Don’t Get Sentimental

 Classic.

Pavement - Shady Lane

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There comes a time in every man’s life when he looks across the crowd at a packed casino bar with a shitty cover band playing “I will survive” and sees John Adams wearing a neck brace, sitting on a stool in the corner of the room, gazing menacingly around the room.

At that moment, I knew I had to post on this sweet blog. It was a watershed moment, a seminal moment, a moment when I realized “shit, if John Adams lived in the 21st century and for some reason wore a neck brace, he’d look like an angry assassin who had just sprained his neck while being foiled in his latest attempt at sniping whomever John Cusack was supposed to kill in Grosse Pointe Blank.”

Anyways, for some reason it inspired me to post this little snippet that I’ve been sitting on for a while…

I stopped at the Sheetz gas station on my way home from work this evening for the bare essentials (the simple bear necessities) — fierce grape gatorade, orange-strawberry gatorade, trashbags, windshield wiper fluid.

The purchases were unrelated, mostly.

I was standing in line, trying to act very cool and casual while listening to my ipod. (You may be thinking, hey, here’s the tenuous music connection. Wrong, sucker. It was a Bloomberg economics podcast I downloaded that morning. Who’s the nerd now?)

I was understandably exhausted after avoiding work for most of the time I spent at the office on Monday, and certainly all of the time I spent at various coffee shops outside of it. I spaced out, waiting for the cashier to handle this woman’s purchase of a $198 money order, paid in cash; ice cream for her kids, paid with a credit card; and $5 in gas, paid for with a different credit card.

It was then I saw a hooded figure in the doorway. Black hood, black mask. I tensed. Stephen Roach chairman and acting chief executive of Morgan Stanely, Asia, was talking about the the bailout plan on the podcast.

I dropped my fierce grape gatorade. The cap broke. It spilled. Tragedy. But, I was more worried about what my sleep-deprived mind thought was a ninja about to bust through to door. In one of those split-second slivers of time where your mind can make dozens of illogical leaps from synapse to synapse, I thought “which would better deflect a throwing star, wiper fluid or gatorade AM? The wiper fluid bottle is bigger, and the gatorade would probably make a better return volley than a shield, I figured.

I shifted my feet - left foot forward, right back slightly, putting myself in position to throw the gatorade, if the need should arise, or box with my dominant hand in the preferable cross position.

In walked the Muslim woman, wearing her black robe, hood and veil, and three little kids. No throwing stars, no gatorades in return. But it took me a moment to wipe the idioticly tense look from my face, and I got a disgusted look from the woman in return. It was all in the eyes.

So that’s the story about how I got fierce grape gatorade all over Sheetz. Also, I don’t mean to diminish the amount of bigotry and insensitivity in this country. But, couldn’t some of it be chalked up to misunderstandings like this one?

Misunderstood

PS - I was just making up annoying tags for this article and, through the auto complete feature, realized I had already used the “gatorade” and “lots of gatorade” tags. Sad, sad business.

PPS - How sweet is that “Gloria” song by Patti Smith? G-L-O-R-I-A. Woooo.

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Sick Track. Can Ox.

Cannibal Ox - From the Planet Eat

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In response to Marcelo’s post on ODB, I present the greatest performance the man ever gave, certainly the greatest known rendition of “Build Me Up Buttercup,” and, dare I say, possibly the greatest slice of music ever recorded.  Old Dirty Bastard née Big Baby Jesus née Dirt McGirt née Old Dirty Chinese Restaurant (seriously, check out this wikipedia article, it is a treasure trove of awesomeness) lends his vocals to the chorus in this Rhymefest song (another great artist, but I’ll leave the hip-hop to Marcelo).

Rhymefest - “Build Me Up featuring ODB”:

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Four years ago the legendary Ol’ Dirty Bastard otherwise known as ODB passed away. At the time I found out of ODB’s passing, I wasn’t nearly as big a fan of Wu-Tang as I am now, and I only knew Ol’ Dirty from his hit “Got Your Money.” Back then, his antics and his persona outweighed his abilities as an MC for me. Well, turns out I was wrong. I’ve really been getting into his material recently, and the man was a genius.

According to Method Man at the end of the track “Can It All Be So Simple” on the Wu’s 36 Chambers album, Ol’ Dirty Bastard got his name “’cause there ain’t no father to his style.” And there is no truer statement. His half-sung half-rapped unpredictable and sometimes humorous style is one of a kind, and I don’t think there is any MC that could even touch Ol’ Dirty in terms of originality, creativity, and style.

Check this song out. It’s testament to the man’s skill.

R.I.P. ODB.

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I don’t really have anything to say, other than you should vote.  Or Puff Daddy/Diddy/Puffy/P. Diddy/Sean John/Sean “Puffy Combs will kill you.  And here’s a song that decries politicking but that came on random this morning on the way to work and made me happy.

