10.30.2007
THE CRAZED
Parachuting from the sky this week: special guest Halloween enthusiast Dave Tompkins.
As We Were Deteriorating
My brother and 11-year old niece at dinner.
“My stupid friend Eugene likes zombies. He wants zombies to take over the world.”
“I've been in a zombie state all week.”
“Not those zombies.”
“We beat Zombie State last year in the playoffs.”
“I mean he likes dead rotting people walking around with dirt in their teeth.”
“We buried their offense.”
“Daaaad!!”
“They had a running back …”
“You should get up from the table and slowly walk away from your weirdness.”
“His name was Eldritch Von Bonehammer.”
Worst Case Scenario
Friendly zombie paratrooper drops in on afternoon worm dig. The plop plop of maggots from heaven. Kid looks up. Zombie waves.
But the other trailer. Beyond the uh-oh tremolo, bombs, the World Cup schnurbartbinde and the hotdogs.
Ballpark stitching! Machine shop fingers! Two-faced facemeltness! Groaning foghorns! Cereal bowl in a puddle!
Sgt. Schultz with a Talk Box tube?
Which one crashed through that nylon beach chair?
Von Bonehammer? That you?
And the radioman doing a wounded version of The Snake? He who set up the transmitter on the beach in Holland that intercepted and unscrambled all those Churchill calls. What is on his back? Squidpack. Help. Yeichs.
If this doesn’t win best costuming, I’ll eat my neighbors.
MC A.D.E., "How Much Can You Take"
Two scary things that happened to MC A.D.E.
1.) Ran away from a group home in Jacksonville, got lost in the moonless woods, got an earful from the tree frogs, bummed a Yoo Hoo and walked to his grandma’s in Jeckyll Island, Georgia, where the armadillos are not shy.
(Note: Creature From The Black Lagoon is from Jacksonville.)
2.) Was surrounded by little kids with machine guns in Rio, who demanded his video camera which contained footage of him performing “Bass Mechanic” in a rioting soccer stadium and on Pele’s ex-wife’s TV show—before she was kidnapped. To his credit (and insanity), the Bass Mechanic didn’t give up the camera because it belonged to his girlfriend. (“I didn’t want to hear that mouth when I got back home!”) The interpreter wasn’t available for negotiations because he was around the corner shooting at the police.
Luke and Lil Jon, "Head Tonight"
Okay, real quick:
Halloween is orange
Miami is orange.
Bass is sustained decay.
Zombies are sustained decay.
Miami is sustenance decadence
Miami: Dead men vote.
(Sustained decoy!)
Zombies put people in office.
(Sustain do what???)
Maggots are sustained decay.
Maggotron makes Bass.
Zombies like Maggotron records.
Orange peels go in the compost.
Compost is Bass.
Bass is biodegradable.
Soil needs zombies.
Bass wakes worms.
Worms wake zombies.
Dredgers woke the fossils.
Don’t bury me in the Orange Bowl.
“Dude, it’s like photosynthesis!”
Hallow can you go?
More on this later. I’m a little rusty (Wait! Oxidization?)
Whodini, "Nasty Lady (Dub)"
This is how it all went down, according to Whodini’s “Haunted House Of Rock”:
Girl shows up at a party as Frankenstein’s monster’s date. She is Tesla Lancaster in opera gloves. Her hair is teased out by some hellion of voltage that curses darkness.
(“YOU STUPID DARKNESS!!!” once yelled the indelicate Lucy Van Pelt, ice skating in a comic strip.)
One of the guys from Whodini, the one in white leather shorts, asks her name. Frankenstein’s monster says, Voodoo-On-A-Stick*. We take him at his word though he speaks through a hotwired larynx. Not the most articulate cat in the room.
This is immaterial to Ms. On-A-Stick. She leaves the party hanging on a dead man’s stolen arm (“You big lug!”) and Whodini is left standing around the punch bowl, wondering if the Invisible Man got in for free.
(This happens in the song. I’m not prevaricating.)
Meanwhile Karloff coughs up the black cat of all hairballs. Homunculus mucous!
(Okay, now we’re prevaricating.)
And Lorre rolled his eyeballs down the hallway.
And, in the name of stolen parts, somebody should do something about Whodini’s “Haunted Version.”
But the question that’s eating you: Was Voodoo-On-A-Stick also the Nasty Lady?
Check out “Nasty Lady.” Drum machine is Lurch repeatedly bumping his forehead on a doorframe. When the guy in white leather shorts asks How many of y’all know nasty ladies, it’s the nasty ladies who answer, screeching on behalf of their dates—assuring they’d known no better. It was the late Kraftwerk engineer Conny Plank who put extra decay on that screech, while in a castle in Germany.
We’re really impressed with how that screech carries itself.
