It only took 6 months and 5 posts, but here we are…wrapping up Left Handed Straw.
The final stretch.
“Impatience”
I titled this song “Impatience” because it seemed like it was a little antsy. Like it was trying to get somewhere anxiously. I don’t know if it came from being new on an MPC2000 and exploring the sequencer (which was very different than how the Ensoniq EPS worked), but I kept doing this thing that was kind of drum and bass in my head, but really isn’t drum and bass.
Admittedly, some things on LHS were made specifically for LHS and…were made to fill up space. This one is a bit of a recycling job, with elements from two different projects. At one point, Moodswing 9, Jel, and myself were going to form a live MPC/SP1200 band. There were regular monthly shows at Rico’s in SF and I think we planned to do some sort of live performance. Planned is the key word. We practiced once at my apartment and quickly realized it wasn't going to happen. The bass notes for “Impatience” came from something we were workshopping for that live show. Thanks Moodswing.
“Slip of the Tongue/First Time Ever/Test # 5”
This is essentially a series of 3 interludes. I was aiming for at least an hour of music and these little collages were a way to get from point A to B and also stretch things out a bit.
I guess I called it “Slip of the Tongue” because the guy is fumbling to say something. This is a recording from at least 50 years ago and he’s talking about air pollution and the world coming to an end. Evergreen content, baby!
I can’t remember where that “performance for the first time ever” dialog comes from. I don’t think I recorded it in person, but maybe I did. There are definitely a handful of elements that I added hastily and I will probably never remember their origins.
“Test # 5” follows the same “Test” pattern and is a clue to something else. In this case, it foreshadows the next song. It’s a throwback to my original Deep Puddle Dynamics “Rain Men” remix. You hear the pizzicato strings, but instead of starting the beat, the music fades as the rain comes in. In retrospect, putting the original Deep Puddle remix on here may have made sense. I didn’t want to reuse things and it had already been released on a 12 inch, so I didn’t see the need to include it. That remix never made it to this current streaming world, so maybe I should have put it on here.
“Rain Men (Left Handed)”
This is a remix of a remix. I’d already done the Rain Men remix, but here I am remixing it a second time. I did try to get a few people to do new songs for this project, but besides the more loose, interlude type things, nobody recorded any new vocals. What I did have were some Deep Puddle Dynamics acapellas and I was able to work on those on my own time and I didn’t have to ask anyone for anything. This remix is the jazzier alternative to the original remix. In my original remix, I used a variety of drums, but this one is based around the drums that were originally just in Alias’s section. I liked that this felt a bit more boom-bappy and put a different spin on the song. If I remember correctly, it was a bit easier to do than the original one because I’d already mapped out the song. It’s still all done in my MPC, with the acapella playing through from start to finish. For this one, I was able to swap out the samples and keep the general format of the sequences and how they lined up with the vocals.
There was a lot that I didn’t know how to do back then. I also didn’t have or know anything about using gear or effects. All of the drops, filtering, etc, that’s all programmed into the sequences. There was no mix down. Everything on LHS is straight from my sampler into the 4-track.
“Final Call/Final Test”
This section is technically new to LHS and was not on the original CDR version of the album. The drums were given to me by a family friend in a random pile of records. I also got the drums (one of them) that I used for Sage Francis’s “Agony In Her Body.” When a family friend gives you records, it’s usually a bunch of unusable chud, but there was some good stuff in this batch. “Final Call” was essentially the last song before I closed things out.
“Final Test” is basically birds and an odd sound collage. It’s not the last time I’d add birds to music. On paper, it sounds like a Portlandia joke, but I like hearing natural sounds mixed with music. I’ve done it a few times and there’s a good chance I’ll do it again. Don’t try to stop me.
“Heckles From The Peanut Gallery”
For most people, the reissue of LHS is the version they know. It’s the one that is on streaming and the version that was on the manufactured CD. There were several thousand CDs pressed, so it got around. For anyone who knows that version, “Heckles From The Peanut Gallery” has always been the album closer, but it has a different origin.
In the summer of 2000, I had just finished the original version of LHS and had begun selling copies online through places like ATAK and Hip Hop Infinity. The initial buzz was pretty exciting. I didn’t anticipate much more than giving copies to friends, but now I was trying to crank them out assembly-line style. I had also booked a ticket to fly to Scribble Jam, which felt like another great opportunity to make connections and share my music.
If I remember correctly, a few days before Scribble Jam, Sole told me there was going to be a compilation called the Giga Single and he wanted me to add something. I’d already gotten a few reviews for LHS and there was tons of message board activity in those days. One frequent comment about LHS was that the songs were too short and that things felt unfinished. Maybe true and also maybe true. However, that was the intention. It was both the limits of my abilities, but also a sound that I was aiming for. As I described it, it was “a collection of soon to be lost beats and records.” If I didn’t compile them, they’d likely get lost and forgotten. Also, I’m of the mindset that a short song that you want to replay is better than a long song that makes you want to skip. I may have been ahead of my time, because most things are short these days.
When Sole asked me to make a song, I had these comments in mind. I wanted to try to make something that was a bit more substantial and that worked as a song on its own. In reality, it’s still a collage of sounds and two different beats, but it was able to stand alone on the compilation, which made it feel more like a full song. The title of the song is a comment on those message board commenters. I pictured these guys:
The thing that is somewhat unique about this song is how fast I made it. Sole asked me a day or two before Scribble Jam. I don’t remember if he said “I need it in two days” or if I just made it that fast, but I made the whole thing in one fevered session right before flying out to Scribble Jam. I stayed up late and I can remember driving down to the San Jose airport with DJ Mayonnaise and falling asleep in the car (he was driving). I was delirious.
My current ears do not hear this song the same way they did back in those days, but at the time it really felt like something special. I really liked the way the song progressed and I was proud of how I stretched some of the samples to get more life out of them. This was all done in an MPC with no effects, so the limitations play a role in the final sound. There are things that I would fix or change these days, but fixing things on LHS would make it something different. It is what it is because of when and how I made it.
I’ve never been able to confirm it, but I did get a check (I think) for this song being in Tony Hawk Project 8. I went and bought a new Playstation so that I could play the game and hear the song, but I never found it. There’s a YouTube video that has it and lists it as being part of the soundtrack. I’ve never been able to confirm that it was actually in anything. Maybe just one some sort of web promo?
It’s also tied to Bob Burnquist. I see people comment that Bob Burnquist brought them to that song. It was used in the Oakley “Our Life” video for part of Bob’s megaramp section. There are a few things that are crazy about that. I made that song in a tiny studio apartment on a very simple set up. Basically, everything was done small. It was used as a soundtrack to something that is about as big as it gets. The other thing that is crazy about that video is that I follow the Pixies “Where is My Mind?” and my song comes in as theirs echoes out. I’d actually never seen that until right now. When I was in my room making that song, I had no concept of the song being in a skate video and definitely not following the Pixies.
Over the past 23 or so years, LHS has been released in a variety of formats. Way more than any other project I’ve done. Here are a few variations:
So nice to be able to read all of this. Very cool from the fan point of view. You may not have noticed but the whole anticon world was quite mysterious when it was all going down in the early 2000s.