I lived in Chico, CA. for a good while — college and beyond, about 10 years total. It’s a wild place, a sort of perpetually restless place. The Chico I lived in doesn’t really exist any more, but some things never change. This got passed to me earlier today by a recipient of the original e-mail dispatch, who shall remain nameless:

A message from BUTTE COLLEGE

Do yourself a favor and cop the new Grand Invincible “Purse Thieves” 12″ fresh off the vinyl presses.

Here’s a taste of the flavor:

But that’s not all — you also get the A-Side extra of “The Style is Bonkers” and the B-side “Elephant Tranq.” You can’t go wrong.

CLICK HERE TO GET THAT SHIT RIGHT NOW.

NERD

It all started on Friday at the AES (Audio Engineering Society) Show at Moscone Center in downtown SF. It’s the nerdiest audio nerdfest I’ve ever been too, and it goes down in SF every other year (alternates between the Bay and NYC). I have to be there for work, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get certain degree of personal satisfaction out of it. I record bullshit at my modest home studio (Maxin’ & Relaxin’ Studios, Oakland CA), and play in a three-piece rock band, so audio geek shit is kinda interesting to me…at least, in a much as it relates to what I’m doing.

After running through all the dope boutique outboard studio gear, new microphones, and niche software plug-ins, I found myself short of interest. This took all of five hours. Not that there wasn’t some excitement afoot — DigiDesign’s ProTools 8 and Cakewalk’s Sonar 8 were released with much fanfare, but since I use neither in my studio, those demos were of cursory interest to me. Still, it’s not like I was there against my will.

I had plenty of opportunity to get my nerd on, and the Universal Audio both alone made the whole day a worthwhile venture. The top-notch pro-audio manufacturer was showcasing all kinds of crazy-awesome stuff: new UAD-2 cards, which I’m told they can’t make fast enough to keep up with demand (and I believe it, I have a UAD-1, and I freakin’ LOVE it); the 710 Twin-Finity tube and solid state preamp and DI; the LA610 MKII channel strip; and the Moog Multimode Filter plug-in for the UAD-1 card (I know where my next $200 in nerd-related expenditure is going).

I looked at — and at times tried (and invariably failed) to find the rational to invest in — a lot of other cool stuff too, like Eventide‘s digitalModFactor effects pedal, which, among other things, allows users to update it by downloading new software from the internet; Radial Engineering‘s Phazer Box and new Phazer Bank; Line 6‘s Pod Farm amp and effect modeling software; and handheld field recorders — the Marantz PMD60, and the Sony PCM series handheld devices, which are both pretty cool (Marantz wins; the Sony doesn’t record to MP3).

ART HOUSE MUSIC

Since I spent the day looking at all the shit people use to make music sound good, I figured I’d go to a show and watch some people actually play good music. After AES, I headed over to Less Respect $tudios, drank beer, watched Olberman and listened to G-Pek play with his new Serato set-up for a few hours while a crew gathered. Eventually we made our way to 111 Minna to catch the homies TopR and Grand Invincible. It was starting to rain, but that didn’t keep people from hitting the spot; it was already kinda jumping off when we got there at about 10:30, and it just got more and more poppin’ as the evening dragged on. SF’s own Melina Jones set it off, and she kinda killed it. Grand Invincible — DJ Eons and Sacred Hoop’s Luke Sick — laid down the smokey golden era jams and TopR is still pissed at the world, and really good at explaining why. Good rap show.

Bonus: Half of the art currently on the walls at 111 Minna — which is primarily an art gallery, for those of you who aren’t knowin’ — is by Henry Lewis, the painter and tattooer who has been working on my left arm sleeve. It’s been a while since I’ve seen his painting, and it’s better than ever. Check it out this month at 111 Minna.

