Greatest and Best

For whatever reason, there is a veritable flood of Arrested Development Greatest Hits/Best Of releases out there.  For no particular reason, I thought it would be kind of fun to post up some of the various covers and variations that are floating around out there.  I personally only own one of these releases, which will be the first one that we'll post:  Classic Masters.

 

 

 

This one has a remix of "Like Marvin Gaye Said" that varies a bit from others, and it is also the first place I saw "Southern Fried Funk" despite it being a b-side elsewhere, so it was a must buy for me.  The tracks have all supposedly been remastered as well- maybe I should listen closer to see if I can tell the difference.  I'm really not much of an audiophile despite having a ridiculous collection of music.  I think that stuff just lost it's luster with me when my car stereo kept getting stolen and it just got to be burdensome to worry about.  Anyway, on to more covers:

My Deluxe 3 Years, 5 Months, & 2 Days in the Life... Album

I got to thinking the other day about how I apparently really like to buy the same album two or three times.  In these days where most people have a hard enough time buying one copy of a particular CD, I'll often have two or maybe even three copies of certain CDs.  Now I should stop and mention that what happens is I get suckered in for a "special edition" of the album I already bought, specifically a special edition of a classic hip hop album.

The epic deluxe version of Mecca and the Soul Brother.

The quality on these releases vary.  The Beastie Boys put out loaded two-disc sets of their second through fifth albums (with the exception of Paul's Boutique, which was left untouched due to laws surrounding the heavily sampling on that album from the epic "Wild West, anything goes" days of sampling), Run-DMC released single discs of their first four albums with outstanding bonus tracks and liner notes (you're not a hip hop fan if you didn't get excited to hear their original version of "Slow and Low" that was later covered by said Beasties), and we saw really great versions of Criminal Minded by KRS-One and Mecca and the Soul Brother by Pete Rock & CL Smooth last year.  I would be remiss in not mentioning the outstanding two-disc version of Paid in Full as well.

As good as these are, there are some other re-releases that have too many holes to really be worth the re-purchase.  For example, Priority created special editions of Ice Cube's first four albums that are great if you didn't have the records, but offer little to those of who had those albums as well as his already released b-sides collection.  The NWA special editions weren't any great shakes either.  Other artists like Public Enemy and LL Cool J are begging to have special editions done of some of their classic albums, but thanks to the ineptitude of Def Jam, these will never see the light of day.  (Speaking of ineptitude at Def Jam, I'm listening to Big Boi's album from last year and I'll never figure out how this wasn't a huge hit for that label.). 

Eyes As Hard- Part Two

Saw through the eyes of the inflicted people
Their eyes are hard as a million tombstones
marked with the names of the millions of kin thrown
to the dust that gave them their colored skin
Fade to black is the scene they're embalmed in

From "Raining Revolution" by Arrested Development

Moving on to part two of my review of Eyes as Hard as a Million Tombstones (part one here), I quickly learned that I probably could've just tacked this on to part one as there isn't a whole lot to comment on for the last 20 minutes or so of the video.  But the choice has been made, instead of getting with this I got with that, and here we are.

We now move on to the video for "People Everyday," which is the video I'm most familiar with.  I think this video played every night on Yo! MTV Raps during the summer of 1992 (as did the previously referenced "The Choice is Yours Revisited" by Black Sheep).  We go from there to a little segment on Speech talking about his "sing-song" rap style that he used on "Tennessee."  According to Speech, he recorded "Raining Revolution" first and then later decided to use it on "Tennessee," which was an excellent decision.  I'm not an expert on rap flows or technique, but it seems to me that Speech was the first to really use this style, a style that would go on to be used by just about everyone at some point, but the names that really come to mind right now are Bone thugs -n- harmony at times and Nelly.

We then move on to the video for "Revolution."  At some point there is more discussion from Speech where he expresses his desire for a family, but laments it's incompatibility with a "revolutionary" lifestyle.  Obviously it's not hard to tell which direction he went, and one can't blame him.  Of course, there are ways to rebel besides becoming Che Guevara.

From here on out, you can basically describe the rest as filler material- these are the last 10 minutes of the video.  A few more shots of the group, some clips from Unplugged on MTV, and footage of the group accepting an MTV Music Award.  Realistically, from here on out mainstream rap music quickly deteriorated into the gangster era, so I get a little sad when I hear the group talking about how their music with actual content proved that you can succeed with a mainstream audience while staying positive.  Not for long.  Very bittersweet ending really.


