Day After Day #186: Bring the Noise

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Bring the Noise (1991)

By 1991, the fusing of rap and rock wasn't a new thing. Rick Rubin had already made it happen in the mid-'80s with Run-DMC and Beastie Boys, with the most famous crossover being Run-DMC teaming with Aerosmith to cover "Walk This Way." 

Meanwhile, in the world of thrash metal, New York City's Anthrax was emerging in the '80s as a force to be reckoned with; along with Metallica, Slayer and Megadeth, the band was popularizing thrash in the mainstream. Anthrax was also vocal in its support of the burgeoning hip hop scene; the band released a rap-rock song called "I'm the Man" in 1987, guested on U.T.F.O.'s "Lethal" and guitarist Scott Ian regularly wore Public Enemy shirts on stage and in photo shoots. PE then name-checked Anthrax in the song "Bring the Noise" on their classic 1988 album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.

In 1991, Anthrax and Public Enemy teamed up to do a cover of "Bring the Noise," which the band had been playing in concert for two years. Anthrax approached Chuck D of Public Enemy about rapping on their version of the song and at first, he was hesitant. But the band sent their instrumental version and after being unable to get both acts in the studio together, Chuck D and Flavor Flav recorded their vocals and Ian and Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante edited them into the song. Ian rapped the third verse of the song, and then Anthrax shot a live video with Chuck and Flav, which became a huge hit on MTV with both audiences.

"Bass! How low can you go?/Death row, what a brother knows/Once again, back is the incredible/The rhyme animal/The uncannable D, Public Enemy Number One/Five-O said, 'Freeze!' and I got numb/Can I tell 'em that I never really had a gun/But it's the wax that Terminator X spun/Now they got me in a cell 'cause my records, they sell/'Cause a brother like me said, 'Well/Farrakhan's a prophet and I think you ought to listen to/What he can say to you, what you wanna do is follow for now'/Power of the people, say/'Make a miracle, D, pump the lyrical'/Black is back, all in, we're gonna win/Check it out, yeah y'all, here we go again/Turn it up! Bring the noise!/Turn it up! Bring the noise!"

Ian and guitarist Dan Spitz provide an unrelentingly heavy guitar crunch while Benante's powerful drumming propels the proceedings along.

"Never badder than bad 'cause the brother is madder than mad/At the fact that's corrupt like a senator/Soul on a roll, but you treat it like soap on a rope/'Cause the beats and the lines are so dope/Listen for lessons I'm saying inside/Music that the critics are blasting me for/They'll never care for the brothers and sisters/Now, cause the country has us up for the war/We got to demonstrate, come on now, they're gonna have to wait/Till we get it right/Radio stations I question their blackness/They call themselves black, but we'll see if they play this."

Almost immediately after the song was released (first as a single, then on Anthrax's comp Attack of the Killer B's and on PE's Apocalypse 91...the Enemy Strikes Black), the two acts decided to do a tour together in 1991 with Primus and Young Black Teenagers opening up. Both bands enjoyed the tour, which was attended by predominantly white fans, but it introduced a lot of kids to Public Enemy and hip hop in general. The shows ended with Anthrax and PE playing "Bring the Noise," and Chuck said the early shows were difficult because Anthrax's intense live show forced PE to step up their game in concert. 

The collaboration paved the way for more rap-rock connections, for better and worse. Ice-T rolled out his metal band Body Count and created tons of controversy with the song "Cop Killer." Rage Against the Machine emerged in 1992 with an amalgamation of rap, punk and hard rock that was a big hit, and in 1993, the soundtrack to the little-seen horror movie Judgment Night featured collaborations with hip-hop and rock artists (including House of Pain and Helmet, Run-DMC and Living Colour, Ice-T and Slayer, Cypress Hill and Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr. and Del the Funkee Homosapien, Pearl Jam and Cypress Hill, Faith No More and Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E., and Sir Mix-a-lot and Mudhoney). And then toward the end of the '90s came rap-rock from the likes of Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock and Linkin Park.

