Don't Sweat The Technics

Eric B and Rakim "Eric B Is President"

My brother and fellow music nut Pat has always tried to get my goat by asking me what music of my generation will be on the radio still in thirty years. Granted, his comments were justly inspired by whatever band of the moment I had brought home and compared to Zeppelin. After listening to a track, Pat wold turn to me and say, "Yeah, but are they going to be listening to Alice In Chains in thirty years?"

My lifetime has not included a Summer of Love, or a '76 kind of year. My generation grew up in the MTV era of short attention spans. But our generation did see the rise of hip-hop, and as I've previously wrote, hip-hop radically changed the pop landscape. I loved hip-hop from an early age. I spent many evenings dialing into the radio station of the University of Chicago, several miles from my safe suburban home, thrilled by the rhymes of a Sugar Ray Dinki or the beats of a Fast Eddie. This music sounded like NOTHING I had ever heard before, and certainly spoke of an experience as alien as it was of-the-moment. Before they became a boring catalog of material possessions, rhymes dealt with life in the ghetto. And that life was not altogether hopeless. The other great theme of early hip-hop rhymes was partying- not partying with Cristal and a 300 pound security guard between you and your fans, but partying at a barbecue, a record shop, hell, anywhere where they had a turntable. Hip-hop was a community, a movement. I'm sure most people thought it would have its five minutes and short-lived MTV show and then disappear. They were pretty wrong. Hip-hop was an early harbinger of where pop music is today, where personalization and unique distribution have eroded the power of labels and even MTV.

Although alpha males MCs like Big Daddy Kane, LL Cool J, and Chuck D dominated the scene, I did not want to be a MC. I wanted to be a DJ. These guys had the power. They were a one-man band, and it was their beats that made hits. What romance was there in being at a studio, double-tracking your guitar solo? DJs did their magic right in the club, what you heard was the same as when the needle dropped. And by creating their sound, DJs destroyed it, literally. You know why you don't see many James Brown records at record shops? Because most were beat to shit and back by '80s DJs. To this day I would take two turntables and a mixer over a guitar (even a double-necked one) or saxophone.

Eric B. and Rakim hailed from New York City. "When Eric B. Is President", their debut single, dropped they instantly became the most forward-thinking group in hip-hop. Erik B. nods to black music's past all over this track. It manages to have a the slow burn of blues, the swing of jazz, and the propulsion of disco while also sounding so incredibly spare (especially when compared with the celebrated sound his contemporary, Terminator X, was spinning for Public Enemy). Rakim's rhymes cleverly break down the wall between listener and MC. You're listening to the track, and he's telling you what he's doing and what he's going to do right afterward. He's not telling a gritty tale. No, Rakim knows he's riding a hot beat, so he's going to let that do the boasting for him.

Download this, rip it to a CD, roll the windows down on your car, max the bass on your off-the-line sound system, and drive irritatingly slow in the right-hand lane in the happeningest street in your 'hood. Play it loud enough to drown out the car alarms you set off. Bring it in to whatever party you are heading towards. Get the DJ to play it. Watch that groove get bodies moving.

Pat, THIS will be played in thirty years.

Tacoma Rock City!

The Sonics "The Witch"

by Mike Brett

You finally get the nerve to ask out your chemistry partner, and you decide to take her to the KJR showcase booked at the local VFW hall. You talk your dad into letting you take the Fairlane, and you get dressed up in your finest powder blue suit. Cherie happens to be wearing powder blue as well, except it is fitting those teenage curves of hers like a cocoon about to pop. You didn't pay attention to the bands playing tonight, although the headliner is Paul Revere and the Raiders who Cherie absolutely adores.

At the show, everything goes well. The first two bands do passable Beach Boy imitations, with the second band closing their set covering some folkie from New York City. The third band catches your attention because it takes them a good hour to get all their equipment on the stage. Lots of speakers. They're called the Sonics. You've never heard of them, but they are compromising your ability to talk to Cherie what with the incredible volume they are tuning their guitars. But it wouldn't matter anyways, because from that first chord blast Cherie's eyes do not leave the stage. When they begin their set, it sounds like the test run of one of Boeing's new supersonics. The old hall shakes loud enough to give veterans in the front bar flashbacks. Someone splashes Coke on Cherie. You turn to see who it is. Someone splashes Coke on you. Now you're pissed and you shove the guy next to you. He turns around in his leather jacket and just sneers at you. Meanwhile Cherie has let her hair down. When you look at her you don't see much but a sea of teenage lust, her shaking hips calling you farther out from shore. You can't tell what the Sonics are saying. You take Cherie's hand, and the same electricity through those amps shoots through your body. Thank God that Fairlane is a big car, because tonight Cherie is going to be your butterfly.

The year is 1964, the city is Seattle, and the Sonics have just released "The Witch".

Zyklon B For Hippies

The Band "Don't Do It" (live)

By Michael Brett, POP ZEUS contributoradora

Recently, a knee jerk reaction to the very creepy Jim Jones tape evinced my aversion to all things hippie. Why should I hate hippies? I could go on for hours and hours, but I'm going to focus just on music, which is why we are all here, right? First, they are music as lifestyle, which has always irritated me. I am a music junkie, tried and true, but I love that my profile befits that of an organic chemist. Music is the escape of the mundane, not an art whose essence can get distilled into a dirty tie-dye shirt. Music becomes the mundane when it becomes the everyday. And lo, if not besides that, hippies chose the worst possible band as their standard bearer-the Dead. Now, I do not loathe the Dead. They are to me the Cubs of music. I am indifferent to the Cubs, but jebus, do I hate their fans! The Cubs are a below mediocre franchise who play in a slice of heaven. The Dead were a good, at times great, band of their era who made millions off of never-ending below mediocre tours.

