September 29, 2010 New The Old, The New, and The Shower Scene from Psycho!
Ch-chickity-check it out, folks! I’ve imported ALL of the old posts from THAT’S MY MOTHERFUCKING JAM!‘s previous incarnation at Vox.com, which is about to sink forever beneath the waves of the interwebs. There are tons of jams linked below, so take a moment to scrollio down through the archives. You might discover your next favourite jam!
And there will be ALL NEW JAMS posted shortly. I spent the summer in something like a waking coma–damned fibromyalgia keepin’ my ass down–but now that I’m back in school as a Commercial Music Tech Major at California University of Pennsylvania, I’m feeling psyched and ready to share the jamnation with y’all once more. However, I am hella busy, too…so I doubt I’ll be able to do more than post a new jam every week. I’ve got a metric tonne of great new stuff to share and promote, though, so you’d better get your butts ready for the sonic assault!
In the meantime, I’ll leave you with my New Favourite Song: The Shower Scene from Psycho‘s masterful New Wave cover of “Georgy Girl”! Do you has what it takes to handle the insane syncopation of these almost-forgotten pop-music whackjobs from Melbourne, Australia?
Props to my homeperson Colin King from the wild backcountry of Tasmania for introducing me to so much ca-razy Australian post-punk over the past few months!
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May 23, 2010 DJ Heauxmeaux, “Trouser Rouser”
Yeaux, YEAUX, YEAUX! What it do, peeps? Yeah, I know, it’s been a while since I rapped at y’all here–but, hey, the semester at good ol’ Cal U ended on May 5th and…well, I went into your typical postsemester coma for a bit. Spent the last two weeks lying around the house, reading some awesome steampunk books (The Affinity Bridge by George Mann and the utterly, painfully brilliant The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer), hanging out with my girlfriend, and enjoying the hundred-some albums I’ve had on my to-listen-to list since April. But I know you’ve been waiting patiently Out There for a new motherfuckin’ jam, so enough of the laziness–it’s time to get crackin’ again!
This week, we’ve got something very special for you all: a track by Yours Truly–that is, me!
DJ Heauxmeaux - Heauxmeaux Sex You All
Check that out, folks: the track’s got it’s very own big ol’ PLAY button because it’s hosted on my SoundCloud page. SoundCloud is one of the coolest sites in the world because it makes it ridiculously easy to check out new music in any one of a few thousand different genres and to publish and promote your own, if you are so inclined. And, gods know, I sure as hell am.
So why am I featuring one of my own jams today? Simple: I am a BIG proponent of independent self-promotion–and it just so happens that “Trouser Rouser” is one of the phattest jams I have ever written. This track was scientifically designed to make your boogie, because it was created specifically according to a formula devised by analysis of over 14,000 classic house jams using Funkatech Incorporated’s patented award-winning funk-producing, disco-inducing rock receptors! An independent study conducted by the University of Pittsburgh’s Psychology Department shows that “Trouser Rouser” gets 94.2123% of heads bobbing in under 30 seconds, and spontaneous getting up for the down stroke in less than 1 minute. So clear some space for yourself before clicking play so as to avoid possible injury and/or property damage.
Instead of analyzing why this jam pwns so hard, this time–since I wrote the damn thing myself–I’m going to tell y’all a bit about how it was written. First of all, I must declare my eternal love for gay-bar house music–that is, the kind of house that you often hear being played in gay nightclubs (at least as depicted on TV). Fuck that “deep house” and “minimal house” bullshit: house is supposed to be funky, flashy, and soulful, just like the disco it grew out of. A few years ago, after I went to a drag show at Pegasus, a popular gay club in Pittsburgh, I decided I simply had to write some gay-bar house of my own…and so DJ Heauxmeaux was born.
Disco house is all about the bassline. ALL of the funk/dance greats of the ’70s were built around stompin’, stankin’ basslines–basslines that are often more memorable than the lead melodies placed over them! So, when I sat down to write this jam, the bassline was the first thing I needed to figure out. It took a lot of work–a lot of trial and error–but finally, after a while, I’d nailed it: a swampy, phased-out bassline that worked perfectly over the generic beatloop I was using as a simple framework. After that, I began to build up the actual beat, the intro portion, the rhythmic arpeggiated backing synths (which kinda/sorta work like a rhythm guitar line), and–finally–the spacey lead melody. I worked on the track off and on for about a year and a half, trying out a thousand different leads, synth sounds, and melodies before one day, totally out of nowhere, a bolt of inspiration flung down from The Mothership Itself hit me between the eyes and that jazzy, discofied sequence just shot through my fingers into the keyboard and–BAM!–”Trouser Rouser” was done and ready to be unleashed on the world!
