OK so apparently Zubes fell down a well or something. Sorry for the no new music, but I've been having my mind blown to smithereens pretty much on a daily basis since coming to Asia. So far I've bought a Tshirt with my own face painted on it, almost died climbing a mountain to see the biggest buddha in the world, seen my friend try (and fail) to eat a cooked pig's brain, and shot a music video.
If you crave quality entertainment go here now to my travel blog:
HTTP://WWW.VACHINA.BLOGSPOT.COM
I'm in Asia with 2 co-workers, and since we all used to work at MTV we're a bunch of production nerds, so we're shooting/editing and posting videos, promos, etc. Here for example is my version of a Phil Collins masterpiece:
I'll be back in July homeys
I'm out this bitch!
Yea bras, it's 5:20 in the AM. I'm trying to stay awake til 10 AM so I can get in car and go to Newark. I just finished my weekly Saturday gig. It was my last gig for a while so I went bonkers and decimated the place. "Love Generation" into "How Bizarre"! What son!!! Every DJ who's ever played that Bob Sinclar joint always thinks to themselves "this is basically OMC" so I just eliminated the middleman out that motherfucker. Luckily my crowd is completely idiotic and ate that nonsense up.
Where am I going, you ask? I'm going to Asia (a/k/a "the motherland") for a month, then I'm following my favorite band the Flesh around for a month in Europe. Yes, dear sweet blogophiles, I'm taking a hiatus for 2 months. However, I will still be blogging regularly at this site:
Vachina!
Bookmark it now, fellow nerds! Here you can keep abreast of my latest travel travails, and read my compulsively updated blog entries about how I'm getting mugged/raped/murdered/rendered impotent by crippling stomach pains at every new port.
Zubes, I hereby pass on the torch for you: bring the 21 gun salute great shining pride. I'll be posting music nonsense every once in a while if i feel the urge, but Zubes has the keys to the whip right now.
In my absence here's a couple songs that seem thematically appropriate. It's too bad I don't have the theme song to Alex Haley's "Roots"... this will have to do instead:
Peace homies
I am officially a vinyl nerd again. Fuck you, CD singles and Limewire! I even went record shopping a little while ago with my Vestax portable turntable and shitty first record bag (which is similar to my first cel phone in that it is both gigantic and ugly) and bought a bunch of dance 12s around the city. Now that I'm back on the hunt for vinyl I guess it's basically 2003 right now, so by extension I guess I should be trolling for girls on Friendster and covet my friends' dj gigs at the W hotel.
So here's yet another vinyl mix for yo asses, some of the mixes are pretty raw but I equate that with realness. Plus it's one of my favorite mixes I've made in a little while:
WALKING AT 127 BPM
~artist info~
Arnold Schwarzenintro
Mock & Toof ~ Black Jub
Claude Vonstroke ~ Chimps
Robbie Tronco ~ Walk 4 Me
Basement Jaxx ~ Fly Life
Moodyman ~ Dance If U Want 2
LNR ~ Work It To The Bone
Jona ~ Smart Cats VS Dumb Dogs
Shirley Lites ~ Heat You Up, Melt You Down
Don Ray ~ Standing In The Rain
I remember a long time ago when I was DJing, opening for this group that had a hypeman. While I was spinning their hypeman started in on his routine for my set. I was playing Prince "Kiss" and the guy goes "Awwww hell no! Woodman, diggin in tha crates!!" and I felt mortified, like I was totally writhing with embarassment.
Not even because this guy popped a gigantor boner over the most obvious Prince song you can play, but because the phrase "diggin in the crates" is probably, of all phrases in the english language, the one that has aged the least well. Frankly, it sounds totally gay. Keep diggin son! Diggin in the crates! Neva stop diggin! etc
Anyhow I still dig to this very day. I'll go to flea markets, record stores, tag sales, etc. This is not a point of pride, I just happen to be drawn inexorably towards little cardboard boxes with records sitting in them. Not to get all Vinyl Junkies on you, but I've found some of my favorite records while breathing in asbestos in poorly ventilated firetraps.
Probably the prime example of this kind of store is Greenpoint's "The Thing". Even though it's the A-1 garbage dump, there's still tens of thousands of unsorted records lining the basement walls. Most of them come from DJ's collections, so there's a shit-ton of disco, reggae and 80s 12s everywhere you look. Quality control is pretty shitty, but if you have a portable turntable and a free afternoon, I've always found it kind of meditative to hunker down and listen to some records.
When I use to go to the Thing was when I first started getting into disco, and aside from all that Kenny Dope disco (which is dumb expensive), I found that I really like disco from 1980-1982 ... I have no idea why it just seems fresh and exciting to me.
Here's 3 of my favorite disco finds... the rarity of them is not ass-melting, but I'm a fan of them nonetheless:
GLORIA WEEMS - WANNA DANCE (mp3)
HI-TENSION - HI-TENSION (YT)
BBQ BAND - ON THE BEAT(streaming)
I love finding alternate versions of songs that are so established it's hard to think they ever existed any other way. Think about the most schlocky, overproduced song ever. No matter how corny or overplayed it is, I am sure that there is some raw, lo-fi alternate version of it. Someone needs to roll up their sleeves and make a comp of early awesome versions of shitty songs, filled with tracks by Joe Satriani and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Dude I would totally listen to Jagged Edge demos!
It's kind of similar to how EVERY band that had a hit in the 80s began as some post-punk band with artsy intentions and then at some point said "fuck it" and wrote a top 40 hit.
For example, when I got the completely unecessary Nirvana metal box set, the one shining moment came on the DVD, which includes the first amazing live performance of "Smells Like." The energy on this performance is infectious, it's one of those transcendent moments. This is of course way before someone paid Butch Vig $90,000 to turn the track into mall music:
On a similar note, I'll give you this early mix of "Tainted Love." It sounds like it was recorded in 5 minutes while Marc Almond was getting a blowjob. It also happens to be totally fucking great:
SOFT CEL "TAINTED LOVE" (ALT MIX) (mp3)
Here's a partial list of songs that blew my mind when I first heard them:
Paul Lekakis "Boom Boom"
Not so shocking now, but keep in mind I was like in the 3rd grade when I first heard the now quaint and tactful lyrics "boom boom boom let's go back to my room so we can do it all night, and you can make me feel right." When you're in the 3rd grade the only thing you want to do all night is pretend you're a dinosaur.
Apparently no video for this track was ever made at the time, but presumably in response to overwhelming demand Paul Lekakis created the 20-years-late masterpiece below. It's kind of sad actually, not unlike when Peter Cetera re-recorded "Glory Of Love" with an orchestra totally unnecessarily, or when you see clips of Bon Jovi performing and he points the mic at the audience during the chorus like "now YOU!" because it's painfully obvious he just can't hit the notes anymore:
Smashing Pumpkins "Bullet With Butterfly Wings"
Again, woefully dated now in retrospect. But when I first heard it on the radio I was like "Billy Corgan has truly earned his inheritance of the grunge throne! Also, I'm late for Gym!" Still, it was pretty ambitious of the Smashing Pumpkins (the album originally had 50+ songs written for it which was then shortened to 28), and every single from the Mellon Collie LP was in a completely different genre... pretty epic for a pretentious bald Chicagoan who wrote shitty poetry. Here's how some Amazon readers feel about Corgan's poetry book "Blinking with Fists":
"This book is worth the time it takes to throw away."
"Blinking with fists? Try, SLEEPING WITH BOOK."
DURAN DURAN "WILD BOYS"
Imagine watching this if you're 5 years old:
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