Dollar Grillz’ Day Off
January 2009
I think this was my idea, since I was in a mixtape-making mood, having just dropped 4 x Floor the previous month. We did it over either Thanksgiving break or Christmas. Probably Christmas, and I said to Chris, “Bring over ten songs you want to put on a mixtape, and we’ll go one for one.” And that’s what we did. Except there are 21 tracks because I insisted that editing together Daryl Gold’s “Love Quake” with the instrumental version counted as one track.
This cover is the pinnacle of my work in Photoshop. We put Johnny Five in a lot of scenarios, with a lot of gold grills for the Dollar Grillz flyers, but the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off parody is by far my favorite. Didn't even bother with the gold teeth. I was digging it so much just now that I made a new Johnny Five cover for the next mixtape, which never had an image since I made it for a work party. More on that in the next post.
This mix turned out better than I thought it would when I proposed it. I think in particular the “Love Quake” through “Mean Machine” section compares favorably to the efforts on the first DGZ mixtape. And whereas I edited only the first and third segments of the first mixtape, I was watching the cuts, pastes, and fades closely on our day off, so this one’s pretty slick. I just wish we’d made it longer.