JAMES GREATEST HITS PART 1

Cosmo

I've decided that my new hotel alias is "Reebee Garofalo."

Is it just me, or does that bear look...happier?

I saw this episode of

Pet Psychic where she told the owner of a despondent llama that said llama thought of itself as a "star," and would thus be in better spirits if it was given a fancy scarf to wear. I'm getting a similar vibe here.I'm also feeling the drooping, Nan Goldin quality of some of the candles. It lends the whole thing a certain saudade, especially when coupled with the optimism of the "Happy Birthday" message. It's been a long time since an avatar made me weep openly. Four stars. I do, however, think that

I would use that for my avatar, but I think compressing it into a square would distort it too much.

is the new

No, I like it--I'm just afraid that wearing it would mess it up.

But irregardless: Jolly Bornday.

You moved to LA, and you turned into a damn hippie.There is nothing wrong with hate.

I am saying. It's like homegirl Mary said about leaving New York before you get too hard and leaving California before you get too soft. Dudes need to hit the Midwest, get on some Grow and level the fuck up.

Love don't live here anymore. Step in the name of hate.

Many years ago I saw some cartoony poster at a Shoney's, advertising their all-you-can-eat shrimp plate. The ill-conceived and inexplicable dixieland motif they had chosen combined with their artist's poor rendering skills and overeagerness to anthropomorphize his or her subject and resulted in what looked like an illustration of a jazz band composed of smiling, slightly curved phalluses. Like, "Why is there a happy little penis stabbing itself in the face with a black golf tee? Oh, that's supposed to be a shrimp? Playing a clarinet? Oh, okay." Trust me when I say that shit was far from appetizing. "Are you a pimp?""Yes, I'm a pimp."

I find this thread somewhat wine-in-a-box.

I agree with Jonny???s assessment that this kind of log-rolling shit is part of the reason why checking into soulstrut has lately felt like sipping off of a sick girl???s drink, so I???ll keep it brief: Dude has remained a strong voice even after rolling the odometers on half a dozen aliases, his contribution to the architecture around here has been???what???s the word I???m looking for?--gargantuan, and like the old saying about influence being measured by what has to go around it, considering the preponderance of dudes on here whose only distinguishing characteristic is their overly shrill distaste for All Things Paycheck, anyone that can???t recognize what he brings to the table is probably the kind of simple motherfucker who still thinks it was the stork.Complex. My man. Wait--what am I saying?! Getting back on-message: Fuck Jonny Spraycheese, fuck that Soiled Porpoise shit, fuck all his hip-hop jibber-jabber, fuck his good job, fuck his ???making moves,??? fuck that recurring picture of him all Sundayed Saturdayed-up where it looks like he???s been pithed by the overhead fixture, fuck billable studio time, fuck a chinstrap, and fuck New York.2005: Step In The Name Of Hate."Yo, cop that!""Pfft. Biter."

BITD I thought I was gonna pull all the honies at the dance with this shit!

BITD, I thought I was gonna do the same with some poached Geoffery Beene and a blazer with the fly three-quarter sleeves. And yes, those

were Bugle Boys that I was wearing...tucked behind the protruding tongues of my puffy sneakers. Knit tie? Maybe that, son. Hey, it was the style of the time. I did okay (hi, Joanna), but my man Clark (hi, Jon) struck out. C'est la vie (hi, Robbie). BTW, all of the criticism in this thread seems to amount to not much more than an elaboration of "Man, I fuckin' hate this commercial!"BFD.

my brothers record store

Speaking of which: I was outside HPR the day after Pulaski Day, on the sidewalk (on

public property, mind you--the people's sidewalk) trying to unobtrusively move some Joe Jackson doubles and some slightly dented cans of Bustelo--to feed my family--when your boy comes out and bounces me, on some Arthur Alexander "You Better Move On" type bullshit, and then gestured at me real aggressively with his pushbroom, like I was dirt or suh-in...like I was dirt, meaty! I had to run next door and drown my sorrows in a Frontier Shrimp Roundup platter. And some Slice. And maybe some of those orange circus peanuts. Whatever the case, I felt mad emasculated. Tell your man to get off the bullshit or he can kiss my quarter-bin-Blow-Monkeys business good-bye.

