J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - March '10

This is the March J.J. Krupert countdown of most played songs on my stupid gaypod machine that has not been listed beforehand in previous months. It is always funny going back through this, because usually it's the stuff I was obsessing over two weeks ago and now I'm obsessing over some other shit that I end up talking about next month. I have always thought about starting to share links for the music each month, but fuck man, the internet is full of fools sharing music. Trust me with what I write about this bullshit and go steal it for yourself.
#1: "I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water" by Charlie Rich - Oh man, like I think I've said before, I knew Charlie Rich as the "Behind Closed Doors" dude, which is a great song. I have the record with that single on it and my kids say he looks like a pig man on the cover, and they oink at it when I play it. This song is from some batch of old early Charlie Rich shit I downloaded at some point inside the cybernetz, and good fucking lord. There's a velvet smoothness like Sun labelmate Elvis Presley, yet more outlaw to this old Charlie Rich shit than Johnny Cash had at that point. Honestly, after hearing all this old stuff, it's easy to see how Johnny Cash probably co-opted some of his man in black swagger from Charlie Rich. (Side note: there should really be a pair of rappers from some medium-sized city in the south who go by Charlie Rich and Johnny Cash. Maybe me and Mike Gee will start rocking that style.) This song is fucking amazing, old school southern white dude outlaw smoothness, like a good David Allan Coe song but done without a hitch in the sanging or a stumble in the delivery. Of course, that's what makes good outlaw country so outlaw is the raw nature of it, but with the Charlie Rich style, and him talking about robbing people and driving Cadillacs and stuff, it gives it a gangsta smooth factor that the white underclass has pretty much abandoned for nearly fifty years when it gets it's outlaw on in the music industry.
#2: "Thank Yuh Jah" by Vybz Kartel - I probably first came across it when I was on a heavy Mavado kick a few years back, but whoever the fuck started the shift from the hyper ragga style of the '90s into the more traditional sing-songy reggae style but with bass-heavy beats (that are not the annoying 5000 bpms of reggaeton) is a Jamaican national treasure. I do not know, nor care to learn, about all the beefs going on between the best reggae dudes, but I know they apparently all fall into two factions that constantly battle, and were apparently from the same faction at some point. Vybz Kartel, like all reggae dudes, does corny ass sexually explicit songs which just make me feel like a dumbass because I don't have four fat assed chicks shaking their ass like it's having an epileptic seizure but the rest of their body is fine (and I mean fine) in front of a tin shack building. This is some chill ass modern reggae, yet since it's modern, he talks about smoking herb when he wakes up and the lyrics aren't nearly as spiritual as your average Rainbow Gathering dreadlocked white rastaboy would desire in his leisurely battles against Babylon, brah, but the style of it all is so fucking great. I actually played this song nine times in a row one day going to work.
#3: "Long Haired Country Boy" by The Charlie Daniels Band - This song is ingrained in my brain from Saturday and Sunday mornings. My folks, and later once they separated, my dad on the solo tip, would be up late as fuck partying on Friday and Saturday nights. But my dad would raise up early, usually earlier than he did on days he had to work, probably because he was always motivated to be laid back more than go listen to some asshole all day to try and earn a dollar. And the old man would be pumping music, usually not till 8 in the morning though, out of respect to everybody else. When I was a teenager and had started getting all fucked up myself on weekend evenings, I'd so want to sleep till noon, but the music would be blaring early on, and the smell of bacon and eggs and homemade biscuits would be kicking it as well. I learned how to tune it out, until my folks got separated and me and my dad lived in a shitty little trailer with no door on my room. I could still learn to cover my head with the pillow though, until it got too hot and the sun would bake the fucking aluminum painted roof and it was like sleeping in a fire pit. We had a clotheshanger that kept the front door open and you'd just walk out in the main room and kick it until your brain got itself together. My dad would keep a pie tin with bacon and eggs and biscuits in the oven for me, covered with foil. And a few hours later, we'd do it again, in our own separate worlds of delinquency, although I did enjoy blowing off friends my age to play poker for pocket change with my dad and a couple of his buddies. Everybody who knew how cheated, so it worked good to have me playing because my dad could deal me hands, and I'd rake it in, and they knew I couldn't cheat because I was only 16 and wasn't good enough at it yet, and I'd make $40 a night playing poker that had a quarter limit for the most part. This covered my gas money during the week, so it saved my dad having to give me that shit. In fact, I think all he had to support me on from the separation was gas money, so we cheated at cards to cover that. Hahaha, I never even realized that until now. Word up, Charlie Tuna. You were a mean ass dude with a good heart and a confined spirit. Hope you're doing well. Do they even have the internet in whatever afterlife they sent you too? I bet if you went to Hell, they have wifi in your brain. If you went to Heaven, probably no internet though I'd suspect.
#4: "Fix Up, Look Sharp" by Dizzee Rascal - Who'd have thunk that Billy Squier's "Big Beat" would be a classic break beat? Here is Dizzee Rascal from his first album rocking that break with the intriguing angle of an underclass limey accent. It is an enjoyable thing for me. My oldest kid seems to love British rappers. It's too bad there's only like two good ones.