Honest to gods, people: this song took over 18 months to get right. I think it sounds really cohesive and flows pretty well despite the fact that it was constructed bit by bit by bit over a considerable amount of time–because, in my experience, I’ve discovered that some jams just come together on their own with little personal intervention (it’s like the sounds are just using me as needle and thread to sew them together into being), but some need a lot of nurturing and must evolve–or be forced to evolve. There were times when I wondered if this suminabitch would ever be done…but, just like that, one day it was. The pieces finally fell together. All that work and experimentation paid off.
At least in my opinion, it did! What do you think? Do notice that “Trouser Rouser”–as well as ALL the tracks on my SoundCloud page–is/are free to download! So go ahead, get ye some! And let me know what you think. If you’re a DJ, give it a spin some night and tell me if it made people drop and do the bootie-wop. But most of all, enjoy–because this is one of the creations I am truly proud of, and the most I could ever ask for is that you, the folks listening to it, get your trousers roused by it!
Oh, wait–one more thing: I’ve gotta give a shout-out to my old buddy Wes Galloway for being the originator of the title “Trouser Rouser.” He came up with it years ago–in, like, 1992–when he and I were hanging out at his place listening to The O’Kaysions’ “Girl Watcher” on his vintage 1964 jukebox. Quoth he at the time: “Man, this song is a real trouser rouser!” “Damn,” I replied, “that would be an awesome song title!” And so it is. Thanks, brother, even though I haven’t talked to you in over ten years.
Tags: dj heauxmeaux, electronic, gay-bar house, house, trouser rouser
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- Posted under Electronic, House
May 3, 2010 Shy Child, “Liquid Love”
Considering that, like, almost every song I’ve featured on here so far has been a synthpop or electronic jam of one sort or another, you can probably tell that I’m a huge fan of synthetic popular music. I grew up on a steady diet of electronic pop music and, to this day, music of that particular persuasion forms the basis of my daily sonic diet. After thirtysome years of listening to acts like Depeche Mode, Yaz(oo), Pet Shop Boys, Camouflage, Beborn Beton, and Iris, I’ve come to a thorough understanding of synthpop. I know it like I know my own wang–and synthpop has the potential to be weird, angular, fluid, abstract, straight-forward, intelligent, or dumb as shit…but no matter what permutations individual artists may give their particular creations to personalize them, every single synthpop song worth listening to has to have one vital element without which it cannot be synthpop: a catchy hook.
Think about your favourite synthpop song. (And I don’t give a damn if you’re the world’s most hardcore baby-sacrificin’ black metal cultists or country crooner, you have a favourite synthpop song. The genre’s appeal is universal, especially to those of us, blessed beyond belief, to have grown up during the Greatest Decade, the 1980s). What is the first thing that comes to mind? The melody. The hook. The chorus, most likely, or that one awesome little lead part that just makes the song. Synthpop is so full of great riffs and hooks that many of them have become positively iconic: everyone recognizes the melody of Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough” or Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me With Science” or Justin Timberlake’s “Sexy Back.” (What, you didn’t think Jizzy T was synthpop? Uhhh…he’s a pop artist, and “Sexy Back” is completely electronic, so…do the math yourself.) Synthpop without that hook isn’t synthpop: it’s some other kind of electronic music, but it ain’t synthpop. Pop music is all about hooks, so if you pull the pop out of synthpop, well….
Now, there are a lot of contemporary artists who bill themselves as synthpop, or are identified as synthpop, but are everything but synthpop. And then there are synthpop artists who shy away from the term synthpop simply because some jackasses have portrayed the genre as shallow, mindless “bubblegum” music. Some artists just don’t give a shit about genre classifications and make the music that they want to, and if it’s synthpop, well, goddamn if they ain’t a-gonna make the best damn synthpop they can!
That’s where Shy Child comes in.
