(1972, United Artists)
War is known mostly for their bigger hits like “Low Rider” and “Why Can’t We Be Friends”, but they made a bunch of great full-length records. War, led by Lee Oskar, was a black and hispanic funk ass band, but you probably knew that already. This was always my favorite full-length by them (most notable for the single “Cisco Kid”) because it was a nice concept record, and I’m a sucker for concept records, especially nowadays where everything is downloaded by the tracks or as a whole, unrared, and then you check each track one time real quick and dump half of them before giving any of them a full couple time listen through to truly get into.
I originially copped this on a used cassette when I lived with this hippie chick Lynne that I mistakenly thought I was in love with. She had a steady tendency to flip out on dudes and bail on them for the next guy that came along, even though she fell in love with each one. But I was such a strong upstanding dude, that when this hit her one time, she just wanted some space for a few days to figure it all out, instead of her standard moving onto the next guy mode. So I crashed on a mattress on the concrete floor in the basement of my buddy Scan’s house. The washing machine drained right beside me and the water would overrun and flow into the drain on the floor, like a foot over from where I had the mattress, and there were mice and shit everywhere, and it smelled like a juicy pussy with lots of hair had been kept confined inside of tight blue jeans for three days straight all the time. And I had this shitty little five dollar radio from the ghetto ass five-and-dime store a couple blocks away, that I’d play this cassette in. Being I was all young and introspective, wondering if this girl I loved was gonna love me, and whether I should even bother, sitting in a shitty basement, not far from finishing college, and just really lost as fuck and mired in one of those dirty environments that works like an acid trip and causes you to over-evaluate your life from every angle and not really like any of what you see. This tape was, and still is, the perfect soundtrack for such a freak-out.
We got back together, but it was only like another nine months before she freaked out again, after we had moved across town where she had a car and I had a 10-speed, and she started hanging with some other dude (actually Willie Adler who ended up being a guitarist in Lamb of God and is a good ass dude and I love to this day, mostly because she ended up leaving his dumb ass too, so we bonded in crazy bitch), so I was couch crashing while my dog Waylon lived with her. Actually she went on the road and was supposed to come back a certain day, and I was gone that day, at my boy Scan’s again, with Boogie Brown and Cock Diesel Robby, and me and Boogie Brown and Scan split a quarter bag of shrooms, which meant I took like half of it, and I was booming man. I rode my 10-speed across the nickel bridge at like four in the morning with a blood red harvest moon rising over the James, and I was freestyling at the sky and I remember thinking it was the best freestyle I ever had done ever EVER! but of course, never remembered even half an idea from it, heading back to southside to my house where the bitch ass ex, her new boyfriend potentially, anything could be waiting. Instead the house was empty still, just my dog Waylon who had tore up a bunch of aloe vera plants. I stared at Waylon sitting on the bed, which is what I liked to do when tripping, and to this day I think that’s why we were so close as man and dog, it was some twisted brainwashing bullshit. I think I tricked him into thinking I was part dog, or I accidentally shot human powers into his brain while on shrooms or something, which is why he had to sleep only on beds or couches mostly.
Next morning, I packed a backpack full of shit and hit the road myself, Greyhound riding out west. When I got back, I just grabbed my basic shit, as the ex and Willie were official, and I left a lot of music behind. I called one time back to my old house where they lived, and no one was home, and the answering machine came on and it was a clip from THIS FUCKING TAPE! Oh man, the ridiculousness of it all. I would say that’s ironic, but the term’s been thrown around in so many strange ways I don’t even remember what it’s supposed to mean anymore.
At some point since then, though, I got this on vinyl. Actually, twice that’s happened, because my first copy was scratched up as fuck, so I upgraded one day when I ran across it again, though I think I still have both copies. One of them, I’ve been meaning to tape the cover of to the walls inside the camper, because it’s one of my favorite album covers. Everything so grey yet happy. It is raining outside and I am typing click-clack-clickity-clack shit all over a laptop, tin roof pattering, Statik Selektah mix show on the satellite radio... the world is a ghetto, but filled with such good times blasting horns. Fuck it man, the apocalypse is gonna be a party.
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