Strictly Lew Wassermans. The Rodenstock jernts. Or the mirrored Eat 'Em And Smile shits with the pleather bellows on the sides.I rock 'em with wrinkled shirts (no iron).

Top:Sir Stanley - ???I Believe???[/b]You need this in your life. And I don???t mean that on some ???You heard that new grey-market shit from MC Won???t Be Around Next Year? Yo, you need that in your life??? shit. I mean that if you consider your life to be a life at all, you need to occasionally be confronted with records like this and see where you???re at. Life is full of subtlety and complexity and fragility and infinite shades of grey, but it???s also full of lines that you either cross or you don???t, doors that close with you on either one side or the other, and departing planes that you???re either on or you???re not. Songs that chart the terrain on either side of that kind of divide are legion, but songs that chart the divide itself are rarer than they should be. You can tell a lot about yourself by how near or far you are to bottom-dollar blast-furnace expressions of a sentiment as elemental and irreducible as ???I believe today / what I didn???t believe yesterday.??? You don???t have to like it, but without at least hearing shit like this every now and again, you won???t be hearing everything. *Note 1: This record is no fun to physically listen to. It???s harsh as hell, has not much bottom-end, and sounds like it was recorded inside your left ear. It???s an in-the-red pavement-chewer from beginning to end. Whether or not that dissuades you will also tell you a lot about yourself.**Note 2: Message to all the ???Fuck a funk 45!??? dudes: Please miss me with that horseshit. At its best, that argument sounds like the province of those who have confused an artform with its enthusiasts, and at its worst, it sounds like the same willful ignorance that oozes out of self-satisfied fuckers who brag about never watching television. Either way, you end up looking like Burt Reynolds. So cool it.
br />Billy Easton - ???I Was A Fool???[/b]Mello???s coconut slab[/b]It???s this multi-color strip of extruded, coconut-like polymer that tastes a little like a Presto log marinated in Hawaiian Tropic. They sell ???em at the train station. So wrong???but so right? I can???t call it.The instrumental for MOP???s ???Put It In The Air??? played at 45[/b]The older and slower I get, the more I seem to pitch up my records. Even so, this one had me finna punch my breakfast.Steve Kuhn ??? ???The Meaning Of Love???[/b]The Cyrkle[/b]Bottom:I was watching this fly Israeli movie on JBN, and it got cut off to make room for an hour-long infomercial for some bullshit support garment[/b]It was some black-and-white, subtitled, mod-ish 60s caper flick with a couple dudes posing as filmmakers so that they might rob the National Lottery. Had cute female cops on Vespas and the whole nine. Anybody that might be able to tell me the name of this movie, holler. One of my grandmothers looks like Roy Orbison, and one looks like Johnny Cash[/b]I love them dearly, just saying.My LCD Soundsystem twelve-inch is mad skippy.[/b] With every hop of the needle, I can hear Bob Bannister cackling out the sunroof of his company-supplied grey-and-orange Prius (with the ???H8R??? vanity plates) while peeling out in a flurry of limited-edition stickers. Man, fuck that dude! Based on sheer wrath of the math, I???d say the ups have it. But that???s not the way it feels, word to Jim Croce.

More to come, but this is tiring work.

motown67

Wasn't James the originator of the famous if I had doubles of Stark Reality I'd use one as a bean dip coaster? Hell, that was so long ago I can't even remember the exact line.

TheeeCasualMale

Genius.

Thanks for compiling this, AI.
James is far and away the sharpest tool in our humble Soulshed.

Here's my favorite James verse, a writeup for one of my mixtapes:

p.s.: in the course of putting this shit together, it occurred to me that you moved from The Show Me State to The Beaver State. If you're not already using that in your pick-up lines, you should start.

*******************

"I wrote this song in Missouri...???

Currently keeping it guerilla in the mists of the Pacific Northwest, DJ Mike 2600 has spent the last little while making moves that feed the eyes more so than the ears. This brief pause of his war-drums perhaps makes it prime time to excavate and reanimate what we have here, some boom-pow-ping that predates his westward expansion. Old to the new, new to the old.