Shy Child, Liquid Love
CLICK HERE TO PLAY: Shy Child, “Liquid Love”
I’m always friggin’ late to the party. I never even heard of Shy Child (here’s their MySpace page, BTW) before March of this year, when their fourth album, Liquid Love was released–in Europe. Even though the band is from New York City and has toured substantially here in the States, their new album is only available as an import. Unlike us stoopud Amurikens, Europeans understand that synthpop is Tha Shiznat, which is why so many American synthpop bands end up with overseas record deals before most American labels–save indie labels dedicated specially to synthpop–will even consider them. But anyway….
A buddy of mine said I’d love Shy Child, so I checked them out and…damn right, I loved them! Liquid Love is nothing but motherfucking jams from track one, the above-linked title track “Liquid Love,” to the closing track, “Dark Destiny”–a lush ballad that simply has to travel back in time somehow so John Hughes can use it as an anthem for one of his films. The album kicks off on a strong note and maintains the same level of interest, energy, and creativity from beginning to end.
“Liquid Love” begins with a floaty little riff reminiscent of something from an Abba or Stevie Nicks song, but quickly kicks in to a wonderful descending melody on synth bells that trickles over the pulsating bass and drums like a spill of mercury dripping down a PA speaker. The song’s production is notably similar to a lot of contemporary indie-rock and so-called “indietronic” bands: the drums are really precise, the bass gritty and in-yo’-face, and everything highly-compressed so the music comes blasting out of your speakers like a tidal wave of sound. But the sound here is not overwhelming or murky: every note stands out pure and lively in the mix–and that lead hook is right up there in front, insisting that you pay attention to it right from the very first note.
You’ll hear that hook again in every chorus throughout the song, but it never grows wearying or repetitious, because the vocal melody, the bass, the drums, and every other sound in the entire track is built around it–either supporting it from behind, or riding atop it. It’s the glue that holds the entire song together, and it will strike right down the length of your spine to inflame your booty with the urge to shake. The song’s lyrics are not particularly brilliant (“Pleasure and pain / sometimes feel the same”–who hasn’t heard some variation of that a billion times before?), but that’s irrelevant: they’re simple and catchy and they fit the hook perfectly.
What I find most cool about “Liquid Love” is the fact that it not only gives obvious nods to the ’80s, it also even aims some love at the 1970s: the synthbass in particular has a funkiness that makes me think of Bernie Worrel’s work with Parliament Funkadelic, and the whole track has a bounce to it that would make Roger Troutman proud. The only thing it’s missing is vocoded vocals. Considering that Shy Child are from NYC, no wonder there’s a touch of electro-urban funk in their mix.
I seriously need to track down their older work now. From what I’ve read of it, they started out with a more jagged, Broken Spindles-like sound–which could be cool, sure…but I think they’ve finally gotten their musical formula right on Liquid Love. This album is a perfect synthpop album. PERFECT, I SAID. Every song on the album is a JAM…so if “Liquid Love” gets your motor running and makes itself at home in your head, then track down the album however/wherever you may, because it’s got more hooks than a friggin’ Cenobite’s tacklebox, and every one of them is a 100% bonafide synthpop winner.
2010 isn’t even half-over yet, and I’ve already declared Liquid Love to be my Favourite Synthpop Album Of The Year. The only album that might dethrone it is Devo’s forthcoming Something For Everyone–but chances are it’ll end up sharing First Place with Devo. Now how awesome do you think something has to be for me to place it on equal footing with Devo, peeps? Yeah. THAT awesome.
Tags: liquid love, shy child, Synthpop
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- Posted under Music, Synthpop
April 26, 2010 Deadmau5, “Slip”
Deadmau5 sucks. His music is mindlessly-repetitive, almost childishly simple, and just plain boring. Electronic dance music–especially house music, in particular–needs to have a steady beat and groove, of course, but without some kind of prominent funky hook or driving melodic line, it loses all musicality and becomes nothing more than dull loops of repeated sounds designed to keep dulleyed hordes of X’ed-out ravers and/or ‘roid-raging guidos fistpumpin’ in clubs with too much blacklight. It all sounds alike to me: relentlessly generic. And that’s exactly what producer/DJ Deadmau5′s work is–relentlessly, endlessly, steadily generic. I’ll give him credit for one thing, though: he knows his shit’s incredibly generic and is obviously fine with that. I mean, why else would he call his official debut album Random Album Title?
So why, then, is one of his tracks featured on this blog?
Deadmau5, Random Album Title
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN: Deadmau5, “Slip”
Because even the most untalented hack with a copy of Ableton Live and some softsynths can sometimes create a great jam!
