Long Haul Flights

The flight from Hong Kong to Los Angeles is damn long and that’s if you are flying direct. If you have to stop off en route, which I had to a couple of days ago, it’s even longer and, let me tell you, it isn’t much fun. The only saving grace is that you can plug your headphones into the greatest device ever invented, the iPod, close your eyes and listen to hours of music without interruption and on this journey I decided it was time to get stuck into some serious Stevie Wonder listening. I did it all. Well not all of it, but I went through Innervisions, Songs In The Key Of Life, Hotter Than July, Music Of My Mind and Talking Book to name but a few of his masterpieces and honestly I enjoyed every single minute of them. For years I have always tried to figure out what my top three Stevie Wonder tunes are and, whilst these will probably have changed by this time next week, for now the list is definitive: (1) You’ve Got It Bad Girl (2) Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You) and (3) Rocket Love. Go and check these out if you don’t know them or haven’t heard them in a while. Each of these is just such a work of genius I don’t even know what to say about them and words won’t do them justice so I am going to stop writing now.

Slow Down

Picture the scene: You’re sitting in a bar in Hong Kong and the worst music ever created by mankind is blaring through the speakers two inches above your head. All you want to do is leave but you can’t because you’ve just sat down with a bunch of people you don’t know that well and you don’t want to be rude. It’s getting worse and worse and then suddenly the music stops and the barman goes to change the CD. At this point you’re not expecting much and, as you wait for the next track to kick in, there’s this nervousness in your stomach. Then you hear the opening bars and you can’t believe your ears. Is it really? Surely it can’t be? Yes it is. It is. It’s Slow Down by Brand Nubian – one of the best hip-hop tracks ever – which you haven’t heard in ages and all of a sudden you’re smiling. As Grand Puba, Sadat X and the rest of the gang rhyme over the Edie Brickell hook, you find yourself a million miles away thinking about how excited you were when you bought Brand Nubian’s first album, One For All, in Tower Records on Broadway all those years ago and things start looking up. Then, in the space of less than five minutes, the moment is gone and it’s back to the Hong Kong variant of Greek Island trance and once again you’re looking down the barrel of a very long night.

Chilling With The House Of Pain

Back in the day a song was simply a song. If you liked it, you listened to it and, if you didn’t like it, well then you didn’t listen to it. Then the remix came along and changed everything. Songs started getting house mixes, chilled out smooth groove mixes and of course hip-hop mixes and artists you had never given the time of day to before you would all of a sudden find yourself listening to. I could go on for hours about this but, to cut a long story short, there have always been, and always will be, good and bad remixes and really all I wanted to talk about was how amazing the Pete Rock remix of House of Pain’s Jump Around is. Whether you like the original or not, there’s no disputing it’s one of hip-hop’s finest party anthems so for Pete Rock to have conjured up a remix which blasted it out of the water was no mean feat. Everything about the Pete Rock version – the intro, the beats, the verse he throws in for good measure and the groove – are just so good I don’t even know how to begin to comment on them. Whenever a DJ drops this joint wherever it is, within five seconds you can bet your bottom dollar the crowd will be going crazy so go dig this out and remind yourself and good it is as remixes don’t get much better.