Saturday, March 24, 2012

Is The Sugarhill Gang a Jam Band?

So the whole "write everyday" thing kind of fell to the wayside after only two days. Nevertheless, I will try and make up for it somehow.
I got into the office on this Saturday morning at 6:30--nothing like an early morning drive on a Saturday to remind you that you're one of the only people awake in the city. I loved the ride, it provided me an opportunity to zone out for ten minutes and listen to some music. One of my favorite bands is the Pixies and my iPod began to play "No. 13 Baby" on the way in. My undying love for this song cannot be put into words--in fact, for me the entire album "Doolittle" is in the upper pantheon of albums in my opinion (short list off the top of my head: "London Calling", "Doggystyle", "Doolittle", "Paul's Boutique", "Dookie", "Songs for the Deaf", "Stay Positive"). After the final refrain of "No. 13 Baby" there is an extended instrumental jam that, in all honesty, could go on for two hours and I wouldn't get sick of. Of course, this would then qualify the Pixies as a jam band which would mean that by definition and principal, I would hate them. So, perhaps keeping this song a tight 3:52 is probably the proper way to go.
Continuing down the topic of music, I have been working on the computer in my office for the past few hours and have been listening to some old hip hop. One of my all time favorite pre 1990 hip hop songs is the Slick Rick and Doug E Fresh song "The Show". Aside from borrowing the hook from Inspector Gadget, the song is near perfection--it's also used in the opening credits of CB4, but I digress. Years back, I owned a double disc record titled "In the Beginning There Was Rap" that featured one disc of some hip hop classics and a second disc of the same songs covered by artists who were popular in 1998 (if memory serves me, when the discs were released). "The Show" was performed on the covers album by The Roots and it was a solid effort, although not nearly as good as the original version. Another song found on the covers album was Def Squad covering "Rappers Delight" by the Sugar Hill Gang. This was the song that originally attracted me to buying the CDs, as I was a big Redman fan at the time (I even wrote a review for his "Doc's the Name: 2000" album for my high school newspaper because I was cool). After listening to the Def Squad's version I decided to listen to the original version, which is almost 15 minutes long. It was while listening to this version that my mind drifted back to my ride into work and listening to the Pixies...a lengthened version of "No. 13 Baby", as I joked, would make the Pixies a jam band--but what about a 15 minute hip hop song? Certainly, there were jam bands dating back to the 1960s and 50s, but could I make an argument that The Sugarhill Gang is the original hip hop jam band? Of course not, that would be stupid...but I needed to fill up space.

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