Who the king piece in the chess game?

Slick Rick - Underwear is Wet


Today is my sister's birthday. Happy birthday Jordana. A little while ago she wrote a top ten of 2007 list for me that was at least half rap music which was, of course, no surprise to me since we share an apartment, and I heard her listening to these songs for months, some of them for years. A few years ago she lived in a Philly apartment crowded out with all of my records. She made the best of it, running through piles of 12"s and assembling genius mixtapes. When I showed up to the fort she had made out of cardboard sleeves and dirty clothes we spent weeks laughing and freaking out over songs. Barely letting two verses of Biggie songs play out before we shoved Foster Sylvers onto the turntable, followed quickly by "If I Had No Loot." It had been a minute since we had seen each other, and the themes that emerged in her hasty playbacks nudged me to ask if she had discovered the Slick Rick white label in the shelves with the B-side "Underwear is Wet", claiming that it was the exact sort of misogyny that she appreciated.

In the late 90s I lived in Portland Oregon and there were so few stores to buy rap records that I ended up figuring out the internet so that I could keep up. It turned out a good thing, because between sandboxautomatic.com and hiphopsite.com I found a ton of weird stuff that barely made it to stores beyond midtown Manhattan and Los Angeles. When Slick Rick was released from prison in 1998, I obsessively fantasized about how great his comeback record would be. I think it must've been in 1999 when this 12" came out, listed on one of those sites as "I Sparkle" b/w "Underwear is Wet" which is funny since the 12" only says "I Sparkle (clean version)" on one side and "I Sparkle (dirty version)" on the other. "Sparkle" is a Large Professor produced cut that's confident, easygoing and steady graciousness, the kind of thing that Jay-Z's grown man rap music should've aspired to. But "Underwear" was the real winner, a fearsome battle track with him twisting and turning over a ridiculously simple beat that basically flips the "there's a place in france where the naked ladies dance" theme.

The song is full of quoteables, nearly every line hits with that hurt-your-feelings sharpness, but Rick sounds nonchalant and grinning the whole time, so clearly in control of the situation. I think it was that era where everyone started describing MCs as sounding "hungry" and it was a sound I was very compelled by but on "Underwear is Wet" Slick Rick outdid the hunger of Shabaam Sahdeeq or Ill Bill or whatever it was by sounding well fed but a gourmand, like he was just eating for the taste of it. Appreciating the flavor of demolished MCs. Quick favorite punchlines:

"my record will be barking all through your broke project"
"if a rapper wants to eat he better never cry battle"
"put you and your family on welfare"

And then of course the chorus, which features the eye-widening, nudge-your-friend-in-disbelief line which made me think my sister would love the song so much: "no period and still have to put a pad on." Always with the grin on his face, I can't think of another rapper who you can so clearly hear his smile while he's rapping.

Jordana and I have secretly fought over this 12" for years. I have no count of how many times it's changed hands over the years. Always without a word or discussion. It's just suddenly gone one day, and then the next time I see her I sneak it into the bag with whatever I just bought. I think we've both looked for extra copies on the internet but never with any luck, the fact that it doesn't say "Underwear is Wet" anywhere on the record doesn't help. A year or so ago Cocaine Blunts aka the gold standard of talking about rap records on the internet ran an entry on Slick Rick rarities that had some gems but both of these songs were absent. "I Sparkle", by the way, did surface on the "Wild Wild West" soundtrack but as far as I know "Underwear is Wet" has been hidden forever. Anyway, it's now here and on her computer so no matter what happens to the 12" we can always hear a favorite.

And I play "couldn't-be-much-boreder"

Shudder to Think - Corner of My Eye



A couple of months ago this movie came out, called "Control" that was about the band Joy Division and specifically their singer, Ian Curtis. A few years ago, I read the book that "Control" is based on, called Touching From a Distance. It was written by Deborah Curtis, who was married to the singer. They even had a daughter. The book, um, debased me of a mythology that I had carried about Curtis since I was a teenager - that he committed suicide by hanging himself in an empty room, leaving a mystery for the authorities. They eventually figured out that he stood atop a block of ice to place the noose around his neck, which he knew would melt and leave no trace before they found his body. Anyway, it's not at all true, although it is true that they found a copy of Iggy Pop's The Idiot on the turntable beside him.

