ON REPEAT #4: Sunflower Bean, Nice As Fuck, Salami Rose Joe Louis, The Amps, Chill Rob G & Snap!,

It's gettin, it's gettin, it's gettin kinda hectic!

Every week I pick a handful of songs I have on repeat (playlist of these here), along with one GOLD STANDARD (just an old song I already like and am revisiting). Song recommendations are welcome!

My friend Kate just made a substack and just published the first post and it’s mostly pictures of Madness posters on a wall in London, but if that’s the kinda thing that speaks to you, give it a follow. There might be some cool mixes (not entirely involving 2nd wave ska) that pop up on it!

• Sunflower Bean “Who Put You Up To This?”

• Salami Rose Joe Louis “Akousmatikous (feat. Soccer96)”

• Chill Rob G “Let The Words Flow” / Snap! “The Power”

• The Amps “Tipp City”

• Nice As Fuck “Door”

Sunflower Bean “Who Put You Up To This?”

(Bandcamp)

Sunflower Bean has been blowing up more and more with each album they’ve released. They actually played my public access show way back in the day when they were still babies. This song has been on rotation for me for a while now—like a year maybe—but it’s still on repeat and might be one of those songs that lowkey dominate my last.fm stats (which I still look at sometimes). I particularly like when Julia sings “In another life, I was a fish, now I'm sitting on the fucking dish” because cursing is cool and she does it well. Also I love that guitar solo.

Salami Rose Joe Louis “Akousmatikous (feat. Soccer96)”

(Bandcamp)

This is a good morning song. Something to put on before you even get out of bed. It starts slow but then more and more starts happening and by the end, you’ve had a sonic cup of coffee. I’m bad at writing about music. I meant to see Salami Rose Joe Louis (aka multi-instrumentalist Lindsay Olsen) at Zebulon last weekend but I forgot but there’s a lot of great music there that sounds like it was beamed from space by chill aliens who wanted to share their morning music.

Chill Rob G “Let The Words Flow”

It’s gettin’ kinda hectic. I alluded to this controversy in a previous post but I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

This song probably sounds vaguely familiar to you. It sounds like a lot of danceable hip-hop of the late 80s. Chill Rob G was a respected, but not well-known MC in Jersey City, a contemporary of Queen Latifah, and a founding member of the Flavor Unit collective. He released this record in 1987, along with an acapella track (a common feature of singles of the era, for DJs to use in mixes) and it wound up in the hands of Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti, a eurodance duo based in Frankfurt, looking for one of these crazycool hip-hop rappers to feature on a song.

Above: Snap!

The duo sampled his acapella rap, sampled a Mantronix song called “King of the Beats” from 1988, added a new chorus sampled from and the “I’ve Got The Power!” line from a 1985 Jocelyn Brown song called “Love’s Gonna Get You” and released it under their name, Snap!

They recruited a rapper, Durron Butler, previously a heavy metal drummer, who was a member of the U.S. Army stationed in Germany. They took him off the army base and he was rechristened TURBO B (which I am also going by now). One rapper called him, “the lyrical Jesse James.” (That rapper was Turbo B.)

Chill Rob G eventually caught wind of this when Jungle Brothers toured Europe and spotted a Snap! performance with Turbo B doing the “Let The Words Flow” rap. And seeing how this track was beginning to take off in Europe, he’d release his own version in the United States on a small label called Wild Pitch and beat the thieves at their own game, pulling the same Mantronix and Jocelyn Brown samples:

Snap! caught wind of this and raced to make a legit version of their song for Arista Records, with slicker production value and a new rap penned by Turbo B.

For the chorus, Jocelyn Brown commenced with legal action, but the crew recruited the legendary Chaka Khan for the song. Chaka didn’t show to the recording, she instead sent Penny Ford, of Klymaxx fame. (If you don’t know Klymaxx, you gotta see this video of a weird, smiling, seated shirtless man doing the robot with a blank stare while attached to a keyboard in an elevator.)

Snap! “The Power”

Snap! was no longer two white German DJs but now a black American singer and rapper, who had a #1 hit in multiple countries before they even met one another.

That’s not Penny Ford. She’s not in the music video. She was busy recording with Chaka so they got Turbo B’s cousin, who was supposedly also on an army base in Germany, and had her lip sync for the music video. Then the Milli Vanilli controversy happened so they quickly got back in touch with Penny Ford to avoid any further drama in that regard. And she can really sing (and dance):

I’m gonna assume the dancer guys were also pulled off an army base. I also like Turbo B’s lil Sheila E drums and the synchronized dancing.

Above: (also) Snap!

People that recognized Chill Rob G’s (only lyrically superior) version of the song barely even had bragging rights, because Snap! technically released it first. Rob struggled for years to put out another record after his label was reluctant to fight Arista Records.

The song sold over a million copies, but the group was not ready for this newfound success. Turbo B was not part of the dance scene—let alone the gay community, and was surprised to walk out to an audience of drag queens and dropped some slurs after an altercation with two men that caused controversy. Penny Ford would leave the group before the 2nd album and was replaced with Thea Austin, who would sing on the more techno-leaning “Rhythm is a Dancer,” another big hit—but Turbo B hated it, maybe due to this poetic line:

I’m serious as cancer, when I say rhythm is a dancer.

Snap! (the white dudes) continued to move towards house music and continued to put records out over the years. Turbo B left the group but returned when other projects fell through. Penny Ford joined Soul II Soul, and would eventually appear on Judge Mathis suing her ex-producer (with star witness Chaka Khan testifying via telephone), but she rejoined Snap! in 2006. After decades of struggling with record labels, he finally released two more albums, one just last year. Jocelyn Brown, the woman who sang the words, “I’ve Got The Power,” finally sued in 2009.

If you thought this was nuts, wait til I get to “Whoomp There It Is…”

The Amps “Tipp City”

I was watching a Sofia Coppola short film from the 90’s and heard a catchy song by some band called The Amps, who I hadn’t heard of. Turns out it’s Kim Deal! The Breeders were on a break, and The Pixies were broken so she made a one-off record with some Minneapolis friends.

Look…Kim Deal is cool, but I kinda wanted this to be some forgotten garage band that Coppola heard on a mixtape. This is the same way I felt when I found out Nice as Fuck was a supergroup.

THE GOLD STANDARD

Nice as Fuck “Door”

Like come on! Troop Beverly Hills-ass Jenny Lewis AND someone from The Like AND Erika from Au Revoir Simone!? (I met some of them!)

I heard this first completely without context. I wanted it to be some randos! I hate supergroups. Fuckin’ Velvet Revolver over here. Fuckin’ Audioslave. Fuckin’ Traveling Wilburys shit. What, did BILL MURRAY go to your first show? I bet he did. Wait let me Google this…….no he wasn’t but, Rosario Dawson was. (It was a Bernie Sanders benefit.)

Anyway, this song is really great, good for them. I also really like the logo and the uniform. And it’s nice they campaigned for Bernie. Ok, fine, you’re not Velvet Revolver.

- Turbo B