Those who follow this blog know that among my many, many interests is a fascination with both the Civil War and trains. Upon a recent outing to Sonic Boom Records in Seattle, I found both.
Records of trains sounds are fairly common finds. Due to their iconic nature, they tend to hover around the $10 per LP range. I like trains and I like records, but I tend not to pick these up. I feel kind of weird listening to train sounds in my living room.
I made an exception for this one put out by O. Winston Link Productions in 1962 (during the Civil War Centennial). It’s a 7″ (45rpm) record of the restored General, a steam engine made famous in the Great Locomotive Chase, a strange historical event that I covered here, in Civil War Daily Gazette.
The record itself comes in a gatefold sleeve and is loaded with wordy information about the historical event, the restoration of the locomotive and the recording.
There are five tracks in all, and you can listen below.
From the inside cover:
Side A
[audio:gen1.mp3]
High Fidelity recording equipment has been used to capture for posterity the sounds of the steam locomotive General just as they were 100 years ago.
Recorded here for the first time are the close-up tones of the hand-rocked bronze bell (the last steam locomotives used in the U.S. were equipped with steam driven bell ringers operated by a small piston next to the bell stand), the clack-clack of the hydraulic ram pump, and the distinctive throaty moan of the single-ton brass whistle, all part of the engine’s original equipment.
The final sequence, as the 107-year old General attacks a steep grade in Southern Kentucky with its one-car train, is an exciting combination of these historic sounds.
Side B
[audio:gen2.mp3]
Puts you on the General during a test run in Southern Kentucky on a branch between Lebanon and Spurlington. You are riding the pilot beam and you will feel the dripping water off the roof of the rough rock tunnel as the General passes through.
The final sequence takes you to Big Shanty, Ga. (no Kennesaw) 100 years after the locomotive was stolen by Andrews in 1862. This recording is typical of the welcome the General receives where ever it appears, an enthusiastic “Thank You” to the men of the Louisville & Nashville R.R. responsible for the tremendous task of bringing this old beauty back to life.
Remember to tack on fifty years to those numbers.
If you’d like to download MP3s of this record, along with high resolution scans of the outer and inner covers, you can do so here.
Today, the General is on display in Kennesaw, Georgia. It sadly is no longer in operating condition.
Over the past two years, I’ve made upwards of 27ish mixes. All told, it was over thirty CDs worth of songs. Frankly, I’m tired of it.
I mean, yes, I love doing them, but my god, how many of these things can I crank out? By the end of this past year (with the exception of the Christmas Mix and the Johnny Cash mix), I felt like I was cheating.
After trying to figure out what to do, I decided to go back to the road trip mixes for inspiration. Those mixes weren’t just a collection of songs. They told a story using bits from movies, oddities from songs and general randomness. Sure, it wasn’t an entirely coherent story, but there was some chunks of narratives kicking around.
So I through together a quick little thirty-minute mix. It’s a rough draft, but I spent a few days on it. I’ve since decided not to use it, but maybe someone out there might enjoy it.
Springmixside1-30min (Final Rough Draft) by Eric Swanger
This is the track list…
01 The Cure – Listen
02 Duran Duran – Runway Runaway
03 De La Soul – Say No Go (Say No Dope Mix)
04 Nirvana – Son Of a Gun
05 The Pogues – If I Should Fall From the Grace Of God
06 Pretty Girls Make Graves – Head South
07 Anthrax – Got The Time
08 Pink Floyd – Fearless
As with all of the mixes from the past year, the music was recorded off of vinyl from my collection.
It went through several different names, such as the Listen Mix and the Spring Mix, but I never really settled on anything concrete. But, it’s gone now, so no big deal.
So anyway…
The mix above was going to be Side One of a two-sided mix, but I got distracted and lost interest and just couldn’t think of how to make a Side Two. The problem was that I didn’t have any story. It was just a few songs thrown together with some clips here and there. Why? No reason.
And then I sort of became obsessed with the Beach Boys Smile LP. I was floored with not only how it was (and wasn’t) recorded, but the entire concept of a “teenage symphony to God,” which is complete pre-hippie silliness. Anyway, I liked the symphony idea and the idea of using the Elements (earth, air, fire, water) as a guide.
Smile is divided into three main sections, Americana, Childhood and The Elements. So, I decided to take a hint from it and do the same. As with Smile, I also have an intro and outro (and borrow some stuff there and in between).
Here I go talking like it’s a done deal. I’ve barely even started on it. I’ve incorporated some stuff from the Listen/Spring mix, but there’s also a whole lot of other stuff. I’m not even sure what kind of story it’s going to tell. I guess we’ll find out in a few months when it’s completed.