It’s enough to make the man in white leather shorts sorry he even asked. (“My God! All y’all know nasty ladies!”).
But, as Samuel R. Delaney once said, “There are times when helling and yelling won’t fill the lack.”
*Years ago, someone spent the better part of the afternoon talking to Whodini in a doublewide trailer in Central Park, trying to learn more about Voodoo-On-A-Stick. The one with the twin just shrugged. “You know! Like Voodoo-On-A-Stick!” Then someone struck up the chorus for the Vocoder Version of “Haunted House of Rock” and Whodini joined in. (Moat throats for all.) Back out on stage, things got even weirder. Biz Markie lost his shirt and stood there itching the back of his head with a microphone. The crowd was helping him through the second verse of “Just A Friend.”
Bonus Quiz:
In which movie did:
Bill Pullman inhale Goofer Dust and hallucinate a hand crawling out of his bowl of butternut squash soup?
Martin Landau run over a mailman with a laundry truck after escaping from a sanitarium with Jack Palance?
Martians try to accelerate the process of evolution and telepathically project giant grasshopper images across the London skies?
Bela Lugosi braid his goatee?
A shock-headed ghoul stick tarot cards in the spokes of his bicycle and pedal down a dirt road at night, his bony knees akimbo?
Marine biologists in Jacksonville try to de-gill the Gillman and stick him in a khaki pantsuit?
Vincent Price say: “I broke down and screamed didn’t I? I couldn’t help it Dave. Things were pretty foggy.”
Last Wish:
That someone would get off their inflatable stadium donut and do a proper film adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s “Sandkings.”
As We Were Deteriorating
My brother and 11-year old niece at dinner.
“My stupid friend Eugene likes zombies. He wants zombies to take over the world.”
“I've been in a zombie state all week.”
“Not those zombies.”
“We beat Zombie State last year in the playoffs.”
“I mean he likes dead rotting people walking around with dirt in their teeth.”
“We buried their offense.”
“Daaaad!!”
“They had a running back …”
“You should get up from the table and slowly walk away from your weirdness.”
“His name was Eldritch Von Bonehammer.”
Worst Case Scenario
Friendly zombie paratrooper drops in on afternoon worm dig. The plop plop of maggots from heaven. Kid looks up. Zombie waves.
But the other trailer. Beyond the uh-oh tremolo, bombs, the World Cup schnurbartbinde and the hotdogs.
Ballpark stitching! Machine shop fingers! Two-faced facemeltness! Groaning foghorns! Cereal bowl in a puddle!
Sgt. Schultz with a Talk Box tube?
Which one crashed through that nylon beach chair?
Von Bonehammer? That you?
And the radioman doing a wounded version of The Snake? He who set up the transmitter on the beach in Holland that intercepted and unscrambled all those Churchill calls. What is on his back? Squidpack. Help. Yeichs.
If this doesn’t win best costuming, I’ll eat my neighbors.
MC A.D.E., "How Much Can You Take"
Two scary things that happened to MC A.D.E.
1.) Ran away from a group home in Jacksonville, got lost in the moonless woods, got an earful from the tree frogs, bummed a Yoo Hoo and walked to his grandma’s in Jeckyll Island, Georgia, where the armadillos are not shy.
(Note: Creature From The Black Lagoon is from Jacksonville.)
2.) Was surrounded by little kids with machine guns in Rio, who demanded his video camera which contained footage of him performing “Bass Mechanic” in a rioting soccer stadium and on Pele’s ex-wife’s TV show—before she was kidnapped. To his credit (and insanity), the Bass Mechanic didn’t give up the camera because it belonged to his girlfriend. (“I didn’t want to hear that mouth when I got back home!”) The interpreter wasn’t available for negotiations because he was around the corner shooting at the police.
Luke and Lil Jon, "Head Tonight"
Okay, real quick:
Halloween is orange
Miami is orange.
Bass is sustained decay.
Zombies are sustained decay.
Miami is sustenance decadence
Miami: Dead men vote.
(Sustained decoy!)
Zombies put people in office.
(Sustain do what???)
Maggots are sustained decay.
Maggotron makes Bass.
Zombies like Maggotron records.
Orange peels go in the compost.
Compost is Bass.
Bass is biodegradable.
Soil needs zombies.
Bass wakes worms.
Worms wake zombies.
Dredgers woke the fossils.
Don’t bury me in the Orange Bowl.
“Dude, it’s like photosynthesis!”
Hallow can you go?
More on this later. I’m a little rusty (Wait! Oxidization?)
Whodini, "Nasty Lady (Dub)"
This is how it all went down, according to Whodini’s “Haunted House Of Rock”:
Girl shows up at a party as Frankenstein’s monster’s date. She is Tesla Lancaster in opera gloves. Her hair is teased out by some hellion of voltage that curses darkness.
