You're the Journal, He's the Journalist

(I’ve had a new record sitting here for a month, unplayed, because if I wound up not liking it, it was gonna really bum me out. I finally broke it open. Youtube version is here.)

Ah, the Halcyon Days Of Anticon

Man, remember the great days of Anticon Records? When they were hip-hop and ingenious and releasing great records and CDs as fast as you could collect them? It seemed like you never had to worry about them running out of material, and even if some of their hand-made, limited CDRs were sub-par, you could be confident it would still be full of compelling moments and great samples. But man, I just had to check anticon.com right now to make sure they were still in existence. I don't even know who's on the label anymore - just a bunch of folk singers and Alias making techno beats I guess. But all you guys who spent the early 2000s hating on them missed a Hell of little thunderstorm in Hip-Hop, at a time when the rest of the genre was going through a slow drought.

What about the time they all came together to do a track for DJ Krush's album called "Song for John Walker?" That was his 2002 album, The Message At the Depth; but you can just do what I did and get this sweet little 12" single of it. There are a couple other non-rap album tracks on the 12", too, but who cares? I sure don't. I only listen to "Song for John Walker."

In case you've forgotten, or just aren't a big news follower in the first place, John Walker Lindh is the white kid from California who got shot and captured while fighting against the United States during our invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. What was he doing there? Well, some kids join the school marching band and some kids lean towards something a little edgier, like the taliban. He shot some Red Cross workers while he was over there, plead guilty when he was brought back, and President Bush (the first one) got in trouble for calling him "some misguided Marin County hot-tubber."

The song surely shares inspiration with the piece Black Like Me that The Pedestrian had published in the East Bay Express a little while after the song was released. That article uncovers the surprising and under-reported fact that John Walker was, prior to leaving the country, a huge hip-hop fan who wrote battle raps on newsgroups and pretended to be a black man named Mr. Mujahid, calling out rappers who didn't live up to his ideals of blackness, i.e. calling Dr. Dre a "sellout house nigga living honkey dory," and "a disgrace selling out to the talcum. He'll be left dead and naked in the outcome; word to brother Malcolm." Yeah, you won't learn about all that in many other sources; you should totally go read the whole article.

Ironically, the song focuses less on Walker as a hip-hop figure, though; and more as a political icon. Like all of their best work, it's both directly sardonic and perplexing abstract at the same time. At one point, Dose One is chiding, "he wanted Hammer pants. He joined the tali-hey-ban. He sought an absolute truth, the alpha cliché; But he got the omega and fucked," at another you'll be struggling to decipher what he means as he repeatedly sings, "again we use the magnets poorly; again we use the magnets poorly." While Why? comes in, getting at least close to rap (longtime Why? listeners will know what I mean) to represent the non-voting, slacker generation:

"Well, I heard the two parties split platforms at the turn of the century;
But. I. Know. I'm. A. Mer. I. Can. By the coins I carry.
And that's fuckin' scary.
Bla-bla-bla-bla-blah blah blah.
And even the worn-wigged hard news anchors are un-affected;
And every psychic and small-time prophet is aloof.
We've been injected to the point of immunity;
It takes an F load of S to stimulate the desensitized taste buds of the sugar expecting community,
'Till we can barely detect... the weather man's insincerity."

Passage and Sole team up, reminiscent of their classic duet, "Isn't It Sad How Sad We Are?" ("Become a smart happy healthy pet rock if you can eat like us; you'll make great soup and hot new imports for domesticated devils. Don't worry, in thirty years we'll all be Johns and Sarahs"), while Alias provides a more omniscient perspective a la his great "Divine Inspiration." The Pedestrian only really chimes in for the song's opening lines, but I'm sure he was deeply involved with the writing of the whole thing, which has often been his role. The whole gang really pulls together, often with quite divergent styles, into a cohesive whole, thanks in no small part to DJ Krush. At the time, I know Krush's production for the Anticon collective received a lukewarm welcome by fans; but I actually think he does an excellent job capturing the dark, bitter joke; and subtly shifts the music to fit the different segments of the song, rapped or sung in styles you'd otherwise think could never be parts of the same song.

Krush remixed this song on an album called Stepping Stones years later, but it really doesn't retain the energy or effect of the original at all. It's kinda cool once or twice as a variant - he adds some slick scratching during one of the breakdowns. But the newer, earnest instrumentation takes things too seriously, losing the feeling that these are courtroom jesters singing a coded message of our extinction. Stick with the original, which is conveniently available on 12" already. The idea that Anticon has been moving on without Sole for years feels like some kind of a morbid joke. But that's the great thing about records, they last even as the times change. We can plop 'em on the turntable and go back whenever we want.

Arrest the President, 14 Years Later

Now that we're under the administration of Bush #2, The Arrest the President All-Stars dropped a sequel to Intelligent Hoodlum's original "Arrest the President" in 2004 on Anticon, with a pic cover (enlarge the image and find Rev Rhyme!) riffing on the old We're All In the Same Gang album cover. The All Stars were made up of Pedestrian, Sole and Jel, who rhymes as well as produces on this one.

