His name was LL Cool J and he was the hottest, most versatile rapper around. Capable of appealing to the hard rocks and the ladies, the pop fans and the underground cats. His songs had choruses and hooks, but he didn’t sacrifice lyrical agility for commercial success. And when hip-hop fans started to think that he was about to fall off back in the early Nineties, he hit them with the album of his career: “Mama Said Knock You Out”. He was arrogant yet humble, dangerous yet approachable, undeniably talented…
I just bought a USB turntable and fell in love with it immediately. I’ve also found a local record store called “In Your Ear” that has tons upon tons of vinyl, most of which is 3 bucks or less. I went there last week and wound up with 31 albums, all of which are slowly making their way onto my iPod. Among the choices: “Still Crazy After All These Years” by Paul Simon, a ton of DeBarge (and El DeBarge solo stuff) and Marlon Jackson’s solo album. Yes, Marlon made a record. More on that some other time.
We are now up to 16,939 songs (show-off). Here’s today’s seven:
Track 1: “Baby Jane” by Rod Stewart: I can see how “serious” music fans would take everything Rod Stewart made after the mid Seventies and uniformly say “crap”, but damn it, my two favorite Rod songs are “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy” and “Love Touch” (Mr. Cass, you’ve got to have my back here!). So bite me. “Baby Jane” was a hit single in 1983 or 1984, and had sort of a dance-rock flair to it. It’s a genre he mined intermittently throughout the Eighties, before he went the grizzled rock balladeer rout in the Nineties and turned into Barry Manilow with a raspier voice at the turn of the century. Listening to those standards albums, you appreciate his 80s music a lot more, don’t you “serious” music fans?
Last weekend I was at a family get-together. Somewhere along the way MP3 players became a popular topic, which caused my dad to pose the immortal question, “Who the hell cares what’s on my iPod?” Now chances are pretty good if you’re reading a music blog you already know the answer to that, but pretending that you don’t since I can’t think of any other way to open this up: it’s because it allows you to know a person without actually knowing them.
For example, if your iPod is loaded with songs from Type O Negative, Burzum and Scandinavian death metal sensation Vordghackf, it means you have you several pentagrams carved into your arm, like to write overlong and half-racist internet dissertations on why “rap music” sucks, and it’s only a matter of time before you shoot up the post office you’re inevitably working for. If your iPod is loaded with songs from George Jones, Daddy Yankee and Godsmack, it means you’re going through a mid-life crisis and can’t decide whether you want to want to embrace a conservative adulthood or put up the façade that you’re twenty years-old again, ‘cos god forbid that you should accept your age and move on. Finally, if your iPod is loaded with nothing but Ani DiFranco, it means you’re one of those feminist types with a butch haircut, lots of beads and a huge ass (stolen courtesy of “That’s My Bush!”).