Beyond movies, the internet is doing a good job of removing all of these weird legends that we carry about our favorites - like how Debbie Harry wasn't actually almost abducted by Ted Bundy, or how Sinbad didn't die last year, or how Lars Ulrich isn't HIV-positive. But it sometimes feels like a fun robber.

Anyway, when I first heard Shudder to Think it was this song on a mixed tape, and the friend who made it for me said that the singer had trained for the opera before getting into punk, which is why he sang so uniquely. I resisted his voice for awhile; the leaps in pitch, the near-constant vibrato and smoothed-out vowels sounding so much like good posture and all the other stuff I joined punk to avoid. But I really liked the way he sang "and I just want to see my girlfriend, cause her hugs are the best I know", because his inflection actually adds to the emotion of the line, makes it believable and bright in a way that Blake Schwarzenbach or Billie Joe wouldn't have been able to. That scratch of ache that I felt so deeply when I first heard it and feel again on a night like tonight was enough to carry me through the song over and over and over again. I liked the poetry of his lyrics, it was sweetly teenaged and facile, full of images like "housefly hair" and alcohol described as "forgetting sauce", the types of conceits that never appeared in the underground where everyone simply said what they meant. "At least I can fucking think" and "if I started crying, would you start crying?" and "put your hand in my hand and look me in the eye when you're talking to me" are all potent, but they sometimes fade and stop registering with their directness. While I still think about Shudder to Think's "neurotic time" when I'm on the subway.

The song itself is another kind of magic, a take on the sound of their friends that's just skewed enough to sound unlike everything else. On the Dischord Records biography of Shudder to Think they describe the band as being "inspired by, but also independent from" the Dischord scene. I like the way they take the insistent, melodic guitars of Revolution Summer and slowed them down just a touch, releasing a bit of the tension but creating some kind of nobleness that matches the singer's tone. As the verse begins, there's a chugga-chugga guitar riff that would feel muscular and heavy-browed in another band's hands, but in "Corner of My Eye" feels pensive and wide-eyed in the way the lyrics feel.

The thing is that there are a million punk songs about feeling isolated in a crowd, about the weight of the mainstream, the pressure of their lifestyles. And there's something great about kicking out, and spitting and causing a scene like the songs do, but most of the time I just feel tense and so quiet and wishing I could shrink or vanish. And more than anything, I watch: the secret interactions of the people around me, the way they hold their bags, the way they care about other people's gazes or else the way they make a show of not caring. But I never found a song that said that until "Corner of My Eye." And I just spent an hour reading every bio I could of Shudder to Think's singer Craig Wedren and I can't find a single reference to him training for the opera. And I'm annoyed to have to let go of another amazing myth but I feel even better coming to terms with the brilliant cohesion of the entire band, with the way their every gesture reinforces this sense of movement surrounding me and forcing me more and more inward, wishing for faraway hugs and wondering about the lives of the people across me on the train.

A certain something asphyxiates my breathing

Hardcore has always felt the most potent to me when the music reaches the same kind of frantic violence as the world that it's responding to. The first song on the Necros LP. Crossed Out. Die Kreuzen. The entire second side of the Heroin LP. There's something so compelling to me about the balance, these short, super-tight songs where it feels like everything is at the breaking point. Drummers hitting every single surface in front of them, exploding bursts that cut and jab but always remain concise. Guitar and bass careening, like their strings are a staircase the players are falling down. Listening to "Jack of All Phobias", the first song on Phantom Tollbooth's 1986 self-titled EP, I sometimes can't believe there's only three people in the band.

I spent a lot of the 90s feeling breathless and aghast, and those years were thankfully escorted by hardcore records. When life felt hectic, instead of finding a song that could calm me, I looked for one that felt just as hectic. There was a few years there where it seemed like Born Against were clearly the most succinct expression of this feeling; the songs swarmed and kicked in a way that I wished I could. Their abrupt endings made the two seconds of silence before the next song feel like a new kind of violence, a sudden elimination of air.

Somewhere along the line I explained to someone how deeply I felt for Born Against, how original and telling their records were. In a very friendly, hey-check-this-out kind of way he suggested I look for a 7" by the band Mecht Mensch. A few weeks later I saw a copy in a record shop in Rochester and paid $50 for it unheard, begging my sister not to tell my parents how much I spent. I loved it. Ran around the living room stagedive off the loveseat unspeakably happy. It felt like fighting every person that's ever made me feel worthless, irrelevent, or unfit, and winning! It was everything I knew hardcore could be.