. . . .

While January of 2002 was getting over on December 2001, Mike 2600 was huddled in his St. Louis book depository, using turntables, mixer, and an MPC to hammer out this mix, his own periodic table of elements, which reads less like some dry scientific chart and more like a freight-yard burner done with an NY thin cap and the blood of the other guy, with only Mike???s four-track recorder escaping to tell thee.

And that???s the thing: Despite the fact that Mike himself is an unfailingly nice guy, his way with records is unerringly nasty; in the thirty-minute entirety of this mix, there???s not one thing that you???d want to bump into in an alley at night or in your bed in the morning. While it???s too soon to tell whether or not the cedared vistas of The Beaver State will take some of the edge off of Mike???s future transmissions, this one here sounds like its life is at stake, like Kurtis Mantronix shackled to a fat, derelict Al Kooper???on the run from the Recognizers, bleeding, sweating, and tearing through the coffee-cold Red Dawn wheatfields of the Midwesssss. Things get rolling with a calm, watery groove that seems to promise moody loops and wide-open spaces, but don???t be fooled: by the time you???re five minutes in, some guitar chug has kicked in the door for the angel-dusted bootleg beat-box drums from ???Flash To The Beat,??? overrun with enough fingersnaps to let you know that there???s more of them than there are of you, and you realize that "Not a speck of light is showing / So the danger must be growing..." You???re spit out of the tunnel as dirty Bomb Squad reconstructions bleed into sleazy boot-cut single-dad horn-rock that sounds like it???d grind up your dirtbike fender to make its brass; Lee Dorsey bangs out Cadillac dents, oblivious to the swiftly tilting stand-up bassline that lumbers like a golem with a forehead full of symbols, two hands full of drums, and one blind desire to see its enemies at the end of its rope; Steve Miller Band drop-outs decide that there is no future, and instead keep on slippin??? slippin??? slippin??? into the deep end, watching Good Times and huffing 808 until they???ve got the feeling, until the surveillance playback shows them gaffling chess kings, dragging them out of the arcade and into the red weather. Loop, scratch, stab, repeat. The only light at the end turns out to be the cathode-ray glow of an oncoming dead channel, but before you can look away, the TV screen implodes and its glass clatters heavily to earth, leaving broken teeth that spell out ???GAME OVER.???

. . . .

Mike has the tekkenology, though, and was thus able to rebuild some of the fragments of the wreckage herein and fold them into his subsequent six-million-dollar efforts, Records Before Rent and Cut Class And Eat Paste, both of which bear witness to some refinement of the kind of barbarian arithmetic that???s in e-f-f-e-c-t here: namely, a singular ability to lower the high-tech while simultaneously pumping up the base, until the two are brawling somewhere in the middle--a drumbot with a spiked bat versus an ape with a pistol, all puppeted by a computer that???s reading from a cassette tape. And as you consider this portrait of the artist as a young street fighter, rest assured that whatever he frankensteins next will likewise rise up off its slab swinging one fist full of raw power and one fist full of weird science, hell-bent on the punch-out. Keep your guard up.



James Cavicchia
Chicago, January 2005

Cosmo

Wow, that's dope.

More...

I have personally seent surveillance-camera footage of Clubbup in the parking lot of the Rock N' Roll McDonald's, finessing his "weekend hair" (you know, the Lord-Jesus perm) and doing the Bus Stop to "If I Had No Loot." Dude sure looked happy about something. I bet it's him what's got those records, yo.

This one's for you, Dave:

Parquet or pavement?
Four drinks in, it's tough to tell.
Watch this...Ow! My palm!

Floorwork on blacktop
leaves me typing left-handed.
I cry leather tears.

"Hey, baby. Good. What's?
What you know about this heat?
Hey where you going?

I have Demon Fuzz.
And my seven is Meaty
(but just on one side)."

