Blackalicious – Melodica

So we had a party the other day where Andrew invited two sides of a broken couple that haven’t gotten along to well since the break-up. We’ll call them Dave and Tessa. They broke up almost a year ago, and I was perfectly willing to remain friends with both except that Tessa is crazy.

And by “crazy” I mean “batshit crazy.”

When the two were together, they spent most of their time being miserable as they tried to force things to work (I assume the sex was crazy good.) You could never tell from week to week whether they were broken up or back together. And I began to hear stories about their fights from Dave’s roommates. At first I didn’t believe them until I started seeing signs that the stories were true.

Tessa had shown up at Dave’s house one day and started a fight. She began screaming at him and running around his room trying to confiscate everything she had ever bought him. He told her to leave, but being insane, she refused.

Eventually he had to push her out of his room and lock the door. This is what Dave told me, and from the other witnesses said, I believed to be true. Unless you asked Tessa.

She began spreading her story like the flu at an office, and as she told me several times personally, I got to see the slow manipulation and exaggeration of what had occurred. First it was that Dave had pushed her, then became Dave shoved her before morphing into Dave “getting physical with her,” before finally landing on Dave hitting her. I wondered if she really believed it at that point, because she was still trying to get him back while she spread these stories.

After the break-up she spent months trying to turn as many of our group as she could against Dave. Dave on the other hand remained respectfully silent, despite Tessa’s accusations to the contrary. I sided with Dave…especially since all his stories were true. So at the party last week, it was clear that she still wasn’t over it as she attempted to whore it up for Dave’s benefit.

Thank God Dave has a normal girlfriend now and really could care less.

But since it’s been a week since I got a post in, allow me to focus you attention on the masterpiece of 90’s indie hip hop that is Blackalicious’s “Melodica.”

Chief X-Cel (Xavier Mosley) and Gift of Gab (Timothy Parker) met in 1987 while at JFK High up in Sac-Town (that’s what we call Sacramento here on the west-side) and discovered a mutual love of hip hop music. After graduation though, Parker moved to Los Angeles while Xavier stayed local at UC Davis and was part of the now infamous Solesides crew that included DJ Shadow, Lateef the truth Speaker and Lyrics Born who would eventually become the wonder duo known as Latyrix. Parker and Mosley stayed in touch though, and reunited in 1992 in Davis and formed Blackalicious.

By then, Solesides had their own label and the two released their first single in 1994, the DJ Shadow produced vinyl only single ‘Swan Lake.’ Underground response to the 12″ was huge and the group followed it up with their debut EP “Melodica” the very next year.

The thing that always amazed me was how hard it was to lay your hands on a copy of this at the time and even now.  After years of searching, I’ve only seen one vinyl copy…thank got for Serato and the internet.

“Melodica” isn’t a huge album at only 7 tracks (11 if you got the import with instrumentals included) but it is an immensely satisfying one. The sound runs he gamut between the slow your roll vibe of ‘40oz for Breakfast’ to the jumping party track ‘Rhymes for The Deaf, Dumb and Blind’ and it runs it well. It can cover the night of drinking just as good as it can the morning after.

Now days you can just download it off most of the illegitimate music sites out there( iTunes: Take notice and put this shit up you dumb asses!!!), or plunk down some serious scratch for a Japanese import. And tune in next week when I discuss just how outrageous and unfair Japanese imports are.

DJ Shadow – Endtroducing

When I’m not out saving the universe, I work at a photolab as a mild mannered retoucher.  Pretty much every event that comes though gets retouched by me, and over the course of the years I can honestly say I’ve seen it all.  From pirate themed weddings to random naked “art”.

So anyhow, the other day I came upon a photo of a woman with a mustache….and not a little one.  I would put it somewhere between John Waters and Magnum PI, and dark enough to be noticeable from across the street. The kicker was that she had a matching goatee that was just starting to come in too. 

Everyone I showed it to seemed convinced she was a man dressed as a woman, but I can’t imagine any self respecting cross dresser or trannie walking out in public looking like that.  Which begs the question, does she know she has a mustache?  I can’t imagine that if someone in my family had a thick dark mustache growing in that I wouldn’t say something.

