J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - May '09

J.J. Krupert is the name of my gaypod, which is what I call my tiny little 2 gig iPod Shuffler, and I find it to be the perfect size, because when it comes to squeezing analogous music down into little 1s and 0s and stuffed into a tiny piece of electronical stimulation, I don't want 7000 albums all at once. With the little bitch, I change my theme every now and then, cut shit off fairly regularly, add other things, it's like survival of the fittest. It is called J.J. Krupert because when my middle kid was like 4, she always played my DJ Z-Trip CD we got back when his retard mash-up style was new and fresh and not old and played out. And she would ask what it is and I'd tell her and she'd go, "Oh cool. Mommy, I'm listening to J.J. Krupert again." So that's what it is.
I did this once before at some point as monthly mixes of songs, but fuck it man, there's enough free music inside the internets. So I'm starting fresh and will simply write about the top 13 most played songs on my gaypod named J.J. Krupert. Of course, with me and my strange halfwitted mathematically seduced brain, there are ridiculously unnecessary parameters. I will not write about a song more than once (if I even do this more than once, as this was my May list for the beginning of the month and I'm just now feeling like doing it), and there can only be one song per list by any individual musical artist, so that if I go buckwild this summer and just get high all the time and listen to Led Zeppelin constantly, it doesn't end up being just a list of Led Zeppeling songs. So anyways, here is my list of top 13 most played songs on my ridiculously small robot machine of music as it was for the start of May 2009 the year of the psychedelic goat eating all the blackberries that greedy little fucker.
#1: "A Crippled Man Finally Rides a Train" by 1000 Feathers - Basically, this is me using my new ancient hobo style that I've been doing out the in camper, since I mostly just make the music with myself nowadays. The formula is I take funky-ish breakbeats from classic rock records, sometimes identifiable sometimes not at all, straight up just loop them using the Audacity and a USB turnstable, and then I record my vocals straight into the Audacity too, testing it's limit to process too much information at once. I got a bootleg of that Ableton Live, but that shit's got too many knobs and bullshit for me to figure out. I wouldn't be able to actually write anything anymore if I learned myself that Jap nonsense. Then I pitch shift my vocals down seven notches since DJ Screw brainwashed me into thinking that's the best way, and plus I only write lyrics about riding trains or Greyhounds or shooting pool or swimming in the river - basically outlaw country standard fodder, but in the rappitty rapping ways. This song was the first one I did, and the best one too. I used the beginning break of "Up On Cripple Creek" by The Band, which was always my favorite The Band song, but I've come to love my own song so much that when I used to have both songs on my gaypod and The Band would start singing instead of my warped vocals going "I'd like to ride the rails but I'm too far off the tracks..." I'd be bummed. I even deleted the original version because of this fact. It's the best song I've ever done in my life and makes The Band seem stupid in comparison. Basically, Robbie Robertson only existed as a springboard for me to make a retarded song in a borrowed gypsy lady's camper in my backyard about becoming a hobo out of frustration from life. Sorry bro. We all have our positions to play.
#2: "Enough Rope" by Chris Knight - I heard this on the satellite radio one Saturday morning (which I just cut that bitch off - they were offering me like 3 months free to stay on and all and I was like, "Dude, I don't listen to it. It's boring. Just cut it off.") and got some off an internet dude, and this song rules. It's the best country song ever of the past 10 years, except if he had actually sold it and like Trace Adkins did it as a follow-up to "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk", it wouldn't actually be awesome anymore because regular people would know it, and I'm an internet music nerd contrarian hipster fucker, so I can only really really really like things most people don't know about. It makes me feel special and helps me compensate for self-esteem issues I have in other facets of my life. There are other Chris Knight songs and I've heard them and tried multiple times, but honestly, I'm convinced this is the only good song this dude ever did. He is a one-hit wonder, except his one-hit is underground level hit, so he didn't even get briefly rich from Billboard charts until he realized his evil Jew manager ripped him off and actually owns the right to the song and made all the real money off the deal.
#3: "Ironhorse/Born to Lose" by Motorhead - Not the later metallic Motorhead version, but a very early, post-Hawkwind, mellow yet rugged Lemmy making the greatest biker anthem of all-time. I had this on a tape that got stolen out my car years ago when I worked at the Richmond Times-Dispatch in RVA, and I looked forever for it, even buying a few used Motorhead CDs that always ended up having the more metal version. Finally, this dude Sicknote who is inside the internets and can find anything you ask him for even if you make it up and it doesn't exist found me the version I had long been missing. One thing lame about gaypods is I can't just have this set to be the first thing I hear in my truck when I get in it in the morning, to motivate me to make that money and feel good working out in the sun simple man hell yeah boy. I mean, I guess I actually could figure out how to make that happen, but man, it's hard enough to get up and actually go to shitty ass work, much less plan out morning theme music to make the shitty day better.
