Musical Chairs

Posted on August 1, 2010 – 1:15 AM | by OldManFoster
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MidMo Art Director Judd Hertzler is a man for all seasons.  He stays plenty busy, with a family, an art/design career, skateboarding obsession, and, as some readers might remember, a recent book, A Moment to Reflect, which captures a good mix of his creative spirit.  When we asked Judd if he’d be interested in taking a spin in the Musical Chair he quickly obliged, revealing a side we’d never seen before: gun toting hip hop.  What?

I’ve never heard the music I enjoy in a club or bar in Sacramento, once in a long while on KDVS I might hear something from the Hertzler catalog, but those occasions are few and far between; usually it’s just me and the good ole’ trusty ipod. Here’s a sampling of what I’ve been listening to….

I just downloaded A.G’s. new tribute mixtape to J Dilla, called  Dunkin Donuts. Very rarely do I listen to something and it instantly gets me psyched. I didn’t follow Dilla’s legacy that closely when he was alive, but just hearing A.G.’s voice come on over Dilla’s sophisticated beats, gets me going. A.G. is mellow but at the same time, so crisp and clear. I was always a fan of Diamond D and his crew, so when this Diggin In The Crates member steps up, I had to give it a listen.  It’s always good to support the true ogs of the game. With that said, we’ll move onto another favorite hip hop download.

To remind myself what I’ve been listening to, I checked out my most listened to songs on my itunes. The Number one most played song was DJ Kay Slay’s “Self Destruction 2010” featuring Busta Rhymes, Bun B, Sheek Louch, Uncle Murda, Papoose, Remy Ma & Jay Rock. I was a HUGE fan of the first “Self Destruction” in 1989 with Boogie Down Productions, Stetsasonic, Kool Moe Dee, MC Lyte, Doug E. Fresh, Just-Ice, Heavy D and Public Enemy.  The 1989 version had some of the biggest stars in contemporary East Coast hip hop and the 2010 version does not does not let you down. Busta Rhymes always brings the hype, Uncle Murda spits a line about “so many brothers dying, the Klu Klux Klan has retired”, and how can you go wrong with Sheek Louch bringing you into a song with a “D BLOCK” chant! I do have a bit of embarrassment being a 33 year old working class stiff with two kids that is so attracted to East Coast gun toting hip hop. So, once in a while I have to listen to something else.

Animal Collective provides that for me. Tim, the editor, actually gave me an R5 gift certificate in a gift swap for Christmas and I was lost on what to get. What, no computer needed to download? No card swiped? I have to actually go to a store and wander around? So I picked up Animal Collective’s Fall Be Kind, and it’s been on steady repeat ever since. Well, to tell the truth, the first two songs (“Graze” and “What Would I Want? Sky”) are on extra heavy repeat. I love how both are fairly long and go through complete moods – mellow to super funky. The whole Animal Collective thing seems a little blown out these days, though – the skateboard community got really acquainted with them through ALien Workshop’s video Mind Field (using three songs from Merriweather Post Pavillion) and the website, Pitchfork.com, is always sucking them off in some fashion or another. Oh well, they are still really good and have a creative sound… my nine year old son even thinks so.

While we’re on the top of trends, I guess we’ll move on to my passion for Diplo. If there’s a producer that makes beats of what’s going on inside my head, without a doubt it’s Diplo. His affinity for Dancehall music and break beats blows me away. I heavily played out The mixtape he did with Santogold, Top Ranking: A Diplo Dub, as well as the remix of MIA’s “Paper Planes”.  His recent remix of Beyonce’s “Halo” with dancehall king Elephantman is a perfect match for me. I saw his side project Major Lazer in April for my birthday and it was one of the best times I’ve had. His label Mad Decent has a great website for getting turned on to new music. That’s where I found one of my favorite mixtapes, Laugh Factorie’s, Me So Corny, which contains wacky music, from Raffi’s “Bananaphone”, to the glorious Mike 2600’s remix of “Werewolf Barmitzvah”, taken from Tracey Morgan’s skit on 30 Rock. Diplo has inspired the masses and he’s well deserving of all the hype. I’m sold.

Neil Young always finds a way onto my playlists and has a special place in my life. I grew up listening to Harvest and definitely played it out. But I was able to reconnect with Neil when I took a work computer home and it had Neil Young’s Neil Young record on it. This is a true masterpiece – such a range of songs and beautiful anthems. “Here We Are In The Years” always gets me, and “I’ve Loved Her So Long” just traps me. Both have such beautiful beats, almost hip hop-like, but his singing is so sincere and heartfelt. I guess it plays a special place in my heart to me because the wifey and I saw him at the Bridge School Benefit on one of our early dates and I’ll always remember him playing those songs. Truly good stuff!

DJ ALLAH MATHEMATICS! Anybody who knows me, knows I’m a huge nerdy Wu Tang fan. I had to represent some faction of Wu and I best chose DJ Mathematics. Known as the “official WU TANG Dj” he produced many Wu beats ( arly GZA tracks) but recently dropping the Avenging Eagles mixtape, composed of songs that didn’t find a home on Wu Massacre, Method Man, Ghostface Killah and Raekwon’s Spring 2010 release. His amazing blog, themathfiles.com, was being updated regularly for a hot second but ever since Avenging Eagles officially dropped it’s been put on hold. Hopefully it wasn’t all a scheme to hype up the mixtape, Math takes the money and is never heard from again! Like I always say, “Once you’re WU, you can never turn back!”

Brian Degraw from the art, beat happy super group, Gang Gang Dance, is always up to something interesting. He has a mix on the great site, dublab.com, that I wish I made.  There’s a funky song from Big Cherry –  “Come in Bonzo” that I just love as well as a track with a sports commentator reading soccer scores over “Hand On The Plow” by Becket and Taylor. Seeing Brian perform with Gang Gang Dance is like a bizarre audio science experiment, but his creativity and mashup of randomness makes a fellow Connecticut native very proud. This is about as close as I will come to techno music, though.

Want to be our guest music reviewer?  Email: music@midtownmonthly.net

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