To close the video out, there's some wacky stuff played over the credits of fans talking about the group that probably could've been left on the cutting room floor, but no biggie.   I've also seen that some copies claim that the video for "Natural" is included, and it probably is, but not on my copy.  Again, no biggie in this youtube age as we can look it up in two seconds now, but I would've been ticked if I had bought it back then looking for the video!

Anyway, that sums up my review of Eyes as Hard as a Million Tombstones.  If you've got a working VHS player, it can still be found pretty cheaply on the used market, and if you're an AD fan I highly recommend checking out this video as I think you'll enjoy it greatly, as I have.  It loses a little steam at the end, but before that it's filled with Speechy goodness....  :)  

Chocolate Therapy

In case you missed it, Speech has posted the third entry in his "Musical Safari" series- "Chocolate Therapy."  I think Ben and Jerry's makes that in a pint and a quart.... anyway, here it is.

Deee-Lite

Well, my hope when I saw that Arrested Development had collaborated with the dance group Deee-Lite on a couple of tracks back in 1992 on their album Infinity Within was that they had heard 3 Years and decided that they wanted to have a couple of songs in that style on their album.  My fear- and suspicion- was that they did hear the album and basically decided they wanted AD on a couple of Deee-Lite sounding songs that could've basically been done with any other guest artists- pretty typical of how most rap guest spots are done today on seemingly every song on the radio.

And yeah, the second one is pretty much true.  Still, the stated mission of this site is to be everything and anything Arrested Development and Speech, so let's go ahead and share these songs, with a few thoughts by each.

IFO (Identified Flying Object):  Like the rest of the album, a very "dancey" type song, with Speech giving a guest rap and according to liner notes, Headliner and Speech are both on the turntables.


Come On In,  The Dreams Are Fine:   If you didn't like the first song, you'll hate this one.  AD appears at the very opening of this song with what is described in the liner notes as an "African chant."  They are there and gone.  Nonetheless, here it is, so do with it what you will.

Well, enjoy, it's too bad that they didn't let AD have more influence over the music, but it is what it is.

Eyes As Hard As a Million Tombstones (Part One)

I opened up my mailbox the other day and saw a package from Canada.  My first thought was "Canada?  Where the heck is that?"  Just kidding- my thought was "oh, that's right, Christian said he was going to send me a spare copy of the old Eyes as Hard a Million Tombstones video."  So naturally, I was excited as I've never seen it before, and I was even more excited to see that he had enclosed a DVD copy as well.  My poor, neglected, seldom-if-ever used VHS player was not so excited, but what are you going to do?

Moving on, the video is really interesting.  I'm going to just kind of throw out some random thoughts on it and hope it all pulls together into some kind of coherent narrative, but I'm not particularly hopeful on that.  The video opens up with about a 15-minute segment that kind of introduces the group one by one.  In a way, it almost felt like watching an old introductory episode of MTV's The Real World to me.  Just the style of introducing the various band members without staging it as just a series of sitdown interviews gave me that vibe and I thought it was a good touch.  In particular, there's some stuff with a conversation between some of the female group members lamenting the way woman are portrayed in rap videos that really just gave me that Real World vibe- I also recall that time period being a bit removed from the oncoming "video ho" era (for lack of a better phrase).  It's sad, but this time period was probably the peak of woman being portrayed positively in rap videos- it just shows that even then, there was work to be done and it's only gotten worse. 

Happy Monday

Yep, Mondays stink, although I really should just be happy I have a job.  But nonetheless, if you want to start your week out in a  good mood, I think this remix will do the trick for sure.  

Ease My Mind

Well, it's been awhile since I've posted any new audio content, so the other day I went through basically every Arrested Development single I could find to make sure I hadn't missed anything.  Turns out, I could only find one- the "Ease My Mind" single.  The single is made up of the album version, "Shell" which is also on Zingalamduni, the Another Perspective Remix of "Ease My Mind" which popped up on Extended Revolution and was shared elsewhere here already (link may be dead, so let me know if you need it and I'll get it up).  So the only missing was the Instrumental and what's called a Beat Version of the song (basically a drum instrumental)- so here you go!  If anyone knows of anything I'm missing, let me know and I'd be glad to try to track it down.  I did figure out I missed an old Deee-Lite album with not one but two songs featuring Arrested Development, so that should be coming shortly!  Until then, enjoy these two b-sides.

Ease My Mind (Instrumental)

Ease My Mind (Beat Version)

Speech on Gil-Scott Heron

Here's a brand new video of Speech talking about the recently passed Gil Scott-Heron, who was an innovator of hip hop- among many other things (check out that linked Wikipedia article, that site is great for stuff like this).  As with many Black icons, he wasn't given his just due while alive and likely won't get it in death either. Thanks to Kel for pointing this out to me!