god bless america

welp.

mr obbs is back from a whirlwind week or so of non-blogging. I had an awesome 4th of July. Went and saw the Boston Pops and Rascal Flatts perform for free at the Hatch Shell along the Charles River. I had seen Cake perform there (also for free) a month or so ago. It's a pretty cool locale... and the price is of mr. obbs' liking. The Boston Pops performed some classics-- the Rocky Theme, the 'Shipping Up to Boston' tune (Boston's anthem, apparently), and their signature piece: 1812 Overture. All in all, a great night capped off by some drunken singing of "God Bless America," "Yankee Doodle Dandy," "America the Beautiful," etc, etc, and some cool fireworks over the river.

I then went home Saturday morning to spend some time with the 'rental unit. We played some games (I won in a VERY close game of Scrabble with my mom... 172 -170 i believe) and I ate a lot of free food. At nite, we hit up LL Beans in Freeport for ANOTHER free concert. This time? The ultra-cheesy, ultra-catchy playing of Daryl Hall, the non-mustachioed half of "America's Greatest Songwriting Duo," -- Hall and Friggin' Oates!

He put on an awesome show. Apparently he wrote a lot of the classic hits... not that I am takin anything away from Oates, but Daryl had said he only likes to perform 'his' hits, and he covered "Rich Girl," "Kiss on My List," "Sara Smile," "You Make My Dreams," (sounds exactly like the theme to Ducktales btw) and of course, an encore of "I Can't Go For That."



Sadly, youtube won't let me link directly the the friggin awesome video, but there's a live version to display the showmanship of Mr. Hall. He was awesome and you could see how much he really enjoyed performing.

He is still a busy dude-- touring and recording live jam sessions straight from his house called, well, "Live From Daryl's House."

I had actually not heard "I Can't Go For That" before... and yet, once he dropped that synthesizer riff I knew I had heard it before... I just didn't know where. Once I got home and hopped on wikipedia (love that shit) I came to realize that the song has been sampled by more than 200 times! Who knows where I heard it. For the love of god, even "Billie Jean" sampled the bass groove. Listen for yourself! YouTube "Robot Rock" by Daft Punk and see if you think they're riff is the keyboard riff. I think it is...

But anyways, to tie this blog together, I won a ticket to the Red Sox game today. It was awesome. A co-worker invited me and the other ticket winners (you know, augustus gloop, veruca salt, and Violet Beauregarde! LOL!) to his apartment with a friggin ROOF DECK and we grilled some franks and slugged some brews prior. It was glorious. The 4th co-worker who won a ticket was actually already at the ballpark, cuz her friend just happened to be MISS VERMONT 2008 and it was Vermont Day at Fenway! Her friend sang "God Bless America" during the 6th inning.

and it was glorious.


For some toonz.

1. Daryl Hall ft. Travis McCoy (of Gym Class Heroes [of Geneva, NY]) This little track was handed to mr. obbs by a fan of the blog, and was performed/recorded during one of the "Live at Daryl's House" sessions. It is, for lack of better words, the shit. "Be Thankful."

Apparently, there is supp to some mash-up album featuring all GCH vocals over classic Hall and Oates beats, a la the Jay-z/Linkin Park thang. So says MTV, and we all know they're never full of shit.

2. Tamia ft. 213 "I Can't Go For That (remix)" -- 213 is the supergroup made up of Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg, and Warren G-- named after the area code they all grew up in. This is a sub-par r&b chick wit some of the greats. Nate Dogg is one of my faves... so i downloaded this back in like... senior year of high school or somethin.

3. While we're on the subject of Nate Dogg... didja know he had a whole album that was never even properly released? It was dope (I downloaded for free... meh!) but they made it only available on iPoons or somethin. Here's a track with a beat and verse by my 2nd favorite producer -- DJ Quik.

Nate Dogg ft. Warren G and DJ Quik - There She Goes



4. Ok one more song. This is a remix of the Coldplay hit "Viva La Vida." Beat by Kno, of CunninLynguists, and verses by Natti of CunninLynguists. Natti takes on two personas... listen carefully. It'll blow your mind.

Natti - Ruled the World

all for now fans!
-- obbs