Pfft. Dudes like this will be judged on garbage day. I have neither time in my day nor room in my heart for amnesiac motherfuckers who act like they came out of the womb with their tastes fully formed. We all start somewhere well south of where we end up. All of us. A hundred times out of a hundred, an honest examination of the author's record collection from ten years ago would prevent myopic shit like this from ever being written.

Did you hear the one about the constipated mathematician?







































He worked it out with a pencil.

"Buck 50"

Redman's opening "Yo...yo..." is the sound of a Driver's Ed teacher taking the wheel away from a student who's all over the road at 15mph. One of the most illustrative moments in hip-hop ever. I love that shit.

And I can understand why folks don't like "Stroke Of Death," but I just see it as part of the JB/Lee Perry/Dipset "Listen, I do whatever the fuck I want" continuum. Fake applause and sixty seconds of an entirely different track dropped in the middle? Fine. Goat noises? Fine. ESPN samples? Fine. Off-tempo backspin? Fine. I think that we've gotten so used to Ghost's berzerkness being counterbalanced by tracks that bang more or less conventionally that hearing out-of-control dude over an out-of-control track feels unnatural, like some kind of mistake, when it really couldn't be less so. I mean, Ghost is obviously something of a lunatic, and is probably destined to either end up on some Black President shit in some compound somewhere and/or go down on some Chuck Berry shit for filming girls in the bathroom; dude is clearly watching an entirely different movie than the rest of us, yet folks act like whacked-out shit like this track is out of the blue, and (in more dramatic moments) act like it's some kind of betrayal. But, you know, "That tiger didn't go crazy--that tiger went tiger." I sure wouldn't go so far as to say anybody doesn't like this track doesn't like hip-hop, but I would say that anyone who doesn't think this track is at least worth listening to--who thinks that this isn't "the real Ghost" (just like fat Elvis couldn't possibly have been "the real Elvis")--isn't really listening.

All of which is just to say that, yeah, I really dig that beat. And not to put words in his mouth, but I'm pretty sure Rawb Zilla does, too.

And TTL vendetta dude needs to cool it. Did they send you the thin envelope or something?

My name is Fatback and I will fucking own your little bitch ass record collection 1 day.. (i.e., longstanding inside joke that you do not understand.) Best step the fuck off.

Inside jokes are the refuge of scoundrels, flyweights that can't say what they really mean, and dudes that probably imagine a trumpet fanfare when they step up and proudly announce their screenname. Pfft.

I will step wherever the fuck I want.

Bernadette

Absolutely unfadeable. Back when I was in single digits, "Bernadette" was the very first song I heard that gave me what they call "the shock of recognition": It made me realize that there existed a fiery, end-of-the-world type of love, and at the same time made me realize that I was six years old and still thought girls were gross and thus there was no earthly reason why I should even have known what the fuck I was listening to--but still, there it was. That long second of silence in the middle--right before he cries "Bernadette!" like he's been shot--holds vast continents. Like those exhausting dreams where I'm reading a book as I'm writing it, listening made me race ahead of myself even as I lagged a half-step behind, simultaneously exhilarated and scared shitless that a day might come that I would feel as strongly as the singer of this song. Probably the only reason that Third Guitar 45 didn't turn my hair into snakes is because I heard "Bernadette" first.

So, yeah--I appreciate.

That Little Shop Of Horrors movie was my shit, too. Levi Stubbs played the plant.

This is a day late, but as it concerns a gentleman who used to perform under the name ???Buck Short,??? I???m calling it even.

A belated Happy Birthday to Clubbup, uno blanco pachuco rolling his balls through the Humboldt Park pachinko???someone old, looking for something new, on borrowed time, rocking powder blue, dodging harpoons and trying to avoid the street hassle on his way to his own private Florida room, where it???s Always Saturday. I???d like to fabricate some fantastical point of origin, but as is so often the case, Ruth is stranger than Richard: Dude actually (like, actually) lives at the corner of Crystal and Rockwell, which would only be the second-flyest address I???d ever heard, were it not for the bonus beat, which puts it over the top like your boy Sylvester Stallone: Yeah, just make a right on the street between the liquor store and the women???s clinic. Real talk.