(“YOU STUPID DARKNESS!!!” once yelled the indelicate Lucy Van Pelt, ice skating in a comic strip.)
One of the guys from Whodini, the one in white leather shorts, asks her name. Frankenstein’s monster says, Voodoo-On-A-Stick*. We take him at his word though he speaks through a hotwired larynx. Not the most articulate cat in the room.
This is immaterial to Ms. On-A-Stick. She leaves the party hanging on a dead man’s stolen arm (“You big lug!”) and Whodini is left standing around the punch bowl, wondering if the Invisible Man got in for free.
(This happens in the song. I’m not prevaricating.)
Meanwhile Karloff coughs up the black cat of all hairballs. Homunculus mucous!
(Okay, now we’re prevaricating.)
And Lorre rolled his eyeballs down the hallway.
And, in the name of stolen parts, somebody should do something about Whodini’s “Haunted Version.”
But the question that’s eating you: Was Voodoo-On-A-Stick also the Nasty Lady?
Check out “Nasty Lady.” Drum machine is Lurch repeatedly bumping his forehead on a doorframe. When the guy in white leather shorts asks How many of y’all know nasty ladies, it’s the nasty ladies who answer, screeching on behalf of their dates—assuring they’d known no better. It was the late Kraftwerk engineer Conny Plank who put extra decay on that screech, while in a castle in Germany.
We’re really impressed with how that screech carries itself.
It’s enough to make the man in white leather shorts sorry he even asked. (“My God! All y’all know nasty ladies!”).
But, as Samuel R. Delaney once said, “There are times when helling and yelling won’t fill the lack.”
*Years ago, someone spent the better part of the afternoon talking to Whodini in a doublewide trailer in Central Park, trying to learn more about Voodoo-On-A-Stick. The one with the twin just shrugged. “You know! Like Voodoo-On-A-Stick!” Then someone struck up the chorus for the Vocoder Version of “Haunted House of Rock” and Whodini joined in. (Moat throats for all.) Back out on stage, things got even weirder. Biz Markie lost his shirt and stood there itching the back of his head with a microphone. The crowd was helping him through the second verse of “Just A Friend.”
Bonus Quiz:
In which movie did:
Bill Pullman inhale Goofer Dust and hallucinate a hand crawling out of his bowl of butternut squash soup?
Martin Landau run over a mailman with a laundry truck after escaping from a sanitarium with Jack Palance?
Martians try to accelerate the process of evolution and telepathically project giant grasshopper images across the London skies?
Bela Lugosi braid his goatee?
A shock-headed ghoul stick tarot cards in the spokes of his bicycle and pedal down a dirt road at night, his bony knees akimbo?
Marine biologists in Jacksonville try to de-gill the Gillman and stick him in a khaki pantsuit?
Vincent Price say: “I broke down and screamed didn’t I? I couldn’t help it Dave. Things were pretty foggy.”
Last Wish:
That someone would get off their inflatable stadium donut and do a proper film adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s “Sandkings.”
Labels: TOMPKINS
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
* * *
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
6.29.2007
EVEN DAVE TOMPKINS' BIRTHDAY GREETINGS ARE WORTH POSTING
"Happy Birthday," Big Boy
A guy in a Chuck E Cheese suit gets jumped by a mob of kids covered in fluorescent lime green icing. It was recorded by Calvin Mills, III maybe IV of Miami. When he's yelling like this and wishing Hua a happy birthday at 95 MPH, he goes by Big Boy. Calvin's dad once wrote Whopper jingles for the BK Express which once delivered cheeseburgers to your front door. Calvin's dad also drove a furry custom van and could be heard blasting Midnight Star at all hours though truthfully he wanted to be Planet Patrol. Calvin's dad also wrote a classic balloon toker called "Freestyle Express." Luke Skyywalker literally broke one of Calvin's records (in half) over the radio.
Labels: TOMPKINS
4.09.2007
MONTHLY DISPATCH FROM DAVE TOMPKINS' CLOUD
dave wants you to know that the new issue of stop smiling features a couple moments of "classic tompkins" (my--hua's--words, not his) and they are both available online:
"Open Your Books to Page Freak: Egyptian Lover" and "The Night-Time Master Blaster" (on "Scorpio")
dave would also like you to hear this: Some crazy Rich Cason mix of 1980s electro stuff
said issue also features a great rasheed wallace reference by peter relic and a dilla/james brown eulogy by me.
These bonus MPs are from me, though they are also somewhat dave-ish:
Ultramagnetic MCs, "Delta Force"
52nd Street, "Cool as Ice (Jellybean mix)"
Labels: TOMPKINS
2.28.2007
I TOTALLY FORGOT TO POST THIS LAST WEEK, WHEN IT WAS SENT
FROM DAVE TOMPKINS, WITH LOVE...
