You meet him at the resort in 1981 while your boyfriend mails you joints from eight thousand miles away. He smiles at you on a Nile houseboat and over brunch in the delta, milk charred in clay pots, the rice is sweet, and wet. You pretend you are older and from an older people still. I watch and imagine I am also descended from the jackal. The world is an afternoon by a canal in a wheat field. We do white lines the following summer in the city, but not the same one. You stop writing after you go away to school. I never get closer to the sun than on the back of that donkey.
If you’re not familiar with this 12” from Liquid Liquid on 99 Records (pronounced nine nine), “Cavern” is where Grandmaster Flash got the bass line for “White Lines,” and “This record is what ultimately destroyed 99 Records.” (Scroll down at that link if you don’t want to read about other 99 Records releases.)
Listening to this you can hear the same sensibilities happening in the nascent hip hop scene that influenced Gang of Four, PiL, and A Certain Ratio in the post-punk world, a groove still copped today !!!
The whole 12” is worth listening to. These mp3s are ripped from my so-so copy, decent, but the tracks are not without their pops and tics. Here for your perusal at 320 kbps.
Liquid Liquid
Optimo/Cavern/Scraper/Out 12” 99 Records (1983)
And because it’s Monday:
PiL
Swan Lake
A Certain Ratio
Shack Up
Gang of Four
He’d Send in the Army
!!!
Shit Schiesse Merde, Pt. 1
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Okay, I had NO idea that GMF had actually just ripped off this tune for White Lines. That makes me a little sad.
Well, that’s where rap started–MCs talking over the tracks the DJs were spinning, so you can’t fault them entirely. But that tale of how Sugar Hill basically screwed 99 Records and left both Liquid Liquid and ESG in limbo without contracts or control of their recordings is miserable. The music business blows at all levels.