Off list today, I’m ripping the No Borders Here LP from Jane Siberry, so we’ll have a track from that. Dunno much about Siberry except that she’s Canadian and she sang with a group of other Canadian stars on a track on the We Are the World LP. Anyway, I’m usually not one much for lyrics, but this tune, "Symmetry (The Way Things Have to Be)," speaks to me. I don’t particularly like asymmetry, and I hate it when people do things wrong. It also makes me think of my father, from whom I inherited these traits. In particular, these lyrics:
Or say you're in an air show
And you're flying with two other pilots
And you want to do it right
Because you like to do it right
And one guy is flying
At the tip of your left wing
And the other guy's off
Doing his own thing
Would it bother you?
It bothers me
My copy of this tune is from an Ultimate Breaks and Beats compilation, so the first bar is looped eight times or so. When the loop is in effect, the Public Enemy is unmistakable if you’ve heard it before. The JBs doing “The Grunt” at No. 156 will keep your rebellion off pause forever. Careful, though, or that squealing sax will go right up through your roof.
I’ve got a lot of edits from Tim Zawada, and all the good ones made this list, which is still a lot of them. His edit of Tamiko Jones’ “Let It Flow”—the “Deep and Slow Edit” at No. 155—is as dubbed out and synth-y as you might expect, but it’s also stringy without being syrupy and loopy without getting boring. Checks all the boxes. Have a listen.
There are lots of tunes that are close to my heart because the Dust Brothers used a snippet or two on the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique LP. “Loose Booty” at No. 153 from Sly and the Family Stone stands up on its own, but Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are forever Biblical unburnt Beasties in my mind with Rose Stone singing “Hey, hey, hey yay yay yeah.”
Of course when I promise the next track is so good it deserves its own post, it’s one of those tracks that isn’t already up on the web. This one was vinyl only, so I posted a low-quality excerpt on Soundcloud; we’ll see if it stays there. I think I did that once before for a different tune, but I haven’t gone back to check on that one, whatever it was. Anyway, DJ Day took a pretty great song and recast it with a backing beat from Gino Soccio’s “Try It Out” and in the process created a little magic. The original version of People Under the Stairs’ “Trippin’ at the Disco” is cool and all, but at No. 152, “Trippin’ at the Disco (DJ Day Does It Again)” is far superior. I even used it to title and kick off the last mixtape I made.
I want to double up today because we had the vocal version of One Way’s “Cutie Pie (Instrumental)” on the list already. Why Serato thinks the instrumental is a tiny bit faster than the vocal version I barely even have a guess. No. 152 is too good to double-bill, though, so at No. 151 the instrumental version of “Cutie Pie” is about all you can ask for in a funky synth bassline. Doesn’t do that much else, but who needs it to? [Note that the featured video is not the actual instrumental B side of the single. Can’t find a video for that; too lazy to upload one.]
Edit: Having conducted further investigation, I don’t think there is an official instrumental version. The one I have that claims to be from a 12-inch single is the same as the loop in the video, I think; it’s missing a section or two from the legitimate backing track. The absence of an official instrumental explains why this edit floats around out there. And I guess Serato calculates the tempo to be a little faster with the vocal sections removed. Harumph. Careful what you download, hey?
