THE TOFU HUT

Dusty Grooves Give Good Music

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glisten: skimming the surface noise

The Pitter Pats - "Bury Me Dead"

The Hueys - "You Ain't No Hippie"

In the spirit of Soul Sides' Black Label Collection, Th' Hut is both excited and proud to offer a new regular feature: skimming the surface noise. The skimming tracks are analog-to-digital transfers of 78 and 45 RPM cuts from a number of genres; you'll find gospel, bluegrass, jazz, quartet singing and folk music in the mix. All of this material has been provided by the good graces of Good Ol' Pops Tofu. Every track is either horrendously obscure or simply out of print; you're unlikely to see this music anywhere else. Beathunters and DJ's should keep an eye peeled for the surface noise imprint; you ain't gonna have THESE hooks, I promise.

As the title and the source suggests, skimming tracks are going to be clad in a bit of surface noise; this may sound a bit disarming to modern-day laser-eared listeners, but I find a reasonable (read: not obtrusive) amount of surface noise to be nostalgiac, warm and somewhat desirable. Rather than give you some sort of sterilized copy of the original, here's the real dirty dirty, just like it would sound on the shellac today. If you can't handle that, Jack, you can stick it up your filter.

Our first episode of surface noise focuses on a pair of pieces from New Orleans r+b piano maestro, Huey 'Piano' Smith. Huey's big smash back in the day was "Don't You Just Know it"; the singles he wrote that you probably still know include "Sea Cruise", "Lil' Liza Jane" and "Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu". All of Smith's hits came on Ace Records; by the time of these two recordings, Huey's star had faded somewhat and he had been forced out to the much smaller and less-reliable Instant label.

Nonetheless, Huey STAYED recording and touring for well over twenty years, mostly with his primary backing band, The Clowns; but, by the 1960's, Smith chose to start hitting the road with a few smaller side projects, giving himself the liberty to cut loose and test out new material without jeopardizing the Clown's good name. These AKA bands including 'The Hueys' and 'The Pitter Pats' (presumably named after the popular card game that band members gambled over). Huey was joined on these trips with his fellow songwriter, collaborator and lead female soloist, Brenda Brandon. Brandon can be heard doing solo work on 1967's "Bury Me Dead," a cocky and joyous paean to bachelor(ette)hood.

Huey would eventually retire from the music industry and join the hallowed musical ranks (Prince, MJ) of the Jehovah's Witness, but not before he took a broad stab at posers and youth culture wanna-be's with his vicious, funky, bass-blasting "You Ain't No Hippie", circa '68.

Both of these cuts remain, to the best of my knowledge, currently unissued on CD; however, both HAVE been recently re-released on an import-only vinyl pressing of Smith rarities called Pitta' Pattin' that I would LOVE to get ahold of. Holla if ya holdin'!

How to make sure that they ONLY bury you dead.
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Learn a bit more about hippies.

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spiffy

$615 coulda got you an ivory monkey head with baseball cap.

Unfortunately I had all my money tied up in this cosplay fox head.

Decisions, decisions.
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For those of you who have a PS2, you owe it to yourself to take on God of War, which held me rapt for three glorious days. It's a perfect rental.

on the other hand, I feel entirely safe in saying that I think I should be able to comfortably skip fiddy's entry to the ol' ultraviolent.

I mean, what the fuck, you're getting involved in real world gunplay and then making hyperrealistic looking supersamurai killmachine videogames starring yourself? This, for me, is off the rails. And yeah, I know it's not meant for kids, but they're releasing it on Christmas? Pfah.
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Ugly animals yawning.
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Sure, everybody heard about that great lion vs. midget battle royale, but were you aware about the outbreak of Cambodian zombies?

More news pranks, please.
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Our old buddy D. Boyle is more than willing to ride the new Star Wars train to the dark side.

As long as it's organic, I guess...
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FUCK FUCK FUCK DEVIN FUCK FUCK!!!

I am EXTEMELY hyped about this concert; Devin is a BIG Tofu Hut favorite and somebody I would totally go out of my way to see. Luckily, th' Dude is gonna be nearby and I will DEFINITELY be on hand; anybody who'd like to come with should drop me a line so we can get together and show this gentleman some serious New York love.

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followup

First off, a big apology to all readers, new and old, for my enforced suspension from school. A severely wonky Firefox continued to bump me out of Blogger's homepage, iTunes erased my playlists, I couldn't get my files FTP'd over to my host, dogs ate my homework...

Suffice it to say, a dozen insolvable problems came to a head and had to be dealt with by sowing the earth with salt, invoking a few sacred names, sacrificing a cute lil' goat and finally reinstalling Windows (shudder). Tensions ran high and I'm not ashamed to say that some tears were shed, but I think we're back on solid ground again (though this post had to be re-written when my C drive got wiped on the OS reinstallation); keep those fingers crossed.

Obviously, this lag couldn't have happened at a worse time: I could hardly help but notice that the incomplete audioblog list seems to have stirred up a little attention to my humble abode and what better time to abandon a thriving project than when you have thirty five thousand hits a day? Oy. Anyway, welcome to those of you who found your way here in the aftermath of all the hubbub; I hope you'll find the general blither-blather and spucktacular music worth hangin' around. I've a completely full roster for the upcoming week (we've got underground Japanese hiphop and more surface noise rarities just to get started), so check back often... heck, I'll even quit buggin' ya for contributions for the next two weeks until we've done some genuine content providing; how's that?

COMMERCIAL FREE HUT, YA'LL!

You may notice that I said incomplete audioblog list; I've been turned on to and discovered some FIFTY MORE since the post in question. There will be an update on the sidebar within the week, so if you already breezed through the last six or seven hundred links, I'll have fresh meat for you soon.

Also worthy of note: the list in question has since been wiki-ized, so feel free to play along at home!

And let's not forget the fallout from the Bizzy radio interview; that shit went tempest in a teapot over at Allhiphop, culminating in this public apology from Matt.

As far as I can see, Matt did pretty right by Bizzy and Bizzy responded with how he felt. No harm, no foul all over; I still wish somebody would step up and do right by the brother.

Lastly, a big thank you to the boys over at The Morning News for throwing a few kudos my way. I'm much impressed to be hangin' with the company on this list and while I _haven't_ heard (or loved) "every song possible", I _am_ insane.

So, you know, I got that goin' for me.
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Labels: clicky, music, personal silliness