Well, that’s about it. I hope you enjoy the rough draft of the mix. Let me know what you think, okay? I need some feedback, here.
Since there are only 16 songs on this mix, let’s take a look at each of them, okay?
I started off with Audio Two’s “I Don’t Care.” You’d think that I would have started off with the first rap song I ever heard or something like that. But no, I picked Audio Two. This might be the only song that I ever heard from them, but it’s one of my favorite hip hop songs ever. I first heard it on the Saturday edition of Yo! MTV Raps with Fab 5 Freddy. They didn’t play it often, but the off-beat rhyming starting off with the anti-rhyme tickled my 15 year old heart.
Whodini was a huge staple in the mid 80s rap compilations put out by Priority and K-Tel. I heard “Freaks Come Out At Night,” “Five Minutes of Funk,” “Funky Beat,” and “Friends.” Being a white kid in rural Pennsylvania, I couldn’t relate to a lot of rap, but “Friends” spoke to pretty much anyone with a friend or two. I had at least that, so I was good.
“The Truth Is Out Of Style” was also from Yo! MTV Raps. I kind of forgot about it until a couple of years ago. I remembered a video with a creepy dummy in it and somehow or another figured it out. Watch for the Richard Pryor sample after MC 900 Ft Jesus talks about bigfoot stealing his car. Incidentally, his name comes from Oral Roberts who claims to have had a dream where a 900 foot tall Jesus commanded him to build a hospital.
Female rappers were always hard to come by, but I liked MC Lyte best. This was also from Yo!. She’s introduced by label-mate MC Milk from Audio Two who corrects the grammar of the King of Chill.
And here we come to our first of several remixes. When I first heard “Posse On Broadway,” I thought it was about New York City. I don’t think I had really even heard of Seattle at that point. But nope, he’s rapping all about Seattle. I did a post about this song a while back. Anyway, this is the Godzilla Remix with samples of the Godzilla roar. The song also features a David Bowie sample.
“Don’t get to close or else you might get shot!” It wasn’t really gansta rap, it was just a fun way of putting down other MCs. EPMD’s “Strictly Business” was played sporadically on Yo! and it stuck with me through all these years. I didn’t own this as a kid, but more recently picked it up. Very worth it.
UTFO was also a regular on the rap comps and “Roxanne, Roxanne” (along with the reply “The Real Roxanne”) were there as well.
Duran Duran eventually covered “White Lines” by Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel, but the original is the best. Here’s the full 12″ version of it.
I think I heard BDP’s “My Philosophy” on Yo! first. In the video KRS-1 does a fun acapella for the first verse. That’s not true on the regular version, nor is it true on the Extended Version seen here. Great and amazing song from “the intelligent ground man – a vegetarian, no goat or ham. Or chicken or turkey or hamburger. Cause to me that’s suicide, self-murder.” Awesome. Very awesome.
“Gimme No Crack” was played a lot on Yo!, so if you watched it, you probably saw it. I tracked down a 12″ of it with an incredibly fun remix that samples Public Enemy and has a whole new rhythm thing going on. Check it out.
I never really followed Mantronix, though “Fresh is the Word” is one of the greatest rap songs ever. “Simple Simon” was played daily by me for probably a year or so after it was first released.
Run DMC were pretty much as popular as the Beastie Boys and their song “It’s Tricky” was probably their most popular cut behind “Walk This Way.” Since everybody and their mom knows “It’s Tricky,” I thought it would be cool to use a pretty rare remix of it called the “Percapella Mix.” You will like it.
Rap remixes were often big let downs. Usually they were just extended versions with maybe a bit more scratching here and there. But Public Enemy’s “Night Of The Living Baseheads (Anti-High Blood Pressure Encounter Mixx)” is one of the best remixes I’ve ever heard. If you don’t know the original version, you won’t get why it’s so fun. The video, however, is worth it.
De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising LP was maybe the second full on rap LP I owned (the first was He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper). It’s full of great songs, the best (maybe?) being “Me, Myself and I.” Last year, I came across several really fun remixes of it. This one, called “Oblapos Mode,” is my favorite.
I still have a hard time telling Dana Dane and Slick Rick apart. Both sound like they’re from England, but only one of them actually is. Both told cute stories through their songs, but Dana Dane was probably a bit more ridiculous. “Cinderfella Dana Dane” is just cute fluff. But it’s really good cute fluff.
