August 21st, 2008
Predictably, Chris GVB already scooped me on this, but if you haven’t heard “No one Does It Like You,” the new single from Department of Eagle’s upcoming album, In Ear Park on 4AD, it’s highly recommended listening. For those who don’t know, Department of Eagles isn’t a group of patriotic ornithology fanatics but rather the combination of Daniel “Grizzly Bear” Rossen and Fred Nicolaus (yes, the Fred Nicolaus.) As you’d expect from Rossen’s other band, “No One Does It Like You,” features celestial harmonies and a beautiful, shambling melody. One might say that it even soars. And then one hopefully might get savaged for making such a horrific pun. Either way, it’s a wonderful song from a group significantly better than both The Eagles and The Eagles of Death Metal.
Download:
MP3: Department of Eagles-”No One Does it Like You”
Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 1 Comment »
August 21st, 2008
Since this week’s recurring motif seems to be, songs that I owned on cassingle, why not Domino’s “Sweet Potato Pie,” which narrowly missed the cut of my G-Funk mix in favor of the Long Beach rapper’s other hit, “Geto Jam.” God knows what happened to this dude, he pretty much fell off the earth after his pretty good, eponymous debut and I’m guessing he didn’t make it to Stanford with Ahmad. So yeah, anyone who knows what this guy’s up to, please fill me in, well, other than maintaining the world’s worst Myspace page and presumably running a lucrative yam and yam-related products company.
Download:
MP3: Domino-”Sweet Potato Pie”
Posted in Videos, Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 3 Comments »
August 20th, 2008
Though my fever’s finally broke, the ’20s blues fixation persists. My latest revelation has been Washington Phillips, a Texas gospel singer known according to wikipedia for playing “something resembling a fretless zither.” I’m not sure what a “fretless zither” is exactly. My best guess is that it’s a Jew on valium. Washington Phillips was not a Jew on valium but he was a great musician, one who only cut 16 songs, all of them recorded during the year’s 1927-1929, all of them worth playing on repeat.
Buy The Key to the Kingdom
Download:
MP3: Washington Phillips-”Lift Him Up, That’s All”
Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 3 Comments »
August 20th, 2008
10. I sincerely hope that word doesn’t get out that “the people” who came around looking for me, were really just Mormon missionaries.
9. Speaking of possible rumors to pro-actively quell. If the wrong definition of “licky boom boom doom,” is allowed to be disseminated, we could be ruined. Mental note: also stop using the word disseminated.
8. In interviews should I describe my music as reggae or reggreat?
7. Are White People really Allowed To Wear Cross-Colors?
The Clothes Show We Mean Business: The Dog Shows We Know How to Love
6. Hopefully, by showing various action shots of me mean-mugging in prison, it will convince people to overlook the fact that I wrote a song called, “Girl, I’ve Been Hurt.”
5. Informers=bad Transformers=good.
4. I wonder how long we can keep MC Shan trapped here without bread and water before he starts to go crazy?
Snow: Possibly a Decepticon
3. I hope no one asks how I picked up a Jamaican accent in Toronto.
2. Ha. PM Dawn will never notice that I stole their sunglasses. Whatever, they look better on me than that fatty Prince Be.
1. Can you believe how lucky we were to find these dancers thumbing for rides home near the set of the “Vogue” video?
Also, for the In Living Color-inclined. (As though there was anyone who wasn’t.)
Download:
MP3: Snow-”Informer”
Posted in 10 Questions Raised | 5 Comments »
August 19th, 2008
At the moment, I’m hard-pressed to envision two songs more diametrically opposed than Pedro the Lion’s “When They Get To Know You They Will Run” and this recently excavated Big L freestyle from a 1995 appearance on Funk Flex. After all what goes better with your sensitive Christian-skewing indie rock fix than some hardcore rhymes about putting bullets to domes over the “Who Shot Ya’” beat.
Odds are every single person that reads this blog will find to something to like in one song or the other. I also estimate that exactly four and a half people will download both (half, meaning that a Dipset/Children of the Corn fan will download 1.2 MB of the Pedro the Lion song before stopping mid-way through while furiously uttering the phase “no homo.”)
This is just begging for a mash-up. Greg Gillis take it away. Or don’t. Please don’t.
