June 23rd, 2008
At the expense of launching into a repetitive and long-winded intro, allow me to get right to it. Here is Day 1 of Summer Jamz 08, a feature which will appear daily over the next two weeks here at the Passion and the very fine sites mentioned below. With that I present to you a more fitting intro from Jonathan Bradley and the first mix from the illustrious Dan Weiss and Alfred Soto.
Summer Jamz ‘08
The irony is, we’re in the thick of winter here in Australia. It’s cold, wet, and, as I type these words, I’m trying to prevent little icicles from forming on the tips of my fingers. Maybe that’s why I’ve always enjoyed the series of annual summer-inspired mixtapes the sadly defunct Stylus Magazine would present at this time of year, starting in 2002 and continuing right until it closed its doors in 2007. These playlists, which would encompass a variety of styles and perspectives on the season never failed to warm my short winter days.
Although Stylus no longer publishes, summer continues to shine, and so this year, as June approached, I called up some of the old Stylus writers and asked them to contribute a mix of songs to soundtrack their summer. Amazingly, they agreed, even the ones who are getting married, hate summer or live in places like Miami and Los Angeles, and, by all rights should be too busy picking up models and partying to be constructing mix tapes.
Starting today, the first day of summer, and continuing each day for the next two weeks or so, Screw Rock ‘n’ Roll, The Passion of the Weiss and What Was It Anyway (along with a few other locations across the Internets) will be posting these Summer-inspired mixes for your listening pleasure. Working or partying, relaxing or vacationing, these are the sounds of our summer. Join us and enjoy.
– Jonathan Bradley
And while you do so, check out Stylus’s archived Summer Jamz:
Stylus Summer Jamz ‘02
Stylus Summer Jamz ‘03
Stylus Summer Jamz ‘04
Stylus Summer Jamz ‘05
Stylus Summer Jamz ‘06
Stylus Summer Jamz ‘07
***
Summer Jamz ‘08 #1: Dan Weiss and Alfred Soto
1. The Reputation - Face It
2. Arthur Russell - That’s Us/Wild Combination
3. Cut Copy - So Haunted
4. Yo La Tengo - Today is the Day
5. The Cure - A Japanese Dream
6. Be Your Own Pet - Super Soaked
7. Lil’ Wayne - I Feel Like Dying
8. Belinda Carlisle - Heaven is a Place on Earth (Heavenly Version)
9. Mike Doughty - Like a Luminous Girl
10. Hercules & Love Affair - Shadows
11. Pet Shop Boys - Minimal
12. Katy Perry - Waking Up in Vegas
13. Wussy - Soak It Up
14. Kathleen Edwards - The Cheapest Key
15. Jens Lekman - A Sweet Summer’s Night on Hammer Hill
16. Bryan Ferry - The In Crowd
17. Weezer - Everybody Get Dangerous
18. Al Green feat. John Legend - Stay With Me (By the Sea)
19. Duran Duran - Meet El Presidente (7″ Remix)
20. The B-52s - Eyes Wide Open
21. We are Scientists - After Hours
22. Liz Phair - Lazy Dreamer
23. Rosanne Cash - Hold On
24. Bob Dylan - Clean-Cut Kid
Mixing this was a necessary challenge. I’m in constant worry that the constant tide of new sounds to parse will eventually swallow my instinct for putting music together or catching the hairpin logic of a loop in potentia. I’m really proud of these results, though. Alfred is a natural collaborator for me because he’s one of the few critics of my time who zeroes in on melody, rhythm, songwriting…the boring essentials that some people will go as far as SunnO)))) records to avoid. I can count on him to present me with a new way to hear E-A-B-C# again (Kathleen Edwards’ brilliant Amy Rigby stunt “The Cheapest Key”) or discern visceral arguments of longevity from inscrutable favorite-band-ism (Pet Shop Boys’ “Minimal,” as exciting as they’ve ever been in 20+ years). I was delighted by his picks, nearly all of them unknown to me. In fact, his choices set the bar so high I went back and redacted a few of mine that I fear relied too much on my weakness: classic alt-rock comforts. Even still, no summer can jam without Weezer, Weezy or Belinda Carlisle. Thanks for luring me out of the cheapest key.
–Dan Weiss
After studying our mix, I noticed that we were most concerned with space — how artists and shrewd remixes suggest vastness. In the context of summer, vastness suggests the abrogation of responsibility: school and relationships, mostly, and the moral sinecures they provide by necessity, against which we strain with some success, and towards which we return as the days start to shorten, and bank balances begin to shrink. These songs are guideposts: towards danger and release.