A while later my friend Isaac gave me the first 12" EP by Phantom Tollbooth, knowing my love for this kind of brutality. The first song, clocking at 1 minute, 52 seconds, feels like it has somehow lasted from the moment I put on the record until this moment, and will extend its savagery for the rest of my life.

What was going on in New York in 1986 when this record came out? The history books seem to think there was just the Cro-Mags "Age of Quarrel" and Youth of Today's "Break Down the Walls", leaving no room for this kind of storm. The art-damage of D.N.A. was far enough in the past that it wouldn't even signify, and the band's reliance on sheer noise as a foundation seems to distance it from any of the midwest hardcore acts that reached their levels of aggression. Their thank you list includes Sonic Youth, Das Damen and Yo La Tengo, which suggests the company they were keeping. But if I try to imagine going to see Sonic Youth, even in their feedback-swirl mid-80s mode, and hearing this, I can only think of it like waiting for the train and suddenly getting stabbed in the ribcage with a screwdriver.

The track begins with an evil squall, which fades just enough to introduce the bassline before the drums and vocals kick down the door. Their initial impact is one of the harshest openings I can think of. The song rages forward with a wild-eyed fury, the drumming running so many fills that it seems like he recorded three different takes. It's a paranoia-inspiring flurry, makes me feel surrounded and harried. Just at the moment that you could become acclimated to the pace, the song stops with a neck-grabbing precision, which isn't at all showy but does make you realize that everything is carefully placed. Then they leap back into the fight.

This is where the song almost derails, with a dis-ease and drama that only heightens the sense of paranoia and harassment, with the bass peaking into this Minutemen-ish high-end speed, while the guitar restrains itself to tight, sparse chords. The drums almost manage a typical 4/4 beat. Then the noise swells up underneath while the vocals maniacally repeat "laugh, laugh and survive." It's harrowing, but clearly encouraging.

The other five songs on the 12" are good, they don't kill me the way "Jack" does but there is some gleeful dement on it, the lines "blood on the stairs/still mine" from "More Paranoia" or the haunted nonsense of "Little green girls with little green tails are telling tales, they're telling tales/about me" in "Sweat Blood." The thing that does kill me is how much this record means to me and how little it's entered any kind of hardcore canon. These days Phantom Tollbooth is best known for the remake of their 1988 LP "Power Toy" by Bob Pollard and by the bands they went on to form/join. Apparently the $50 I paid for the Mecht Mensch 7" is nothing compared to what it's fetching today, but you can buy a sealed copy of the Phantom Tollbooth 12" for $9. Really. It's on ebay right now. And when I can't breathe, and there are enemies on every side, it's impossible to say that one record signifies more than the other. And the Phantom Tollbooth has a better cover.

I'm looking for amusement, please believe me

Roy Harper - Mr. Stationmaster




Something's that's been discussed before is that amazing process where you learn about things in isolation. Reading Maximum RocknRoll and noticing that every third band in the review section gets compared to Green Day so you buy a Green Day record. Green Day thanks Crimpshrine on that record so you get one of theirs. They're both on Lookout Records, so you start checking for other records on that label.

Or a roommate played Nick Drake for me and I absolutely flipped. It was the best! Like the music my parents played around the house when I was a kid, but more ghostlike, closer to my ear. And then I found a biography where the author claimed that there's nothing special about Drake's guitar playing, he just knocked off Bert Jansch. So go buy one of his. Bert Jansch was famous for his cover of "Angie", written by Davy Graham. Davy Graham made a record with Shirley Collins. Their version of "Nottamun Town" is on the boxed set "Electric Muse: The Story of Folk into Rock" which has this one perfect, precious love song. "Forever" by Roy Harper.

Everyone likes Roy Harper. Led Zeppelin made a song about him called "Hats off to Harper." Pink Floyd had him sing "Have a Cigar" on one of their records. Kate Bush traded duets with him on her record, then his. This past September, Joanna Newsom called on him to play a show with her in London. But when I heard him sing that song, the weight of his reputation, really the whole world, just fell away. It was me, cross legged on the floor with headphones on, like a teenager on TV, and Harper, playing this perfect, fingerpicked guitar that felt like warm water, that certain softness, roundness maybe, of bathwater, the weight of it on your body when you lay all the way back. His voice is clear, with one haunted touch of roughness. It sounds like he wandered in the forest for days or weeks, sleepless and alone, only emerging after finding the right words to tell someone how dearly he loved them.

