Vitamin C!

Vitamin C - Can
That's Vitamin C! It's also called L-asorbic acid. Vitamin C is essential for human life. Some animals, strangely, make their own vitamin C internally, most notably all bats and tarsiers and monkeys and apes. I'm glad that we do not make our own vitamin C internally because I enjoy having an excuse to eat lots of kiwis and grapefruits and tangerines.

Here is a picture of some citrus fruits:

They look delicious, don't they?

I am assured that vitamin C has biological significance. Here is a quote from a fairly reliable source: "SVCT2 is involved in vitamin C transport in almost every tissue, the notable exception being red blood cells which lose SVCT during maturation. Knockout animals for SVCT2 die shortly after birth, suggesting that SVCT2-mediated vitamin C transport is necessary for life." The complicated and unfamiliar language assures me that vitamin C is, indeed, biologically significant. While I do not understand the quote I provided, I am curious about some of its claims. I feel a certain pathos for red blood cells who lose their SVCT after they graduate from, presumably, adolescence. I guess life (with all its dependence on vitamin C) is tough for everyone. I am also curious about what a "knockout animal" is. I am also saddened to learn that they die quickly after they are born. God is cruel.

While vitamin C is essential for life, "Vitamin C" (please note the helpful quotation marks) is also a song by a German band called Can. Like the scientific language above, they are complicated and unfamiliar. When they were a band in West Germany (the democratic sovereign state on the right side of the Iron Curtain, which is a metaphor for the divide between communist states and democratic states), Can recorded a few strange albums with strange names like and Tago Mago and Monster Movie and Ege Bamyasi. The album from which "Vitamin C" is taken is Ege Bamyasi, which means "Aegean okra" in the Turkish language. Okra is also good. However, it is not a citrus fruit, so do not expect it to deliver any vitamin C (please note the lack of quotation marks) to you. I also like the song "Father Cannot Yell" by this band, but I am not writing about that song. I am writing about "Vitamin C."

The song "Vitamin C" is a very good song. I would say that it is the best song on the album. I make that claim because the song that should be the best song (the next song on the album, "Soup") is over 10 minutes long and only 5 of those minute are really good. I sometimes lose my patience with the last 5 minutes of "Soup." I do not lose my patience with "Vitamin C" because it is an important song. I think the song is a PSA (or public service announcement) for the importance of receiving vitamin C. The singer of Can reminds the listener of the song that he or she is losing his or her vitamin C. Since vitamin C is important for life, the singer's message about the importance of vitamin C is an important message.

Losing your vitamin C is a scary proposition. Think about this when you are thinking about not getting your vitamin C by eating a citrus fruit: vitamin C deficiency is the cause of a disease called scurvy. To illustrate the danger of scurvy, please look at the helpful picture below:


When you have scurvy you have loss of teeth, pale skin, and sunken eyes. Since you probably like to not lose your teeth or have your skin be pale or have your eyes sunken, then you would be wise to heed the warning of the lead singer of Can to get your vitamin C by eating citrus fruits.

On a historical note, many pirates had scurvy because they did not have access to the vitamin C-rich citrus fruits that we decadent Americans take for granted every morning at breakfast while we read USA Today and sip hot beverages like tea or coffee. Also, many sailors (who were people who ferried commercial goods over vast oceans) had scurvy too. If you will excuse the pun, they were in the same boat as pirates with regard to their vitamin C consumption. Sometimes, pirates wanted to steal the commercial goods that sailors were transporting. The pirate captain would order his ship to ride beside the commercial freighter while his men stormed aboard. The pirates would take the commercial goods because they could use those commercial goods or they could sell the commercial goods on the black market. Think about this fact: men with scurvy (pirates) often fought other men with scurvy (sailors). God is cruel.

I want to say one last thing about the song "Vitamin C." My favorite part of the song is the noises made at the end. At first it sounds like someone breathing with a deviated septum. But then you think it sounds like the moment right before a tea kettle begins its full whistle. Then you think it sounds like seagulls, which just backs up the scurvy/pirate theme I mentioned earlier. At the very end of the song, though, it is clear that it is some kind of digital sound, perhaps made by a keyboard or a computer. Keyboards/computers are remarkable like that. They make our lives sustainable, which is what vitamin C does.

Fuck The Security Guards

Fuck the Security Guards



Sorry I didn't get one up yesterday—got a little busy. As recompense, I give you “Fuck The Security Guards”, by Niggaz With Hats, the fictional rap group from the sadly forgotten mockumentary, Fear of a Black Hat. Made in the early 90's, the genre hadn't really been played out yet—this was way after Spinal Tap (to which it is clearly homage--the go through a series of white managers, each one of who gets murdered), but still before Guffman and the recent spate of Office clones. The premise, basically, is to follow around a send-up of NWA as they get famous, break-up, and eventually reunite. Why NWH? Because it was a lack of hats that kept the slaves down, of course, they were too tired to escape at night because they had the son beating down on their heads all day. The music, while all parodies, is actually not that bad—in this case, the security guard riff seemed a lot fresher back then because it was long before the Mall Cop meme entered our national lexicon. Highlight of the movie, perhaps, is Ice Cold trying to explain the deep social importance of their misunderstood mega-hit, Booty Juice, or Pet That Pussy:

Ice Cold: "P", Political, "U", Unrest, "S", Stabilize, another "S", Society, "Y", Yeah.

"I Say Fever" Ramona Falls, "I'm That Type of Guy" LL Cool J

"You're the type of guy to call me a punk, not knowin your main girl is bitin my chunk."