More real talk, but this time from two ladies (overheard at a Mr. Terry Clubbup show. Actually.): ???Is he wearing lipstick???? ???No, I think his lips just look like that.??? ???Really? Hmmmm?????? (You kinda have to imagine that last part being said as approvingly as humanly possible. Like, approaching should-have-had-her-???Always-A-Lady???-t-shit-revoked levels). I think her name was "Maureena."

TCB is the fly in the ointment, staying the former, hopefully without needing the latter. Crunko-American advocate, transition-lens wearer, deer feeder, liquor drinker, showboater, and comforter of the lost and turned-out, the peach tree that grows a quarter-inch behind Young Cleezy???s fivehead perpetually drops like hot a bumper crop of strange fruit, but all you really need to know is right there in the Clubbuppington family crest: one side depicts a dog running free, and the other, a cat on a leash. Trilly yours.

In a world where they don???t use lemons to make lemonade, Clubbup???s got that actual Guatemala. Happy Birthday, bon bon vie, champagne for your real friends, real pain for your sham friends, and all that.



???This dude???s a gangster?! His real name???s ???Terrence???!???

Like wings, traveling shoes, opinions, and assholes, all God???s children have a Terry Clubbup story. What???s yours? (And before you reply, ask yourself: What has the truth ever done for you?)

Failing that, just post up some Friday Afternoon Party Patrol shit. Terry would have wanted it that way.

Shout to Terrence Clubbs. You will be next, holmes.

z_illa

Ya'll know that as of June 2nd James is a father right? Here's to single handedly (well um, not single... or um hand..) destroying the chicago school system's curve. More later, but now I have to listen to Funkadelic. Not to put words in his mouth but, I'm sure James would want it that way.

Cosmo

Holy Pakora!

Jonny_Paycheck

Ya'll know that as of June 2nd James is a father right? Here's to single handedly (well um, not single... or um hand..) destroying the chicago school system's curve. More later, but now I have to listen to Funkadelic. Not to put words in his mouth but, I'm sure James would want it that way.

WOW. Fuck Pap, this shit deserves a holiday.

On_the_Red_Clay

Bernadette

Absolutely unfadeable. Back when I was in single digits, "Bernadette" was the very first song I heard that gave me what they call "the shock of recognition": It made me realize that there existed a fiery, end-of-the-world type of love, and at the same time made me realize that I was six years old and still thought girls were gross and thus there was no earthly reason why I should even have known what the fuck I was listening to--but still, there it was[/b]. That long second of silence in the middle--right before he cries "Bernadette!" like he's been shot--holds vast continents. Like those exhausting dreams where I'm reading a book as I'm writing it, listening made me race ahead of myself even as I lagged a half-step behind, simultaneously exhilarated and scared shitless that a day might come that I would feel as strongly as the singer of this song. Probably the only reason that Third Guitar 45 didn't turn my hair into snakes is because I heard "Bernadette" first.

The world needs more lines like this. I haven't got a clue what you do for a living, but James- I do hope it has something do to with writing.

djdaze

Seriously...dude is un-fuckwitable

grandpa_shig

this is awesome. i have a feeling these gems were pilfered from the long winded threads that i rarely read cuz i cant be bothered. so it is great to have them compiled here so that i may read them and enjoy them and laugh my ass off. eagerly awaiting part 2

TheeeCasualMale

Ya'll know that as of June 2nd James is a father right? Here's to single handedly (well um, not single... or um hand..) destroying the chicago school system's curve. More later, but now I have to listen to Funkadelic. Not to put words in his mouth but, I'm sure James would want it that way.

WOW. Fuck Pap, this shit deserves a holiday.

TRUTH!

June 2nd, 2006 = DO THE JAMES DAY.

hogginthefogg

After he was so kind as to purchase a copy of Slump & Grind, I believe he decried it as potentially dangerous in that a non-Bay denizen as himself could end up walking into a kielbasa spot and saying, "What it do on a hot link?"