–Alfred Soto
Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »
June 22nd, 2008
I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was working on a story about J Dilla’s legacy and the problems that his estate has had in enforcing copyright law. It’s up and running now for you to scoff derisively at. A follow-up story with Dilla’s family may be in the works, so there may be more layers to this story. Sort of like a seven-layer dip. Nay, exactly like a 7-layer dip.
LA Weekly: Who’s Biting Dilla’s Beats
Download: (I recognize that this is probably some form of low-grade copyright infringement but I think we can all agree that if you don’t know you need to know.)
MP3: The Pharcyde-”Runnin”
MP3: De La Soul-”Stakes is High”
MP3: Common-”EMC2″
MP3: A Tribe Called Quest-”Find a Way”
MP3: Slum Village-”Climax (Girl Shit)”
MP3: J Dilla-”Lightworks”
MP3: Jaylib-”Champion Sound”
Posted in LA Weekly | 7 Comments »
June 20th, 2008
What’s better than one of my favorite songs of the year? A remix featuring one of my favorite rappers of all-time. The ideal way to start your weekend off right.
Download:
MP3: Erykah Badu ft. Pharoahe Monch-”The Healer Remix”
Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 2 Comments »
June 20th, 2008
Odds are on any given day you can catch Nico the Beast rocking plain white tees. They’re his uniform of choice. Not because he’s trying to sell some D-boy image to get that Plies money.* but rather because they symbolize what Nico reps: a sort of basic no-frills, rock-ribbed fundamental rap. Or in sports terms, think him as the classic, blue-collar lunch-pail, PJ Brown-type, always hustling (no Rick Ross), willing to put his head down, take charges, board hard and lock-down scorers.
A few people sniped at Nico for dissing Lil Wayne on his “Dey Know” freestyle a few weeks back. I understood where the sentiment was coming from. It’s easy to label any attack on the rapper du jour as being sour grapes, considering the salvo came from an independent rapper very much on the grind. Yet the diss seemed logical to me, the natural polarization that exists between two opposites. Indeed, few people on earth are more diametrically opposed than Nico and Weezy, the former’s knuckle-nosed, blue-collar sobriety, the very antithesis of Wayne’s self-aggrandizing swagger and candy-colored flash. Unlike the man who boasted he’s so high that he’s eating stars, Nico’s a drug-eschewing, happily married father of two young daughters, a family man with an almost tribal sense of loyalty that he’s unafraid to flash on wax (”Sunshine,” “Loving You a Lifetime,” “Be A Man.”)
Ever the product of the South Philly streets that raised him (see Nerd Litter’s outstanding post on “Philly Codes”), Nico’s outlook and rhyme capabilities are very much the result of geography and the thousands of ciphers that find you when you’re a hulking white boy rapper with a hair-trigger temper. Retaining the asphalt and dirt rawness you’d expect from a snarling ex-street fighter nicknamed the Beast, No Beast So Fierce strikes a surprising moral balance without resorting to self-righteous stridency.
Why Yes, This Man Did Once Challenge The Spiderman on Hollywood Blvd. To A Fist-Fight
Even if for nothing else, Nico’s debut record would be a success based on his ability to evince a complex, compelling personality without opting for the easy confessional rout that so many other rappers have traveled in the past (hi Marshall.) But there’s more to like than mere three-dimensionality. On pure ability to spit raps, few young subterranean rhymers can in recent memory can match Nico’s ability to flow. A master of byzantine internal rhyming, breath-control and the skill to kick both double-timed burners over bounce tracks and blunt, hammering raps over woozy gospel-infused moans, Nico’s versatility makes him one of those quintessential “rapper’s rappers.”
Moreover, No Beast So Fierce makes a clear statement for the case that the Philly/Camden scene is turning into one of hip-hop’s most vital, with help arriving from impressive guest turns from Reef da Lost Cauze, 2ew Gunn Ciz, Magr and Nico’s partner in Clean Guns, Zilla Rocca. Of course, the record isn’t without it’s flaws. At a whopping 20 tracks and an hour and twenty minutes, like nearly all hip-hop albums it runs at least 20 minutes long, making it hard to get through in one sitting. **To Nico’s credit, the bloat stems more from the near-impossibility of sustaining attention over such a long stretch, rather than anything being an outright dud.