“Slip,” the third track from Random Album Title, is an incredibly simple, basic slice of dance music: typical four-on-the-floor beat, typical pumping synth bassline, simple bouncy lead melody….Lather, rinse, repeat for almost seven minutes, right? But no: the song is not as brainless as you might think. There’s an intriguing subtlety to its arrangement that recalls Ravel’s Bolero: the main melody is always there, but it’s played by different sounds at different stages in the song’s progress, giving it a shifting, restless tonality that holds your attention even as the otherwise-boring thudthudthud beat keeps time.
But then–suddenly, after four minutes…the beat drops out entirely, and the song dissolves into an airy, almost trance-like fugue of swishing, filterswept synths. When the main melody comes back in, it slowly drowns in washes of reverb, becoming just another element of the ambient mix–until, just as suddenly as before, the beat comes back in and the main theme of the song comes back.
None of it’s brilliant, by any means. It’s certainly not a particularly creative song, though the beat drop in the middle section does make it a little more dynamic. But it’s got a solid groove that recalls some of the best classic Chicago house from the 1980s, and does just what it aims to do: get your booty moving.
Remember: sometimes music doesn’t even have to be good to be a motherfuckin’ jam–it just has to accomplish what it was written to do. Ohyeah, and have a good tune. Out of all the tracks on Random Album Title, only “Slip” actually achieves that–and, damnit, it does it well!
Tags: dance, deadmau5, electronic, house, random album title, slip
April 21, 2010 DJ Steve Porter, “Rap Chop”
Sorry I’ve left you jamless for a few days, folks–things’ve been a little bit busy and I’ve been a little bit lazy. Hey, it happens. BUT! We’re back with a very special video jam to put some humpin’ in your Hump Day! Ladies and gentleman, as seen on TV, THAT’S MY MOTHERFUCKING JAM! presents: DJ Steve Porter‘s classic “Rap Chop”!
YouTube is hipdeep in awful autotuned “remixes” and mash-ups of various commercials, newsclips, and suchlike video detritus–but amongst the badly-recorded, badly-sequenced, and just badly-conceived slop there are some true shinin’ diamonds, and DJ Steve Porter is the creator of most of them. Still, whenever you Google his name or search for it on YouTube, you will almost always find hit number one to be a link to the above video, because “Rap Chop” is the jizzam that made DJ Steve Porter Internet Famous prettymuch overnight. In fact, “Rap Chop” was so awesome that the makers of the Slap Chop actually used the song as a follow-up to the infomercial that Porter sampled!
Of course the song’s main attraction is the expertly chopped and sequenced audio bites from the notorious Slap Chop informercial featuring manic pitchman (and cannibal prostitute afficionado) Steve Offer. Porter does an amazing job at turning Offer’s carnival-barker-on-crack sales flow into fresh rhymes that practically demand that you sing along. I guarantee you that you will be saying “You’re gonna love my nuts!” and “Watch this!” and “Guys, we’re gonna make America skinny again, one slap at a time!” over and over and over again for days after listening to this song a few hundred times. But some clever vocal arranging is meaningless unless it’s got some good music underneath it, and the oldskool electrofunk beat–quite reminiscent of Afrika Bambataa & SoulSonic Force or Egyptian Lover–is a solid backdrop for the vocal samples. The melody’s quite catchy, too–but ultimately, it’s the beat and the bouncing wordplay that really make this track stand out as more than just a quirky little viral-video hit: it’s a legitimate dancefloor-fillin’ jam that I’ve seen make a mopey crowd of drunken Goths jump around gleefully.
Ohyeah, and chances are you’re gonna buy a Slap Chop within a few days of listening to this song. I did. It’s actually quite handy at dicing onions (“the skin…comes right off!). Plus, $19.95 USD is a pretty good price for not one but two devices that’ll have you slappin’ your troubles away in no time!
If you want a high-quality mp3 version of the song, well, y’all just gotta click right here. There are few things I respect more than an artist who realizes the power of giving away hit music as an infallible means of self-promotion.