#5: "Master Of The Universe" by Hawkwind - I have been looking at the stars a lot more lately, out on the giant oak stump left by the pig pen that I used to nail old workboots up when it was still a standing tree. When I am sitting out there, with a teaspoon of wild lettuce tincture in my brain, Hawkwind makes more sense than any fucking thing that has ever made music ever. Ideally I would like to freeze Hawkwind into that one early to mid 1970s period I find to be the best, and not have them mutate and morph into the myriad of different things they have been over the decades. But that is nonsense. What kind of asshole sits out there at night and looks at the moon and says, "I want to go there, and see if they have things we can use." The same type of asshole that likes to force a band to be his favorite songs by them and nothing more. Dominion over the Earth, as well as the Universe. Fuck people and their peopley ways.
#6: "Super" by R.A. The Rugged Man - I am sad there is not a much larger discography for R.A., as he is a solid motherfucker. He just released a theme song to his new movie called "Bad Biology" but the song ain't that great. I don't think you can dabble in rap and maintain that high level that R.A. was doing in his prime of obscure awesomeness. Still, even when not his best, he's better than most motherfuckers. And I have no problem with him dedicating himself to the writing game, especially when a book he's supposed to have coming out is some sort of degenerate's account of professional boxing.
#7: "Gates Of Hell" by Masked Assassins - This is the title song from the only album I think Masked Assassins ever did. They are an unknown southern group doing the paranoid crazy horrorcore rap style, kind of like Bone Thugs meets Killah Priest. For the most part, you can skip ever trying to find their CD, but this song is the greatest shit ever. Wake up, get high, clean up for work, listen to this twice, drink a big ass cup of coffee, and go get my white man on.
#8: "G.I. Pride" by Freddie Gibbs - I skipped this song forever because I thought it was gonna be some corny ass "to all my soldiers in Iraqistan" song, but then finally listened to it and was like, "Oh yeah, 'G.I.' is Gary, Indiana." Freddie Gibbs is one of the few great ass mixtape rappers who make great fucking songs and I wish had had a chance in the regular music era where people made regular CDs and earned regular people's money to get themselves some nice cars and a big house before the Jews bilked them of their fortunes through shady record contract situations. Nowadays, they don't get nothing but some free sneakers.
#9: "One Draw (screwed & chopped)" by Rita Marley - "I wanna get high... so high" sounded good enough I guess in regular speeds, but you slow it down so that she sounds like a ghostly dude from laid back heaven and what you have my friend is something that I can enjoy the fuck out of.
#10: "Vacilando Con Ayahuesca" by Juaneco Y Su Combo - South American drug music, but the drugs are spiritual and native and not processed and chemical, which means if you die, you die with a totally awesome vision of the end of the world and what is wrong with everything everywhere while you die. This is from an album called The Roots of Chicha, which is a psychedelic plant from South America that inspired a whole genre of Third World funk music. Except this song is about ayahuesca, which is also a psychedelic plant of much brain activity. We just bottled a homebrew that has aspects of that, a Scandinavian viking style, and it will be ready in like ten days, and I am ready to get my tore down on, sitting on the pig pen stump, looking at the stars analyzing the sky, asking myself was I meant to be here, and why?
#11: "La Danza De Los Mirlos" by Los Mirlos - Another Roots of Chicha track, and really, if you are a fan of world music but not the stupid fucking Putamayo style ("putamayo" is Portuguese for "stupid white people") but more of a raw dog wild style, this is a CD you would be enjoying, I am sure, especially if you like shit like pupusas and LSD and 8th Street Latinas and Mexican dudes who work construction but are wearing really nice soccer jerseys for teams you have no idea what it is and you actually follow soccer.
#12: "Sunday Morning Coming Down" by Willie Nelson - Willie live is still awesome as fuck, but studio album Willie has been sort of lackluster and mailed in for nearly a decade now. This song, which I guess is off some album he put out at some point, probably to pay off more tax debt or just because someone recorded him while he wasn't paying attention, is fucking great. I can listen over and over and over to it, and love it so much more than Johnny Cash's version. In fact, I'll just say it - Johnny Cash is overrated as fuck. Sure, he's good, but really kinda predictable. And good fucking lord, he's got more after death albums than Tupac at this point.
#13: "In My Resume" by Swamp Dogg - You have probably never heard of Swamp Dogg. This is your own fault. Virginia born and bred soul singer from some point or another who is still around and kicking it (actually saw him perform live last year), and has the most ridiculous high-pitched but raspy sanging voice. I first got into him from him making John Prine's "Sam Stone" useless for anybody else to ever try to do again, but I dl'ed a couple CDs sometime last year, and this is the song that has been the most played. Ridiculously good soul-searching yet not corny song. If when I die, Swamp Dogg is still alive, and we are not broke asses, I want my wife to hire him to play my funeral. And I want him to sing "Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day" by The Charlie Daniels Band.