It’s unlikely that No Beast So Fierce will satisfy that subset of the blog-rap world that worship swag and style above skills, but both genre purists and anyone in thrall to that mid-90s school of hard rhymes spit over knocking beats will undoubtedly find something to like. In the liner notes, Nico thanks his favorite rappers, Brother Ali, Joe Budden and Joell Ortiz and with his impressive debut, No Beast So Fierce, he’s established himself as being a worthy inheritor of that lineage. Or at the very least, an RA the Rugged Man or Vinnie Paz for this generation. Consider it a triumph of the power of plain white tee (no American Apparel).
*As long as the South is the only region that y’know, buys rap CDs, it will stay winning. Sort of. At the very least, it ensures that majors will always push crap like 2 Pistols over that Knux album that Interscope will probably never release.
** Rappers, I know there have to be at least a few of you reading this. Unless your name is Big Pun, stick to 14 tracks running no more than one hour. Or do we have to bring up the played-out reminder that Illmatic was about a half-hour long.
Buy No Beast So Fierce
Download:
MP3: Nico the Beast-”Mark of the Beast”
MP3: Nico the Beast ft. Reef Da Lost Cauze, Zilla Rocca, 2Ew Gun Ciz & Blessa -”Feedin’ Time”
MP3: Nico the Beast ft. Dame, Black Russian, Zilla Rocca, Blessa, Slim-DSM-”One of These Days”
Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 12 Comments »
June 19th, 2008
Photo Via American Songwriter
Lamentably, I didn’t make it out to this year’s Bonnaroo, but thanks to some enterprising hippies, I’ve wrangled a bootleg of My Morning Jacket’s marathon four-hour set that was reportedly played in the midst of a torrential downpour. I haven’t had the chance to listen to it in its entirety but the sound quality isn’t bad, even if Jim’s voice sounds a bit strained. Naturally, there are covers galore (galore, I tell you), including cuts from Sly & the Family Stone, Erykah Badu, James Brown, Funkadelic, Kool & the Gang, Bobby Womack, the Velvet Underground and uh…Motley Crue. I’m presuming this is as a thanks to Tommy Lee for writing “Highly Suspicious.”
Setlist after the jump (jacked courtesy of the fine people at Hidden Track)
Download:
ZIP: My Morning Jacket-”Bonnaroo 2008, 6-13-08) (Left-Click)
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 4 Comments »
June 19th, 2008
10. After noticing a spare copy of Pigeon Racer Digest: the Thinking Person’s Journal of Racing Pigeons in the Hot Boys’ trailer,* “that boy” decided to join the American Racing Pigeon Union and make a go of it in the wide world of ornithology.
9. Decided to leave Magnolia because hanging out with Baby during his “bird-calling” phase soon became unbearable. Like it was the funny and cool the first few dozen times but soon it got really old. Like Austin Powers jokes old. Eventually, this also led to B.G.’s decision to leave Cash Money.
Who Else Would Be Willing To Employ The Sporty Thievez?
8. Due to NAFTA,”that boy” lost his job to a more cost-efficient Mexican pigeon clapper.
7. Became the subject of a revelatory Roald Dahl work.
Malice Was Actually More of a Charlie And the Great Glass Elevator Guy
6. Currently, delegated to being Wayne’s third-string lip gloss holder.
5. Pusha-T got him an apprenticeship at a Chinchilla furrier in an Italian neighborhood in Virginia Beach.
4. After being disposed of properly by Birdman and Clipse, “that boy” was thought to be dead due to his waxen pallor. Instead, it seems that he survived the attack and went on to one day join the Arcade Fire.
Let’s Just Say That There Are Many Funny Things To Do To This Photo Provided You are 12-years Old and Have a Mastery of Photo Shop.**
3. Went to the impossible-to-find desert island that Pharell’s talent abandoned him for.
2 . After begging for his life, Birdman forgave “that boy” for snitching and allowed him to run his thriving school of avian mesmerism.
1. He was traded away in a three-team deal involving Philly’s Most Wanted, Gillie Da Kid, five Birdman medallions and three Cash Money Millionaires to Be Named Later.
* Turk briefly contributed to the magazine for a short stretch in the mid-90s.
