yeah

That's When I Reach for My Revolver!

I was listening to Sound Opinions a few days ago (If you've never listened to it, do yourself a favor. Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot are both really knowledgeable and interesting.) and the main focus of the episode was an analysis of the my favorite Beatles album, Revolver. The piece focused a lot on the revolutionary aspects of the album's sound, particularly on "Tomorrow Never Knows". I listened to the show, then spun the album a couple times. Then in the few days that followed, I've found myself noticing the song's influence in places I didn't expect it.

"Tomorrow Never Knows" by the Beatles

First example

"A Daisy Chain 4 Satan" by My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult

I listened to TKK a little bit when I was 13, 14, intrigued by their evil imagery. As it turned out, their music isn't terrible evil, so I sort of lost interest in them. After I listened to Sound Opinions, I happened to give Confessions of a Knife a spin, and heard it in a very different way. Their use of manipulated, backwards sounding guitars, and their use of layering of the vocal tracks creates a lush atmospheric sound, very much in the vein of "Tomorrow Never Knows". Even the inclusion of the Middle Eastern vocal sample shows the worldly feel the Beatles were striving for when they wrote the song with allusions to the Tibetan book of the dead (I think it was a tibetan book, don't quote me on that.)

Second example

"Shattered Skull" by Excepter

Excepter's dense art-rock certainly takes things in a completely different direction than TKK's industrial dance music. The influence is still clear, however. The song has a feel of other-worldliness to it, a sense of the supernatural, completely in line with the themes of "Tomorrow Never Knows". While the Beatles song uses the lyrics and sound to create the scene, Excepter relies purely on their droning organs, the layered vocals, and sporadic percussion to bring the listener into their realm.

Third example

"Nothing Like This" by J Dilla Jay Dee

This is one I brought up a long time ago with some folks, the Douchipster among them, and nobody agreed with me. I don't care, I'm sticking to my guns (my Revolvers if you will! yesss) on this point. Although not identical, there's a correlation to the way the drums sit beneath the track and the hook sample has the same eerie backwards feel to it.

Magical Dillishtery Tour

This tune "Nothing Like This" off of one of the Chrome Children comps has a vibe to it that really reminds me of the beatles' more experimental ambient stuff.

"Nothing Like This" by J Dilla Jay Dee

Hallelujah Holla Back

I really wish I didn't like the white rapper show so much. Serch is a jackass.

There's been a lot of folks writing about Dilla lately, with it being a year since his death and all. Of all the stuff I've read, the one that stands out the most was posted by Talib Kweli almost a year ago (stumbled on by way of ninoy brown). Check it out here, it's definitely worth a read.

Spine Magazine had a video up the other day with a young lookin Nas on stage with Biggie, as introduced by Movin' on Yo Left, Mr. Mef. That video was cool and all, but it's still not my favorite Biggie Internet moment. That would be this one. It's crazy how he sounds exactly the same, but looks like such a kid.

And while we're talking about sidewalk freestyles,

et en français

Summer songs, again.

Yousendit.com decided to start working, so here are your free downloads (I changed my mind and tried to download the Cassie song, and seriously every time I downloaded it, it was 20 min. or so of silence. ). So just to reiterate,

5)

"Ghetto Story" by Baby Cham

4)

"Me & U" by Cassie

3)

"Heavy Metal" by Clap Your Hands say Yeah!!

2)

"American Girl" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

1.5)

"Two Can Win" by J Dilla Jay Dee

1)

"Stop! The Love You Save May Be Your Own" by the Jackson 5

-1)

"Dollar Day for New Orleans... Katrina Klap" by Mos Def

That Mos song has a cool dub vibe to it and speaking of dub vibes, I've really been digging this RJ song lately.

"Good Times Roll Pt. 1" by RJD2

I love the way it just chugs and chugs along and then out of nowhere the transmission just drops onto the highway, and you're crawling along with the spaced out dub section. It's great.

Coming up next time on Cigar Box Guitars, the first installment in my list of the 5 albums that were the most influential to my love of music, plus MC Abstract Douchipster's guide to getting out those hard to remove stains on your pants.

please show the same love to my friends, dear summer.

Well, as much as I enjoy autumn, I have to say that I had a great summer. So what's the best thing for a case of nostalgia? A top 5 list! So now, for the approval of the midnight society, I present to you:

Summer 2006 as experienced by the Green Hornet

(in no particular order!!!)

1. "Ghetto Story" by Baby Cham

To me this was 2006's "Can't Satisfy Her", you couldn't turn on the radio without hearing this song (on power105 and hot97 at least). It may not have the same level of infectiousness that I Wayne achieved, but damn, I couldn't turn this song off when it came on. The vocal squeeks here are hands down the coolest part of the song. That and the fact that it's awesome to hear such a big tough voice comes out of such a skinny dude.

2. "Me & U" by Cassie

(I don't actually have this song on my computer, and I have no desire to download it, so enjoy the youtube link!)