Maybe something like “Hey, what’s up with the mustache?”

Or maybe she likes it…or has a husband with a facial hair fetish who insists that she keep it.  Either way, I end up disturbed.

Why can’t I un-see these kind of things?

Moving on this week, I’ve decided to include what is perhaps on of my favorite hip hop albums of all time, DJ Shadow’s “Endtroducing.”  I know this piece of art is now pretty well known, but it wasn’t always so…and that remains part of it’s charm.  With his first album, Shadow dropped what would be the first in a series of what I call sonic grenades…mostly because there seems to be a time delay between when he drops something and when the rest of the population “get’s it.

That being said, if you ever want to get a glimpse of what the next level looks like, you can always pick up whatever DJ Shadow has recently done.  Just don’t sleep on it.

Josh “DJ Shadow” Davis was born in Davis, California and was obsessed with music from an early age…and he’s as pure a DJ you could ever hope to find.  He spent years digging through the dusty shelves at his local record store (like the one on the cover) and was soon rewarded with access to the store’s now legendary basement.  Digging through stacks of records that often reached the ceiling,  Josh began to develop an ear for the obscure and a respect for the music that most would throw away.  His first recordings reflected they style of the late 80s and early 90s era, with a distinct slant towards something that was undefinable at the time.  Something different.

His first real gig was at the UC Davis radio station KDVS and he began to explore a more experimental style and jazz infused ethic that would soon become the hallmark of his work.  After a few releases on Hollywood Records, he was contacted by Mo Wax label head James Lavelle who wanted to release his next 12″  ‘In/Flux’ on his label.  It was the move to Mo Wax that signaled the the real cohesion of the DJ Shadow sound.  The single was an underground hit, although made little waves in the mainstream. 

At least for the time being. 

Shadow’s work was never about appealing to the mainstream anyway, but the sound he had created would have far reaching repercussions that are still being felt in the music world today.  He started work on “Entroducing” soon after the success of ‘In/Flux’ and dropped it at the tail end of 1996.  Working entirely from sampled music, Davis put the whole thing together on an old MPC60. 

But it’s not just the sampling…it’s the quality of the samples, the random excursions into psychedelia and jazz, the sparse vocals and snippets of dialog from “Prince of Darkness,” and the adhesion to the core beliefs of hip hop that make this truly one of the greatest exercises the human ear had ever experienced.  Like the dialog implies, the album seems to be a broadcast from the future.  A future where music hasn’t gotten dumber…but advanced to near genius level. 

I could seriosly go on for hours about how much I love this shit…but I have to sleep sometimes. So go feed your ears.

DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist – Brainfreeze

This is the stuff Mixtape legends are made of.

I picked this up on a whim at the record store because I knew DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist and was already a fan of their work.  I thought to myself:

“Hmmm…a mix of funk 45s, how quaint.”

Then I tossed it in my pile, only to discover later that it contained some of the rarest, funkiest shit I had never heard of.  I have a shitload of old funk and soul in my crates, so for something this awesome to come out and not have a single track I could identify kind of brought my mind to a halt.  45’s like these go for mucho dinero on Ebay! But to fully understand the brilliance of this mix, you need a little history.

See, there used to be an awesome club in San Francisco called Future Primitive.  Their hook was that they would pair up two DJ’s with different styles, usually a party rocker and a turntablist, and have them throw down for an evening.  One one occasion DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist were on hand, and already good friends and musical contemporaries when they decided to rehearse a little set just using their old funk 45’s.  What happened was nothing short of magic…so they kept the recording, pressed up 1000 copies to sell at their shows and another 1000 for local record shops. 

It sold out real fast.

Back in the 80’s, when DJing was just beginning to evolve, guys like Double Dee and Steinski started a mini revolution by releasing a few tracks called ‘The Lessons’ which cut and mixed snippets and parts of popular tracks together into a new track.  What most DJ’s didn’t know was that this was done in a studio by cutting and pasting audio tape.  As far as they knew it was being done live, so they began emulating this technique using two turntables instead.  The rest is history, and would eventually lead to the skills you hear on this mix.