Both Anthrax and Public Enemy have continued to release new music and tour over the last 30+ years, even teaming up again for a 2021 version of "Bring the Noise." The song still resonates all these years later.

 

Day After Day #9: Brothers Gonna Work It Out

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Brothers Gonna Work It Out

I grew up a fan of rock music. Although I listened to a lot of pop and R&B as a kid, it wasn't until I was around 12 and listening to rock radio that I started to really become serious about music, especially guitar-based music. I remember hearing "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang around 1980 and thinking it was cool, but my attention quickly turned to the likes of Zeppelin, Rush and Black Sabbath. In the mid-'80s as the likes of Run DMC and Beastie Boys emerged, I enjoyed them but I held off from buying any of their albums. I watched a lot of MTV and hip hop was getting more and more exposure, but I still resisted. 

By 1990, CDs had become the music format of choice. I still had a ton of vinyl, but it was obvious by the summer of '89 that CDs were taking over. For a lot of people, that meant buying music on CD that they already owned on vinyl or cassette. My dad gave me my first CD player (and a pair of huge-ass speakers) as a present when I graduated from college in May 1989, so I started buying CDs. But I didn't want to repeat myself, so for the most part, I bought CDs of albums I didn't previously own. 

As CDs started to dominate, the prices for pre-recorded cassettes dropped. My thing had always been to buy music on vinyl (and later CD) and then record it on blank cassette for listening in the car or on my Walkman. But when I noticed tapes were cheaper, sometimes I would buy cassettes of artists I wasn't entirely sure about. These were the days when you couldn't just go online and listen to an entire album before you bought it. You maybe heard a song or two and based the purchase on that. In the spring of 1990, Lechmere was a popular department store in Massachusetts. I would go regularly to the Lechmere at the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers and get cheap CDs and sometimes tapes.

Public Enemy had stoked a fair amount of controversy the previous summer with the kickass "Fight the Power" off the soundtrack to Spike Lee's even more controversial film Do the Right Thing. I didn't see the movie in the theaters but rented it on VHS not long after and in addition to enjoying the hell out of it, the movie made me want to check out more PE music. I knew "Don't Believe the Hype" from their previous album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, but that was about it. So I went down to Lechmere and got three tapes for $20: PE's new album Fear of a Black Planet, De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising and Digital Underground's Sex Packets ("The Humpty Dance" was a total banger, of course). All three albums were great, but it was PE that really opened my eyes and ears.

Public Enemy's third album, Fear of a Black Planet was unapologetically Afrocentric and in your face, both lyrically and sonically. The counterpoint of Chuck D, with his booming stentorian raps, and rapper/hype man Flavor Flav, with a much more flamboyant rap style and demeanor, was striking. What really stood out to me was DJ Terminator X and the Bomb Squad (Chuck D, Eric Sadler, and Keith and Hank Shocklee), who produced the album and provided impressive musical backing: turning samples, sound effects and beats into a wall of noise that could rival any rock band. This was before hip hop artists were forced to pay for samples, so there were literally hundreds of them on this album; much like De La Soul and the Beasties, this would have to be settled in court later. 

PE's second single off the album, "911 is a Joke," became an unexpected hit on MTV, criticizing the late emergency response services in black neighborhoods. Flav was the main vocalist on it and was featured in the video as an accident victim waiting for an ambulance crew to arrive. The album is full of bangers: "Welcome to the Terrordome," "Burn Hollywood Burn," "Fight the Power," "Can't Do Nuttin' for Ya Man," the title track, but for me, "Brothers Gonna Work It Out" is the standout. Chuck and Flav trading verses, a killer guitar sample from Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" and Bobby Byrd from James Brown's "Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved," all backed by a monster groove. The song features Chuck and Flav exhorting the African-American community to work together to fight injustice. Just a beast of a song, through and through.