Radiohead - Electioneering:

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At my job, I work with a lot of immigrants and my office helps them apply for various statuses: green cards, visas, citizenship, etc.  One service that draws a lot of people is Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which the US offers to various countries whose people have been/are enduring hardship.  More specifically, we get a lot of Salvadorans and Hondurans in this office.

As part of this process, the prospective immigrant has to answer 30 some yes or no questions to determine their eligibility.  These questions range from useful to batshit-fucking-insane, and I’m fairly certain that they’ve never stopped anyone from entering the country.  For your perusing pleasure, here is an assortment of questions our Great Nation uses to keep out the unwanteds:

• Have you engaged in or do you continue to engage in terrorist activities?

Really? You think we’re gonna catch terrorists by asking them nicely?

• Have you been or do you continue to be a member of the Communist or other totalitarian party, except when membership was involuntary?

Nevermind the fact that the Red Scare ended 50 years ago, this is a great tactic.  If only they’d had something similar at Ellis Island, we could’ve kept those pesky anarchists out too.

• Have you participated in Nazi persecution or genocide?

This is a personal favorite, not least because any remaining Nazi ‘persecutors’ would have been about 7 when they were commanding Auschwitz.

• Have you within the past ten years, engaged in prostitution or procurement of prostitution or do you continue to engage in prostitution or procurement of prostitution?
• Follow-up: Have you been or do you intend to be involved in any other commercial vice?

Frankly I think it’s unfair that prostitution, in every possible form, should get its own shout-out above all other commercial vices.  Other commercial vices, according to a google search, include “keeping a bawdy house, procuring, or transporting women for immoral purposes.”

Which is kind of the same thing, except one uses the phrase ‘bawdy house,’ which in my opinion should get its own question, and probably some follow-up questions to inquire about the nature of said bawdy house.

And finally:

• Do you practice polygamy?

Which is totally unfair, because we let the Mormons stay.

If I’ve learned one thing through all this, it’s that maybe building a giant fucking wall across 1,951 miles of territory is not in fact the stupidest thing our government has tried to keep out the undesirables.

God Bless America!

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Our next Swede is another “Swedish Grammy” winner, and this just in: they’re not just called Swedish Grammies, but Grammis. Without Wikipedia, nobody would even know that their grammis are just like ours.

But I digress.  Hello Saferide is a Swedish act led by the above pictured Annika Norlin, and since Wikipedia doesn’t mention any of the other musicians on their English page, I don’t know who they are.  Because I don’t read Swedish.  And because this blog is now a Wikipedia blog with the occasional splash of music.

Hello Saferide is classified as twee pop, which means it’s more happy music, but (do not despair) it is not as happy as I’m From Barcelona.  Listen:

Hello Saferide - Anna

Also, several years before the artistic bankruptcy that is Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl,” Norlin released this gem with the chorus:

“Damn! I wish I was a lesbian
Damn! I wish I was a lesbian
Damn! I wish I was, and that you were, too
So I could fall in love with you”

Enjoy!

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The song “Blueprint²” is featured on Jay-Z’s 2002 album “The Blueprint²: The Gift & The Curse.” The beat on this song initially caught my attention because it’s very epic sounding and very familiar, although I couldn’t figure out where I knew it from.

Later, after doing some reading on the Jay-Z vs. Nas feud I realized that this song was chock full of punches towards Nas. Then after some further reading on “The Blueprint²: The Gift & The Curse” I found that the sample came from “The Ecstasy of Gold” by Ennio Morricone, from the score to “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”

The way I became familiar with “The Ecstasy of Gold” is not through “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” because I have never seen it sadly enough, but because it is one of the songs on Metallica’s “S&M” album which was recorded live with the San Francisco Symphony. Apparently Metallica has been using it as their intro music for their concerts since 1983. I had no idea. Apparently the Ramones also used the song for the same purpose.

Ennio Morricone as you may or may not know is a very well known Italian Academy Award-winning composer who has done film soundtracks and scores for tons and tons of movies.

The use of this classic and epic piece as a sample in a hip-hop song is simply brilliant. The producer on the Jay-Z track is Charlemagne, who I have never heard of before, unless he is the historical figure Charlemagne King of the Franks. And I don’t think he is. Below is a studio version of “The Ecstasy of Gold” in youtube video form, the song “Blueprint²” by Jay-Z, and the live Metallica S&M version of “The Ecstasy of Gold”.

Jay-Z - Blueprint²

Metallica - The Ecstasy of Gold

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So Dave recently posted on the song “Working for the Weekend,” by international pop sensation Loverboy. First thing that came to mind: Scrubs. Check this out:

First of all, I wish I could dance like Turk. Sadly, I cannot. Back to my association with Dave’s song, as you can see in the video, “Working for the Weekend” is followed by “Poison” by Bell Biv DeVoe. And it’s an awesome song.

That’s some great early 90’s R&B (new jack swing if you want to get technical) if I do say so myself. The vocal sample that can be heard throughout “Poison” by Bell Biv DeVoe is sampled from the song “Poison” by Kool G Rap. The sample is one of Kool G Rap exclaiming the word “poison,” which is taken from the opening line of his song.

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