So then go after the record the song is from: Sophisticated Beggar, released in 1967 and rereleased as Return of the Sophisticated Beggar in 1970. The record is full of the same beautifully rich, dancing guitar work as the song "Forever", and that same gentle, modest voice. And this magic little surprise, "Mr. Stationmaster" with no guitar at all and its jaunty organ marching along like some perfect night in a yellow-lit pub, dark wood everywhere and crooked-teeth smiles inviting you to new friendships.

Honestly I don't know enough about the condition of the English railways circa 1967 to understand why Harper needed to write a song where he declares, "oh Mr. Stationmaster, you're a national distaster" and I think he's mostly trying to make a listener laugh. But I don't really even hear the actual comedy, all I can hear is the laughter behind his voice, the steady skip of the drums and that merry organ bending its elbows and swinging its wrists in some smiling, marching dance. And it makes me so ridiculously happy.

So, new year, old song. I like having the reminder that a song can just be a cheerful pump of organ chords, steady drums, and an insolent but good-natured voice singing out snapshot images and almost-jokes. And listening to it reminds me also that I'm much more drawn to that simple joy than all the careful programming, sophisticated song structures, or accomplished musicianship that I normally fret over.

Best of 2007=my friends Part 7

All this blog was ever supposed to be was my favorite records. A bad habit I have is promising to make a tape for someone that I never do. Most of the songs I've written about have appeared on a mixtape, some of them have appeared on nearly ever one I've ever made. Anyway, what that means is that it's sort of superfluous for me to make any sort of year-end list. You already know what it's going to be. But! There are many reasons to have year-end lists and my favorite have always been the ones written by people that didn't spend the whole year writing about music already. So! Here are seven different lists written by people that I love. I hope you have fun reading them.


Andrea Longacre-White
Andrea took one of my favorite photographs of all time. I like the way she sees things, the way she exists in all the same spaces as the rest of us but is constantly uncovering secrets. But she does it in a way where she has a voice, isn't just some observer, and she also does it with a respect that makes her prints so heartachingly emotional. After she DJ'ed at Lit, the CDRs that she burned a bunch of songs onto floated around Brendan's car for weeks and they were thick and frantic, high-energy and bright. The combination of her appetite for bangers and that sense of understanding makes her list feel like summertime with open windows:

Int'l players anthem- UGK featuring Outkast; could there be a more perfect dance song (or opening lines)?

Uh-Oh- Ja Rule Lil Wayne; could there be a more perfect runner up to the most perfect dance song?

Barr- Summary, every corner of every song

Animal Collective- Strawberry Jam and its array of ever shifting favorite songs

Lil Love- Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and Maria Carey; haven't loved her this much since the highest notes of 'Someday'

Every live Car Clutch performance I've witnessed

First bonus track from Honk Honk Bonk (song 13)- Soiled Mattress and the Springs; they always play this song live and I feel embarrassed to not know the title but Avi won't text me back with answers! Wait, he just did only to say that there are no bonus tracks on the album! Lies!

Comfy in Nautica- Panda Bear; a song that slowly, relentlessly pulls and stretches time.

2 step remix- Unk featuring T-Pain, E40, Jim Jones; first song to create true concern about the system I'm listening to it on's bass integrity.

Go Getta- Young Jeezy featuring R.Kelly, its melodrama amazes me.

Boyz- M.I.A., whatever, I love her.

----

Okay friends, thank you for reading. I know it's a lot but I really loved seeing these and hope you did too. Happy new year and to steal from an email I got from my friend Devon recently, good dreams or none at all. Peace.

Best of 2007=my friends Part 6

All this blog was ever supposed to be was my favorite records. A bad habit I have is promising to make a tape for someone that I never do. Most of the songs I've written about have appeared on a mixtape, some of them have appeared on nearly ever one I've ever made. Anyway, what that means is that it's sort of superfluous for me to make any sort of year-end list. You already know what it's going to be. But! There are many reasons to have year-end lists and my favorite have always been the ones written by people that didn't spend the whole year writing about music already. So! Here are seven different lists written by people that I love. I hope you have fun reading them.