(To the tune of The Parliaments' "A New Day Begins")
ASTRONAUTS MILKING COWS
Last night saw Werner Herzog speak at the library. Nothing about the woodchuck auctioneers in an Amish village but plenty else to think about.
He talked about his house being bombed when he was 2. "My mother found me covered in rubble and debris but I was okay."
Postwar Germany: "as a child you own a block of bombed out buildings. There is rubble to play in. You're inventing a world."
"I made my first phone call when I was 17"
After the war, the SS ditched their weapons in the woods and fled into the mountains. He said he found a submachine gun and started shooting at crows.
After the screening of an Elvis movie in Munich, the audience started ripping up the seats. "They engaged in a quiet methodical destruction of the theater."
"The Anna Nicole Smith Show is a monumental failure of civilization."
Something about filming a retarded Englishman carrying a barbershop chair on his back
"You do not hug the bear. You respect the bear."
"They want to save 50 panda bears but who hugs the last speaker of an Inuit language in Alaska?"
He talked about finding the very last speaker of a language in a retirement home. Lacking an interlocutor, he fell mute. "What happens when the last speaker of a language dies?"
Every grey hair in his head is a "Kinski."
Something about a movie he did w/ Mick Jagger.
He talked about the necessity of astronauts strapping themselves to bed. "Otherwise you will drift into the cockpit and disturb the instruments."
"There is no upside or downside or left and right in space."
Something about a science fiction movie with algae and vines growing from computers. (Looking into that one)
(maybe related: learned today that bladderwrack seaweed is kept afloat with air bladders)
Something about bonding with astronauts about milking cows.
"Languages vanish faster than mammals"
Notes get pretty unintelligible here but it all ended kind of umm, grisly.
Herzog answered a question about going too far in trying to answer a question, in that sometimes having the question is more exciting than having the answer. As an example, he talked about a conversation he had with Eroll
Morris regarding the latter's interview with Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein. Gein had exscavated the graves surrounding his mother's plot. Did Morris ask Gein if he dug up his mother? Gein said he didn't dig up his mother. (Guy sitting behind me coughed up something unspeakable so I missed something here.) Herzog and Morris agreed to meet at the graveyard in Wisconsin, with shovels, and find out. Herzog said Morris chickened out.
I wanted to ask about Kinski's telepathic Vocoder scene in a blue zoo with blue lions and a girl wrapped up in 2 inch recording tape but chickened out. Different director anyway.
Labels: TOMPKINS
2.13.2007
YOU CAN'T SPELL "STEINSKI" WITHOUT "ST," WHICH IS SOMETIMES SHORT FOR "SAINT"
Yes, Steinski is one of the nicest people in the world. And now he has a blog, etc.
mp3: Steinski and Double Dee, "Lesson 3"
Every so often I reread this, because it makes me laugh: Invisible Jukebox with Steinski that Tompkins and I did a while back for The Wire.
Labels: TOMPKINS
2.03.2007
FROM THE MIND OF DAVE TOMPKINS
FROM DAVE TOMPKINS, ON THE SUBJECT OF ONE OF THE GREATEST DAYS OF HIS LIFE. (THE "GREATEST" PART IS MERE SPECULATION. BUT GRINS LIKE THAT DON'T COME AROUND OFTEN.)
Live It Up, Shucks!
Yesterday, Egyptian Lover stood in Times Square for the first time in 25 years and said “I have to go by the hotel and pick up the Vocoder.”
This is the kind of thing one likes to hear Egyptian Lover say on a Friday evening in New York City.
Twenty-five years ago in Times Square, Tom Silverman and Afrika Bambaataa were driving around listening to a Jonzun Crew song called “Pak Man” on Bam’s portable radio cassette deck with Cushion Eject. (“Umm, maybe we should sign these guys.”)
10 out of 10 Donnie Wahlbergs would agree.
But the Vocoder was grousing with the PA set up at Studio B and so had to sit on its frequency band-of-the-hands (Mann!) and watch Egyptian Lover play “Planet Rock,” backwards. Which sounds as good as forwards. Just kind of unright in the head, that’s all. Same speed, different holy shit. Executed by doing this Yellow Pages thing with his fingers. He’s been doing this since, like, I wore pointy shoes purchased from Holloway’s Men’s Fashions and busted my ass on some ice and made an icehole of myself. (Quick: which rap song made “asshole” sound like “icehole?”)
Playing Planet Rock backwards is no sneeze in the park, especially when one is acquiring phone numbers with the other hand (see surname), while Dr. Dre pays very, very close attention.
Wonder if that one made the Dr Dre biography.
Planet Rock is important because it’s the first hip hop song to say, “Live it up, shucks.”
(A guy in full-on Tour De Pant spandex, shoe claws and yellow goggles just walked in the coffee place where I’m now sitting a few adenoids short of a voice.)