NERD, PART 2: UNDERGROUND SOUND

Saturday afternoon, slightly hung over from the night before and tired as hell from having to get up at the crack of dawn and get on a day-job-related conference call, Colin and I hit Mr. Toad‘s in SF, where we met mastering engineer Ben Adrian to sit down and master the new Ovipositor record, Oakland Minor. The subterranean mastering suite is dope, a simple setup with a single mastering station, a small couch, muted moveable sound walls and carpet, and two huge, really great sounding Dunlavy SC-IV monitors.

I know the record isn’t ever going to sound as good as it did coming out of those Dunlavys, but it sounds pretty good in my living room, in my car, and coming out of the puny computer speakers in my office, too, so I know Ben did a good job. We’ll be working pretty hard to sound that good when we play live again in December at the Hemlock.

YouOverdidItHolmes.com. Too funny. Tell your friends, upload photos.

It’s time for another exciting edition of The 40 Oz Show, this week featuring hot new tracks from David Banner, Conceit, and Grip Grand, as well as classics from The D.O.C., J-Zone, Motion Man and a bunch more.

You can download the show every other Friday at GurpCity.com, or subscribe to the podcast from the iTunes store’s podcast section, or click below to stream the latest show…

I hit the Hip-Hop Shop show that TopR and Quest performed at this past Friday evening. It was a private deal with free beer ad wine, and a really comfortable environment — the space was obviously live/work, and I’m pretty sure TopR rocked some dude’s living/dining room — but there was this strange Big Tobacco element to the whole thing. When we got to the address, there were people at the front door checking IDs and taking names, then giving those in attendance drink tickets with packs of cigarettes. So in order to get drinks, you had to have drink tickets and to get drink tickets, you had to take the smokes. Pretty interesting. Even more interesting: the art on the walls in the space was all Camel-branded paintings of various style. I felt like I was being aggressively marketed to. It was really weird. Even weirder were the stocky guys all wearing bluetooth headsets, turtlenecks, sport coats, apparently doing security. They were so out of place, people were talking about them, making jokes about the government using the Men In Black to keep tabs on underground rap shows, or how Big Tobacco had hired mercenaries to make sure we took the cigarettes.

Quest was already spinning when we got there. He wasn’t getting too crazy with the scratching — he’s one of the world’s best — but he was throwing down the dopest mix set I’ve heard in a long, long time, and tossing in some turntable trickery in a fashion that was neither phoned-in nor too wildly technical, nor a step out of line with the flow of the music in the mix. Strictly a rap music set, there were a lot of old school drops, and Quest got things hot enough to incite a b-boy circle, three or four dudes who got down in turns for about 20 minutes.

TopR and his hype man, the producer of his latest album The Marathon of Shame, Dick Nasty joined Quest and performed a tight set of new and old Top Ramen classics.

When we left, there were unopened packs of Camel cigarettes all over the place.

Hit the Mission Bar after the Camel rap show, and proceeded to spend the rest of the night drinking heavily with a friend who was celebrating his retirement from his days as a bartender. Things got ugly.

If you’re around the Bay tonight, you can catch Top performing with the always incredible and hellsa-fucking-cool DJ Quest at a Hip-Hop Shop event. Here’s the info:

EVENT: “HIP HOP SHOP”
DATE: 7/25/08
TIME: 7PM-10PM
WHERE: 50 WASHBURN ST. SAN FRANCISCO
BTWN. 9th &10th St., BTWN MISSION & HOWARD (SOMA)
NO COVER – SPREAD THE WORD!
LIMITED CAPACITY – COME EARLY!
(2) FREE DRINK TICKETS UPON SIGN UP

And just for shits and giggles, here’s TopR’s last video, for “Security! Security!” (which I’m in, as the security guard who throws Top outta the bar), off the album Cheap Laughs for Dead Comedians (which you should also buy right now from the iTunes store):

Every two weeks — every other Friday, to be exact — I produce and post a new edition of a rap music podcast called The 40 Oz Show. You can download it at GurpCity.com, and subscribe to it in the podcast section of the iTunes store. If you just wanna stream it, then here ya go… And tell you friends…

[audio http://the40ozshow.podbus.com/40_oz_show_07-18-08.mp3]