Tags: dj steve porter, Electro, electronic, Hip-Hop, rap chop, video
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- Posted under Electro, Hip-Hop
April 15, 2010 Rettore, “Lamette”
I love discovering music in offhand, indirect ways. A little while ago, io9, one of my favourite science-fiction blogs, presented a collection of 20 SciFi Disco Videos That Were Made By Insane People. Of course I had to watch them all…and, of course, I loved almost everything I heard. Sci-Fi + Disco + Insane = SUPERFUTURISTICOSMIC JAMNIFICATION! Unfortunately, you can’t just hop onto Amazon or eMusic and purchase moldy old European disco and New Wave classics that were never released in the United States to begin with, and have probably been out-of-print in their native countries since the end of the ’80s. (See for yourself.) But that’s why the gods made SoulSeek.
Thanks to that article (and a whole bunch of anonymous music collectors overseas), I ended up with several gigabytes worth of shiny-sequined, analog-synth-laden, space disco, Italodisco, and Eurotrash postpunk–and let me tell you, it’s just jam after jam after motherfuckin’ jam in dis bitch! But of all the songs, one has floated to the top of my playlist again and again and again:
(Donatella) Rettore, Kamikaze Rock n' Roll Suicide
CLICK TO PLAY: Rettore, “Lamette”
I really don’t know much about Donatella Rettore at all–I’d never even heard of her before watching that video showcase–but, apparently, she was a pretty big Italian disco/New Wave star in the ’70s/’80s, and is making something of a comeback these days. Hopefully she still performs “Lamette”–translated: “Razor Blade(s)”–from her 1984 album Kamikaze Rock n’ Roll Suicide, because it’s a stone-cold booty-rockin’ JIZZAM. Witness!
This is one of those twitchy, awkward-sounding, angular New Wave songs like “Money” by the Flying Lizards and anything/everything by Wall of Voodoo which really helped define the early New Wave/post-punk sound–though in this case, the song’s a little tighter and more polished. The herky-jerky guitars and boxy synthesizer bassline bop around atop a solid rockin’ beat, and you might be thinking this song’s gonna sound a lot like an old Ultravox tune for a bit. And then the verse kicks in and…yyyyeeepppp. There’s something quintessentially, Morriconely Italian about Ms. Rettore’s rushed vocal delivery and those glorious “arrrup-a-buppa-bup-bup” background vocals that give this song a uniqueness that is both totally New Wave and totally…something else. This song simply needs to be in Italian Spiderman!
You’ve gotta love a song that can sound totally punked out and de-vo, and yet still sound like the theme from a ’70s Italian spy flick. It’s spiky, but swank. It’s infectious as a dose of the clap and will get you all wired like a noseful of coke. It will get stuck in your head, so don’t come whining to me when you find yourself flailing around in your work cubicle or bedroom singngin “Arup-a-buppa-bup-bup abuppa-bup-bup!” all damn night–YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.
Oh, and here’s the video. Don’t ask why those guys are wearing Japanese flags on their Spanish Civil War uniforms and googly-antennae on their heads–just bounce around to it like a Mexican jumping-bean basted in crack fumes!
Tags: italy, kamikaze rock'n'roll suicide, lamette, New Wave, rettore
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- Posted under New Wave
April 15, 2010 John Prine, “The Great Compromise”
I’m a bit of a born-too-late hippie, so of course I love protest music from the 1960s, especially music protesting the Vietnam War. Usually when someone brings up the words “Vietnam” and “protest songs” the first name that leaps into most folks’ minds is (naturally) Bob Dylan–but the name that steps forth immediately before my attention is John Prine. And the song that always comes with him is “The Great Compromise.”
Great Days: The John Prine Anthology
CLICK TO PLAY: John Prine, “The Great Compromise”
Today, John Prine is mostly thought of as a gentlemanly old singer/songwriter of the classic country or “roots music” school, a writer of sad, genteel songs about hearts badly bruised by the brickbats of life–songs that make you think of dusty rural backroads, smalltown diners full of weary people, and long warm nights spent sitting on your back porch wondering what’s happened to the world. He’s got plenty of songs like that, sure–and plenty of songs full of sly, sometimes wicked humour…but tucked behind his gentle smile and laconic, “Oh, well now” drawl is a mind that can make words cut. For every “Angel of Montgomery” he’s got a “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore.” For every “Hello In There,” a “Lake Marie.” For every “Souvenirs,” a “Six O’Clock News.” John Prine is the author of some of the most vicious protest songs ever written: “Sam Stone,” a lament for a soldier come home from the war with an inevitably-fatal heroin habit, and today’s jam, “The Great Compromise” (taken from the two-disc greatest hits anthology Great Days [get it here]).