Fear of a Black Planet was PE's peak. Chuck and Flav teamed with Anthrax to redo PE's 1988 song "Bring the Noise" and it became an MTV hit and inspired a lot more rap-rock teamups in the years to come. PE released another strong album the following year, Apocalypse '91...The Enemy Strikes Black, but a few years later, Terminator X broke his leg in a motorcycle accident and eventually left the group. PE have continued making albums throughout the last 25 years, but to me, they haven't touched the earlier material. Although by all accounts, PE still brings it live. Chuck and Flav still have a strong media presence. Chuck toured with the Prophets of Rage, which featured members of Rage Against the Machine as well as B-Real of Cypress Hill, and Flav became a reality TV star on various shows and lately has been popping up everywhere, from Taylor Swift concerts to singing the national anthem at ballgames.

But if you want PE at the peak of their powers, it's Fear of a Black Planet.

Completely Conspicuous 582: Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos

Part 2 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey about our favorite music of 1988. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").

Show notes:

- Recorded while driving home from Trillium Brewing in Canton, Mass.

- Phil's #5: Sonic Youth focuses their sound 

- Jay's #5: J. Mascis and Dino Jr. get more melodic while still delivering a heavy sound

- Phil's #4: U2's first controversial album still provides a lot of memorable moments, overshadowed by the movie

- Jay's #4 and Phil's #3: Living Colour's debut showed off their many talents

- Jay's #3: Debut from Toronto's The Pursuit of Happiness combined hard rock, neurotic singer and girl group backing vocals

- Phil's #2: R.E.M.'s last album before they became superstars

- Jay's #2: Public Enemy at the peak of their powers

- Phil's and Jay's #1: Los Pixies creates the template for the '90s alt-rock explosion

- Favorite songs: "Gigantic" (Phil), "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" (Jay)

Completely Conspicuous is available through Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!

The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

Welcome to the Terrordome

Normally I'd be posting about my favorite song of 2008 today in my "Ye Olde Hit Parade" series, as well as posting the episode of Completely Conspicuous that was set to go up today, but things in the world are just a tad messed up. There's a lot of shit going down across our nation right now and today has been designated as Blackout Tuesday to call attention to the protests against systemic racism. So I'm taking a break today and will be back with my regular shizz tomorrow. Keep your head up!

Fight This Generation

As I get older, I find I'm more prone to griping about "kids these days." It's not that I have this burning desire to yell at kids to get off my lawn, but there are definitely generational differences that jump out at me.

The one sticking in my proverbial craw at this particular point in time has to do with context. Not just having a thorough knowledge of what's going on right now, but what came before you. Seems to me that a lot of the young'uns don't know and don't really care about what happened in the past, whether that past is 100, 20, 10 or even five years ago. Part of this is reflected in blank stares if you make a cultural reference more than a year old, but especially in music, there's an out-and-out ignorance of the music of previous generations.

My ire was provoked by an NPR blog post that ran last week in which an intern reviewed an album he had never heard before, Public Enemy's 1988 hip-hop classic It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Now I don't begrudge the kid for not having heard it; the album came out before he was born. And I guess that's the point of the post, to get the perspective of a kid who isn't a so-called expert. But holy crap, the guy has no reference points to judge the album on other than to say that Drake rules and Chuck D sounds weird. And if that's his opinion, more power to him, but it illustrates my point.

[Begin old guy rant] I don't necessarily blame this kid, because it's a societal thing, but his review really bums me out. Our society is so overloaded with stimuli these days coming at us through smartphones, computers, TV, etc., that it's a tough task to keep up with what's happening right now, let alone what happened 20 years ago.