The whispered hook is the same; and the instrumental echoes the original... you hear hints of the signature sirens, but Jel fades them out quickly as he's actually crafted an all new instrumental for us, though roughly in the same energetically angry vein. It's a bit closer to the remix, I suppose, in that it has a proper bassline and is generally a bit more "musical," though it forgoes the scratching that Marley did in favor of a variety of vocal samples of everybody from Bobby Seale ("the long arm of fascist surveillance, reaching from the '60s into the present") to LL Cool J ("guilty, face down on the pavement!"). For the most time they alternate kicking four bars, but for the second "verse," they rhyme in unison, which kicks the energy up another notch. Then they split back up again for the final segment:

"Sole:
Blood against blood, he threatens neighbors with nukes
When he's reading his cue cards and punching the camera.
Don't look at the forest, he's burning it down for
The royal family and the prison landlords.

Jel:
We ain't the band for no campaign tour;
We rap to distract in these times of war.
We're not righteous, but might just make you want to listen...
Yo, I'm Elvis with the words of wisdom.[<--3rd Bass quote, kids]"


This single was actually one of those "double A-sides," and the flip is a Pedestrian solo cut called "The Toss and Turn"(both this and "Arrest the President" appear on his debut album, Unindian Songs vol. 1). Pedestrian describes the tune better than I surely could, "[f]ormally, 'The Toss & Turn' is all about appropriation: jel's music is essentially modeled after raw, early '60s novelty dance tunes (like 'The Funky Penguin') and the rapping is in the late-'80s, New York vein. Thematically, the lyrics modify and in some cases invert the associations of those two genres, so that it becomes a swingy, up-tempo song about loss, a conscientiously clubby song about solitude, and a clearly, coldly rapped song about anxiety." Maybe that'll strike you as a bit pretentious, but I gotta say it all works for me... Ped's staccato flow over Jel's funky beat is perfect; the theme is substantive enough to relate to, but simple and catchy enough to just enjoy as fun, too.

This record also comes with a formal, written apology [I can't be bothered to scan it; it's double-sided. Just buy the record.] for his past discography, which is pretty silly. I mean,. if he wants to apologize for something, he'd be better off apologizing for the vinyl exclusives that also appear on this 12".

There's three (not including the instrumental for "A.T.P."). There's "Resurrection Morning Sermon," a five minute literal sermon in his preacher character (continuing a series of skits from off the album). It's actually set to a dope beat by Jel, and there's occasionally some nice scratching during the breaks. But essentially the sermon is one long, self indulgent drag.

Then there's this weird thing where some guy named Adrian Bayless (I've no idea who he is, but apparently he owns a computer!) takes the "Toss and Turn" acappella and distorts it unto an indistinguishable series of noises for about a minute and a half. Then some sound effects fade in, and this continues on for a total of roughly four minutes. If you make it that long, god bless ya.

Finally, producer Odd Nosdam takes another stab at distorting "The Toss & Turn." He basically takes the chorus and one verse, turns the drums into some kind of awful, piercing mess, and lays it over an actually kinda funky organ loop. This one would be pretty catchy if it wasn't literally painful to listen to.

Anyway, you can't really complain since they're just "bonus tracks" on a 12" with two great songs on it. So cop that shit... right after you've copped the Tragedy, of course. Do it for yourself... Do it to support good music... Do it for your country. 8)

Unfortunately, I've no idea what Pedestrian is up to nowadays. I know he left the country for a while, and that he has a very uninformative myspace for his preacher character (Evangelist J.B. Best); but that's about it, and that's seriously old news. I think he did a little writing for one or a couple Anticon-affiliated projects recently ("cbf" as the kids say), so if you find him, remind him he owes us an Unindian Songs vol. 2 soon. He takes way too long between projects, and should be chastised at every opportunity.

Tags: Pedestrian, Arrest the President All Stars

A Thousand Awkward Situations

Even rarer than that Object Beings 7", surprisingly, is the self-titled CD album it's off of. It came out shortly after the vinyl in 2001 and was limited to only 200 copies (mine's #147), and was mainly just available through Anticon-friendly online stores like Atak. #154 recently sold for $182.50 on EBay, and that was before shipping!

Fortunately for everybody who got the 7" but missed the CD, they didn't miss too too much. Both songs from the 7" are here, albeit slightly different. The CD version of "Attack Of the Postmodern Pat Boones" retains, but talks over, the atmospheric opening, that starts out by playing a very warped opening to Pat Boone's "Sugar Moon." But more importantly, they've removed the ominous coda at the end of the song - another spoken exchange between Brandon and Tobey (originally a character from Anticon's infamous, unreleased Stuffed Animals project):

"You mean, we shouldn't be afraid of the post-mortem baboons?"

"That's right, Tobey. There's nothing to be afraid of.

Unless, of course... you're a jazz musician."

And the version of "Cannibalism Of the Object Beings" on the CD, is apparently the "West Coast Phunk Remix," though both mixes sound pretty darn similar to me.