Download:
MP3: Pedro the Lion-”When They Get to Know You They Will Run”
MP3: Big L-”Who Shot Ya’ Freestyle on Funk Flex”
Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 10 Comments »
August 19th, 2008
As I mentioned in the “My Life” post, I’ve always been a sucker for wistful rap songs and even though when it was released I was probably too young to grasp the full sense of nostalgia, Ahmad’s “Back in the Day,” remained one of my favorite mid-90s rap singles. Ahmad pretty much fell off of the face of the earth after his one hit but today’s LA Times has a really interesting article about the South Central rapper’s life post-”Back in the Day” and how he’s wound up at Stanford with a full ride and the goal of one day receiving a PhD in social work. It’s a great story, one that’s particularly heartwarming considering most tales of one-hit-wonders in the music industry usually wind up with some interpolation of the phrase, “Cocaine is a hell of a drug.”
Download:
MP3: Ahmad-”Back in Day (Jeep Mix)”
Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 8 Comments »
August 18th, 2008
Never seen this video before. Not sure if it was official or what, but it has rough footage of a very young Big appearing to perform the song live, spliced with scenes from a presumably pre-arranged park jam. You Tube: single-handedly redeeming the Internet.
Download:
MP3: Notorious BIG-”Party and Bullshit”
Posted in Videos | 5 Comments »
August 17th, 2008
I’m in no mood to re-hash the “Jockin’ Jay” debate. Promise. However, this weekend in a bout of channel surfing, I caught some of VH1’s 100 Best Songs of the 90s Countdown. Along with reminding me that I really fucking hate VH1 talking heads, the five minutes I watched featured some (obvious) gems. Bell Biv Devoe’s “Poison.” Sophie B. Hawkin’s “Damn I Wish Your Lover” (yes, really) and “Can I Get A…” one of the finest Jay singles ever.
So can we get a moment to ruminate on the fact that Sean Carter was so red-hot in ‘98, that he was somehow able to extemporaneously kick genius for Brett Ratner film soundtracks just to shut Amil up, keep things running smoothly and in the process also appease Def Jam. I mean was there any other explanation for the presence of Ja Rule? Speaking of which, do you know what the odds are of making a great song featuring both Ja Rule and Amil? The Rain Man couldn’t unlock the probability. (No Tropic Thunder).
Also, while we’re on the subject of Ja, in hindsight can we also safely concur that no rapper in the history of time has ever portrayed a less convincing thug. Dude looks like Dino, the dinosaur from the Flintstones, in a doo-rag.
What You Ain’t Know? It’s Easy To Pimp a Ho
Baby Girl Best Have My Money Fo’ Sho
Download:
MP3: Jay-Z ft. Amil & Ja Rule-”Can I Get A”
Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 22 Comments »
August 17th, 2008
One of the the finest songs from one of the most morbidly comic, intelligent and greatest songwriters to ever breathe. Sometimes, I think there’s a Warren Zevon tune for any mood or feeling you might have. I’m hoping to recover soon enough to go gambling in Havana and demand “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” Or at least, order some pina coladas at Trader Vic’s.
Download:
MP3: Warren Zevon-”My Shit’s Fucked Up”
Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 3 Comments »
August 16th, 2008
Maybe it’s because I’m convalescing on a Saturday night , as weary as Weezy’s hook, or maybe it’s my time-tested affinity for gangster melancholia, but right now, I’m ready to go with “My Life” as my pick for the best rap single to see radio play in ‘08. I’ve always found the auto-tune craze largely an unoriginal device generally used by Roger Troutman-aping artists eager to mask an inherent lack of charisma (salutations, T-Pain). But of late, both Kanye (”Put It On,”) and Wayne (”My Life,”) have successfully transcended its cheap schtick, making it less about “Hey, Now I Can Sound Like A Robot,” and more about how to utilize it for extreme emotional resonance.
Right now, I prefer the LP version to the original leak for the slightly more universalist message Game tacks on, sneering, “Fuck Jesse Jackson. It’s not about race now.” What I love about this song is that you don’t have to grow up in the hood to appreciate Game’s story. It’s about more than just simply geography or simply poverty, it’s about a sense of struggle and how to approach distant dreams with a tireless and triumphalist attitude. Though, god knows we didn’t need another “I was listening to The Chronic” name-drop from Jayceon Taylor.
Download:
MP3: The Game ft. Lil Wayne-”My Life”
Posted in Weekend Song, Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 15 Comments »