Giuseppe Catania
Sep is one of my oldest, dearest friends in the world. We met when I was playing a Mobb Deep record in Amy's dorm room, he walked by and paused, glad to finally hear rap music at college. We spent every weekend at record stores, eventually working together at Jackpot where we engaged in a good-natured but aggressive competition, writing reviews of new 12"s and those sketchy reissues. On his day off I would frantically try and hit as many records as possible, bouncing back and forth between the tiny Baltimore Club section and anything with a Queensbridge connection. When I would come back to work on Monday he would've reviewed entire bins of records, effortlessly covering the DITC crew, current radio hits, all the Rap-a-Lot warehouse find stuff and then hit up the soul section to tag all the records that got sampled by KMD. The summer before he moved to New Orleans he just went crazy, covering Ghostface's "Back Like That" with like half a sheet of paper talking about love and mourning. He also was behind the brilliant tag for Lil Wayne: "Your favorite blogger's favorite rapper". Here goes:

I moved to New Orleans about a year ago and for my job I have to drive to Baton Rouge twice a week. At first I hated the drive, pretty much cause I suck at driving and I-10 gets all treacherous with idiots and rainstorms, but then I started a ritual where I pick and listen to albums all the way through. Even if the songs start to suck, I don't let myself fast forward through them. I listen to a lot of old cds and tapes I'm already familiar with, screaming rap lyrics at the top of my lungs. I also listen to a lot of new cds. I learn the rap lyrics fast and then I scream them at the top of my lungs just like the old songs. Here're some of the albums that make the trip feel like I just got my license and am finally getting to play dirty raps out loud.

I should also mention that the car I'm driving is an '88 Camry with a blown stock system. Everything that comes out of the speakers sounds like a dub of a dub: It's like a machine that can turn the smoothest Dr. Dre production into some Tical sounding ruggedness.

Lil' Wayne "Da Drought III"

Before "DDIII" came out, I saw a Juvenile show where he threw a bunch of fliers into a crowd that showed the now infamous Wayne and Baby kiss. People were going crazy, and for a second it seemed like Weezy F. might get Ja Rule'd over the whole thing. Instead, it turns out that Wayne was on a spaceship or something, listening to "It Was Written" over and over again recording a million songs. "Sky's the Limit 2007" was an NO anthem for a second (I would turn off the car and another car would drive by playing it, or I would be in the corner store and there would be some kid wearing a 3XL Scarface t-shirt playing the cd on one of those portable DVD players). The song even sounds like the city: violent, angry, funny, and soulful. There's this part at the end of the song where the instrumental is riding out and Wayne keeps spitting these increasingly fucked scenarios ("use your head 'fore I take it off your shoulders, mail it to your mom with a dozen roses") and then mumbles, "now that's fucked up." Then, the music fades out for a second and Wayne makes like a second line trumpet and sing/scats the chorus one last time, spitting out the entire evolution of music into that one moment. Word to Gizmo.

Devin the Dude "Waiting to Inhale" and UGK "Underground Kangz"

Another thing about the car: there's no air conditioning. Once May hit, I started having to bring a change of clothes along because I was always totally soaked once I got to BR. Ethan once told me that he understood why Screw comes from Houston, 'cause of the slow traffic. That's good. It makes sense, but in my mind, Screw's it's-too-fucking-hot-to-actually-have-your-brain-work-to-comprehend-what's-being-said- at-normal-speed music. The Devin and UGK albums perfectly capture the feel of a Screw tape without the creepiness, both albums' beats and choruses are beautiful, even though the raps are on some hide-that-shit-under-your-bed shit, especially Devin's verses. Although, his rhymes are delivered so criminally smooth he might be able to get away with singing to your grandma about how his "dick is so clean, you can serve it with some lima beans" and she would still say, "that young man has a nice voice." The UGK album is a little harder to think about with the recent passing of Pimp C. My favorite track on the album, "Living this Life," seems especially ominous in retrospect, going from what was in my mind a post-prison song about heaven to some Tupac shit ("died young, oh well, I had a good life"). Of course, Bun murderizes that shit with the non-glamorous hustler life, "I'm a pawn in this neighborhood chess game/having to see a man 'bout a dog and sell him a cat."

