a poem about neil young vomiting

If that title isn't a hint, well, uh, sorry. If you did get the hint, you are now rewarded with a few Soul Coughing obscurities. The first are two tracks from the Ruby Vroom sessions back in 1994, and the second a rather obscure mix of Super Bon Bon from the one and only Tchad Blake. I've shared versions of the Ruby Vroom tracks elsewhere before, so maybe you've heard them, but probably not. As for Super Bon Bon, almost definitely not.

The quick and dirty of it is, a friend and I were involved in trying to get a Soul Coughing archival release project off the ground a few years ago, but issues with a specific member of the band put those goals on ice for the time being. We were far from ready for prime time, but we'd gotten new transfers of a bunch of live shows (some already in circulation but still significant upgrades), and a lot of unreleased or rare material. I'm not supposed to release any of it, which is a shame, but my friend and I agreed to release some of these Ruby Vroom rough mixes once or twice. Since then, I've re-done my initial transfer of the RV tape and put my own mastering touches on the tracks, and I think they came out pretty good for my thoroughly uneducated ass. The first is an extended version of Bus to Beelzebub, with an unused intro and an unfaded outro. The second is the first of two takes of Disseminated that were recorded during the RV sessions, though the song was re-recorded for Irresistible Bliss, so this version is completely unreleased. And finally, the version of Super Bon Bon seems to have been released on a Japanese issue of IB, though all I have to go on that is a vague reference on Discogs. It's super swampy and funky, though not dubby in the traditional, reggae sense. Still, calling it a "dub" version is probably the easiest description you could give it with some accuracy.

Click on the song titles in the last paragraph to check them out. Enjoy.

guess who?

Sorry, it's been a little while since my last post. Very busy this week with a funeral among other things.

If you followed my old site(s), you probably know I'm a big fan of cut-up hip-hop. In particular, I'm a devoted follower of Double Dee & Steinski (who have a wonderful Bandcamp page up that you should visit!) along with DJ Food/Strictly Kev, Coldcut, DJ Shadow and many more. I love the recontextualization of other people's work to make something new, so all the better known stuff, along with deep divers like John Oswald and Wobbly, tickle my fancy. That said, none of those guys are what got me interested in this kind of music. Oddly enough, it was the C&C Music Factory producers, David Cole and Robert Clivilles, and their work with Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam. They issued the first taste of their collaboration in 1991 with Let the Beat Hit 'Em, an almost entirely sample-based hip-hop track meant for the club as much as "boomin' systems" that doubled as a tribute to fallen king of the tape edits, Chep Nunez. The rest of their collaboration didn't sound anything like this, going more in a street-driven dance vibe that fit their works in the early nineties, but I still enjoyed it all. Nothing beat Let the Beat Hit 'Em though! I bought the cassette maxi-single and bugged-out to the extended remix and instrumental/dub versions constantly until I upgraded to the CD version. It's still a favorite and sits snug on my phone for when I need it.

Let the Beat Hit 'Em seems to be a bit of strange beast outside of my youthful recollections. I remember first hearing it on the Open House Party radio show and seeing the video at least once on MTV, but it never seemed to get much mainstream focus. The b-side of the original single was the so-called "5 Minute House Version" which I thought was dumb and kinda boring as it was basically a completely new track that, apart from the name, featured nothing from the original and was barely a song. Apparently, a further remix of this version became popular in the clubs and overseas. That later remix definitely improved on it, but I still couldn't understand the popularity of this version over the hip-hop track.

Time moves on, C&C Music Factory became a mostly forgotten joke, and Lisa Lisa disappeared, probably not making much money for her label which resulted in her getting dropped. She put out something on an indie label, but I never got to check it out. Still, the BEAT maintained, and while I like all her earlier singles, Let the Beat Hit 'Em is my jam. So when I found a promo 12" on Discogs that was reported to have two otherwise unavailable versions of Let the Beat Hit 'Em, I was intrigued. This wasn't a test-pressing, acetate or internal-use cassette, it was an officially issued promotional 12" that named-checked C&C but didn't announce Lisa and company, listing only Guess Who? and not even the song's name. I eventually purchased a copy and found two significantly different versions of the song, both seemingly earlier mixes with a lot of samples that were dropped from the officially released versions. I posted them on my Soundcloud, figuring they were fair game since they had never been released outside of a non-commercial 12", only to get the first of a three strikes warning. I was done with uploading anything to Soundcloud after that and just sat on my goods. Well, now that I have another site, I figured this was as good a time as any to share this 12" with the world again. You can get them here and here. They're still pretty awesome 28 years later!

I tried reaching out to Robert Clivilles a few times to see if I could get any background on the song and maybe these mixes, but I never heard back. No surprise. Still, this is one of those records I'd love to know more about. In the early days of digital editing, they probably spent a whole day in the studio adjusting the pitch and key of the samples and trying to get things sounding right before assembling the basic track. I can only imagine how long something like that could take and how maddening it could be. So, if anyone knows Robert C or Lisa Lisa and can get me in touch with them, drop me a line, though I'm assuming these are stories I'll probably never hear. :(

Please forgive me for the slightly downer outro note there. Enjoy and have a great weekend!

what's in a name? and other questions we don't care about.