Egyptian Lover first heard Kraftwerk in Oxnard of all places. Last night, he did Kraftwerk backwards too, with some pulse dial ticking. Vvt, fft, vvt, etc. But he got the breathing from Prince not Ralf.
Don’t worry. “Dial-A-Freek” is still plenty nasty weird when played forwards.
If you haven’t seen/heard the old West Coast KDAY style of mixing then you must. Lots of torque.
Glad Hank Shocklee was there.
***
ONCE DAVE'S BOOK IS UNLEASHED, YOU WILL GET THE DONNIE WAHLBERG REFERENCE UP ABOVE, AND YOU WILL NEVER GIGGLE AT THE NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK'S EXPENSE EVER AGAIN.
Labels: TOMPKINS
12.19.2006
GUAP IN A BOX
MP3s:
"The Christmas Rock" by Sherman and Pretty Tony, with Calvin Mills II
HOLIDAY BONUS: An unreleased outtake from Jay Dee/Dilla's Donuts.
Rest in peace.
Sigh.
***
(from the bookshelf of Dave Tompkins)
Combust the Wick
Pa’s nose fell off at breakfast. It fell right into Ma’s coffee and displaced it. Prunella’s wheeze blew out the gut lamp.
“Land o’ Goshen, Dad,” Ma said, in the gloom, “If ya know’d it was ready t’plop, whyn’t ya tap it off y’self?”
“Didn’t know,” said Pa.
“That’s what ya said the last time, Paw,” said Luke, choking on his bark bread. Uncle Rock snapped his fingers beside the lamp. Prunella’s wheeze shot the flicker out.
“Shet off ya laughin’, gal,” scolded Ma. Prunella toppled off her rock in a flurry of stumps, spilling liverwort mush.
“Tarnation take it!” said Uncle Eyes.
“Well, combust the wick, combust the wick!” demanded Grampa, who was reading when the light went out.
Prunella wheezed, thrashing in the dirt.
…
“We pregnated the clouds! ‘Lectric charges is afummadiddled. Tomic structure’s unseamin’!!”
from Tis the Season to Be Jelly
Richard Matheson, 1963
Labels: TOMPKINS
10.24.2006
WEIRD AL(L)
This from Dave Tompkins. It's an actual conversation between Dave and our friend Michael Jonzun. They are weird guys, obviously. MP3 awaits, once you finish.
***
Went Insane Trying To Play A Phonograph Record With A Peanut
(from conversation w/ M. Jonzun Tuesday night)
DT: Who was on the bill for that '83 show in Miami Beach?
MJ: Stacy Lattisaw, Weird Al, Sylvester Stallone's brother...
DT: Frank?
MJ: And Jonzun Crew.
DT: That’s some line-up.
MJ: Yeah man! It was crazy out there.
DT: I'm picturing Frank Stallone and Weird Al doing The Worm to "Pack Jam."
MJ: I was wearing George Washington pants.
DT: What about the powder wig?
MJ: I had the wig and the Vocoder.
DT: Amadeus, Vocoder commissar.
MJ: I had to keep the sand out of the Vocoder. Man, it was so hot out there.
DT: I think Lenny Bruce once dressed up as a nun on Miami Beach. A sweaty nun.
MJ: Wait, what was the song Sylvester Stallone's brother did?
DT: Wasn't it about arm-wrestling?
MJ: Oh yeah.
DT: From that movie where Sly was a truck driver named Lincoln Hawk.
MJ: I didn't see that one.
DT: You've got to see the footage of New Edition doing Candy Girl in your attic.
MJ: Did I ever send you that old picture of the Berlin Wall with the Jonzun Crew tag on it?
DT: No, please do.
Jonzun Crew, "We Are the Jonzun Crew" (DiscoNet mix)"
***
Went Insane Trying To Play A Phonograph Record With A Peanut
(from conversation w/ M. Jonzun Tuesday night)
DT: Who was on the bill for that '83 show in Miami Beach?
MJ: Stacy Lattisaw, Weird Al, Sylvester Stallone's brother...
DT: Frank?
MJ: And Jonzun Crew.
DT: That’s some line-up.
MJ: Yeah man! It was crazy out there.
DT: I'm picturing Frank Stallone and Weird Al doing The Worm to "Pack Jam."
MJ: I was wearing George Washington pants.
DT: What about the powder wig?
MJ: I had the wig and the Vocoder.
DT: Amadeus, Vocoder commissar.
MJ: I had to keep the sand out of the Vocoder. Man, it was so hot out there.
DT: I think Lenny Bruce once dressed up as a nun on Miami Beach. A sweaty nun.
MJ: Wait, what was the song Sylvester Stallone's brother did?
DT: Wasn't it about arm-wrestling?