Freeway-"Free At Last"

Freeway sounds like he hasn't really listened to a rap album since he put out "Philadelphia Freeway" four years ago. He's still rapping in that crazy rhyme pattern and his voice sounds like a wounded elephant trying to speak some kind of strange human language. He didn't get any new Just Blaze or Kanye tracks- just a bunch of producers that make beats that sound like four year old Just Blaze and Kanye tracks before they got all smoothed out by success. It's a great look though, Free knows he's not gonna be doing any HP commercials, so he just decides to rhyme as cold as he possibly can: there's this Rakim moment where he goes from biblical reference, to the jungle, to space in the span of two bars ("I am Noah, I will throw you off the damn Ark/ feed you to the fishes like spare parts, don't you dare start. Boa constrictor flow, constricting your airlines, like you outerspace with no oxygen. Tell your man, 'Halt'"). Free also drops one of the most painfully confessional rhymes this side of Fatlip about his grandparents dying. And then he rhymes, "(I cried) when I realized that they died on the wrong religion. Hope Allah forgives 'em." Even though it's been like 80 degrees for most of December, this shit brings the winter.

Will.i.am-"Heartbreaker" from "Songs about Girls"

The poor man's Justin Timberlake. This song almost makes amends for "Humps" (and makes me want to hang a little disco ball from the rear-view mirror).

PS

Someone should make a video where a kid puts a Freeway tape in his walkman and he starts rapping along while putting on his jacket and when he walks out of his house has a Freeway beard. Then his girlfriend asks to hear the tape and she ends up rapping with a Freeway beard. And then she lets a baby hear the tape until a bunch of people have Freeway beards. Then they play a baseball game against State Property.

Best of 2007=my friends Part 5

All this blog was ever supposed to be was my favorite records. A bad habit I have is promising to make a tape for someone that I never do. Most of the songs I've written about have appeared on a mixtape, some of them have appeared on nearly ever one I've ever made. Anyway, what that means is that it's sort of superfluous for me to make any sort of year-end list. You already know what it's going to be. But! There are many reasons to have year-end lists and my favorite have always been the ones written by people that didn't spend the whole year writing about music already. So! Here are seven different lists written by people that I love. I hope you have fun reading them.


Jordana Swan
My sister! It never ends! From when we went to see Sonic Youth (she was 14, I was 19) together to a couple of weeks ago when I was reading in my room, listening to Burial, and I went to get a cup of water and heard her listening to the same LP, two songs ahead of me while reading in her room. She makes plants grow in our tiny, sunless apartment and she just made a video for the BARR song "Context Ender" that made the floors, walls and lamps cry with its sensitivity and beauty. Her list:

1. In Paris I mostly got the feeling that people are losing all concern for each other. We can all have a different experience of a place and that was mine. For a lot of fucking months. BARR played two nights there. First one, my dad was there too and I just kept sponging as many 14euro drinks I could with the tickets. That nasty ‘spensive proper gin, nah mean? Second night though was like, for the people, on a boat, on the east side, friend’s birthday, and ralph darden was there and buckets of cans of beer. For the people! Well so you know how the polyamorous kids who proselytize anarchy and then get crumpled jealous when they girl’s up on someone D… well cos anarchy don’t work without work, or at least the promoter don’t cos right as BARR went on their set got cancelled for time. UPRISEHELLAWHATTHEFUCK! Says the crowd so he said “ok shit just play one song” and then… go big baby kevvy… they compress an entire set’s worth of “THAT TALK IS POISON NO SERIOUSLY” break-the-keyboard energy into one song and then it don’t stop cos kevin does go big and he just starts playing another song and this dangerous medley and there’s dancing and ethan and I end up on the floor like we’re kids and we reclaim our professional wrestler names.

2. no age “weirdo rippers”
3. lilly allen record and yes I mean it
4. kmd “mr. hood” reissue
5. curtis mayfield “no place like america today” reissue
6. when AC played “essplode” in nyc. trip the fuck out! thank you again!
7. panda bear (duh)
8. cam’ron “public enemy”
9. notorious b.i.g. (yeah that means that)
10. best of mac dre vol 3
10. the BARR/no age show in london cos jeremy abbott was in attendance