unpiano: music

//photo by Arthur Leipzig

This is from that Big L/Jay-Z freestyle I posted last week. Makes me think of New York on a weekday in the rain. Smoking a cigarette and watching the rain fall while the piano loops in the background. You can check the version with lyrics if you want, but I just put it up there for reference.

Miilkbone - Keep It Real (instrumental)
Miilkbone - Keep It Real

Lamont Coleman came straight out of Harlem with some of the sickest murder raps I have heard to this day. Sometimes he talked about other stuff too (see ‘Put It On’), but he was always at his best when he got real dark. The best part was that he hated everybody; best friends, women, Jesus, cops, gay dudes, infants, his mom.. they all got caught a bad one. Sometimes you just gotta take what you’re good at and stick with it (Are you listening Mobb Deep and Beatnuts?). He also killed every freestyle I have ever heard, including the one below where he made Jay-Z sound like a stuttering idiot in comparison. Unfortunately, it seemed like all that gun talk finally caught up with him and he got dropped on a corner in Harlem back 1999. Luckily before he left he recorded the amazing Lifestylez Ov Da Poor And Dangerous (another one of about 10 cassettes I still own) which can be best enjoyed at night cruising around with tinted windows, letting the streetlights wash over the hood as you go by.

Big L - Devil’s Son
Big L - Put It On
Big L - Street Struck
Big L - Lifestylez Ov da Poor and Dangerous
Big L - Da Graveyard
Big L - Platinum Plus (w/ Big Daddy Kane)

Bonus:
Freestyle with Jay-Z (over ‘Keep It Real’)
Freestyle from 1995 (over ‘Who Shot Ya?’)
Freestyle from WKCR (Stretch and Bobbito)

Thanks to Three’s Company, I thought my first apartment would be a huge three bedroom that was clean and well lit with a rad bar two-doors down. It would be cheap, wouldn’t smell like a dump that four skaters lived in, wouldn’t come with a bathtub full of human hair, wouldn’t have dirty syringes under the refrigerator, and I’d have to pretend I was gay so my concerned landlord and his horny wife wouldn’t think I was fucking my two hot roommates. None of these things ever happened and I’m still pretty bent about it.

DC’s The Ropers were named after those wacky landlords and epitomized the 60’s meets early 90’s indiepop scene of the time. Fuzzy, well crafted pop-is-the-new-punk with a tinge of late-60’s vibe (more Love or United States Of America, not that shit your parents still talk about). They released a handful of singles two great albums, All The Time on Slumberland Records and The World Is Fire on Teenbeat before disbanding in the mid-90’s. Since its impossible to find photos of the band, here’s a blurry picture of some other dude holding up one of their 7″s.

The Ropers - Revolver (7″ version)
The Ropers - Sweet Lord I Know
The Ropers - Transparent Day
The Ropers - Drive (Version)

The Airing Of Grievences appeals to me in the same way that everything that Hickey or the Replacements did appeals to me. It’s a mix of a lot of things I like in one place at full volume. Well crafted pop-songs sung by a lunatic punk band full of alcoholics who were going to art school (or hanging out with a bunch of rich kids going to art school) and made sure it sounded fucked. Really, who else names their band after a Shakespeare tragedy or calls their first single “Camus” after an existential philosopher? That’s right, wasted art-fags from New Jersey. How’d you know?

Titus Andronicus - Fear And Loathing In Mahawah, NJ
Titus Andronicus - Joset Of Nazareth’s Blues
Titus Andronicus - My Time Outside The Womb

Goth’s have always fascinated me. Growing up in Southern California in the 80’s & 90’s, you couldn’t get away from them. Everyone had a goth older sister who was supposedly a lesbian but only time would tell. It was just part of the Southern California cultural landscape, if you were really into punk you missed it. They were going to clubs, doing hard drugs, fucking like crazy way before dance-punk made kids who grew up on hardcore lighten up. It transcended gender issues way ahead of its time, it didn’t bother with racial bullshit either - if you were willing to pile on the velour, hairspray and shirts that looked like tea-doileys you were in the club. Propaganda zine drove the goth/death rock scene fashion wise, with freaky vampires and Edward Gorey cartoons come-to-life gracing the pages in billowing, black & white costumes. It seemed so serious to me, yet all those fucking depressed freaks got jobs at the most unlikely places; McDonalds, The Warehouse… anywhere that called for a bright colored uniform and peppy customer service. Funny right? That’s how I learned what the word “irony” meant. The kids I grew up with eventually outgrew it, came out of the closet, or got into something more fashionable. But still, the only place you can find real goths these days are Los Angeles, the Valley and the Sacramento suburbs. That’s it. So hats off vampires; here’s to zits and cake makeup, ambiguous sexuality, 4 layers of carefully placed fabric in 100 degree weather, a bummer trip and the worst shoes ever.

Christian Death - Romeo’s Distress
Christian Death - Figurative Theater
Christian Death - Dream For Mother

//photo by Jason Fischer

Hey guess who’s on tour right now? Guess who also put out one of the best records of 2008 (that’s an empirical fact not up for discussion btw)? San Francisco’s Thee Ohsees that’s who. From little home-taped solo project of SF enigma John Dwyer (of the Coachwhips, Pink & Brown, Zeigenbock Kopf, Swords And Sandles, etc.) to full blown rock band of the year, The Masters Bedroom Is Worth Spending A Night In is a killer fucking record and “Block Of Ice” shreds (neither of these pure, empirical facts are up for discussion either). Look them up on MySpace for tour dates with the Sic Alps.

Thee Ohsees - Block Of Ice
Thee Ohsees - Ghost In The Trees

Bonus:
Thee Ohsees - Block Of Ice (live @ Cake Shop, NYC)

One of the great things about having a music blog is that people send me links and mp3s all the time. It’s a great way to hear about new stuff since as I get older I’m not getting any less lazy. Wait, was that a double negative? Anyways, you get the point, which is that I got an email from this band The Craters who is from a suburb called Newton near Boston. I used to hang out from time to time and it kind of freaked me out. Then I realized it was really good and now everything is okay.

The Craters - Kissables
The Craters - Flexin’
The Craters - Like You Used To Know
The Craters - With You or Near You

I know the whole “get stoked on Vashti Bunyan” thing is way over, but I love this track from her 1965 Decca Single.

Vashti Bunyan - Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind

What can you say about Lindsey Buckingham? No, really.. what can you say? ..Because I have no idea. I think I’m starting to use this blog as a way to exercise all the songs that are stuck in my head. A friend sent this video to me a couple months ago and I still fucking hum it on a weekly basis. What else can I do but put it out into the internet in the hopes of putting it to rest. I hope you don’t mind..

Lindsey Buckingham - Holiday Road
Lindsey Buckingham - Holiday Road (video)

When I first moved to San Francisco in the mid-90’s my apartment hovered over the corner of Stockton & Columbus streets in North Beach. For the first month or so the only way I could sleep at night with all the yelling drunks, jocks in stupid waist-length leather jackets, screechy Marina-girls, bums fighting shopping carts and yelling at ghosts, buses, cars, yelling, pissing, puking, fighting and partying was to put on Flying Saucer Attack’s New Lands and bury it all under a fluffy blanket of white noise. Fans of the Radio Department, Deerhunter and the like should fuzz out to these records. Here’s some tracks off a few long-gone singles from way back when.

Flying Saucer Attack - Standing Stone
Flying Saucer Attack - Soaring High
Flying Saucer Attack - Crystal Shade