Among other things I'm into, I've gotten interested in ripping cassette tapes. Most of the time I feel people don't make very good rips of cassettes, whereas ripping vinyl is something of an art form. I'm pretty good at ripping vinyl, though I make no claim to being an expert. I have my method and it works for me. But when it comes to tapes, I think I've got this figured out pretty damn well. Because of that, I've looked around and hunted for bizarre cassettes that I might find interesting. Some of the things I've gotten are:

A pre-release version of Beck's Odelay with a slightly different title, some songs with significantly different titles (Devil's Haircut was apparently named Electric Music in the Summer People at one point, unless it was some kind of internal label mistake), and uncleared samples. Some of those tracks will end up here later on.

A collection of rough mixes from the sessions for Soul Coughing's first album, with every song but one included, and a number of unreleased pieces. (Thanks, Mat!)

Rather finished sounding demos for George Clinton's second album for Prince's Paisley Park label. These could've probably been released as a finished album, though the versions later released are mostly superior.

There are quite a few other oddities I've located here and there, but one that really stands out is a "pre-mastering" tape of Lauryn Hill's Miseducation album. It was apparently made for someone at a German branch of Sony and features most of the album, minus a song or two, with a song or two that didn't make the album in their place. None of the interludes are present and a number of the song titles are completely different. It's pretty cool, though none of those things are revelations. The only really big find is a notably different version of Every Ghetto, Every City. The vocals appear to be the finished performance, but the backing track is quite different, with a sample of Miss Lauryn dropping a quip being looped throughout the track. I don't think this has ever leaked, and I'm not big into holding onto things forever unless I've been asked to, so here's a little bit of joy for you to jam to as we approach the weekend. If anyone really cares about the rest of the tape, I'm sure I can make it available for you to check out. For now though, let's keep it to this one track, labeled Welcome Back on the j-card. Enjoy.

Saul's Boutique, for the best in custom cassettes!

Some people have been very cool to me in the last few months and I finally got my hands on a lossless copy of the Paul's Boutique Show Vinyl for the aborted tour in 89/90. I did some work on it, removing some vinyl noise and patching some skips, and eventually made a cassette of it for my deck. Spoke to a friend about making some artwork and he suggested we make some professionally manufactured cassettes, so we did. I'm not selling them, as that would be illegal. FOR SHAME! But I am giving some copies to friends. Probably can't give everyone a copy though, so I'm sorry if I don't have enough to go around for the whole world. That said, I'd be happy to share the digital files, though I won't be posting a link here. If you'd like a download link, drop me a line at the email address at the top of the site. NOT MY OLD EMAIL! I still use that, but this needs to be kept separate.

I also want to give a huge shout out to Harvey Cliff for getting everything worked out! Below are two of the covers he made, both of which are blatantly awesome! He's available for hire to do killer art for your projects!

not afraid to die

I love a crazy remix. That Pizzy Yelliott one from the last post, it's nuts, though it helps that the cover is pretty nutty too. Still, it ups the insanity and runs around the house with scissors. I grew up always wanting to hear batshit crazy remixes of the music I loved, because I firmly believe the best remixes are the ones where the producers lay everything on the line. The disappointment of a generic remix is intense, so why not go all out when given the opportunity? I remember a friend and I being psyched for the release of remixes for Gnarls Barkley's Crazy way back when, only to find five ultra-generic house mixes that didn't need to exist, and probably never should have been created to begin with.

Now don't get me wrong, I understand the purpose of the remix in the eyes of a record label is to push their product in an environment that normally wouldn't be right for the music in question. With that knowledge, a basic club mix or two makes a lot of sense. Beyond one or two club mixes though, what else would you need? There's a promo for Lana Del Rey's National Anthem single with 16 different mixes, 3 done by Todd Terry. Who paid for that? There's a fucking Das Racist remix on it! That's amazing! Who would've thought to hire Das Racist to remix a Lana Del Rey song? How much coke was the A&R guy who paid them snorting at that moment? Apart from that Das Racist remix though, which is certifiably bonkers, all the other mixes are exactly what you think they are. In case you don't know what that is, they're basic club mixes borrowing a few vocals or speeding up the song and giving it a club beat. That's incredibly boring. If you want to see this ridiculous promo CD, just in case you don't believe me, click here.

With that said, the remix I'm posting here is for Janet Jackson's Black Cat. It's called the 3 Snaps Up 12" and was created by Vaughn Halyard. I've never heard of him before and he doesn't seem to have a lot of remix credits, but damn, he made a killer mix for Miss Janet! This mix is 30 years old and still awesome! So I praise you, Mr. Halyard, and I hope you'll check out this incredible remix of Black Cat, a perfect example of how you're supposed to remix a song!