Thursdays with Thurl: Whitefolks Blowout!
Two things about having a strong Croatian readership, they’re not too big into rap/soul/etc. and they have been on my ass about writing a Mario Kasun profile (COMING SOON). The Croats had a terribly difficult time making out the lyrics to the Twista track I posted last week, so I decided to switch gears this Thursday and give em something a little bit, well, milkier…Thurl, I now turn it over to you…
…Thanks, son. First, I must apologize. Masha Lopatova (that’s Mrs. Andrei Kirilienko to you) dropped off a CD with her hit single, “Sakharniy” (Sugary) at my house the other day (Utah neighbors!), and I can’t find it anywhere. It’s a huge hit in Russia right now, and really wanted to post it for all of our Eastern European friends. Instead, I will start things off on the heels of yesterday’s hot discussion of Catholicism with Jim Carroll’s “Catholic Boy” from The Basketball Diaries. The soundtrack to this movie—a biopic of Carroll’s rise as a Catholic High School basketball star and his descent into heroin and other Please Kill Me type sketchy shit—supposedly features a version of this song with Pearl Jam (huge Sonics fans!), but this is the real deal right here:
Jim Carroll: “Catholic Boy”
Next up is a track from Drums & Tuba, a New York duo(?) who specializes in songs consisting of only two instruments (Big T isn’t telling which ones, though!). They sort of epitomize the freejazz/rock/klezmer type scene that was really big at Tonic in New York at the end of the 20th century, and that TrentonHassles wasn’t cool enough to be up on when he began living out East. The hoops connection to this track runs deep. First of all, the track is entitled “Scottie Pippen.” Second, this track is from the album, The Flying Ballerina, reissued by My Pal God Records, a New Jersey label owned by Princeton Hoops enthusiast, Jon Solomon, who also runs the site: www.princetonbasketball.com
Drums & Tuba: “Scottie Pippen”
Last is a track that—love it or hate it—you should all be familiar with. It’s the Beastie Boys Bill Laimbeer diss track, “Tough Guy,” from Ill Communication. Clocking in at just under a minute, this song fails to ruin a very solid album from the Beastie Boys that also included numerous references to an Anthony Mason-driven Knicks squad. Around this time, Slam put out its first issue, which profiled a pick-up game involving Mason, the Beastie Boys, and Q-Tip. Better times those were, for all involved.
Beastie Boys: “Tough Guy”
As always, Big T says…..ennnnjoy.
posted by Dr. Lawyer IndianChief @ 8/25/2005 11:41:00 AM
9 comments
9 Comments:
i'm confused. . . last week, thurl kicked things off, and led into your discussion of music. this week, you're the figureheard, and thurl's the one with the knowledge. . .all of which is actually knowledge about THC's life history?
strange bedfellows, you and thurl.
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we are only human, and thus will profess it to be so
BATTLES WITHIN!!!!!
thc and i just realized that we'd interpreted (no walton) in completely different ways. he's been using it as a basketball-ified version of (no homo) (has "(no homo)" jumped the shark? or does it not jump the shark until the dips give it up? isn't the point of dip set that they themselves are perpetually jumping the shark?).
i, on the other hand, had thought it meant that the author was making a ridiculous, over-the-top pronouncement, but didn't want it to be dismissed as grandstanding fluff, as we so often do walton's massive claims. to my discredit, i don't know what the point is of claiming that you've said something outlandish but urging people to take it somewhat seriously. it would be like if (no homo) meant "i'm gay, but not so gay that i would write what i just wrote with an intended homosexual connotation."
i don't know which one of us came up with the expression, so maybe the readers should decide.
I feel somewhat awkward intervening in a dispute between the godfathers of Darko, but I’ve always understood “NO WALTON” to be an aside meant to acknowledge a bit of overexcited hyperbole (which is really useful on a site largely dedicated to overexcited hyperbole). It’s still basically a basketball version of “No Homo.” I think OED would’ve instructed THC to use a simple “No Homo” after any use of tag team (unless said tag team consisted of Jerry Garcia and John Wooden, in which case either one is acceptable).
This way also allows for more options. For instance, if Shoals ever wants to say “Amare blocked Duncan with no regard for humanity,” he can follow it with “NO HARLAN.”
Either way, I don’t think you have to worry about Simmons swiping this from you since he only listens to U2 and the Bravery.
i'm with shoals and brick on this one and was therefore confused by THC's usage of "no walton" in this column. i was thinking, is walton a wrestling fan or something?
confusion = over. kevin harlan is my boy.
someday we should do a post about basketball player references in hip-hop. . .this might be an over-generalization, but i feel like now rappers mostly just name-drop players that are good to emphasize how good they are. whereas back in the day it was more about mentioning players for what they did, and somehow fitting that into the verse.
though it seems like you still hear people use stockton that way.
c rayz walz is good at being clever about it--and mentions stockton more than once, or maybe the other time it was jerry sloan, or the jazz in general. he also was responsible for one of my favorite lines ever, basketball related or not: "i spit 16's in your face like twin kobes"
this is my last post before we actually do it up proper, but
"high post like hakeem" and "john stockton couldnt assist you" were both on the same jay-z song, "bring it on."
slam actually catalogues a lot of this stuff, and my favorite one comes from cormega (huge hoops fan) when he says "slept on...like the draft did mcgrady/this rap shit is crazy"
"...put a larry johnson crease in ya caesar..."
Seems like Tribe Called Quest had a knack for name-checking the Knicks constantly, especially the fan favorites.
Heheheh.
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