It held true in The Big Lebowski and its even more true in real life. We got Cobra Jesus back and were building the band up again. Ever since our March penthouse studio gig, the band has been non existant. It wasn’t like we broke up, it was more like we couldn’t find time for us all to meet, practice, and play.
Enter Contraband part II
Most of y’all might not know that when we started Contraband we had a GIANT band. 2 Guitars, a bass, drums, keys, and trumpet… 10 bandmembers is how we started off. By the penthouse show in March, we were down to just Keys, Bass, and Drums.
Dave Giordano was our guitarist for most of our bigger shows. His schedule got a little too crazy though so he had to quit the band.
About a month or two ago I hit him up about jammin again. Turns out his schedule had completely cleared up and he was looking to play again.
So since we’ve had the idea for this new style of band since march, and we finally got our guitarist back, it was time to try to throw a practice together.
The idea for the new band is bass, guitar, and drums (electric kit) as well as an MPC beat machine to play samples and what not. Our new drummer Alex is a local Staten Island musician with a kick ass electric drum kit.
The first practice went really well. We are gonna be learning all new songs with this band and we’re really hoping to take it to the next level as we finally have a group of musicians interested in making a career out of this band. We went over a bunch of the new songs from Everybody, our next feature length album. Come along for the ride people. It should be an exciting one.
Worked all day today so I wasn’t at the H-O-D at all to report on the daily goings ons… but I did receive an amazing text from Chris halfway through my day. ‘Rastamans back’ is what it read… and that is great news indeed. If you were unaware, are good friend and labelmate Michel Aubertin aka Rastaman aka Bong was over in South Africa getting married and enjoying the world cup vibes. I came home from work to find him chillin the studio with O, a friend of the H-O-D whose been getting it in in the studio. Since Glaze left, O has been holding down the night shift in the basement.
Anyways, we built for awhile and I heard all about South Africa and the wedding and the world cup. Y’all dont kno nuthing about no VuVu lips…
Today was our first show date in awhile. We have been playing the Art for Heart shows put on by our good friend Shorty B since the initial fundraiser for Haiti. This particular Art for Heart event was at a familiar spot.. Wicked Willy’s. The lovely Christina LaRocca has been booking Wednesday night shows over there for some time now so this was near the 5th or 6th time we’ve performed over there.
This particular Art for Heartfundraiser was for The Lukemia and Lymphoma Society.
Unfortunate circumstances due to a mic some T-shirts and an alien made us quite late to the event so i missed mostly all of the performances but we were just in time to see Dave Noodlez and Paul Marz rip their respective sets. JoyLuv came on afterwords and was definitely the big hit of the evening. The crowd filled up around the stage while she sang a mix of covers and originals with her guitar player strumming away. The highlight of her set was definitely a spontaneous cover of Paramore’s ‘Misery Business’ dedicated to yours truly.
I enjoyed our set although its always hard to tell at Wicked Willy’s if your lyrics are being heard. They don’t have the best sound system and there is no monitor lovin to be found. We had a whole set planned out but since Joy had such a good crowd we flipped our opening song with the song we were gonna end with. House of Dreams started off the set so we could keep Joy on the stage.. From their it was kinda confusing cuz we were jumping around the CD with no real plan. I think after House of Dreams we went into Life’s Good then into Thats Right followed by One Step and I Love Music.
Staten Islands favorite real cartoon character, Swinton a.k.a. Swizzy, closed out the evening with his patented blend of sex, drugs, and energy. He had 10 to 15 people on stage going wild with him, including some random dude in a suite and sunglasses who I thought was his boy but later found out was just a random dude.
Overall it was a spectacular night for a great cause!! Big shout out to Art for Heart for keeping the fundraisers going every couple of months. We’re all about using our music to benefit the world and this is one way we can make a small dent. Be on the lookout for the next Art for Heart, and come bringing donations!!
On a completely different tip… as promised in my last post. Here is the video for ‘So High’ that was released yesterday.
Started off the day with Tekst and Cash again. Had some Google alerts for The Higher Concept in the Inbox and saw that The Great American Mixtape had indeed dropped as scheduled. It was already up on a bunch of blogs and getting a ton of buzz by the time we found out it had dropped. Here is what Anatomy magazine and the blogs had to say about the release.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen, we present to you the Great American Mixtape, Side B, by Anatomy Magazine and Mick Boogie and Terry Urban. The wait has been long enough, the work has been hard enough and we’re sure, for some of you, that the sign up has been enough of an fucking headache. But consider the project done, here in the can, and ready to rock!
