SHUFFLIN ALONG 02

CANNIBAL by SCRATCH ACID

Scratch Acid is one of those bands that you come across after you get into that stage where you start exploring bands that influenced the bands that influenced the bands you enjoy. This song has this sort of lurching, kinetic feeling to it; like a dinosaur trying to lunge out of a tar pit. These guys tend to get lumped into the same loose category as bands like Big Black, Melvins, and Daughters. I really like all of those bands a lot, but if I'm being honest with myself it all seems to appeal primarily to people who dealt with substance abuse problems in art school. There's nothing wrong with that, but it kind of needs to be said out loud. Music for depressed/furious creative types is definitely very much my thing.

THE NIGHT by MORPHINE

Morphine is the band that got me interested in listening to jazz, and I have a major soft spot for them. There's this unique quavering, dark-yet-deeply-vulnerable quality to this song and many others in their catalog. Most of Morphine's music has this underwater sort of sound that appeals to me, but I enjoy their sad/horny songs a lot more than their more loud swingy stuff. Most of their more upbeat songs feel like they're journal entries by this charismatic yet sweaty lounge lizard sort of character who sleazes up to your wife and starts talking about all the people he knows in Las Vegas. You can picture this fucking guy in his tight paisley button-down spitting game and shooting dice, and it's not pleasant. There's a compelling barfly vibe to some of them, but some of those songs feel so 1992 that it causes me physical pain to listen to them. They sound like something you'd lay over the opening credits for a dramedy staring Richard Lewis as a divorced dad with a gambling problem in Queens or something. Not this song, though. This song is good. I am also a straight up sucker for a sax solo. Ask anyone. If you put a sax solo in your song, it will probably end up in my rotation at some point or another. I can't explain why exactly that is. I can't think of any formative experiences involving a saxophone. Anyway, all jokes aside, I love this band. When Morphine was good they were as good as anything.

SKITSO by BUSHWICK BILL

Man, I love Geto Boys so much. Their music feels legitimately dangerous in a way that a lot of other acts could only dream of. These guys were the real deal. Bushwick Bill is such a wild character and in a just world he'd be an icon. I mean, who could possibly invent the idea of a Jamaican dwarf jacked up on PCP and rapping about all the people he wants to kill? You'd think it would be cartoonish, but it isn't. Instead it's just a real expression of emotion expressed in this urgent, sincere way. You can't beat it, and it makes me miss the days when rap music was deeply invested in shock value. I got called into the principal's office once for listening to MC Hammer tapes on my walkman, which is wild. Rap music in those days shocked the squares long after rock music devolved into a parody of itself. It was like this underground thing when I was in middle school. Like, you had to know a guy who had a cousin or something in Kansas City or St Louis just to get a whiff of something like this. Which is funny because a lot of people I grew up with could relate a lot more to something like Mind Playing Tricks on Me than something like Friends in Low Places. Shit. I guess you really have to put in work to find art that resonates with you sometimes. I really need to listen to more Geto Boys. Everybody does.

WAIT AND BLEED by SLIPKNOT

I get why people dismiss Slipknot because I also dismissed Slipknot for a shamefully long time after I tried going to college and went through rapid fire punk/goth/post-punk phases. This was the first song of theirs I heard way back in '99, and I remember just being totally entranced by it. The lore is that this band was born out of dudes bullshitting and fantasizing with their buddies over 3rd shift at a Sinclair gas station. That is the most thematically appropriate band origin story that I have ever heard. Slipknot makes music for 3rd shift gas station workers. They make music for folks who hang horror movie posters on apartment walls with bent thumbtacks and buy Jack Skellington hoodies at Wal-Mart. Dismissing them was one of the biggest lies that I ever told myself about myself. I get the costumes, I get the masks, and I get the songs. I am a dude who engaged in a lot of 3rd shift bullshitting and fantasy. I had a buddy once, big handsome devil who was captain of the basketball team and also a member of NHS, who was really into this band that used to talk me about them all the time before he got into a bad marriage, drugs, and jail in that order and died way too young. Anyway, this was made for me, and I was a fool for turning it aside. Slipknot deserves their success and this song is the 1st example why. They do a lot of interesting things in two-and-a-half minutes and I find it fun to listen to. It's not nearly as dull, turgid, and meat-headed as something like Staind or Korn, which are two bands they often get unfairly lumped in with. Slipknot does an admirable job of straddling the line between mass metal appeal and experimental weirdness. They are far more interesting to me than shit like, say, Metallica or Tool, and I'm having fun rediscovering them now.

RIGHT PLACE WRONG TIME by DR. JOHN

I am a guy who appreciates theatricality in my music, and so it was only a matter of time before Dr. John and I found each other. I love the grooves, the genre-blending, the fearlessness, the grit, and the silly hats. There might be a case to be made compareing the theatricality of Dr. John to that of Slipknot and what the line between those two acts looks like as well as an exmanination of how working class musicians feel more comfortable expressing themselves from behind an invented persona, but I ain't got time for that kind of nonsense. I think this song is untouchable as far as pop/soul ear worms go, and it's the wide-open door to dig into the world of New Orleans music which is so wild and different from everything else that it's considered it's own genre. Dr. John is a really fun rabbit hole to drop into, and this song is a certified stone cold classic in this idiot's opinion. Plus, I am a shriveled and petty soul and I appreciate it when musicians have legit criminal records.

STRAWBERRY LETTER 23 by BROTHERS JOHNSON

This is just one of the coolest songs I've ever heard. Everything about it just oozes laid back charming smooth coolness. That little synth chime run is untouchable as far as licks go, and it's really hard to listen to this song and not bop your head a little bit. This is one of those songs that can make even the fattest, greasiest, beardiest dork on the planet feel like a sex machine and a mythically profliic cocksman, and I say that from a place of experience. What a jam. This is one of my very favorite treadmill songs of all time. I snatched this off of the Jackie Brown sountrack, and I'm so glad I did.