“Brainfreeze”, named and themed after 7-11 promotional 45 that actually has a sick break on it, was never repressed officially after 7-11 sent a cease and desist letter and they boys decided to simply move on. This was a huge mistake by 7-11, who should have jumped on the bandwagon and supported this project instead. But god forbid they be associated with something this fucking cool. It has been bootlegged to death though, and can still be found at some record stores.

If you were lucky enough, you got to catch the boys doing this show live…and got to enjoy a Slurpee while doing so. What’s more amazing than the rarity of the 45’s on this mix, is the fact that Shadow and Cut pretty much destroyed their copies by doing this mix.

But real art requires sacrifice.

Bonus!!! Here’s the tracklisting via Wiki!

Mix One

• Lamont Johson Quartet – “Thunder Kick” (Trailer to unreleased film)
• The Jules Blattner Group – 2001 – “A Soul Odyssey”
• Fried Chicken – “Funky DJ”
• The Mohawks – “The Champ”
• Reuben Bell – “Superjock”
• Albert King – “Cold Feet”
• Ultimate Force – “I’m Not Playing”
• Eddie Bo and Inez Cheatham – “Lover And A Friend”
• Mack Rice – “Three People In Love”
• The Nu People – “I’d Be Nowhere Today”
• Nu-Sound Express Ltd – “Ain’t It Good Enough”
• Mystic Moods – “Cosmic Sea”
• American Gypsy – “Inside Out”
• Odetta – “Hit Or Miss”
• The Mar-Keys – “Grab This Thing (Part 2)”
• Rusty Bryant – “FireEater”
• Simtec and Wylie – “Bootleggin’” (Part 2)
• Wilbur Bascomb and The Zodiac – “Just A Groove In ‘G’”
• Eddie Bo and The Soul Finders – “We’re Doin’ It (Thang) (Part 2)”
• Rufus Thomas – “Sophisticated Sissy”
• The Showmen Inc. – “The Tramp (From Funky Broadway)” (Part 1)
• The Original Soul Senders – “Soul Brother Testify (Part 2)”
• Rufus Thomas – “Itch and Scratch (Part I and II)”
• Alvin Cash – “Keep On Dancing (Instrumental”)
• Lou Courtney – “Hey Joyce”
• Bummer radio spot

Mix Two

• The Singing Principal – “Women’s Lib”
• Salt – “Hung Up”
• The Soul Lifters – “Hot, Funky, and Sweaty”
• Frankie Seay and The Soul Riders – “Soul Food”
• The Interpretations – “Jason Pew Mosso” (Part 1)
• Thunder and Lightning – “Bumpin’ Bus Stop”
• Billy Garner – “I Got Some”
• Pleasure Web – “Music Man (Part I and II)”
• Gary Byrd – “Soul Travelin’ (The G.B.E.)” (Part I)
• Clifton Chenier and Grandma Gee Gee – “Just Keep On Scratching”
• “W” radio spot
• Marlena Shaw - “California Soul”
• The Vibrettes- “Humpty Dump (Part 1)”
• Eddie Bo - “From This Day On”
• 7 Eleven- “Dance The Slurp”
• Kraftwerk - “Numbers”
• Flash and The Five – “Flash It To The Beat”
• Pearly Queen – “Quit Jivin’”
• Tony Alvon and The Belairs – “Sexy Coffee Pot”
• Chuck Mangione – “Hill Where The Lord Hides”
• Funka Fize – “No Words”
• Schooly D – “Gucci Time”
• Jurassic 5 – “Unified Rebelution” (A cappella)
• Third Guitar – “Baby Don’t Cry”
• Don Pierce – “This Funky Thing”
• Funka Fize – “Because You’re Funky”
• The Troubleneck Brothers – “Back To The Hip Hop”
• Stu Gardner – “Devil In A Man”
• Samson and Delilah – “There’s A DJ In Your Town”
• Giorgio Moroder – “Tears”
• Tim and Bill – “Someone”