7.05.2007
"RESPECT MY FRESHNESS"
(Ed. - This is related to a Turf Talk review.)
Feel Like I Do
By Dave Tompkins
Peter Frampton once complained to me about his chronic sore tooth, the result of biting into a plastic tube for over 25 years. This occlusive interruption is the Talk Box, that electric juice straw you see in Roger Troutman’s mouth in the video for “California Love”(Dre & Pac making sand crullers with dune buggies). This would be the only time you’d ever want to be intubated.
A week before my double root canal, I was tubed up to a friend’s vintage Roland keyboard and the voltage in my mouth made my eyeballs hum. Elocution was difficult and things like “Oh shit” and “Where’s my beer” were at the whim of r’s and assonance. (Kind of like that Animal Collective song where dude goes “RowwrrRrrreeowr.”) The overall effect was numbing, like Michael Watts had remixed my face.
Yet couldn’t a Talk Box hang with dental hosiery? Could Zapp be the new Novocain?
The Talk Box is also hell on fillings and P-Thugg of Chromeo claims to be his own dentist as well as his own radio transmitter. I direct you to Lucille Ball and the time she busted a Japanese spy ring with her radio tooth. (A children’s book called Fat Men From Space goes into this further.)
Once, P was using the Talk Box and accidentally caught a Canadian soft rock station playing Celine Dion inside his mouth. Think how loud Doritos and ice cubes sound, cracking up inside your head. Replace that with “My Heart Will Go On.” Or “The Womble” by Nash The Slash. Use your occlusion.
Note: For a classic example of facemelting dentistry you should check out Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom in The Pink Panther Strikes Again.
©All material copyright of Dave Tompkins
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This actually dovetails with a dream I recently had that involved three DJs only playing songs with the word "fresh" in the title:
Turf Talk and E-40, "Sic Wid It is the Crew" ("Fresh is the Word" remake)"
Mantronix, "Fresh is the Word"
All Ready Fresh 2, "Fresh With Style"
Poor Righteous Teachers, "Mi Fresh"
Frescho and Miz, "Ain't U Freshco?"
Labels: TOMPKINS
