Sunday, February 7, 2010

Stop Snitchin

It's been a miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinute since we made a post on here, but that's definitely going to change. Haroun was in town to work on some jams and play a gig a couple weeks ago (the gig in DC was great by the way. shootouts to whoever booked the gig, give, war hungry & coke bust) and i listened to our song from the Generations comp on his ipod for the first time in a few years. This song is a slammer, but it's not all that it could be for a few reasons, as I'm sure anyone who's heard it knows. So I thought I'd dedicate this comeback post to the memory of "Stop Snitchin".

Cold World's lineup at the time was Me, Alex, Dan, Ill Will and Dave Foster (great lineup!) and we were enjoying some success in the scene as well as feeling a lot of hate from the shine blockers of the core. Since a young edgemen, Revelation Records was always my favorite hardcore label. It's early discography can't be beat and I enjoy a lot of the slept on titles up through the 90's as well. Needless to say, we were very excited when we got asked to be on this comp. Actually, let me back up for a second. During this time, I was aware of but not necessarily friendly with my now-bud Bob Shedd and he had recently moved from NJ to Cali to work for Rev and help then re-establish their rep in the hardcore scene. We were looking for a label to do an LP with, so I dropped a hint to a friend of Bob's that we'd definitely be interested in working with Rev if it was something they'd be into. The prognosis was negative(shoutout to my trill-ass o.g. tv nerds) on that suggestion and I was blindly offended by it. Why WOULDN'T they wanna put out the groundbreaking platter from Wilkes-Barre's burly wigger sons?! Haha psych. I was planning on biting Clipse's "them crackas weren't playin fair at jive" line on a song, but changing it to Rev, but that was deaded by becoming really good homies with Bob after playing Sound and Fury.

Anyways, back to the lecture at hand. Thanks to Bob for asking us to be on this comp, because I'm sure it was his idea to include us. When we got asked to be on this rager, Alex & I penned a jam and we booked time at Plymouth, PA's Plymouth Rock studio. I believe Frostbite recorded their demo and maybe their 7" here, but I wasn't at either sessions so I wasn't sure what to expect. The cats who ran this joint were middle-age classic rock burnout stoners who giggled when I brought in a turntable and a Vestax PMC05 mixer to record the scratch part at the end of the song. I remember somebody from the Detroit Birds crew snorting something in the lobby of the studio, but I forget who. It was either T-Bone or Drewpy. It was wild, and we were having a lot of laughs by fucking with the scummy locals in shitty-ass Plymouth but at the same time we definitely got work done on this joint cause I'm really happy with how we played on it. I used Rifkin's drums and had him bring the double bass pedal out so I could rock the crossover sound to the strempf. Dan sounded decent on the track and we had Will do a little backup part.

Anyways, Plymouth weren't answering our calls when it was time to get this track mixed and send to Rev and at last minute we just had Foster go there and get the tracks and send them to Cali so they could just mix it out there so we could make the deadline for the comp. Normally I wouldn't ever let anybody else mix our shit but I didn't wanna miss the chance of having a spot on a Rev release! Apparently when they opened the files, the tracks were scattered and nothing was in time with eachother! Especially the vocals and the scratch part! They mixed it how they thought it should go and sent it to us but the vocals were off time. Well, techincally they were on time, but started a note or two before they were supposed to so they don't necessarily sound off-time to the listener, just awkward. The same goes for the scratches! I called Bob while he was in the studio mixing it down and no matter how many times he played it to me over the phone I couldn't tell what I was listening to so I just had to leave it in his hands.

The result is a bittersweet track called "Stop Snitchin". The name means nothing haha. My friend Bushy got me a stop snitchin shirt from the Dipset store in Harlem around that time so I just used that as the name. The lyrics are on some anti-religious shit. I'd be curious to know what people think of this track a few years later. With all technical problems aside, I think it stands up and we were able to be on the supposed second coming of Where It Is! The key word being "supposed" ;)

2 comments:

  1. Every track on that comp was solid. I always loved that song and was bummed you never played it even when people requested it and a little let down it wasn't on No Omega. It was really cool when you'd see bands from that comp play the songs live and only a handful of kids would go nuts because they jammed that LP on repeat. It would be interesting to see it remixed and heard the way it was supposed to sound. Do it with another song and put out a 7" on rev?

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  2. Wow I didn't even know I was following you guys! Excited to stop by United Blood to see you guys while I travel to NY for the 21st birthday hollaaaaaaa

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