World, meet Anatomy Magazine’s Great American Mixtape: Side B, by Mick Boogie & Terry Urban. This side, in contrast to The Hood Internet release, features America’s favorite rock hits translated into block rockin’ hip-hop tracks ready to kick a hole in your speakers and your perception of the genre. That is because Side B of the Great American Mixtape does something that no other mixtape has done before: It truly cross pollinates rock music artists such as Jimi Hendrix, Guns and Roses, The Doors and Led Zeppelin with hip hop into one comprehensive and radiant piece of work with thought provoking soundscapes that reveal everything that the hip-hop genre can be.
Tracklisting:
1. Freebass 808 Feat. Tabi Bonney- Good Times (Prod. Apple Juice Kid)
2. Curt@!n$- Teenage Wasteland (Prod. M. Stacks)
3. Christian Rich-Dust (Prod. Christian Rich)
4. Aleon Craft- Strange (Prod. SMKA)
5. Laws- Nobody Likes A Quitter (Prod. nVMe)
6. Donwill & Ilyas of Tanya Morgan- The Beginning Of The End (Prod. Legacey Villain)
7. Lex One & Mike Beatz- Tube To Camden (Prod. Alex Goose)
8. OnCue- Otherside (Prod. The Goonies)
9. Panama- It’s My World (Prod. King Midas)
10. Cidida- I Want You (Prod. Eibol)
11. The Canz- Root Of Evil (Prod. Apple Juice Kid)
12. The Higher Concept- Makes Me Wonder (Prod. Mike Cash)
Is this the most innovative mixtape of the year? Arguably. But we’ll let you decide. In order to get a hold of the mixtape, be sure to sign up for Anatomy, and it will be available in the very first welcome email that you get that we send to you. Be sure to enable images for the email, otherwise the download links will not show up. For those of you who are already signed up, well, it’s past high noon so why haven’t you downloaded it yet????”
We are real excited about the potential for this Mixtape. Dope tracks all around and our track definitely finishes the tape off with a bang. Good looks to Mike Cash for providing a ridiculous rendition of the Led Zepplin classic, and everyone else involved for letting us get down!!
Spent the rest of the day doing promo work, as per usual. Once Matty J got home from his 9-5 grind he uploaded our newest officia promo video for Life’s Good. This time the single is ‘So High’ ft. Amerika. I spent the rest of this evening doing promo for the new video. Be sure to visit THC’s video page to see the video! For now, enjoy “Stairway to Heaven” a.k.a “Makes Me Wonder” off Mick Boogie & Terry Urban’s The Great American Mixtape.
Slow day around the house.Woke up early with Tekst and Cash to put the finishing touches on the ‘Stairway’ track. Got some more info on the project… The Great American Mixtape is a collaboration of Anatomy Magazine with Mick Boogie and Terry Urban.. It should be available tomorrow…
I spent the rest of the day working on building the twitter following and a couple of verses for our upcoming project ‘Everybody’…
World Cup Finals was finally here… We started off the day at the H-O-D rooting for our weed friendly soccer team, The Netherlands, to take home the big trophy. Tekst and I were going in… That karate kick to the stomach in the first half was fukin gangster haha. Anyways, Spain took it home, much to our chagrin (SAT vocab word alert)… While we were watching, Mike Cash came upstairs and told us of a great opportunity that had presented itself.
Flashback – Cash has been doing some work lately for DJ Terry Urban, more specifically he was working on a beat for a mixtape Terry Urban is putting out using all classic rock samples. A couple weeks ago found Cash and I sitting in the basement sifting through songs like Skynards “Freebird” and of course, Zepplins “Stairway to Heaven”. Eventually Cash had settled on the classic Zepplin tune and although I was skeptical at first of sampling such a classic song, he absolutely destroyed it (in a good way).
Back to Present Day – Cash comes upstairs and asks if we could have a song finished to the Stairway To Heaven beat for Terry Urbans project by the end of the night… Silly question… Of course we can!!
Turns out that whoever was supposed to get on the track wasn’t going to be able to record it in time, so Terry asked Cash to get a local Staten Island Group he works wih a.k.a US, for the track…
So after the Spain victory, we headed downstairs to get crackin on the trackin…
Concept is easy… Stairway to Heaven.. What do you see on your walk up the Stairway to Heaven?
We happened to destroy the beat (in a good way) and I am excited about its potential… Sorry, no bonus clip until the project is released, but since its been awhile, here is the player for our newest album release Life’s Good. You can download it for free so definitely do that if you haven’t yet…
So close to launch time I can almost see outerspace baby.. haha whack. Anyways, I started the day off mad early as I got in last night from MD. After a ton of driving I was exhausted and pulled a Paul Marz. I passed out on the couch when everyone was chillin only to wake up with everyone gone.