So I actually didn't even know the name of this song or who it was by until I looked it up five seconds ago, but this song holds a place close to my heart. That place is called Stiletto and it's the finest gentleman's club on earth. Now these lyrics may be trite and meaningless, but who cares? Everything about this beat just SCREAMS stripclub. I read a quote once that was attributed to elvis costello, it was "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Now I mean, if I agreed with him 100% I'd be a bit of a fool for maintaining this thing, but I think this might be one instance where the quote applies. See, I could point out the elements of the song that make me think strip club (the clap fx in place of the snare, the lazery keyboard part, the staccato notes of the main melody, the horny girl p.o.v.), but I can't really explain why they translate to strip clubs in my mind. This is just the quintessential stripper sound right here. If I wanted to go with this theme some more I could write a ton about "Loosen up my buttons" and Nelly Furtado's ridiculously sexy "Promiscous" but this is a list of summer songs and strip clubs are only one facet of a good summer.

3. "Heavy Metal" by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!

Now here's where we start turning back the clocks a little bit. Although we're aproaching the one year anniversary of the band's self titled debut, this track played a big part in making the summer of 2006 rock that much harder for me. I ended up throwing it on a CD I made for my car in the early summer and soon enough it became one of my favorite songs to drive to. I might not know a single word of the lyrics, but I'll be damned if I'm not singing and dancing everytime this song comes on in the car.

4. "American Girl" by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

Okay now we're turning the clocks back a little more. I would need some kind of math doctorate to count the number of times these past few months that I experienced a good strong rocking to this song. This song just seemed to pop up everywhere this summer. For a while Tom Petty was burning up the classic rock and "yesterday's hits and today's" stations, so this or "You Don't Know How it Feels" was always on. It's a pretty consistent jukebox choice too. I guess when you're the only man in recorded "history" to almost die of a marijuana overdose, it's hard not to be awesome.

5. "Stop! The Love You Save May Be Your Own" by the Jackson 5

So I guess we just never reset that clock. I've read that this song is actually called "The Love You Save", but the first time I saw it somewhere, it was all written out, and I prefer that. The Jackson 5 have a knack for sunny day music and this song nails it even better than most. I really enjoy the fact that we get a good mix of different Jacksons crooning here, even though Michael still seduces the spotlight. Listen to Jay Dee's "Two Can Win" back to back with this song. Trust me, it's the most pleasant, falsetto singalong inducing, experience a person can have.

"Two Can Win" by J Dilla Jay Dee

And with that, we ressurect Cigarbox from its brief hiatus. I doubt anyone's really itching for an explanation, but just in case, I just sum it up for ya. The Black Hammer and I were arrested for assault with a deadly weapon of rock and roll. See we had some guitars, a full mariachi band, and a Ukranian DJ when we loaded up our truck and started searching for crowds of people we could enlighten with our rock. Finally the Man shut us down, but for some reason the only video footage showed our opening act getting carted away.

So yeah, they tossed us in jail and gave us one phone call, so we figured, hey we'll call that Douchbag Hipster MC and ask him to gather up some bail money for us. He just screamed back into the phone something about "drunkity drunk scabop dobbits" and told us he was gonna call us back. So then a week later he showed up and bailed us out. So now here we are again, out of jail and mildly sober, to enlighten the masses with our unimportant, self important opinions.

EDIT: I'm experiencing some technical difficulties with www.yousendit.com. Download links will be added as soon as this is all patched up.

J Dilla Jay Dee

Everyone out there should go and buy "The Shining", J Dilla's latest posthumous release. The more people that buy it, the more it makes up for me pirating it online. I gave my donation to the dilla fund via T Shirt purchase though, so I'm set. Anyways, this album has guest rhymes from Pharoahe Monch, Busta, Black Thought, Common, and some others, and all the beats are Dilla beats so you really aren't gonna go wrong.

"Baby" feat. Madlib and Guilty Simpson by J Dilla Jay Dee

It's also the Gza's 40th birthday today and the man is still swinging lyrical swords.



Good for him.


"Pool of Blood" feat. Jus Allah by the Gza

thanks for the heads up, talib

Okay, so Talib mentioned on his myspace blog that Mos Def is currently recording with Madlib. I don't know about you, but that makes me feel raunchy as hell in the pants. I love me some madlib, and I love me some mos def, so I'm hoping I'll love Moslib even more.

"Sex Freaks" by Jaylib ( J dilla with Madlib )

"Peeyano Keys" by MadVillian ( Metal Fingered Villian with Madlib )

"Six Days" remix feat. Mos Def by DJ Shadow ( Mos Def and DJ Shadow without Madlib )

So yeah, all these songs are awesome and listening to them now is going to be even nicer, because everytime I do, I'll get that little sparkle in my eye thinking about the forthcoming Mos Def / Madlib project.



Also,


I have been digging Page France for a little while now. I actually got into them at first when I heard their song "Jesus", but today I was listening to music on shuffle and another song by them came on. It has kind of a beatle-y piano line -not neccessarily a bad thing- and there's a cool intro with a really heavily distorted electric guitar over a super clean acoustic. Give it a listen.

"Antarctica (my beloved home)" by Page France

"Jesus" by Page France



aaaand lastly,
if Mr. Douchipster is going to recommend Björk's movie, (yeah that's right, I used the umlauts. Yeah those dots are called umlauts. whatup.) then I get to recommend her husband, Mr. Matthew Barney's movie Cremaster 3. I don't really even know how to explain it, it's so weird. It showed at the Guggenheim as part of an exhibit. It's honestly too artsy for me to really even get into, I didn't understand it, I just kinda thought everything looked cool. Oh and also I was an extra in the scene where Agnostic Front and Murphy's Law play. So ya know.


peace.
and fuck mudvayne.