MJ: Oh yeah.
DT: From that movie where Sly was a truck driver named Lincoln Hawk.
MJ: I didn't see that one.
DT: You've got to see the footage of New Edition doing Candy Girl in your attic.
MJ: Did I ever send you that old picture of the Berlin Wall with the Jonzun Crew tag on it?
DT: No, please do.
Jonzun Crew, "We Are the Jonzun Crew" (DiscoNet mix)"
Labels: TOMPKINS
10.10.2006
"Hollow Can You Stow"
MORE FROM DAVE TOMPKINS
Well fold my face--according to Truth & Soul, that’s not a clarinet in the Raekwon/El Michels remix but an old Roland keyboard that sounds like a clarinet sounding like Pumpkin.
Here’s something by the SOS Band, that I suspect has something Roland in it. Actually, 808 kind of looks like SOS--if the snakes were tailgating. Or eating their words. Or two headless snowmen posing next to something round.
There are parts on this where the SOS blimp seems to be helium powered. They also squeaked “Tell Me If You Still Care” in there for a few seconds. Also 808 is “vegetable store” in Japanese— quantitatively speaking, “a lot,” if one thinks about bass way too much. Add drum machine to the photosynthesis flow chart. Or Maggotron’s “Fresh Beets.” His spelling! Never knew the beet was a member of the goosefoot family. Anyway, these 9 minute SOS Band songs… wait until the leaves drop (New York really crapped out on that one—Fall just gives us two weeks notice before Winter) before “No One’s Gonna Love You,” when the trees are bones, the squirrels are fat and the birds have split. You’ll need it.
By the way, the needle scrape at the end was Jimmy Jam’s doing. Kind of sounds like those keyboard trouser zips The Time was so good at, but ruder.
Check out Chairman Mao’s Loose Ends interview for more on 808 & Lewis and Jam and Human League. (Imagine if they’d gotten this editty on Dreams of Leaving, especially the second part.)
-end transmission-
Labels: TOMPKINS
10.09.2006
"IT'S YOURS--ROCK!"
Mindspray courtesy Dave Tompkins (buy the book when he drops it). MP3s beneath that.
Never realized how somber a Fantasy Three riff could sound on clarinet. The Chef shadows Pumpkin’s original melody with big homies, glass jars, narcotics, Stan Smiths, centipedes (not Rebbie Jackson’s myriapod), TNT and so on, in his best citational style. (Did he just say mosey don’t be nosey?) It’s the mighty “It’s Your Rock,” of course—which has also lately been honored in a Lord Finesse Marvin Gaye remix and Pete Rock’s version. “Black man hold on like magnums in the wind.” Hopefully Dre hears this while figuring what to do with Cuban Linx 2 over at Aftermath. Please don’t foozle “Blue Eagles”—just let it breath—and mind the El Michel undertow of strings, the unease that makes it dark early for Fall. No obvious bloodbath, just a finger or two left on the piano. “Move with the same hollows,” says Chef. In the tree trunk, hollow means there’s only one way out and they bagged that woodpecker, rat for tat.
Fantasy 3, "It's Your Rock"
Raekwon vs. El Michels Affair, "The PJs" (remix)
Labels: TOMPKINS
3.28.2006
DOWN BY SLAW
FROM DAVE TOMPKINS, FOR STANISLAW LEM (R.I.P.)
(Ponder to the tune of The Future's "Nuclear Holocaust")
To quote Maryland player Tom Baxter when teammate Len Bias received the ball and prepared to deface UNC boxcut JR Reid. “Use him Lenny!” (Smelt those Eninens together and you get the idea.)
From Lem's The Futurological Congress:
4 IX 2039
I finally learned how to come in possession of an encyclopedia. I already own one now—the whole thing contained in three glass vials. Bought them in a science psychedeli. Books are no longer read but eaten, not made of paper but of some informational substance, fully digestible, sugar-coated. I also did a little browsing in a psychem supermarket. Self-service. Arranged on the shelves are beautifully packaged low-calorie opinionates, gullibloons—credibility beans?—abstract extract in antique gallon jugs, and iffies, and argumunchies, puritands and dysectasy chips. A pity I don’t have an interpreter.
Psychedeli must be the Psychedelicatessen. And the theoapotheteria on Sixth Avenue has to be the theological apothecary cafeteria, judging from the items on display. Aisles and aisles of absolventina, theopathine, genuflix, orisol. An enormous place, organ music in the background while you shop. All faiths are represented too. There’s christendine, antichristendine, ormuzal, arymanol, anabaptiban, methadone, brahmax, supralapsarian suppositories, and zoroaspics, quaker oats, yogart, mishnameal and apocryphal dip. Pills, tablets, syrups, elixirs, powders, gums—they even have lollipops for the children. Many of the boxes come with halos. At first I was skeptical but accepted this innovation when after taking four algebrine capsules I found myself perfectly at home in higher mathematics, and without the least exertion on my part. All knowledge is acquired now by way of the stomach. Eagerly seizing this opportunity, I began to satisfy my hunger for information, but the first two volumes of the encyclopedia gave me the most terrible cramps….