You don’t get simpler than this folks: it’s just John Prine singing a simple melody over a few strummed guitar chords. The melody is haunting and full of heartsick resignation, and Prine’s plaintive voice makes it that much more personal and affecting. At first listen, the song seems to be a pretty typical tale of love gone sour:
I knew a girl who was almost a lady
She had a way with all the men in her life
Every inch of her blossoming beauty
She was born on the Fourth of JulyWell, she lived in an aluminum house trailer,
and she worked in a jukebox saloon
And she spent all the money I’d give her
Just to see the old Man in the Moon
Hmmmm….Ooookay. Sounds…pretty straightforward. But what’s up with the chorus that immediately follows?
I used to sleep at the foot of Old Glory
And awake in the dawn’s early light
But much too my surprise
when I opened my eyes
I was a victim of the Great Compromise
What does that have to do with the Bad Woman Who Done You Wrong? How do you go from talking about a chick to talking about Old Glory and some kind of Great Compromise?
Oh. That “blossoming beauty” he’s talking about? Born on the Fourth of July? Who had a certain way with all the young, draft-age men in her life and had just spend a fortune in taxes collected from them to put a leaky tin can full of astronauts on the Moon….? It’s Lady Liberty.
The entire song is a stunning extended metaphor for the United States’ betrayal of John Prine’s generation. The country they’d been brought up to love had turned out to be little more than a slattern who’d whored herself out to foreign interests and was gobbling up her lovers and shitting them into the flames of a pointless, unjust war.
“The Great Compromise” has some anger in it, but it’s not an angry song. It’s a sigh of resolution–the sigh of a man fleeing the war-hungry beldame’s arms (for Canada, most likely) despite his lingering love for her, because, as Prine so eloquently puts it, “some people may call me a coward…but I’d druther have names thrown at me, than to fight for a thing that ain’t right.”
I’ve listened to this song a few thousand times, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got most of the specific allusions worked out…but I’m still not quite sure what exactly “the Great Compromise” is. If anyone has any suggestions, how ’bout leaving a comment with your thoughts on the subject! Who knows, you might win a donut or the ashes of a burnt draft card!
Tags: Country, Folk, great days, john prine, protest, the great compromise
April 14, 2010 Snoop Dogg, “Crazy”
Today’s been a Snoop Dogg kind of day. After two weeks of summerlike weather following an interminable, frigid, fibromyalgia-tauntin’ winter, the temperature’s plummeted again and the sky’s been roofed over with concrete-coloured clouds all damn day. So I’ve resorted to the sunny sounds of classic Californian G-funk to keep my spirits up even while my sore, stiff limbs have been dragging!
Snoop Dogg, The Blue Carpet Treatment
CLICK HERE TO PLAY: Snoop Dogg, “Crazy”
Snoopy D-O-Double-G has long been one of my favourite rappers/hip-hop artists, mainly because he is, indeed, a bona-fide artist and not merely some here-today/gone-tomorrow flash in the pan like Souljah Boy or…what’s-his-nuts, that dingdong who always had the Band-Aid on his ch–Nelly! Snoop’s got the requisite rhyme skills to hold his own (and steal tracks like “Nuthin’ But a G Thang” right out from underneath Dr. Dre himself), but he’s more than just a Compton kid with a quick wit and a big vocabulary: in the years since he debuted under Dr. Dre’s tutelage he’s eclipsed even Dre himself as a producer, musician, and multimedia mogul. Snoop’s the full package, and part of the reason why I like his music so much is that its sound is the perfect complement to his vocal style. His trademark laid-back, smoky, soulful but flatout pimp-tastic delivery hearkens back to the swank sounds of the ’70s, of R&B/funk giants like The Dramatics (featured on his debut album Doggystyle), Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, and of course Parliament/Funkadelic and The Gap Band (whose Charlie Wilson has guested on many of Snoop’s albums). Snoop’s music can often sound like cutting-edge contemporary hip-hop, sure, but his best tracks always incorporate some form of classic Shaft-era instrumentation, samples, backup vocals, or choruses.