We’ll end the mix with an alternate remix of one of the most famously remixed rap songs ever. Eric B & Rakim’s “Paid in Full (Derek B’s Urban Respray)” which features heavy samples from John Cougar Mellencamp. The more famous of the remixes is the seven minute long cut from the 12″ that was edited down for the video, but I think this one is quite a bit of fun too.
And there you go.
Just click on the button and it’ll take you to another site. Click on the link to download and save the zip file to your desktop. Then open the zip file with WinZip (or whatever program you use to open zip files). Add to your MP3 library or burn it to a CD-R. Easy as pie!
This past Christmas, I put out a Mix CD that focused on what I was listening to during my 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th grade years. Even though it was the most personal mix that I had every put out, I knew that it wasn’t quite the whole story. While I was most definitely into every song that I put on the mix, I left out a really important chunk of my musical history.
I did this mostly because I thought that the mixture of “alternative” and hip-hop might not go so well together. Mostly, that’s true. Also, I thought that my love for mid 80s hip-hop deserved its own mix (or two).
Let me explain the history a bit.
I don’t exactly remember the first rap song that I heard. It was probably “Walk This Way” by Run DMC, but I suppose it could have been something else. Before Yo! MTV Raps came about, there really wasn’t a way for a middle class white kid living in New Berlin, Pennsylvania to hear anything aside from top 40 radio hits.
The USA Network ran a show called Night Flight. They would pick a theme and then run videos about said theme for an hour or so. Sometimes it was reggae or Rocky Horror Picture Show, but sometimes, or at least once, it was rap.
Their rap show tried to catch all the white people up on what was going on in the rap world. They play songs by Bob Dylan (“Subterranean Homesick Blues”), INXS (“Mediate”), Herbie Hancock (“Rocket”), Art of Noise (“Close to the Edit”) and Blondie (“Rapture”). And with us crackers all up to speed, they then finally laid some real hip hop on us.
Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message” and Run DMC’s “Walk This Way” were all featured.
As soon as I got a bit of the taste for it, I used my lawnmowing money to buy Rap’s Greatest Hits by Priority Records. That introduced me to Whodini, UTFO, Doug E. Fresh and Boogie Boys. I picked up a few more too, like Jammin’ and Kings of Rap. These “greatest hits” collections were available at pretty much any store. I remember I bought one at Gee Bee’s Department Store.
I’m not really sure what my parents thought of all this, but they (for a while) tolerated it. I know they didn’t care for rap music in the least, but probably figured it was some sort of phase or something. Later on, they confiscated my Public Enemy tapes, but that was still years down the road.
Anyway, this mix that I’ll be posting tomorrow features 16 songs. All of them were thoroughly enjoyed by me in middle & high school. I fell out of the rap thing when gansta rap took over. It just all sounded the same and the macho bullshit was even sillier than anything UTFO wore back in the day.
So what’s on this mix? Whodini, Audio Two, Public Enemy, De La Soul, Dana Dane, Eric B & Rakim, UTFO, Sir Mix-A-Lot, MC Lyte, Run DMC, Shinehead, Mantronix and more!
Remember, every mix put out this year has been sourced from my own vinyl collection. Some of these records have been with me since 1987. As a kid, I bought a ton of 12″ singles. I liked remixes, but was usually disappointed in remixes of rap songs. For this mix, I have thrown a few of my favorite (and well done) remixes on it for good measure. If you know the original song, you’ll enjoy it more.
But more on all that tomorrow.
I’ll be back, but for now just sample…
[audio:20110105.mp3]
Sir Mix-A-Lot – Posse On Broadway (The Godzilla Remix)
[audio:20110106.mp3]
EPMD – Strictly Business
[audio:20110110.mp3]
Shinehead – Gimme No Crack (Extended Dance Hall Mix)
[audio:20110113.mp3]
Public Enemy – Night Of The Living Baseheads (Anti-High Blood Pressure Encounter Mixx)
For the 2010 Christmas Mix, I’ve decided to dip into my late middle school/early high school past and picked out 44 songs that I remember from before I could drive. All of the songs featured on the mix have been recorded from vinyl records in my own personal collection. I’ve had many of these records since the late 80s, early 90s. Over the advent season, I’ll be featuring one per day, counting down to Christmas party timewhen the mix itself will be released.
It seems weird to end Advent with the Meat Puppets, but here we are. I think I heard this song (as a few others) from Chris Murrary. I think I also heard it on the Dr. Demento Show. Who knows which came first.
Either way, I liked the song so much that I bought the album Forbidden Places. It was pretty good and I was hoping they’d rerelease it on vinyl at some point, but so far it seems that my dreams have been crushed.