Fortunately there are drugs to purge the mind. Obliterine and amnesol for example. With them one can easily rid oneself of unnecessary intellectual baggage or unpleasant memories. In the psychotropic grocery around the corner I saw freudos, morbidine, quanderil, and the most recent of the iamides, heavily advertised—authentium. Creates synthetic recollections of things that never happened. A few grams of dantine, for instance, and a man goes around with the deep conviction that he has written The Divine Comedy.
Labels: TOMPKINS
3.07.2006
"...AND YOU MIGHT GET HIT WITH AN EGG OR A JAR!"
This image (http://www.mbari.org/news/news_releases/2004/whalefall-images/grab_bone_350.jpg) taken down because apparently it violates copyright.
To be read to the tune of Sugar Ray Dinke's twenty-years-too-early-for-regional-rap smash, "Cabrini Green Rap."
Got those exclusives. From Dave Tompkins: "I dreamt Ray Bradbury wrote a story about the dancing robot pants in Herbie Hancock's Rock-It video. Cronenberg adapted it for the big pants screen. The prelim B/W sketches had a pair of giant robot trousers ascending a pyramid. Then I ghostrode my stepsister's Oldsmobile wagon which turned into the old guy from the movie Junebug, who found himself in the middle of a busy intersection yelling, DON'T FUCKING LOOK AT ME!
I think this is all because I met Jeff Lieberman, the director of Squirm (1976), last night. Squirm was about electric annelids barfed up by a storm in Fly Creek, Georgia. Which reminds me to tell my friend Toshio to resend that picture of the worm-activated synthesizer invented by a Japanese man with whom I‚d like to have a word or two. Maggotron!"
To be read to the tune of Sugar Ray Dinke's twenty-years-too-early-for-regional-rap smash, "Cabrini Green Rap."
Got those exclusives. From Dave Tompkins: "I dreamt Ray Bradbury wrote a story about the dancing robot pants in Herbie Hancock's Rock-It video. Cronenberg adapted it for the big pants screen. The prelim B/W sketches had a pair of giant robot trousers ascending a pyramid. Then I ghostrode my stepsister's Oldsmobile wagon which turned into the old guy from the movie Junebug, who found himself in the middle of a busy intersection yelling, DON'T FUCKING LOOK AT ME!
I think this is all because I met Jeff Lieberman, the director of Squirm (1976), last night. Squirm was about electric annelids barfed up by a storm in Fly Creek, Georgia. Which reminds me to tell my friend Toshio to resend that picture of the worm-activated synthesizer invented by a Japanese man with whom I‚d like to have a word or two. Maggotron!"
Labels: TOMPKINS
9.21.2004
because if I actually hyperlinked to all of dave tompkins' references, the whole world would be underlined
Dave: "Hey can you put a disclaimer saying the writer didn't know about the changes in Star Wars? Before he knew that Darth Vader had his eyebrows removed?"
Hua: I'm doing that as we speak. Hey, is this appearing somewhere?
"Yeah, it's going to be in Stop Smiling."
Do they have a website?
"It won't be appearing on the website, but they do have a website."
What is the site?
"Huh? Yeah."
No seriously, what is the site address?
"They do have a website but it won't be appearing on the website. It will be in the magazine."
I know. You know, I'm writing all this down.
Laughs all around
Seriously Dave, what is the address? For Stop Smiling?
"I don't know. I'd have to get off the phone and check..."
Never mind.
"I just chased a roach around my kitchen with a fork."
Let me read you what we just said to each other.
"Perfect."
I'M TOO THXy FOR MY LIBIDO LEVELER
REVIEWED BY DAVE TOMPKINS
THX 1138: THE GEORGE LUCAS DIRECTOR'S CUT
(2-Disc DVD)
(Warner Home Video/American Zoetrope)
This one's gonna be close. My friend Richard is trying to finish THX-1138 before his airport ride arrives. Robert Duvall's on the ladder. Richard's nervous. Duvall's escaping a subterranean city that's all numb and numbers. The phone rings. Richard stands up. Duvall pops the manhole lid to some glorious Bach. "Your maroon Lincoln sedan is waiting outside." Richard's suitcase disappears through the doorcrack. Duvall, bald as the bulb of ABA star Slick Watts, squints into a giant livid orange, the first sunset in the drudged life of a man named after a license plate. Watching any movie at high noon is disorienting. Watching one set several leagues underground, one where the sets are white, everyone's glabrous and black people are holograms, is another story, one that is finally getting the attention it deserves. Bonus material includes THX-1138 4EB, the original short George Lucas did at USC, with Gregorian psyche score and someone who looks an awful lot like Mr. Bean. This might get Lucas out of the red fans have been seeing since Phantom Menace. (Amateur video of Jar Jar Binks' amateur beatboxing does not.)