Do you know how many better bands there were within a fifteen-mile radius of San Fran during the mid-60s? Just off the top of my head-Sly and the Family Stone, Creedence, Jefferson Airplane. Hippies chose the FOURTH best band in a city during their era. But it's all about the music, right? The Dead were quite probably the LEAST professional band of their day. In fact, they could be punk if they didn't take themselves so goddamned seriously. Plugging in and tuning your guitar for twenty minutes while Jerry tries to remember the next stanza and Pigpen swallows back vomit doesn't make you epic. The Dead were kids infatuated with the Beatles and Bob Dylan, who liked to drop acid and sleep around. This differentiated them from.....um, nobody, ever?

In the other corner, we have hipsters. Hipsters are worse than hippies. Hippies are at least superficially sincere. Hipsters are so drunk on irony and conceit they proudly wear their skin tight Poison shirt without even knowing the name of the lead singer (to my eternal dismay, my name backwards). They've replaced the enjoyment and wonder in music with posing and pretense. Take a look at a lot of the young bands today. They all seemingly look alike. Straggly bearded skinny white dudes who look like they haven't had meat since their grade school lunch program. Women who are either auditioning for the next John Waters film or planning on
spending spring break in the 800s of the Dewey Decimal System. Why do they look so awful? Because they want to fit in!

The internet has done many good things, but it certainly has turned the music world topsy turvy. Bands now bust their nuts to look like their fans. If Izzy Stradlin looked like me I would have felt such an intense shame for him I wouldn't have been able to eject the tape fast enough. And when the fans are the cool kids, well, they do what cool kids do-they decide what's in. New is in, old is out. Hey, give hippies one thing-they know classic rock at least. Hipsters loathe classic rock except in an oh-so-ironic, isn't-Jack Black-goofy-with-those-devils-horns kind of way. At Pitchfork, Of Montreal covered "All Day and All of The Night" and none of the hipsters I asked knew who originally performed the song. I didn't ask them who recorded Satisfaction. I wanted to leave some hope. Hey hipster, David Byrne looked better in your uniform, and you didn't discover Velvet Underground yesterday. Now here's some Chuck Berry. Go somewhere, play it really loud, and find out what the fuck you're talking about.

The Band came from the hippie heyday and looked like a hipster's wet dream. Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm,. Richard Manual, Rick Danko, and Garth Hudson toured the States for years as rockabilly road warrior Ronnie Hawkins' backing band, the Hawks. They WORKED the '60s. They played the same chitlin circuit as Little Richard, James Brown, Otis Redding, and a young Jimi Hendrix. Music nuts for sure, but they didn't ever need a turntable to tell them their sound. Robbie Robertson met Bob Dylan on the road and shortly afterward Dylan invited the Hawks to join him on his '66 European tour. On that tour, Dylan went rawk and he and The Hawks rewrote pop culture history. After Dylan's did-he-have-a-motorcycle-accident-or-just-a-nervous-breakdown incident, he invited the rest of the boys to Woodstock (yes, hippies, that Woodstock-before your mom shat on it or it landed on Snoopy's house). For a year or two they 'woodshopped', as Dylan says. Basically, they smoked weed and screwed around with their instruments. Dylan guided the Hawks through his 'Invisible Republic' (thanks, Greil) of old folk and blues. The Hawks provided Dylan with a thoroughbred whose muscles would propel him in whatever direction he wished to travel. Their year together is chronicled in The Basement Tapes. Buy it.

The Hawks became The Band on the release of their self-titled debut (graced by shite Dylan painting). Their first two albums are as good as anything you will ever hear, ever. "Don't Do It" is an old Motown song the Band reworked, and on this night it came with some fab horn players. The song starts with Danko's bass and Helm's drum, Danko showing off his r & b chops. Next, comes Manual on piano, Robertson on guitar, and Hudson on organ. Cue horns. Besides being insanely talented musicians, the Band were also blessed with Beach Boys level singers-albeit if the Beach Boys were from Memphis instead of Malibu. Here it is Levon (always dig singing drummers) on lead and Manual joining him on the refrain and a few verses. On this track, everyone is going for it. Robertson gives us one of those slash and burn solos that end just before you want it to. Manual plays a super tight piano riff which becomes not fill but part of the rhythm, rolling alongside Hudson's subtle organ.

As the song speeds up, Manual gives us a little Little Richard and the rest of the sound has that rich fudge density, where you can't tell one instrument from another, that begs to be played on headphones late at night. Until eeeerrrrrr- Robertson returns with that keening guitar. Then go out as you came in, and done. This song stinks of years of passionate hard work, diligence, and love. No noodling, no posing-just five guys happily blown away that their playing a sold out New Year's Eve gig in New York with a kick-ass horn section and reverent fans before them. This music can learn you something, can take you someplace, for as long as it takes for the next song to play.