Private Ear Sample Investigations™️ #1
"What we're gonna do right here is go back. WAY back. Back into time."
What we do here at Private Ear Sample Investigations™️ is harness the power of the Internet to investigate the endless echo chamber that is the Internet! We turn the power of the web against itself!
Whether there be sample, reference, homage, and/or parody, there shall we be too, finding the original. For you. For a slight fee. $24 per find. No negotiations. No barter or trade. Just the Benjamins please.
So, as to the sample in question, first some background.
Me and my old friend group used to have an unhealthy obsession with Josh Homme’s music. Kyuss, Queens of the Stone Age, Desert Sessions, and to a much lesser extent, Eagles of Death Metal. We were sorta falling out of love with all things Homme-related when Boots Electric came along. Jesse Hughes was a little too campy for our tastes. Turns out our instincts were correct. The man is a jackass.
I haven’t liked Homme much either lately either. Whether he was kicking a photographer in the face just for doing her job or doing an interview for the Bataclan shooting despite having been on another continent at the time, he was calling attention to himself in nothing but bad ways.
But there was a time when he was our demigod, and that time was 2002. Back then, everything Homme did was worth listening to. As far as me and my pals were concerned.
ANYWAY there is a Desert Sessions song, “Punk Rock Caveman Living In A Prehistoric Age” that has a line that always sounded to me like it came from somewhere else. So today I’ve decided to enlist the help of Private Ear Sample Investigations™️.
The line in question comes @ 1:02 of the track embedded below, sung by Dwarves frontman Blag Dahlia: "What we're gonna do right here is go back. WAY back. Back into time."
Okay, so as far as I can tell, the original line comes from The Jimmy Castor Bunch song “Troglodyte (Cave Man)” from an album called It’s Just Begun (1972).
Then The Bassbin Twins sampled it on their School Party Traxx (1996).
Three years later the line would be borrowed/appropriated by Blag Dahlia for his vocal on “Punk Rock Caveman.”
Then in 2020 synthwave master maestro Marvel83’ would use the sample at the beginning of her “Back to the 80s” video, over VHS-style tracking, and a blue screen, to give the sample even greater legitimacy.
Sample found. Case closed. Now onto the commerce part.
All Desert Sessions are released in two volume sets, so you’ve got Volumes 1 & 2 on one disc, Volumes 3 & 4 on one disc, and so on. Volumes 5 & 6 are particularly strong, with songs like the mesquite-flavoured “A#1,” the smoke-filled cantina vibe of “Like a Drug,” the wispy, dreamy “Rickshaw,” and what would eventually become the opening track on QOTSA’s Songs for the Deaf, “You Think I Ain’t Worth A Dollar But I Feel Like A Millionaire,” sung here by desert rock godfather Mario Lalli, of Yawning Man (whose “Catamaran” is covered on Kyuss’ swan song), Fatso Jetson, and Across The River infamy.
Volumes 3 & 4 are pretty drugged out. Check out the psychedelic stomp of “Sugar Rush.”
Volumes 7 & 8 are pretty drugged out too. Check out the opening track, “Don’t Drink Poison.”
Apparently everyone was on mushroom tea during the recording, the same drug Homme and Co. were on when Kyuss recorded their cover of Black Sabbath’s “Into the Void.” My fav part is John Garcia’s voice cracking @ 6:02 when he screams “GODDAMN!”
OOOH! I forgot to mention, the first two volumes of Desert Sessions feature Soundgarden bassist Ben Shepard, and you can hear his unmistakable playing on the disc’s best song, “Johnny the Boy.”
“Screamin’ Eagle” is, as my friend James once said, “one of those songs that gets better and better as it goes.”
“Cake (Who Shit On The?)” features Pete Stahl of Scream, Goatsnake, and Earthlings?
For a lot of people, including my old group of friends at one point, the zenith of Desert Sessions are Volumes 9 & 10, featuring the PJ Harvey collaborations, which include songs that would go on to become QOTSA hits like “In My Head” and “I Wanna Make It Wit Chu." But one long night spent sleeping in a barn with that CD on repeat over and over and over cured us of our fondness for those particular volumes.
But I think nowadays I prefer Volumes 1 & 2 and Volumes 5 & 6. Whenever I put on these old Desert Sessions songs, I hear that Jimmy Castor line. What we’re gonna do here is go back. WAY back. Back into time…