Unsteady

NoFX, “I Wanna Be Your Baby”

A misfire from this record, I just really don’t want to hear Fat Mike singing this, you know?

Unsteady, “Breaking Up”

A real treat! Unsteady put up a handful of unreleased tracks onto the web in 2001 or so, and I managed to grab them and hang onto them for forever. They never released a followup to their masterful Double or Nothing, so these four tracks are the only things we have. More than I think anybody else in the third wave, they’re the band that I wanted to hear more from. Alas.

The Young Fresh Fellows, “Another Ten Reasons”

Tad Hutchison is really smokin’ on the drums on this tune, friends! I was going to say that this is from the last Young Fresh Fellows album, Tiempo De Lujo, but no! Turns out there was one last year, exciting!

Unsteady, “Darkie Love Affair”

I was going to say that Unsteady is one of the lost gems of the third wave, having put out two outstanding, unique albums that combine a sort of carnival atmosphere with a jazzy take on ska. But, uh, that song title is not great. Listening carefully, I think it’s an attempt to be clever, there’s no malice here, but yeah.

Not a ton to say today.

James Brown, “It’s A Man’s World”

So, uh, sometimes the sexual politics of Brown’s music wasn’t great. You know, it happens. I’ll just observe that Brown had a co-writer for this song, Betty Jean Newsome, which is kind of interesting.

(NB: on Star Time, this track has the above name, not “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World”))

Fugazi, “Public Witness Program”

I don’t want to take too much away from the majesty of this pure slab of punk, so just enjoy.

Good set today.

Hepcat, “You And I”

Hepcat could really straddle the line between ska, rocksteady, and even something like soul. This song is just a low-key delight.

Wu-Tang Clan, “Shame On A Nigga”

I love it when rappers deliberately use a bogus word and correct themselves in their rhymes, like Method Man does in his verse. This song, of course, comes from Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), one of the revolutionary records of rap, and one of my very favorites. I listened to this song a second time when I put together the play list. And then YouTube pulled up “Da Mystery Of Chessboxin’”, so I listened to that too.

Without noticing, I passed six moths of doing this stuff. Nice. Here’s today’s tunes.

Unsteady, “Me”

Another track from Unsteady’s fantastic Double or Nothing, this sarcastic song contains the genius line “I’m a blessed martyr to the church inside my head”, which I think about a lot. Anyway, the ratio of “how much I like this album” to “how much the rest of the world has heard of this album” is just about as high as it gets on this record.

At some point, these things are just going to be wholly unrelated to the music. I wonder if I’ll have the good sense to stop? Who knows? MUSIC

Freeway & Jake One, “Money”

As we talked about last time, Freeway’s always had good taste in producers. For The Stimulus Package (great name!), he teamed up with Seattle’s Jake One, and the result was my favorite album of his.

Why yes, I am kind of a Seattle homer, why do you ask?