Food for the Ears

Some stuff I've been listening to that's worth mentioning:

• The Beastles - dj BC presents The Beatles vs. The Beastie Boys (follow link for mp3s)
• Live From Iraq - 4th25

  It took only a few ambushes, roadside bombs and corpses for Neal Saunders to know what he had to do: turn the streets of Baghdad into rap music. So the First Cavalry sergeant, then newly arrived for a year of duty in Sadr City, began hoarding his monthly paychecks and seeking out a U.S. supplier willing to ship a keyboard, digital mixer, cable, microphones and headphones to an overseas military address. He hammered together a plywood shack, tacked up some cheap mattress pads for soundproofing and invited other Task Force 112 members to join him in his jerry-built studio. They call themselves "4th25"—pronounced fourth quarter, like the final do-or-die minutes of a game—and their album is "Live From Iraq." The sound may be raw, even by rap standards, but it expresses things that soldiers usually keep bottled up. "You can't call home and tell your mom your door got blown off by an IED," says Saunders. "No one talks about what we're going through. Sure, there are generals on the TV, but they're not speaking for us. We're venting for everybody."

  
  Watch their video here, if you can stand it. Not a film clip for the meek, which is why it probably won't get much play on MTV. And that's a shame, because these guys are to Iraq what Jimi Hendrix was to Vietnam.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 12, 2006 at 10:19 PM in Culture, Iraq, Music, War on Terra | Permalink