Growing up, I listened to plenty of new music, but I also knew about bands that came out when I was a baby (or before I was born) like the Beatles, Stones, the Who, Zeppelin. I didn't get into them until I was 11 or 12, but when I found out about them, I dove in. And it wasn't as easy to access the music or do the research back in the late '70s/early '80s. You'd hear bands on the radio, but you had to buy the records or read books or magazines to get any information about artists. Now you can stream just about any band's music on Spotify or YouTube and get plenty of opinions (as well as facts) about an artist before you ever spend any money (if you do at all).

But if you point out the ignorance displayed by this kid and others, you're usually met with a shrug because nobody gives a rat's arse about some old farts and the music they played in the Paleolithic Age. The same thing goes for movies/TV/history. It used to be cool to be knowledgeable about bands or a music scene or movies or whatever; now unless you're in a trivia contest, you don't have to know that stuff. You can just look it up on your phone if you need to.

Of course, I'm generalizing about a whole generation; I'm sure there are kids who know about Public Enemy or Led Zeppelin or The Feelies, but they're few and far between. There's too much coming at kids these days for them to bother looking back. And that's a damn shame. [Conclude old guy rant]

Mixology: High-Decibel Mixology

Mixology is a recurring feature in which I take a look at one of the many mix tapes I made over the years. Some are better than others, but all of them are fun to revisit.

High-Decibel Mixology (9/15/90)

Here's another mix from 20 freakin' years ago, and indeed, the one that gave this feature its name. I was firmly entrenched at the Peabody Times as the schools reporter, which meant I covered a lot of School Committee meetings and whenever there was some wacky assembly activity like the Traveling Tidepool. Not exactly Woodward and Bernstein, but it was a job. I was still thinking I would move on to a bigger paper in a year, but that never happened.

I started going to a lot of concerts: Smithereens, Aerosmith/Black Crowes, Jerry Seinfeld, Robert Plant, and even James Taylor (wasn't my idea). I drove up to Toronto in August with my brother again, this time for a week. We saw three games at the then-brand new Skydome, two against the Red Sox and one against the Brewers; the place sold out all 50,000 seats every night, but my aunt hooked us up.

At the time, I was a regular customer of Rockit Records in Saugus, which was a great store on Route 1 North. In the '80s, I used to frequent the Rockit store in Nashua with my buddy Tat to find the latest metal releases and issues of Kerrang! magazine. I used to comb through the used CD offerings to get good deals; that's where I bought the Black Crowes' debut Shake Your Money Maker, the Kings of the Sun album (had to look that one up; traded it in long ago) and the Dread Zeppelin disc, both of which are featured on this tape. The store closed in the mid-to-late '90s, unfortunately. Rockit was one of the last of the great indie record stores in the 'burbs. Thankfully, Newbury Comics (which is a chain with an indie mentality) and the Record Exchange in Salem are still around.

Musically, I still dug the heavy rock, as is evidenced by the presence of Living Colour and Tesla (!) here, and the guitar heroes (Vai, Belew, Johnson, Hendrix, Moore), but I was also broadening my listening habits and getting into acts like Public Enemy. I picked up the cassette of Fear of a Black Planet earlier in '90 and was into it. I liked the Flavor Flav stuff, but was more into Chuck D's booming raps. That dude was SERIOUS. There's also a song off the soundtrack to Mo' Better Blues, featuring none other than Denzel Washington on vocals, kinda jazz-rappin', I guess. He played a trumpet player in the Spike Lee movie, which I quite enjoyed. Listening to it now, it definitely sticks out, but what the hey. They can't all be gems.