“Crazy,” the third track from his eighth full-length album, 2006′s The Blue Carpet Treatment (get it from Amazon right here), is a perfect example of that updated classic soul-funk sound. You’ve got a pretty straightforward modern hiphop beat, but that rubbery, bouncing bassline sounds like it could’ve come directly from a Fatback track or Gap Band album circa 1978! Layered atop it are mellow synths and gently-phased guitar to give it a bit of a Stax Records vibe as well. But, aside from the bassline, what really gives it that big-black-Cadillac, pimp-hatted atmosphere so suited to Snoop Dogg’s flow is the multilayered choral vocals courtesy of long-time collaborator Nate Dogg. Even though the song is about the cutthroat world of the streets–hell, it opens with a sample of gunfire–there’s still a friendly warmth to it, largely due to Snoop’s amicable persona, but also inspired by the bouncy, lush instrumentation.
Sure, this album is straight-up gangsta from beginning to end, and it’s got some harder songs on it as well (as well as some airy, eyebrow-raising fluff like the peewee football ode “Beat Up On Yo Pads”), but “Crazy” is like a ray of funky sunshine beaming down through the green clouds of dank hovering over a sizzlin’ block party in some 1977 blaxploitation flick. And there’s simply no way that kind of West Coast jam won’t brighten up a bleary East Coast day!
Tags: crazy, Funk, Hip-Hop, snoop dogg, the blue carpet treatment
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- Posted under Funk, Hip-Hop
April 12, 2010 Gary Numan, “Cars”
Yowza yowza! Welcome to the inaugural post for THAT’S MY MOTHERFUCKING JAM!* What better way to start things off than with my all-time favourite song?
Gary Numan, The Pleasure Principle
CLICK HERE TO PLAY: Gary Numan, “Cars”
Gary Numan‘s 1979 masterpiece The Pleasure Principle (purchase the remastered, expanded Beggar’s Banquet edition from Amazon.com here) is one of those rare albums that is great from end to end. There simply isn’t a single bad track on the entire thing! Though Numan had released a groundbreaking synth-based album–the truly revolutionary Replicas–one year before under the name Tubeway Army, The Pleasure Principle was the album that cemented his place in history as one of the founders and chief popularizers of the synthpop genre. No one song on The Pleasure Principle is greater than or lesser than the others, but none will argue that “Cars,” the lead single from the album, is the most recognizable of the lot. It was the only single from The Pleasure Principle, and the only song by Gary Numan in general, to chart here in the United States–giving rise to the ridiculous claim that Gary Numan is a “One-Hit Wonder” (which is total bullshit, since he’s had quite a few singles and albums kick ass on British and European charts).
Gary Numan, "Cars" Single
Though the song had already reached its highest chart position in the US (Number 9 on the U.S. Billboard Charts) in 1980, I didn’t discover the song until I saw the video for it on the newborn MTV Network sometime in 1981. (Yes, back then Music Television actually played music. Weird, idn’t it?) MTV was almost wall-to-wall New Wave videos in its early days, and I was utterly enraptured by damnear everything they played, especially weird songs like Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” and The Buggles “Video Killed the Radio Star” that had weird videos. The video for “Cars” wasn’t that weird–it’s basically just a film of Numan performing the song live with a little bit of cheesy late-70s/early-80s greenscreen effects thrown in–but, like most New Wave videos, it was a literal extension of the song’s own aesthetic: it matched the sleek, cold, electronic atmosphere of the song perfectly.
See for yourself!
I was hooked from the very first time I saw the damn video. I’d never heard anything like “Cars” before. The beat was kickin’, the bassline insanely catchy, and the lyrics…so simple, so easy to understand, but…so strange. So otherworldly. Numan’s voice itself was somewhat alien-sounding–slightly nasal and off-kilter–but still recognizably human. But what the hell was that eerie, sweeping, inhuman howl playing the simple but undeniably unique main melody?! It hovered over the bass and drums like a UFO emitting some kind of bizarre death-ray sound, like something from one of the ’50s sci-fi films I watched obsessively on weekend cable TV! I was, of course, unknowingly familiar with other synth sounds–the burbling lead in Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” and the weird warble in Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime”–but the Polymoog lead in “Cars” was the first truly alien, truly synthetic sound I ever remember hearing in popular music. It literally sounded like nothing else on Earth. The song was really quite basic, almost minimalistic…but it was built from shiny silver parts of seemingly alien manufacture.
