But I can't imagine the song "Sure Shot" without that flute wailing away as the Beasties holler You can't, you won't, and you don't STOP...
If you owned a copy of 1994's Ill Communication (more on that in a sec), you know from the liner notes that the sample comes from a semi-obscure tune called "Howlin' for Judy" by New York-based jazzman Jeremy Steig, who is the son of the late, great illustrator William Steig—the originator of Shrek. A quick listen to "Howlin' for Judy" reveals that the Beasties really only sampled 3 seconds of the song for "Sure Shot"; the rest of the track is sort of a day-glo freakout with overdubbed flutes coming at you from about five different directions. It's oddly funky...in a Ron Burgundy kind of way.
In a 2004 interview with All About Jazz online, Steig was asked how he felt about the group sampling his 1969 track. His response: "I made more money from that sample than from any of my records."
Anyway, Ill Communication was the first CD I ever bought. (It wasn't the first album I ever bought, though. That was actually Kick by INXS.)
I'd gotten a Discman with car audio adapter from my dad for my 17th birthday. It was an awesome gift. Although, I think he was even more excited about it than I was! I'd barely even finished tearing off the wrapping paper, and he had the box open and was busy plugging the various cords and adapters into my car's tape deck before I even had a chance to touch it!
I remember him sitting there in the passenger seat of my car like an impatient kid. "Well, come on! Test it out!"
One minor problem: I didn't own any CDs.
My birthday falls about a week before Christmas, so I had no desire to go fight the crowds at the mall, just to go buy a CD. Besides, I had a stack of mix tapes in my car with hundreds of hours of music on them, so I was content to wait till the New Year.
A couple of days later at the start of Winter Break, I was having a leisurely breakfast, when Dad informed me that I'd be driving him to Asheville Mall later that morning to help him finish his Christmas shopping. Which I did. Through an hour of bumper-to-bumper traffic, fighting kamikaze soccer moms in minivans who would rather go down in flames than let you merge in front of them, because God forbid you should get to that sale at Penney's before them.
Long story short, Dad made one lap around Sears, decided they didn't have the socket wrench he supposedly was going to get my uncle, and headed right for the music department at Montgomery Ward. And in perfect Dad fashion, he said, "So, what did you need to buy here?" As if the mall had been my plan all along.
I dropped $9.99 of my birthday money on Ill Communication. (Confession: I wasn't even that big of a Beasties fan at the time. It was just one of the few CDs that was on sale, and it had a couple of songs I liked. But my opinion of the band's talent and importance in the hip-hop world completely changed after one listen.) It's a CD my father wouldn't have chosen in a million years. Even so, he couldn't wait to hear it on my new Discman. And "Sure Shot" was the first thing we heard pouring from my car speakers, sitting there in the mall parking deck.
"Not bad," I remember him saying.
No comments:
Post a Comment