I Say Fever
by Ramona Falls, Intuit, 2009.
I'm That Type of Guy
by LL Cool J, Walking With a Panther, 1989.

I am completely addicted to "I Say Fever" right now.

It's amazing to me how loaded those opening hard guitar strums and piano tinkles are. The opening lyrics all about waiting five years make no sense whatsoever to me, nor does the response, "I say fever," but Brent Knopf seems pretty fucking thrilled to be saying it. The heights that he stretches that moment to are astounding. It's nonsensical catharsis.

Brent Knopf is a member of Menomena, a band I don't particularly care for (even though I love their name), but I love Intuit and it will end up on my year-end lists (if you like this song but aren't completely sold, listen to "Clover" as well).

As far as I can tell, the song is about a guy who's trying to figure out when to either marry or have sex with a lady. His contention is, there's no time like the present. You know, drop it like it's hot, or as he sings at some point, "Hold my heart like a hot potato."

About three and a half minutes in it goes into that very weird Wizard of Oz Emerald City Guard chanting, which is different from the militaristic chanting of R.E.M's "Orange Crush" or Kayne's "Jesus Walks" (which I think is a sample of the R.E.M. maybe?) but it did remind me an awful lot of a song I loved twenty years ago, Mr. James Smith's "I'm That Type of Guy," which couldn't be any more clear what it's about: LL Cool J will do your girlfriend, love her pudding (I'm not sure if that's a metaphor or not, I hope not because pudding IS delicious), go down on her (seems like if that's what he meant by pudding he wouldn't repeat himself, right?), takes her to breakfast, lunch, dinner, and breakfast (okay, maybe he would repeat himself).


Delicious sexual metaphor, Cool James!





Later LL Cool J seems to run out of metaphors, and this is where the song gets hilarious. "I'm the type of guy/ That lets you keep believin it/ Go ahead and work/ While I defrost it and season it." Uh, yep. Unless her boyfriend is Jeffrey Dahmer, this seems like it's stretching a bit. Why is he putting on a pamper? (yes, I understand he might be talking about pampering in the other sense, but it doesn't sound like it, "put on a pamper"? It sounds more like fetishistic acts, which, hey, cool, I guess.) Why is leaving his drawers in their hamper a good thing? So the dude's girlfriend has to do the laundry? How does that appeal to the ladies? Get ready to wash my filthy underpants! I don't know if we find the type of guy he is appealing any longer. Also, he threatens an excellent ring and run or whatever you called it when you were six. When you start threatening to ring someone's doorbell and leave, you've truly run out of gas. Of course, I shouldn't question the workings of one LL Cool J.

But "I'm That Type of Guy" separates itself from some of what was going on in hip-hop at the time with this slinky production (courtesy of L.A. Posse, which included DJ Pooh and Muffla). That opening machine-gun beat sets the tone. Reversing notes, flipping bass lines, dropping in heavy pianos, and then, of course, bringing in a chorus to chant the piece from Wizard of Oz is the coup de grace. I would give my life savings (admittedly a negative number) to be in the studio while they were explaining to a bunch of dudes what they were there to do.

The absolute best part of this song, and maybe any rap track by an established artist, comes around 3 minutes in, when LL just sits out for half a bar for no reason. He kind of matches it on the other half of the verse, but not really. Just awkward silence and the track runs on without him. So, uh

The Dark End of the Street - Percy Sledge

The Dark End of the Street


If Dave brought us two (very different) versions of the same street story, then I would like to present a third telling in this little romantic Rashomon: Percy Sledge's "The Dark End of the Street."

Bill Withers has just stomped by with Percy's girl. Percy has tried to give Withers the stare down, but he doesn't have it in him. Percy's a lover, not a fighter. Look at that man over there. A man with curls like that isn't worried about posturing because while you're flexing down at the corner bar, tapping your feet to Arthur Conley, he's busy whispering sweet nothings in your girl's ear. This is a man who has only ever curled his fist around a microphone.

But Withers' return look, a dead-eyed look of unnamable recriminations, stops Percy cold in the street. He watches Withers walk away with his girl, listening to him ask her pointed questions. Who is he to her!? Only her truest love! Then, the strings begin to tighten around the girl in question and Withers' massive arm pulls her closer. That tambourine sounds ominously like a fist being punched into the palm of his hand. Someone's seeing the business end of that fist tonight, dadgumit.

Percy's paralyzed. He feels his heart breaking as their history together on this very street comes back in the wavy notes of a guitar. Here, on this street, at the dark end down there, he used to meet her. They didn't belong there, but then again they didn't belong anywhere. Now here come the waves of guilt. Percy might be a ladies man, but he's right with Jesus. Everything he has done in the name of love is framed as erotic iniquity. His paranoia threatens to get the best of this lover man: Withers knows, his wife knows, everyone down at Muscle Shoals First Baptist Church knows. And they're going to find Percy and his girl. And it's going to end. With some of the unbrassiest horn backing in all of soul, Percy almost loses it.

But a voice rises up from the graveyard organ haunting Percy's song. A voice so sonorous and pure that it can only be the lonely call of his girl. She's still in if he is! He won't give up. He won't be a martyr for love. Percy ain't going to let Bill 'The Cuckold' Withers stand in his way. This man has a plan. Should this happen again, she is to be cool. She is to be much cooler than she was today ("Clearing your throat? Are you kidding me!?"). Just walk on by. Don't give anything away. Don't cry because we'll meet later. We'll work on your excuse. We'll meet down at the dark end of the street, and then we've got the world open before us.