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.
(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.