Another one of the main (and it's really quite good) tracks on this album is Pedestrian's solo number, "The Nature of Theater" (here titled, "Theatre of Nature"). But people who missed this song had likely already heard it in spades, as it had been on Anticon.com's shared mp3s for ages... originally scheduled to be released on the Makeshift Writers Workshop LP that never happened.

So, beyond those three songs an Object Beings fan would already have, they weren't missing a whole lot. There's a TON of skits/ poems between the tracks, a demented introduction and a brief, untitled instrumental ...which are cool... but, yaknow, they still ain't proper songs. It's almost more of a neat, "special edition" of the vinyl record rather than a proper album. Why? had this to say, "David [Odd Nosdam] and I were allotted the chore of blending the record. We got together at his place and listened to all the little pieces with no idea how to put them all together. Eventually, we divided the material into songs and unsongs. He put the songs into a logical order and left spaces in between into which we randomly placed unsongs by drawing them out of a hat."

There are still a couple nice exclusives, however. There's a new (albeit pretty short... it's 90 seconds long) Dose One song called, "Well Pail," that starts with him imaginatively describing the only things he's afraid of (they would scare me, too!) and then says,

"There sure are a lot of things we can make,

And make up;

And it's not just an Aegean space

They take up.
Those crazy objects would sure scare us

From far, far away,
If they - one day - had it their way.

Had it their way..."

And there's a second "Theatre of Nature," which uses the exact same instrumental and lyrics, but is this time performed by Dose.

The album came packaged in the plain white sleeve (pictured), with a tiny, folded Xeroxed sheet of paper with a scan of some Newspaper classified ads advertising "Object Beings" on one side, and the track listing on the other. Dose One added, "We rushed the mixing this down. That was two years ago. The summer of hard luck. And 100 students of pressure. The real Object Beings is blank. Thank you."

Tags: Object Beings, Dose One, Why?, Pedestrian

Attack Of the Post-Modern Pat Boones

"It's an art school text book, Tobey; it's nothing to be afraid of."

I'm not done with Weapon-Shaped yet. This is their second, weird, little collector's edition 7", "Attack of the Postmodern Pat Boones" by the Object Beings, a collaberative group of Anticon artists Pedestrian, Why?, Dose One along with producer Emynd. And it's great.

It's catchy, it's creative, it's funny... of course, to really "get" the song, you have to know who Pat Boone is, which might exclude a lot of their younger hip-hop demographic. Pat Boone was huge in the 50's... the non-threatening, non-rock & roll alternative to Elvis Presley, who didn't dress flashy, dance outrageously or have suggestive lyrics in his music. He continued to record through the 60's and 70's and basically made safe "white" versions of hit records so that middle America could have their bland version of "Tutti Frutti" without having to face any scary Little Richards. ...Towards the end of his career, he went into making strictly gospel music.

So bear this in mind, and think of the state of the hip-hop scene Anticon was in when this was released (2000), particularly with the college kids embracing all the DJ Shadows and what-not, and you'll start to see the sense and even the wit in the "nonsense lyrics," including the chorus that goes:

"It's the attack of the post-modern Pat Boones...
And they've got golf shoes for hands.
It's the attack of the post-modern Pat Boones...
And they never learned guitar.
It's the attack of the post-modern Pat Boones...
They're writing their thesis papers on acid.
It's the attack of the post-modern Pat Boones...
And they're taking your transgressive daughters."

The body of the song consists of Pedestrian and Why? trading lines back and forth, finishing each other's sentences over a mellow beat with a very catchy guitar sample and a single, drawn out keyboard note:

"Why?) Who's whoever accepts the primal challenge to play the role of
Pedestrian) Suburban fur-trapper, camoflauged in fake leather couches and plush carpet squares,
Why?) Searching for an embroidered 'Home Sweet Home' wall-hanging,
Superfluous signal of a potpouri sense of security.
Pedestrian) Watercolor class has taught him much...
Even the value of tupperware in a wine-cooler ravaged conscience:
Clear, but for the ominous tint of contentment.
Why?) He once spent a summer squatting in the food court cloaked in McChicken crumbs,
Lucky felt flower behind ear.
Pedestrian) And also having slept on the most expensive sand in all of orange county,
He inverted post-pubescent Keroucian fantasy with a rather non-threatening vengeance."

To be honest, this is still one of my all-time favorite Anticon songs (although, not strictly released on Anticon Records... though it was later included on their Giga Single compilation).

The B-side, "Cannibalism of the Object Beings" features a faster beat, faster flows and introduces Dose One into the mix. It's even more bugged out ("You never know what could show up in your mailbox") and a lot of fun, even if - unfortunately - some of the vocals are a little tough to make out in the mix. :(

It's a shame this 7" was so limited, because it's seriously one of the most important hip-hop records of its period. The Object Beings haven't really stayed together as a group, but today Why? has two albums recorded due to come out... one apparently featuring a lot of music by the band Fog, and other more hip-hop-oriented. Dose has a new Themselves (he and Jel) album in the works. And Pedestrian, as ever, is torturing all of his fans by going for increasingly long stretches without putting any new music out while Sole makes posts about him "working on a new album." Man, I feel like it's 2000 again right now.

Tags: Object Beings, Pedestrian, Why?, Dose One