And now, some Private Press Message James for your enjoyment. In a PM, I had referenced the Fixx's "One Thing Leads To Another" video (because, well, it often does). He replied:

Back when, I always wished I could finesse that angular Thin White Duke euro-appeal like guy in the Fixx video, but my doughiness left me unable to reach the beach, and I ended up more like Billy Joel in "Pressure": hunted by the same Dobermanses, but displaying a marked lack of finesse, sweating profusely, and rocking some very American puffy hair. Thankfully, though, that hasn't happened for the longest time.

And to the man himself, who I know is reading this: Massive and heartfelt congratulations on your family style.

djdaze

yes for real, congratumalations on the arrival of the small person.

drewnice

Favorite Thread! (toggle)

For real though, props man, for flexing what you were born to do and making it a reality.

That demands mad respect.

Brian

That Supreme Clientele discussion post had me cracking the fuck up.

Bambouche

"What it do on a hot link?"

This only strengthens my argument that James is leading the Ill Noize??? Crew towards the frontier of syntax. ("Yo! Didactic, 'cause you might learn from this!") He's the fucking Chomsky of 'Strut.



Got everyone cunninglinguisticly "doin' the James".

...this kind of log-rolling shit is part of the reason why checking into soulstrut has lately felt like sipping off of a sick girl???s drink...

Still mourning the loss of JRoot, the idea of life without James is too much to bear. To quote Seaweed, a pre-grunge SUB-POP punk outfit:



I understand that I can't understand the new breed.





Don't leave, dude. And plaese to post photos of Baby James when he's getting his first taste for tongue twistin'.





(File Under: Character Limits On Titles Should Be Modified To Fit: Morphology, syntax, phonetics, and semantics. Inlcuding sociolinguistics, dialectology, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, historical-comparative linguistics, and applied linguistics. RAWKUKNIZE!)

asprin

This thread rocks.

mordecai

this is awesome. i have a feeling these gems were pilfered from the long winded threads that i rarely read cuz i cant be bothered. so it is great to have them compiled here so that i may read them and enjoy them and laugh my ass off. eagerly awaiting part 2

monty

Wasn't James the originator of the famous if I had doubles of Stark Reality I'd use one as a bean dip coaster? Hell, that was so long ago I can't even remember the exact line.

yes, once again for posterity:

james
180 gram Pressing
Posts: 134
From:chicago
Registered: Nov 2001
posted 03-01-2002 06:59 PM

Two copies of Stark Reality: one for good, and one to put snacks on. It sounds bananas, but it'd be great way to make a name:

"Hey, have you seen that picture of Mo's wall, where he's got the five Skull Snaps lined up?"

"Yo, fuck that--you want heat? I went to some kid's house and he was serving some bean dip offa Stark, son. Had a bowl of chips on the jacket and the dip right on the record, straight up."

"Word?! Stark?! Bean dip?!"

"I swear to god, kid; I saw it myself."

"Daaaaamn. Can you imagine what his GOOD records must be like?..."

True, I'd have fucked up a perfectly good record, but I'd be legendary like "Mardi Gras" without the bells...

dstill808

and every post I write should be a soul strut quotable....

great read.

james

Damn, this is like naked baby pictures.

I can think of a half dozen dudes who could eat some alphabet soup and shit better posts than mine, but still, thank you all for the kind words.

Terry_Clubbup

Kielbasa? not where James do.

You would have to head up north to get your Polish polished.

He buys his hot links at a BBQ Rib joint, where sausage casings
are filled with floor-swept meat, grill-scraped meat, gently bent meat,
and a whole can of black pepper.

Anyways, we recognize ourselves in his knowledge droppings:

I just popped in the other week to wish my man Rob some Happy Birthday, but, you know, soulstrut is like The Blob: "Oh, I'll just poke at it lightly with this stick," and before you know it, it's swallowing your fucking arm.

Yeah, your other arm holding the butt-end of a hot link, stomach
gearing up for a mid-term divestment, you're thinking "this, too,
shall pass".

Late Pass happy birthday Zilla

hogginthefogg

get your Polish polished.

gently bent meat

Awesome.

mylatency

HOLY COW THIS DUDE CAN WRITE

I HOPE THIS DUDE IS COMPILING A BOOK



SERIOUSLY,



JAMES IS THAT DUDE THAT IS APPRECIATED.