“Cars” made me who I am today. I was into music before I first heard that song, but not obsessed with it. Not enraptured by it. My mom’s Englebert Humperdinck and Do Ho 78s were cool, as were the various disco songs I heard on Solid Gold and the classic rock I grooved to on the radio–but “Cars” was indicative of a kind of music that seemed to come from a place much further away in space and time than England. Gary Numan was some kind of time-traveller from a bizarre, machine-dominated future cast adrift in the late 20th Century, but he’d brought back with him instruments from his own millennium. I had to know how they worked. What they were. And how I could play them.
It took years. Many years. Remember, folks–I grew up in the 1980s, loooooooong before the dawn of the Information Age. Plus, I grew up in rural Southwestern Pennsylvania. I simply did not have access to the proper information and research tools to really learn about electronic music. Hell, the National Record Mart at the Uniontown Mall didn’t even have a goddamn vinyl or cassette-tape copy of The Pleasure Principle: I didn’t hear any of the other songs on the album (or, really, any other Gary Numan material in toto) until the early ’90s when I finally found a busted-up, remaindered CD copy in the NRM’s freakin’ dollar bin.
Fortunately, by that time I owned my first PC and my buddy Tony Schiffbauer had just introduced me to the world of computer-made music in the form of .MOD files written on his Amiga. I was in college and learning all kinds of amazing things–including how to use machines to create the same sounds from “Cars”! I discovered that the futuristic sound of the Polymoog lead in “Cars” was now outdated–a relic of the analog past. The Age of Information was dawning and music was becoming Digital! I was literally living in the future from which I’d believed Numan had descended…and the tools for doing what he did were, literally, right at my fingertips.
So here I am today: an electronic musician myself. A music nut. All because of “Cars.” This song was my gateway drug: it opened up the whole world of musical possibilities for me. From my vantage point in the ’90s, it lead me back to the New Wave jams of my youth and pointed me and my own sampled sounds toward the future. It is the musical lynchpin around which my entire interest in the world of music revolves.
Everytime I’m at an ’80s Night and some DJ puts on “Cars,” I lose my fucking mind and start flailing around madly on the dancefloor. When I’m at home, wondering what the hell I should do to help the new song I’m working on develop into more than just a sketch, I put on “Cars” and just let the sounds march into my brain, where they inevitably unlock some new neural avenue of creativity.
I now have everything Gary Numan was ever released. I have every damn compilation, reissue, live album, cover collection, and import version bearing his name. I have The Pleasure Principle on vinyl, cassette, CD, mp3, and even frickin’ 8-track. I can’t even begin to count how many Numan songs I dearly love…but at the heart of it all, there’s “Cars.”
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*Well…it’s not exactly the inaugural post. THAT’S MY MOTHERFUCKING JAM! had a previous incarnation on Vox.com, but since Six Apart has apparently abandoned all development and management on Vox–and since the site’s mp3 uploader is apparently fubar–I’ve abandoned it and decided to restart here on WordPress.com. So…uhh, technically this is THAT’S MY MOTHERFUCKING JAM! V2.0. I will occasionally repost material from v1.0 here (when I’m too damn lazy or pressed for time to write a whole new post, or I just want to feature a stellar jam from the old blog), but for the most part all content on this version of the website will be original.
Tags: cars, gary numan, New Wave, Synthpop, the pleasure principle
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- Posted under New Wave, Synthpop
August 13, 2009 THAT’S MY MOTHERFUCKING JAM! Returns with The Buggles, “Rainbow Warrior”
Yeah, yeah–I know. You ask: Pegritz, where the hell have you been for the last…howevermany months? Did you die? Were you off exploring the Jovian system in a hotwired UFO? Did the post-Singularity quantum computer running your simulated consciousness crash or catch a sentient virus? No, no, and–sadly–no. The truth is far more mundane and thoroughly unexciting. I ran into some weird problems uploading tracks to this site, and thought that maybe I'd exceeded my storage here…but it wasn't that. Not sure what caused the problem, but I got disgusted with it and just stopped using Vox for a bit. Then everytime I wanted to start up again and see if things were running smoothly once more, some bullshit arose that distracted me. Losing my shit job was one of them. But, now that I am a "man of leisure"–that is, a lazy slob living on unemployment benefits, which means I don't have the money to ever leave the house–I've got plenty of time to start smackin' y'all across your faces with some tight jams once again!
Tags: 1980s, adventures in modern recording, music, New Wave, prog-rock, rainbow warrior, Synthpop, the buggles
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- Posted under Music
