PLUG SIDE

Last night I was in the mood for a walk to the main drag a few blocks away. I brought a radio with earbuds (surprisingly good sound for a $15 radio and earbuds found on the beach). I tuned into the jazz station. Blech. I'd forgotten that it was time for the blues show, this particular one my least favorite. It was playing guitar slinger type blues along the lines of the dreaded Blueshammer. I love blues as much as the next guy, but not when some peacock of a guitar player is strutting his stuff. So I switched stations to the r&b station and let me tell you, it was a yowza moment. The opening beats of Run DMC's "It's Like That" from their first LP. Man, I love vintage Run DMC. I worked in a restaurant when it came out, and the dishwasher played it non-stop for months. I remember thinking at the time that it was a turning point in rap. It was stripped down and powerful. No disco beats. That first Run DMC LP is right up there with the Sex Pistols debut inasmuch as it was raw and it took things in a entirely different direction.

After I got home it occurred to me that it was about the time of year to hit "Christmas In Hollis" again. Many of you will know that the horns sampled in it came from Clarence Carter's "Back Door Santa". Those of you who don't, should stop and appreciate that the most prominent sample in the song, the horns, came from another Christmas record and the key thing is, they didn't have to do that. No one would have known one way or another. For whatever reason, I find it cool that they took that extra step..

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Run DMC - It's Like That (streaming) at YouTube
Run DMC - Christmas In Hollis mp3 at Said the Gramophone
Clarence Carter - Back Door Santa mp3 at AM Then FM
More Christmas hip hop:
Kurtis Blow - Christmas Rappin' (streaming) at YouTube
Run The Jewels - A Christmas F*cking Miracle (video) at YouTube
Snoop Doggy Dogg ft. Daz Dillinger, Nate Dogg, Tray Deee, Bad Azz - Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto (video) at YouTube

THE BLOW HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH KURTIS BLOW (BUT PRESS ME AND I'LL FIND SOMETHING)

When fucking around online (which, as you probably know, I do a lot of), I have a hard time deciding whether to hunt for music or read blogs. "Ah," you say, "you should just go to music blogs." Yeah, thanks, I'm on to them. The one thing about music blogs is that most of them write about musical facts, which is great if you want facts. I'd rather read descriptions of how the music felt, and maybe the writers' personal history with the music in question, especially with odd tangents thrown in there.

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"I pulled up to a traffic light and there was a cop giving a guy a ticket in the parking lane. I was blasting "Ace of Spades" really loud and the cop, with his back toward me, started nodding his head. He slowly turned towards me and, with the pulled over driver's vision blocked by his body, the cop flashed the devil horns, with this weird 'you should have seen me back in the day' grin. (Devil horns, or metal horns, or whatever you call it. You know, the non-Hang Loose horns. I swear, metal heads invented the first-finger-instead-of-the-thumb version of the horns just to prove that they were capable of doing the version that was the biggest pain in the ass.)"

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When a music blog writes bullshit like that, that I can read. Meandering. And if the blog in question is written by a musician (as opposed to an MP3 blog) that's okay too. It's like getting to know the musician rather than someone who listens to the musician. Not better necessarily, just a different person writing.

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In the case of Khaela Maricich (aka The Blow), I had already heard her music, and had recently added The Blow to my "further listening" list. Tonight I happened by her blog, That Touch Me Feeling, and it had me listening to her music in a whole different light. Her last post (a few months old) has a video of one of her songs, "Hey Boy", being interviewed. The song is portrayed by a hand with a party hat on...well, you just have to see it. I found it really funny. She writes about her mom too. I love that shit.

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Her second latest post is a letter to her own blog. Like the other post, it was imaginative.

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And the post before that starts with, "Today was the day to seriously get down to business, and that meant standing in my underwear next to the front door, making a nest out of the twigs from my dead ficus tree." She goes on to write about the ficus dying "with only the attention of the large appliances," and her fear of moving into a new apartment.

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It was good stuff. Too bad though, that these are old posts and it appears the blog is now dormant. But it did send me in search of "further listening."

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The Blow - Parentheses mp3 at Streetkiss

The Blow - Pile of Gold mp3 at Schitz Popinov

Khaela Maricich's blog That Touch Me Feeling

Khaela Maricich entry at Wikipedia

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BONUS! Kurtis Blow: When I was looking for The Blow mp3s, I ran across an mp3 of The Breaks by Kurtis Blow. The bass and the overall groove of it have always floored me. I could do with an instrumental version.

Kurtis Blow - The Breaks mp3 at Attorney Street

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