Old Shit Sunday

OK, so this is the flip side of Get Fresh Tuesdays. Instead of searching for something new, I'm going to highlight some old favourites that have recently recaptured my attention.

1) Del the Funky Homosapien and El-P - "Offspring" (2000)

When I was about 19, I sort of "retired" from the punk rock scene. After five or so years of going to all ages shows, sewing band patches on my hoodies, and protesting something every weekend -- and getting blind-drunk afterward, I burned out. I was sick of being part of a subculture that claimed to be about "rebellion," but actually placed incredibly tight restrictions on what you could listen to, wear, and be interested in. Being a basketball fan was massively uncool, the only acceptable sport to watch was English soccer. If you listened to anything other than punk -- and no pop punk, you dirty sellout -- classic ska, and certain types of pre-dancehall reggae, people looked at you like you were insane.

Most of my friends in the scene were moving on to even more restrictive subsects of punk: skinhead, psychobilly, d-beat. Instead, I left.

I started listening to a bunch of different thing, particularly the Rawkus Records-style alt rap that was coming out at the time. (Truth be told, I'd been listening to that sort of stuff for a while and hiding it from my punk friends.)

I bought Del's Both Sides of the Brain in summer between my last year of high school and my first year of universtiy. This collabo between Del and El-P was my favourite song on the album. I would listen to it over and over again on the way to class. I'd sit in my res room and scream along with the lyrics.

This is song is like a time machine for me. It instantly makes me 19 again, and if there's one thing my life needs, it's more 19.



2) "Raspberry Beret" - Prince (as Prince and the Revolution) (1985)

So, I don't want to get to serious and maudlin on a blog dedicated to quality tunes and idiocy, but my Uncle Giles died about six weeks ago. He was my mum's younger brother, one of eight children, born in the UK and raised in Canada. He was both an athlete (rowing, rugby and football) and a musician (guitar, keyboard, bass, and vocals.) He had a few songs receive airplay on local alt-rock station CFNY in the late '80s and early '90s. He also struggled with substance abuse issues, which may have contributed to his death.

My inheritance from Uncle Giles consisted of about a dozen CDs, which have turned out to be a massive windfall of enjoyment. One of them was Prince's The Hits/The B-Sides compilation.

I've always liked Prince, but I never thought of myself as a full-fledged Prince fan until I got a hold of this album. The man is a genius, and some of his early material -- and The Hits/The B-Sides features only early-to-mid career material -- may be some of the best pop music of the last fifty years.

I feel like my words can't do justice to the greatness that is young Prince, so instead I'll just say thanks to Uncle Giles.



3) X - "Los Angeles" (1980)

I don't actually have a really in depth explanation as to why I chose this song. It's just one of my all-time favourite songs.

It's also the song that's gotten X accused of some rather unpleasant shit.

The first verse of the song features the line "She started to hate every nigger and Jew/ every Mexican that gave her a lot of shit/ every homosexual and the idol rich."

Rock critic Greil Marcus wrote about the song in 1981, as part of a bigger article on racism in the Los Angeles punk scene.

"The opening lines of X's searing 'Los Angeles' ('She had started to hate/ Every nigger and Jew/ Every Mexican that gave her lotta shit/ Every homosexual and the idle rich') tell us not that the subject of the song has her hangups but that the objects of her rage are types, not like us, deserving of the contempt they get: crimes against nature. The song has enough musical bite to make any nigger, Jew, Mexican, homosexual or idle rich want to hear the tune again, and then think 'That's not me, I'm not like that,' and that is the true black hole of the number, and of L.A. punk: attacked, one may side with one's attacker, and accept the terms of the attack."

Unfortunately for Greil, who's actually one of my bigger inspirations, he got it wrong. In We've Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of LA Punk, the members of X explain that the song was, more or less, about a girl who had a lot of hang-ups, and how her hang-ups were eating her alive.

The song was written about one of Exene's best friends, who was her road buddy in her move from Florida to LA. Unfortunately, the friend didn't take to LA nearly as well as Exene, and suffered a sort of breakdown. Part of that breakdown involved an ugly slide into racism.

This sort of shit is why X is one of the best bands of all time. They're able to write beautifully crafted, poetic lyrics about deep, complex shit, and then throw it over top of a rip-roaring rockabilly-punk hybrid.