Side A
Elvis is Dead - Living Colour
Heartbreaker - Dread Zeppelin
I am a Wild Party - Kim Mitchell
Fuckin' Up - Neil Young
The One Thing - The Pursuit of Happiness
Pop Top 40 - Branford Marsalis Quintet and Terence Blanchard (with Denzel Washington)
Don't Break My Heart! - 24/7 Spyz
911 is a Joke - Public Enemy
Drop the Gun - Kings of the Sun
Pretty Pink Rose - Adrian Belew (with David Bowie)
Cliffs of Dover - Eric Johnson

Side B
That's the Hold (live) - Kim Mitchell
Type - Living Colour
Heaven's Trail (No Way Out) - Tesla
Erotic Nightmares - Steve Vai
Trouble with the Sweet Stuff - Billy Idol
Liberty Lies - David Baerwald
While My Guitar Gently Weeps - Jeff Healey Band
Oh Pretty Woman - Gary Moore
Sister Luck - Black Crowes
Radio One Theme - Jimi Hendrix Experience





Drop the Gun:


911 is a Joke:

Mixology: Slammin' Summer Tunes

Mixology is a recurring feature in which I take a look at one of the many mix tapes I made over the years. Some are better than others, but all of them are fun to revisit.

Slammin' Summer Tunes (7/15/92)

This was the first tape I made after trading in my old Hyundai Excel hatchback for a bigger sedan, the Hyundai Elantra. The car had way more pickup than my previous putt-putt of a vehicle. It was a pretty fun summer. I was the lead reporter at the Peabody Times, the Blue Jays were on their way to their first of two consecutive World Series, and I was enjoying life as a 24-year-old.

I saw an up-and-coming band called Pearl Jam play at Axis, a tiny club on Landsdowne Street in Boston, just before they joined the second Lollapalooza tour; a month later, I also saw Soundgarden play next door at Avalon before jumping on the same tour. I also saw said tour at Great Woods in Mansfield (now known as the Comcast Center, I think). Other shows I caught included Matthew Sweet touring behind the classic Girlfriend album opening for Robyn Hitchcock at Avalon; the Black Crowes at the Orpheum in August; and in November, my brother and I saw Mudhoney at the Paradise and Alice in Chains and the Screaming Trees at the old Channel club.

Red Sox tickets were a lot cheaper and easier to get back then; I saw the Jays play the Sox at Fenway six times that season for the mere price of $7 each for bleacher seats. Visited Toronto in late September and saw the Jays play the Sox and Brewers on their way to wrapping up the division title. On the way out of the city, I picked up a six-pack of Labatt's Blue, which I drank when the Jays clinched the division, beat the heavily favored Oakland A's in the ALCS and then knocked off the also heavily favored Atlanta Braves to win the World Series. I only had one bottle left by that point, but it tasted sweet. And even though it was after midnight into the morning of Sunday, Oct. 25, my buddy Eric (a Sox fan) came over with a bottle of champagne. Good egg.

With the exception of the first song (which I will admit to liking because it was catchy and sung by the dude from Red Rider, a band I dug as a kid in Toronto), this tape holds up pretty well nearly 18 years later. It starts off bluesy, gradually gets heavier and heavier, and then works its way back to the blues with Stevie Ray Vaughan's great "Life by the Drop." It was a great soundtrack for a fun summer and lead-in for a terrific fall. Little did I know that the following year would be a massive bag of crap. But at least I made the most of '92.

Side A
Life is a Highway - Tom Cochrane
Sting Me - The Black Crowes
Only Fool in Town - Gary Moore
Wham! - Stevie Ray Vaughan
She Runs Hot - Little Village
Spanish Moon - Arc Angels
One Shot - Tin Machine
The Big Wheel - Rush
Jerry Was a Race Car Driver - Primus
The Power of Equality - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Prisoner - King's X
Porch - Pearl Jam
Right Turn - Alice in Chains

Side B
Into the Void (Sealth) - Soundgarden
Lithium - Nirvana
Bring the Noise - Anthrax with Public Enemy
Grip - Rollins Band
New Jack Theme - Living Colour
Got Me Wrong - Alice in Chains
Black - Pearl Jam
Funky Monks - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Ghost of a Chance - Rush
Solar Sex Panel - Little Village
Black Moon Creeping - The Black Crowes
Life by the Drop - Stevie Ray Vaughan




Dog will hunt:


Yeah, boyeeeeeeeeee: