Part 3 and we are only on track 13 of a 37 track album…
what a pretentious jerk.
It does seem a little obnoxious, but Left Handed Straw seems to be the project most people have a connection to and it’s kind of fun for me to go track by track.
“Unknown”
This song clocks in at 6 minutes and 11 seconds and it’s one of my more played songs on Spotify. It was originally made for something, maybe a Mush compilation or maybe even the Stuffed Animals record. If I am remembering this correctly, Dose told me he was going to do a song with Radioinactive. Or maybe I made most of it and he asked to use it for a song with Radioinactive. I am pretty unclear on that part, but I do know that I made it pretty intentionally, trying to make as many twists and turns as I could. The song with Dose and Radioinactive does (or did) actually exist. I know I heard it once or twice, but I have no idea what happened to it and I never got a copy of it.
I can’t remember what song was the inspiration for this multi-section type of beat, but I must have had something in mind. I was also probably trying to show off. Back then, it was definitely not a chest puffed, egotistical type of showing off. It was always a “maybe this will make them think I’m cool” type of thing that came with a fair share of lack of confidence. I’m generally quiet and mild-mannered, so I have to look for other ways to stand out or get my foot in the door.
I have a memory of being at the warehouse in Oakland and playing this for a few people. Alias gave me a compliment on the drums and I noted that I was proud of something I did. It’s about 2 minutes into the song before you hear the first open hi- hat in the drum programming. That’s a dorky detail, but we were very geeky about drum breaks back then and not every break has an open hi-hat, so it was kind of like a little flex to hold out on adding it for so long.
In the Winter 2002 ON Video Magazine, which was a subdivision of 411 Video Magazine, there was a spotlight on Rodney Mullen. They used “Unknown” in his career retrospective, which was a huge highlight for me because I skated almost every day from 1988-1999 and Rodney Mullen is one of the best skaters ever. I think this gave the song some legs and is why it still gets plays. I don’t remember if they paid me, but I did get free videos and clothes.
“The Balerina”
This is a series of answering machine messages from Pedestrian where he redid some lyrics from a different song. I would randomly ask people if they would contribute things while I was working on LHS. I spoke to him on the phone and then I intentionally didn’t answer so he could leave the message. I’m not sure where I got the idea to lay it over itself several times and at different speeds and to pan the vocals. While typing that, I remembered something that may have contributed to it. I am pretty sure I did that because of an experience I had helping why? and Nosdam mix a cLOUDDEAD record. They basically needed an extra set of hands and we choreographed a series of pans and fades. The 3 of us sat on the floor, each with an assigned set of tasks. Thinking back to the 4-track that I used, I must have done the panning as I recorded the sounds in or I bounced multiple tracks into one and panned them then. I had no way to automate any of that and I definitely didn’t do it on the final mix down of the whole album.
Side note…that’s not how you spell “Ballerina.” Technically, it is in some languages, so yes, it was intentionally spelled with on L and I am fancy.
“The Forest”
This is one of my favorite beats. Not everything is perfect in it, but I love that sample. I took a music appreciation class and that sample came from some of my course work. Most of the selections were not my style, but that one really caught my ear.
At the end of the song, there is a recording of someone named Ellen who is calling to talk to someone named Carol Shavonne. I have no idea who this person is. She says “it’s a very unusual telephone answering device, but I suspect Grover had something to do with that.” I used to make custom songs for my answering machine, so it’s extra funny that she left the message and somehow thought a (presumably) older man had made the funny answering machine song. This is one of those things that makes no sense and has no significant reason for being on there, but…I find it hilarious that many people have listened to it and Ellen has no idea that she’s a niche celebrity of sorts.
and…plot twist! Someone DM’d me on Instagram a few years ago and told me that he works with Carol and knows Grover!
“???”
This is a recording of Sole and Alias’s set at Rico’s. It must have been a really rainy night, because Sole mentions the horrible weather. Sole and Alias did a little mic check banter and there’s an odd countdown. I don’t know why, but I thought it would be fun to make a little old school 808 beat with them repeating 7. The “where did that come from?” and “hot damn” are Dose from that same show. I recorded a bunch of stuff at one of the shows, but most of it is blown out and distorted.
“Morality”
This is something I spitballed, but lots of credit goes to Dose. I carried my 4-track over to Dose and Jel’s apartment in Berkeley and I had the music already in place. I also brought him a page I had torn out of a book. Or did he have it? I eventually ended up with the page, because part of it was in the original artwork for LHS, but maybe he was the one who found it. He must have had it. Essentially, he’s reading a poem, but I can’t remember if he added his own elements. I can’t seem to find where it originally came from, but he took some printed words and really brought them to life. He recorded multiple tracks and engineered it himself while Jel and I hung out. I added the reversed part and the little interlude after. In my head, this was the end of the first section of LHS. I think I was originally making it as a cassette (because CD burners were just around the corner from being attainable), so this was the end of side A and it ends with that last little flute note. After that note, you hear one of the only full sections of silence on the whole record. That was where I thought you’d flip the tape.
Artwork
The artwork for Left Handed Straw was made in a very similar process to the way the music was made. I sampled little bits from all over the place. The letters on the cover were all cut out of other record covers. The guy on the cover is from some record (which I can’t seem to find). I painted the black and white background on a piece of orange construction paper. I traced the size of a CD insert and made everything within that space. There was an antique store near campus and I would buy old photographs. I started to see some of the same people and would collect any I found.
I was fascinated by the first Godspeed You Black Emperor album and how the record came with a bunch of random odds and ends, including a penny that had been smashed by a train. I liked the idea of cramming every CD I made with a selection of odds and ends. I made all of the covers at Copy World on University Avenue in Berkeley. There was a really nice guy there that helped me get things set up. I did it in a very crude fashion, running off copies of the front, reloading the paper, and then copying the other side. It wasn’t easy to make everything line up perfectly. I don’t think they had a machine that would automatically do double sided color copies.
Since the CD sleeve only takes up a portion of the 8.5”x11” paper, I would fill all of the other space with little oddities that I’d stick into the CD sleeve. In the end, I made about 400 CDs, one by one in my studio apartment. I cut every line with a metal ruler and a razor. That’s thousands of cuts. If I knew what I was doing, I would have lined things up and had crop marks to make things easier. These color copies weren’t cheap, so I felt more comfortable cutting each one by hand.
This (above) is the cover that most people know. I think the guy and the letters are from classical records.
This was an alternate cover that I made at some point during the run. I think this might be the original cover. I am not entirely sure at this point. The thing at the bottom with the film strips has a piece of the page that Dose read on “Morality” There’s a paper clip and dental floss. I liked the way all the random stuff would flatten in the final image.
This is the tray card. There were two versions of this too. The little hippo came from a moisture absorber that I used to use because my apartment was very humid and would ruin my stuff.
Various odds and ends that I’d stick in the CDs. The little kid smiling is taped onto the keycard from my job at the time. The truck is something I drew. The woman singing is from a record, but printed on an inkjet printer.
This is the main version of the inside of the CD sleeve. I typed up the text and printed it on a transparency. I didn’t have access to or know anything about anything like photoshop, so I did all of my layering by hand. The original description for LHS was “Left Handed Straw runs along the lines of a cut and paste operation. It is by no means an album…think of it as a friendly reminder or…maybe a first introduction.” Later, when I redid the art for the manufactured version of the CD that came out on 6months, I took all of that text out and changed it to “a collection of soon to be lost beats and records.”
This was another version of the inside cover. Again, everything was cut out of other record covers. It’s blank here, but that’s because I reused the transparency with the text. I removed it from this one when I made the other style.
Fascinating! I know the anticon-era is a complicated time for most of you involved, but most of great art in hip-hop is difficult. In my opinion, Project Blowed & anticon are the most important movements in art rap history. Thanks again for sharing all these memories...