Added footage expands Lucas' blank futuristic vision, which was filmed entirely on location in San Francisco. The ladder out is actually pre BART track as a lens flip makes ground go wall. You also get more time with THX (call me Thex) flubbing up on the job. His eyeballs go eggwhite when reproached with a brainlock. No eyeballs go eggwhite in the original. In this bald new world, you can't kick meds and you can't make out--alive or wasted. This gets THX and mate LUH (Maggie McOmie) in big trouble with robot CHIPs who are silver, polite and occasionally walk into walls. This makes Donald Pleasence (SEN) twitch with glee. Catch that grin as Don pivots his right said head after popping an Etracine. It's these nuances that give
THX-1138 a sense of haha (and a-ha, repeated viewings a must). The guy standing in Unassigned Space #33, the munchkin shell dweller drumming his fingers, the iguana blinking behind the switchboard, the Ren & Stimpy eye gurgle, the helpful intercom memos. "A libido leveler has been mislaid near the false buffering gate." Walter Murch's pre-Conversation sound design is ingenious, as is Lalo Schifrin's shark fin cello (David Axelrod had been considered for the soundtrack). So sweat the bits and sit next to the speaker.
Hua: I just checked and Stop Smiling does indeed have a website.
Hua: I'm doing that as we speak. Hey, is this appearing somewhere?
"Yeah, it's going to be in Stop Smiling."
Do they have a website?
"It won't be appearing on the website, but they do have a website."
What is the site?
"Huh? Yeah."
No seriously, what is the site address?
"They do have a website but it won't be appearing on the website. It will be in the magazine."
I know. You know, I'm writing all this down.
Laughs all around
Seriously Dave, what is the address? For Stop Smiling?
"I don't know. I'd have to get off the phone and check..."
Never mind.
"I just chased a roach around my kitchen with a fork."
Let me read you what we just said to each other.
"Perfect."
I'M TOO THXy FOR MY LIBIDO LEVELER
REVIEWED BY DAVE TOMPKINS
THX 1138: THE GEORGE LUCAS DIRECTOR'S CUT
(2-Disc DVD)
(Warner Home Video/American Zoetrope)
This one's gonna be close. My friend Richard is trying to finish THX-1138 before his airport ride arrives. Robert Duvall's on the ladder. Richard's nervous. Duvall's escaping a subterranean city that's all numb and numbers. The phone rings. Richard stands up. Duvall pops the manhole lid to some glorious Bach. "Your maroon Lincoln sedan is waiting outside." Richard's suitcase disappears through the doorcrack. Duvall, bald as the bulb of ABA star Slick Watts, squints into a giant livid orange, the first sunset in the drudged life of a man named after a license plate. Watching any movie at high noon is disorienting. Watching one set several leagues underground, one where the sets are white, everyone's glabrous and black people are holograms, is another story, one that is finally getting the attention it deserves. Bonus material includes THX-1138 4EB, the original short George Lucas did at USC, with Gregorian psyche score and someone who looks an awful lot like Mr. Bean. This might get Lucas out of the red fans have been seeing since Phantom Menace. (Amateur video of Jar Jar Binks' amateur beatboxing does not.)
Added footage expands Lucas' blank futuristic vision, which was filmed entirely on location in San Francisco. The ladder out is actually pre BART track as a lens flip makes ground go wall. You also get more time with THX (call me Thex) flubbing up on the job. His eyeballs go eggwhite when reproached with a brainlock. No eyeballs go eggwhite in the original. In this bald new world, you can't kick meds and you can't make out--alive or wasted. This gets THX and mate LUH (Maggie McOmie) in big trouble with robot CHIPs who are silver, polite and occasionally walk into walls. This makes Donald Pleasence (SEN) twitch with glee. Catch that grin as Don pivots his right said head after popping an Etracine. It's these nuances that give
THX-1138 a sense of haha (and a-ha, repeated viewings a must). The guy standing in Unassigned Space #33, the munchkin shell dweller drumming his fingers, the iguana blinking behind the switchboard, the Ren & Stimpy eye gurgle, the helpful intercom memos. "A libido leveler has been mislaid near the false buffering gate." Walter Murch's pre-Conversation sound design is ingenious, as is Lalo Schifrin's shark fin cello (David Axelrod had been considered for the soundtrack). So sweat the bits and sit next to the speaker.
Hua: I just checked and Stop Smiling does indeed have a website.
Labels: TOMPKINS