#4: "Wagon Wheel" by Old Crow Medicine Show - This is the greatest new school bluegrass song ever. Most newgrass is a little too college town we wear overalls ironically for my taste. Even a bit of O.C.M.S. is like that for me. But there is no denying this is a great motherfuckin' song. It makes me want to get high and hitchhike to North Carolina and see if Boomer and Shannon are around and if they've had the baby or not but maybe Boomer and me can go to Georgia and find adventure for a few days. But of course none of that happens because I'm broke, have to work, and have already had three childrens of various ages, so whenever I get money, self-indulgent retarded drug-fueled road trips usually fall too far down the financial priority list underneath things like the electric bill and paying for ballet class and fuck we need to go grocery shopping again, the baby's already out of her muesli in the weird 1970s box we can only find at that grocery store in Waynesboro.
#5: "Blue Jean Blues" by ZZ Top - DJed a party at my mom's crib last fall for a bunch of older country redneck drunkards and stoners. The next morning, when I woke late after drinking like 23 Yuenglings the night before, there was slow moving, some horseshoes throwing, fire still going, and plenty of loungers having some Sunday morning coming down beers in their hands. So before I could break all the components down, one old dude was like, "Play some Otis if you got it." This led to just playing mellow ass records and plenty of quality lounger bullshitting going on. I threw on Fandango to hear "Blue Jean Blues" and this one lady, good friend of my mom and her son and me grew up together - tight families, she looks at me and goes, "Oh Raven, what a great song." I already loved this song a shit ton, but all those top-level loungers being laid back and wasted, and Mike's mom with her outlaw woman voice saying that, it made the song even more perfect. Actually, I just copped something called The Moving Sidewalks off the inside of the internets which is Billy Gibbons' first band before ZZ Top, a late '60s psychedelic deal where you can really hear how into Jimi Hendrix ol' Billy Gibbons was back then, and it's good shit too. Billy Gibbons is a national treasure and it really saddens me that most people only think of the horrendous '80s MTV electronic hit factory ZZ Top and not the real deal dirty jeans scruffy beard professional lounger soundtrack masters. When I start a college, Billy Gibbons is gonna be one of the first people I tenure.
#6: "Country Rap Tune" by Tow Down featuring DJ Screw, Hawk, & Big Pokey - This is a great song, one of my favorite ever screwed songs and probably the most unheralded underground hit by a white rapper ever. I was in a fancy hotel with speedy internet one time and actually looked up the video for this on the youtubes and it was weird hearing it at regular speed, like it sounded all freaky and odd. But the Tow Down dude was driving like a Honda Civic painted like the General Lee, which is what I always joked I'd do with my Datsun, except I was gonna paint it orange with a Japanese flag on top and paint "GENERAL TSO" along the edges of the roof, and probably keep the 01 number. Have you ever been to a demolition derby? You'd be surprised how many cars at a demolition derby are number 69. You'd also be surprised how many different ways people can purposely misspell “get ‘er done”.
#7: "Long Haired Lounger" by Prolo - Boogie Brown has a bluegrassy group called The Porch Loungers, but some of his songs are too retarded and lazy-boned for them, so he makes them Prolo songs. This is one, with no rapping at all, where he plays guitar, sang harmonies and shit like only he can, then screwed the whole thing down. I’ve heard of people listening to country music screwed and how it works at times, but music made specifically for that purpose is some next level shit. My man Brown.
#8: "Born Poor" by The Jaggerz - 7-inch single I got from some yard sale that I didn’t know shit about and got the band mixed up with The Sylvers ends up being one of my favorite 7-inches I have. Just your standard everyday olden style soulish but maybe white dudes involved song about how being poor is golden and you are not corrupted by the bullshit uppitty affairs of this twisted world, thus you are able to truly love, and also truly long dick a chick. Well, maybe that last part is not so obvious, but it is implied. Poor people love big asses and only rich people lust for the emaciated scrawny sickliness of super models. Eat some samwich bitch.