** The idea that forms the basis of Perez Hilton’s entire career.
Posted in 10 Questions Raised | 6 Comments »
June 18th, 2008
Photo via Stefano Paltera/LA Times
I don’t even know where to begin. I mean I braced myself for the weirdness, but Monday night’s Lil Wayne concert at the House of Blues may have been the most surreal show I’ve ever been to. Among the bizarre things witnessed:
- Wayne repeatedly applying lip gloss taken from his professional lip gloss girl standing behind him (see pictures of the lip gloss girl and more at Play.) There are several things that I never want to know. One of them is why Lil Wayne needs to pay someone 40,000 k a year (rough estimate) to keep his lips moist.
- Suge Knight sitting at Lil Wayne’s private table on the upstairs balcony with a young and very attractive girl grinding into his lap. Me, resisting the urge to recommend that Suge hang Lil Wayne out of a window to procure his publishing. Hey, everyone’s got to eat.
- A guest appearance from Baby, with father and son displaying a salient and palpable homo-erotic current. At times, watching Weezy Fitzgerald Baby and Birdman dance together felt like a combination of Footloose and Deliverance.
- Wayne repeatedly sipping from a white styrofoam cup on stage, presumably infuriating Al Gore for his lack of eco-friendliness. No word on whether or not the liquid in said cup was pinker than the Easter Rabbit.
- The worst guitar solo ever performed. Like making Bill S. Preston Esq. look like Eddie Van Halen bad
- A performance of “Pussy Monster,” with Wayne’s clown-red pants practically down to his knees and him writhing on the floorboards, phantom-fucking the air. In other news, it can be safely relayed that the phrase “Pussy Monster,” is not allowed to be used in a family newspaper, even if said phrase is referring to a song title. This is probably a good thing.
- Wayne walking off the stage wearing a white robe with the words “Best Rapper Alive” sown onto the back, lip-synching to the sweet strains of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.” Presumably, because “I’m Every Woman,” would’ve just been totally over the top.
LA Times: Lil Wayne Live at the House of Blues
Download:
MP3: Lil Wayne: “La La La”
MP3: Lil Wayne-”I Feel Like Dying”
MP3: Lil Wayne-”Off the Docks”
Posted in LA Times | 17 Comments »
June 17th, 2008
Granted, the retina-ravaging neon nightmare of Long Beach-based buzz band Crystal Antlers’ fashion scheme can send you to the hipster handbook faster than you can say LBC, but it’s tough not to love a band whose percussionist’s name is Sexual Chocolate. I’ll let you guess which one he is. (Hint: not hipster Derek Zoolander on your left).
Besides, as Ian Cohen points out in his ‘Fork rave, the Antlers brilliantly “merge psych, garage, lo-fi, prog, and countless other influences [on their debut EP], maintaining consistency despite a complete inability to be pinned to any specific movement or trend (so long as you’re not counting the increasingly frustrating trend of unimaginative bandnames).”
About to embark on their first big X-country trek along with similarly impressive Tweak Bird, if you’re into noisy, psychedelic, Comets on Fire-like rock, this is the show to attend. Just bring sunglasses or something.
Also, while I’m in the habit of name-checking Ian, I may as well give some pub for the next installment of the Comedy Coalition that he’s co-promoting tonight. Line-up includes, Matt Champagne (MC), Adam Hastings, Lauri Roggenkamp, Ali Waller, Jordan Rubin, Clinton Pickens, Jacob Sirof, and Harris Wittels. More info can be found at www.myspace.com/comedycoalitionlosangeles. FREE parking lot in front! $3 beers! $4 well drinks! Karaoke after the show! Good times had by all.
Download:
MP3: Crystal Antlers-”A Thousand Eyes”
MP3: Crystal Antlers-”Owl”
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
June 17th, 2008
So the review for Steinski’s What Does It Mean? that I spoke of a little while back finally ran. It’s not long, just 300 words or so, but I’d hope that it at least partially conveys how incredible and influential this comp is. Highly recommended for anyone with even a vague appreciation of hip-hop, mash-ups and/or the music of DJ Shadow, The Avalanches or ahem…Girl Talk. All requests for further information on Steinski, should be directed towards Nate Patrin’s excellent Pitchfork review, which cites the old-earth Steinski piece, Robert Christgau’s excellent: Great Dance Records You Can’t Buy.
OC Weekly: Steinski-What Does It All Mean? (1983-2006 Retrospective)
Buy Steinski-What Does It All Mean? 1983-2006 Retrospective
Download:
MP3: Steinski-”The Payoff Mix”
MP3: Steinski-”Lesson Two (James Brown Mix)”
MP3: Steinski-”Lesson Three (History of Hip-Hop)”
Posted in OC Weekly | 2 Comments »