This song pretty well rocks. Musically, sure, but the lyrics (and their delivery) especially.
maybe they had a ridiculous statement to make about something they hadn’t experienced
possibly sam had a different opinion that nobody’d ever considered important
and damn it if norman and betty were listening somebody would have become a phenomenal
howling lightning tampering with the electrical evidence shown to be relevant
Sure, they’re fairly nonsensical, but so what? I think you’ll live.
On thing I would like to mention though. They quote a Bible verse in the second verse of the song:
slipping the rich through the eye of a needle is easy as getting a camel to heaven
Sort of. The actual verse is: And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” – Matthew 19:24.
I like this verse. Some folks have suggested that “camel” is a mistranslation for rope, meaning that it would be difficult to put it through a needle, but not impossible. Also, some have suggested that “eye of a needle” was a term for a gate, but that’s not really true, either. It means what it says. Rich people do not go to Heaven and that’s fine by me.
In that jolly spirit of Christmas, I’ll leave you with “Sam”!
For the 2010 Christmas Mix, I’ve decided to dip into my late middle school/early high school past and picked out 44 songs that I remember from before I could drive. All of the songs featured on the mix have been recorded from vinyl records in my own personal collection. I’ve had many of these records since the late 80s, early 90s. Over the advent season, I’ll be featuring one per day, counting down to Christmas party timewhen the mix itself will be released.
I was really into King Missile for awhile, but haven’t really listened to them since then. A friend of mine from high school loaned me a tape that had a bunch of their stuff on it. The spoken word stuff was always my favorite, though I can’t remember much anymore.
The tape had songs from the album “Jesus” was on (Mystical Shit) and the one after it (The Way to Salvation). Stuff like “The Boy Who Ate Lasagna and Could Jump over a Church,” “To Walk Among the Pigs,” “Cheesecake Truck,” “Take Stuff from Work,” and, obviously, “Jesus Was Way Cool.”
Being raised in a Christian home, I had been weary of things that spoke of Jesus in a less than favorable light. But this song, while possibly not the most serious thing in the world, put Jesus in pretty good standing:
If you were blind or lame
You just went to Jesus
And he would put his hands on you
And you would be healed
That’s so cool
Very true. Jesus did a bunch of cool things. And if he wanted to, he could have done a bunch more cool things:
He could’ve played guitar better than Hendrix
He could’ve told the future
He could’ve baked the most delicious cake in the world
He could’ve scored more goals than Wayne Gretzky
He could’ve danced better than Barishnikov
Jesus could have been funnier than any comedian you can think of
Jesus was way cool
Of course, it wasn’t all great times for Jesus. Mostly because he was so cool.
But then some people got jealous of how cool he was
So they killed him
That’s sad, but if you remember, it does have a pretty happy (and way cool) ending!
But then he rose from the dead
He rose from the dead, danced around
Then went up to heaven
I mean, that’s so cool
Jesus was way cool
For the 2010 Christmas Mix, I’ve decided to dip into my late middle school/early high school past and picked out 44 songs that I remember from before I could drive. All of the songs featured on the mix have been recorded from vinyl records in my own personal collection. I’ve had many of these records since the late 80s, early 90s. Over the advent season, I’ll be featuring one per day, counting down to Christmas party timewhen the mix itself will be released.
For the longest time, I couldn’t remember where I heard “AWOL” by The Three Johns. I thought that it was on a compilation that I stumbled across called British Airwaves, but after I got it again after so many years, I found out that I was horribly mistaken.
The Three Johns were indeed on that comp, but it was the song “Rooster Blue,” not “AWOL.”
So that got me to thinking, where had I heard this song before? I heard it a lot. Nearly every day for awhile. Then I remembered that Bucknell’s radio station, way back in whatever year this was when I was in 10th grade, had an amazingly punkrock radio show.
Trying to receive WVBU’s signal in New Berlin was nearly impossible. You’d have to have the perfect weather, perfect barometric pressure, the solar flairs had to be just right and if the wind somehow blew the radio waves across New Berlin Mountain, I’d receive it with only a smidgen of static.
Through that static played some songs that have stuck with me since. I remember Minor Threat’s “Salad Days,” “The American in Me” by The Avengers, songs by Exodus and Megadeth (it wasn’t all punk) and, apparently, “AWOL” by The Three Johns.
Somewhat recently, I came across several singles and a live LP by The Three Johns at Jive Time Records in Seattle (my second home). “AWOL” was among them (as was “Rooster Blue”!).