#9: "Longhaired Redneck" by David Allan Coe - Man, I’ve been listening to a lot of David Allan Coe lately, but nothing as late as this song (from the late ‘70s or so), so I’m not sure how it got played so much on my gaypod. But it is here so I talk of it now. I went to a DAC show one time by myself in Richmond and it was bikers but no cowboys and I thought I’d be the hippie standing in the corner except a couple fake redneck college buddies of mine showed up too who don’t speak redneck, which made us more likely to get smashed by someone, except I do speak redneck since it’s in my bloodline, and probably actually nothing that extraordinary even happened, I’m just babbling. That show was the worst DAC show I saw (I’ve been to like 6 or 7) because I guess he had just made up and met his daughter, who was like 23 or some shit, so one whole set was a bunch of bullshit sentimental sorry deadbeat dad but I didn’t know no better let’s go dance in an abandoned warehouse like in The Wrestler type bullshit. Really dulled my drunk.
#10: "In the Red" by Willie Isz - Khujo Goodie is a growling pork chop breathed awesome MC motherfucker, who I’ve always loved. It was his growl and Ceelo’s wacky sang-rapping style that made Goodie Mobb so goddamned awesome when they came out. (I guess Gipp was good for a little break in the action and some funny fashion accessories, and honestly to this day I have no idea why T-Mo was in the group or what he contributed. He pretty much ruined the perfection of “Soul Food” with his “Fuck Chris Darden! Fuck Marcia Clark!” dumb shit, not to mention dating the hell out of that song now in retrospect.) Jneiro Jarel is some sort of space age indy rap producer extraordinaire who probably has sketches of a “RIP J. Dilla” tattoo in some art notebooks on his bookshelf made of milk crates and cinderblocks somewhere. Even his name - Jneiro Jarel - and I may even be right on this, but I’ve assumed it was one of the bad guys from Superman that got stuffed in that cocaine mirror and shot into space. But I will say, on the strength of this “In the Red” song, I am more stoked for this impending CD (supposed to come out in like week or two I think) than anything else hip hop related in maybe a couple years. I guess the MF Doom this year was pretty good, but it was predictable. This is some retarded next level paranoia-laced multi-generation corny swaggerless audio goodness potentially, this Willie Isz is. And if Ceelo can get famous with Gnarls Barkley, I’d like to see Khujo do the same with Willie Isz, so when they make a Goodie Mobb reunion CD where T-Mo ruins it yet again and Gipp wears like ostrich feathers in his teeth or some shit, regular white people will be more apt to lump Khujo in with Ceelo as a guy held back by his lesser potnas than lump him with the aforementioned clowns.
#11: "Better Off" by Corntooth - Corntooth is a country assed band from my old roommate Matt (also check out his rock shit at RPG) and his wife and some other dudes I know or don’t know who were or are in Lamb of God or Gwar or other shit. It’s good stuff, as Matt’s from Pennsyltucky and his wife Janey is from Roanoke so the vocal stylings make you want to drink beer while watching Philo Beddo beat up Mexicans. I’ts great shit and impossible to ever find inside the internets, but it exists. I swear.
#12: "Pills I Took" by Hank Williams III - I love some Tricephus, which is extra enjoyable now because my eldest kid is 10 and hates country music (much like I did at her age) and even drew me a wacky picture of her idea of a hoedown with people wearing plaid clothes and eating fried chicken from Wal-Mart and carrying purses made of old blue jeans and playing the banjo and harmonica in annoying hoedown ways. She hates Hank III. It’s fun to have kids growing up that you can torment. I wonder if my parents took so much pride in tormenting me or it was some regular sitcom style bullshit where they didn’t realize they were tormenting. Because I know I’m bugging my kid, and I am proud of it, and because I know it it means I’m smart. So smart. That’s why I have a blog. Only smart people have blogs, so they can share how smart they are with the rest of the stupid fucking world.
#13: "Box #10" by Jim Croce - If the current economic climate causes me to either flip out or get desperate or both and do something so stupid I end up in jail for the rest of my life, I’m gonna do nothing but tattoo Jim Croce lyrics on my body. That, and try not to let anybody know how good I braid hair. In the last month, I’ve actually become pretty good at putting a bun in a young girl’s hair (that’s not a euphemism, in case you were wondering), which is a skill I’d never thought I’d acquire. Of course, instead of just doing it half-assed, I had to look it up online, ask my wife to show me, and my middle kid’s bun got better each and every week. First week, the shit fell out, bobby pins all over the ballet school floor. But last week, shit was so tight I was tempted to not even use the little crocheted bun holder thingy to give it that added tightness. I thought I could let her roll straight bun style. I am a man who conquers things.