De La Soul - A Rollerskating Jam Nam Named Saturdays (From De La Soul Is Dead; 1991)
Thanks to holmes in the Fat Lace comment section who dropped the solomon jewels after Dan speculated about which record Maseo got the inspiration for that WAH-A-WAH-A-WAH-A-WAH-WAH scratch pattern he uses on A Rollerskating Jam Named Saturdays from in the last F.L podcast. I've never heard this Fearless Four joint before because I loathe Problems Of The World Today, but the moral of the story is thus : pay closer attention in future because not very good The Message-lite 12"s from 1983 sometimes come accompanied with forgotten electro scratch jams of major historical significance to Prince Paul-era De La fans on the B. side :
Fearless Four - F4000 (From Problems Of The World Today 12"; 1983)
A Rollerskating Jam Named Saturdays is, of course, one of the only Rap songs you can air-scratch to in public without feeling like an extra in the video for that Dilated Peoples song with the Havoc vocal sample, but could it be that it's not Plug Three getting busy at all and a sample from The Fearless Four song instead? The cut-up breakdown solo by DJ Grand Supreme from 3:25 onwards indicates yes, even though it's never officially been credited anywhere. Ayo De La - dip into that Gorillaz/Nike dough and cut Fearless a cheque, you stingy bastards.
If you thought the awful Unity by Afrika Bambaataa & James Brown was the first instance of r&b singers hijacking the rap bandwagon then you've obviously never heard Telephone Bill by Johnny "Guitar" Watson from 1980, where the Texan Bluesman who inspiredGangster Of Love by the Geto Boys weaves an amusing narrative about unpaid bills in a style which is more comparable to the proto-rapping of Lightnin' Rod than it is to Sugarhill Gang or even The Fatback Band on King Time III. If you really want to hear the very first example of an r&b singer trying to rap akin how to any of the original Bronx groups or Sugarhill Gang rapped, however, then you need to go back to Marvin Gaye's 1979 single Ego Tripping Out which surfaced a couple of months after Rapper's Delight blew up, where Marv' gets his Big Bank Hank/Grandmaster Caz on for the first quarter of the song over some typically lush late 70's disco backing. Well, sorta; here's where things get particularly interesting from a historical perspective : Ego Tripping Outbegan life as a demo for Marv's scrapped Love Man album sessions in late 1978 which means it predates even King Tim III, so, not only was Marvin Gaye a pioneer of the R&B Singers Chris Browning Their Hoes movement alongside Ike Turner, but he also accidently invented recorded rap musik in 1978. Who knew? Here he is miming Ego Tripping Out as he concentrates on grooving around in a snowblinded haze on some tv show :
Marvin Gaye - Ego Tripping Out
Despite his drug addiction, spiralling Tax debts, and lack of a hit single since 1977, Marvin was still bringing home the bacon via royalties off his back catalogue and live appearances in 1979, but after the failure of Here, My Dear the previous year he was becoming known as Marvin The Cokehead Who Stumbles Out Of Limousines Dripping In Diamonds And Wearing The Finest Silk Suits Money Could Buy Into The Arms Of A Bevy Of Beautiful Disco-Sluts At The Blue Parrot/Studio 54, rather than Marvin The R&B Singer. Thus Ego Tripping Out was a self-reflective way of poking fun at his public persona and letting people know that he was in on the joke too before providing us with a cautionary reminder that there is a comedown from the high-life and that drugs are as bad for the soul as they are for the body in the last verse. Since I'm somebody who prefers Let's Get It On to What's Going On (Inner City Blues aside, Marvin wasn't exactly Curtis Mayfield as far as socio-political commentary in songs go goes, eh?) I use Ego Tripping Out as a straight-faced demonstration of nouveau-riche flossin' and a celebration of the hedonism which occurs under the disco lights with a thudding closing warning that some touchy-feely, beaked-up wanker constantly yammering on in your ear about seeing Unkle live at some shitty festival/his t-shirt line/how he's totally wrecked/trying to sell you liquid MDMA which is 80% flat Dr Pepper will inevitably end up putting a dampner on your evening.