Terry_Clubbup

Also I wanted to say to James:

There are two kinds of people in the world:

The kind that only thinks there are two kinds of people, and then
the kind that thinks there are a whole bunch of different kinds
of people.

djdaze

Also I wanted to say to James:

There are two kinds of people in the world:

The kind that only thinks there are two kinds of people, and then
the kind that thinks there are a whole bunch of different kinds
of people.

I saw a shirt that said

there are 10 kinds of people in the world
those who understand binary code
and those who don't


I must be a nerd cause that shit made me giggle

james

You know those shirts with the two airbrushed hearts, with the dude's name in one, and the lady's in the other? A while back, I saw a couple flossing identical "DICK CANDY" jernts. Someone really should have thought that one through.

djdaze

"DICK CANDY"

If I felt like spending $9.95 you would SO have a new title.

hogginthefogg

That's talk from it, though--"what it do" on some talk about it?

Also: A quick soulstrut search reveals that most of those terms in your post appear only in your post, Big Apple. I have to say that right about now you're coming off more than a little like an unappealing cross between Eddie from my high school (slang perpetrator of the highest order: "I can't believe you haven't heard it...I mean, yeah, I made it up, but everybody says it...no, really...") and Paul from my high school (dude went to community college one state over, but still came back to the high-school parking lot every Friday after school to, you know, "hang"). You might wanna look into that. Start speaking real words, make some friends at your new school, yunno?

Well, one, I suspect that any devout exponent of any scene would say the same thing (when I lived in quarter-horse Anderson, SC, I had some dude tell me that I probably wouldn't "get" motherfucking half-horse forty-five-minutes-away Spartanburg, SC hip-hop), so it stands to reason that the Bay would feel the same. Don't get me wrong, though: I'm all for that kind of local pride, all day; it beats the shit out of scenes that shit on dudes until they go somewhere else and get famous, and then shit on them for not "giving back" (what's good, Chicago?).

jimiscott

james is both the david berman and richard brautigan of the soul strut board. i once, in a purely fanboy move, read all of his posts on a slow workday. needless to say, his style and sensibility are, as they say...



his flamethrower post on the hollerboard helped re-align what the kj forum should be. i tip my hat.

-j

CousinLarry

The "Smooth" radio format is some revolutionary (if throwed-back) shit, though. Outside of mixtapes, in how many other contexts do you hear music that's programmed not by its genre and not by the demographics of its listenership but by its abstract aesthetic? My dad is deep in the Smooth lifestyle (dude was country when country wasn't cool, so to speak: He's been down with the Smoove unit since the mid-eighties when his avuncular cocoa co-worker Greg--he of the late-model zinfandel-colored something with the "LOAFIN" vanity plate--turned him out with some Najee), so whenever we go to visit him, it's wall-to-wall "Wave FM" or whatever--in the crib, in the convertible, while ordering assorted chicken-based wraps named after towns in Arizona, etc.--and I can honestly say that said station will seemingly play anything, by any artist, in any genre, from any time period, as long as it feels smooth. In one weekend, on one station, I heard Bobby Caldwell, late-period Miracles, Beck, Al Green, MacNeal and Niles, Paul Hardcastle, Etta James, The Deele, Dave Brubeck, Steely Dan, Maroon 5, Lee Morgan, Johnny Hammond, Jefferson Starship, Jobim, Talking Heads, and on and on and on. Regardless of how one feels about the individual artists, where the fuck else do you hear that kind of sensibility in wide public broadcast? Those of you that can't get past the specifics of the playlist ("Fuck a Kenny G, thun!"), think of it this way: Imagine if there was some station that would play anything, by any artist, in any genre, from any time period, as long as it felt hard (settle down, Beavis): MC5, Public Enemy, Metallica, Prince Far I, Funkadelic, Alber Ayler, M.O.P., and on and on and on. Well, that's what's going on with a lot of these "Smooth" stations. You ain't gotta like it, but please recgonize this for the soft bomb that it is.

And in a side note: All those who diss Men With Hats out of hand better hope that Clubbup doesn't see that shit. You'll be a bus ticket.