Anyway, Ego Tripping Out was released to a "Huh, What?" response from Marvin's hardcore fanbase and it didn't even chart on the Billboard Top 100 so Berry Gordy quickly pulled it from stores due to lack of sales to try and save face, and the song was forgotten about until Motown included a 7 minute version of it on the 1994 reissue of Marvin's 1981 album In Our Lifetime and all subsequent issues of the album like the double disc set from a few years back which included the original Love Man version and all the other songs from those aborted sessions on the 2nd disc. Since it isn't a song which benefits from an extended interpretation like, say, the 12" variants of I Feel Love by Donna Summer, Strictly Business by EPMD, Ghost Town by The Specials, and pretty much every Prince single released between 1979 to 1991, that's the definitive original 5 minute odd single version in the video up top.
Not a bad tune to play out if you're looking for something to provide a bridge between Moody (Spaced Out) by ESG and Biz's Let Me Turn You On as I've found out recently, but it's yet to be sampled according to the-breaks.com. After years of grumpy mediocrity De La can't be trusted to make a suitable sequel to Ego Trippin' Part 2 at this late point in their career, but DOOM rapping like he did on Gazzillion Ear or Batty Boyz last year would be a more than capable suitor for the task and Ego Tripping Out would just be the perfect song to loop up for it. If the internet could Beetlejuice-Beetlejuice-Beetlejuice multiple DOOM and Ghostface collaborations like those album tracks DOOM did for Fishscale plus More Fish, and the likes of Charlie Brown and the original Angelz into existence then this can surely happen too.
Back in this post we discussed the unquenchable thirst metallers have for REPPING!!! no matter what the elements, where we focussed on the '93-til-infinity strand of metallers who hold Sepultura-era Max Cavalera as their main style icon and who laugh in the smugly punchable Ricky Ponting-like faces of rain, wind and arctic tempretures when sporting their 3/4 length camo' cut offs all day, e'ry day throughout the seemingly endless harsh British winter.
This time, though, we're gonna discuss their flipsise and turn our attentions to the vagaries of post-goth metallers for whom mere obstacles like glaring sun and sweltering turning-your-crotch-into-a-petri-dish humidity don't even come into consideration when sliding into their pvc kecks, pulling on their leather trench-coats, and climbing into their clod-hopping platform boots every summer morning.
Real metallerz don't die. They might reach middle age and then look even more ridiculous, but they don't die.
You have to hand it to metallers and their effortless ability to accessorize. The Django look is the new black, darling. His diminutive coffin rucksack probably contains little more than some tuna & sweetcorn butties, but here at The Martorialist we like to imagine he has a dead foetus in there, thus making the point that, unlike those goddamned Juggalo pussies who bow to the constraints imposed on us by regular society, real motherfuckin' metallers carry their decaying dead babies around with 'em on their backs :
But nothing had prepared her for the reaction of the bus driver who allegedly told the self-styled Goth and her boyfriend: "We don't let freaks and dogs like you on."
On a metal-related footnote :
Saw De La, with a little help from Prince Paul and a 10 piece band, do 3 Feet High And Rising in full the other night. Buhloone Mind State is their actual magnum opus but 3 Feet.. is probably the more interesting album to bring to life, innit? Think about it : would you rather see 'em play Transmitting Live From Mars and Take It Off OR Dave Has A Problem..Seriously and Long Island Wildin'? Yeah, exactly.
A fine evening and De La's band tackled the uneviable task of recreating old Cymande, Funkadelic, Sly Stone, Steely Dan, The Turtles et al samples more expertly than Public Enemy's slighly Level 42-ish session band belted out the James Brown/The JB's, Isaac Hayes etc samples during the It Takes A.. show in '08, but after seeing 3 of my favourite rap albums performed from front-to-back in the past 12 months the years are really starting to unfurl between that golden period back in '05/'06 when i saw The Stooges, Girls Against Boys, Dinosaur Jr and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion all soar through their respective rawk classics. It's been too long and right about i wouldn't say no to a Monster Magnet show with them giving their Spine Of God LP the full treatment.
Monster Magnet - Snake Dance
Monster Magnet - Spine Of God
They may have had a name like a Timmy Mallett catchphrase or a Partridge gameshow proposal but, damn, them Jersey boys were wild on their first couple of releases before their original guitarist departed.
