Basket Case: Wacked

Basket Case
Wacked / The Problem
Timeframe: 1991

Tracks:

Side One (Wacked)

1 Hello Pain
2 WRENCH
3, 4 Eat This, FLUFFY MOUSIES
5, 6 Painful Spine, THAT WON'T BE ME
7 No After All
8 I'VE GOT MYSELF ON MY SIDE
9 Special Magic Secret Number 8
10 UNSIGHTLY
11 FEEDBACK SPIRAL

Side Two (The Problem)

12 In Trouble Now
13 COLOR ME SHAVED
14 Toda
15 EVERYBODY RIDES THE BUS
16, 17, 18 Thirty Something Chords, Power Ballad, GO TO SLEEP
19 Upstairs Music (Part I)
19 Upstairs Music (Part II)
20 FATHEAD
21 Upstairs Music (Part III)
21 Upstairs Music (Part IV)
22 I CAN'T STAND THE CONFUSION IN MY MIND
23 Still In Trouble Now
24 LATE MUSIC 4U

Basket Case was an electronic music group in the late 80's early 90's, from Madison, Wisconsin. I have two Basket Case cassettes in my possession. The first was given to me by Sunni Sailing, in High School. She was apparently friends with Aaron and Dave, the two main producers of Basket Case.

This first album is called "Sing Along With Basket Case". The cover art is a picture of guys in old low rider bicycles/motorcycles, colored over with crayons. The text on the cover/spine is in "ransom note" style, with random letters from magazines cut out to spell the words. This tape was produced in 1988. Inside, it actually has the phone numbers for Aaron, Heather, and Dave (Dave's is written by hand, in pen).

Some time later, I found a second Basket Case cassette, for sale in The Cat's Meow, a shop on State Street (Kind of a Hot Topic, before Hot Topic even existed). This cassette is called "Wacked". This album was produced in 1991, and contains the songs that are provided and linked here. Side 1 is Wacked. Side 2 is The Problem. The cover is an image of a housewife with some kind of back pain. Behind her is a blacksmith with a giant arm, his hammer poised near her rear end.

The inside credits include: "Basket Case is Aaron Harder and David Heagle." The track listing includes some tracks in ALL UPPERCASE. I have preserved the naming in the list above, in case there is any significant meaning to the spelling. In general, the uppercase tracks are more traditional 'real' songs, while the lowercase tracks are short motifs or just noise.

The original cassette features hand written silver paint-pen slogans underneath a printed label. On Side 1, it says "Burn, Wahlburg, Burn!". On Side 2, it says "Burn Wal-Mart (tm), Burn!"

The tracks here were digitized by playing the original cassette in a Technics RS-232 dual cassette deck, routed into a Denon CDR-620 CD recording deck. The audio CD track detection is not perfect, so some tracks are split (where they once had a single number on the cassette listing) or merged (where they once had two numbers on the cassette listing). The audio CD was then ripped with Sony (Sonic Foundry) Sound Forge 9, and finally convered into 192 kbps MP3 files.

The second album (Wacked) is considerably more well produced and polished than the first. Wacked was one of my favorite albums in High School. If anyone else out there has any more Basket Case music, or knows of what became of Aaron or Dave, please let me know!

Porn Star Rap Music: 3rd Floor

Porn Star Rap Music
3rd Floor
Timeframe: 2000

Tracks:

1: Stir It Up
2: Mad Town Mix
3: New Age Drugs
4: You Squeeze The Lemon
5: Get On The Train

In late 1994, P-Dog and Dr. Jako started working on instrumental tracks for the fourth Porn Star Rap Music album, 3rd Floor. At this point they were making use of the DR-660 for drums and the Akai AX80 for synth sounds, in addition to guitar and bass.

Unfortunately, these tracks were never finished.

In 2000, P-Dog reworked the lyrics he had written for the earlier effort, and recorded a new EP of songs. These featured more modern instruments (Kawai K5000s, Yamaha FS1R) and some old classics (Fender Contempo organ, Yamaha TX81z) and were recorded on a Roland VS-1680 16 track recorder.

The second track, Mad Town Mix, is a re-imagining of a track originally produced by P-Dog for a Madison area radio station contest in the early 90's. It attempts to document life in Madison from the Porn Star Rap Music perspective.

Porn Star Rap Music: Pympin' Tha World

Porn Star Rap Music
Pympin' Tha World
Timeframe: 1994

Tracks:

1: Check It Out
2: The End of my Leck
3: 24 Vice
4: ...And That's Poppin'
5: Die Cast Nugget, B
6: Rollin' Six Cheveys
7: Hustle Yo' Bustle Yo
8: Where's Dr. Jako?

These tracks were produced after High School ended. The instrumental tracks were produced by P-Dog using the Tascam 488, Casio HT-700, Guitar, and DR-660 Drum Machine. P-Dog describes these tracks as "his take on the emerging gangster rap style of the time".

Vocals were performed by P-Dog, Dr. Jako, and IcePick.

Cover art for the cassette insert consisted of a found image of 4 guys drinking root beer floats in a soda shop in the 1950s. The original cassette insert was printed on purple cardstock, because a crazy dude in an elevator once asked DJ ZuLu, "Hey, is that shirt purple?"

Porn Star Rap Music: Hot Snowp

Porn Star Rap Music
Hot Snowp
Timeframe: 1993

Tracks:

1: Look Out Below
2: 5th Gear
3: Artificial Jazz
4: Chillin' PK
5: Quarter To Four
6: Always In The Pocket
7: Coffee Is The Cure
8: Skogstramental
9: Back On Top
10: No Drums Allowed
11: Hot Snowp

After purchasing the Tascam 488 8-track multitrack recorder, P-Dog created some basic tracks for a rap music client at Telstar Studios. Luckily, the client brought his own samples, and didn't need to use any of P-Dog's tracks. These tracks became the basis for the second Porn Star Rap Music record, Hot Snowp.

Hot Snowp draws influence most heavily from Disco and Disco-infused Jazz, adding the Paul's Boutique/Check Your Head Beastie Boys influence on top.

For this recording, vocals were peformed not only by P-Dog and Dr. Jako, but also by IcePick ("The Maestro"). In addition, most of the guitar work was performed by Skog. Recording typically consisted of P-Dog creating the drum samples using Audio Animator sampling hardware and software on an Apple II GS. Some keyboard tracks were added using a Casio HT-700. Then, P-Dog and Skog would add Guitar and Bass parts, typically prior to expeditions to Perkins and Magic Mill. Finally, vocals were added, with each vocalist provided a vocal track. DJ ZuLu would add turntable scratches and additional samples, as a final polishing step.

This effort was highly anticipated, following the relative success of the C.O.D. EP. However, it is likely it recieved a relatively lukewarm response from most, given the dramatic stylistic changes in the music. In hindsight, this is probably the best album produced by the PDP crew during that era.

The original cassette insert featured a picture of the three vocalists at the East High Senior Casino Night Party.

The name "Hot Snowp" is derived from the Audio Animator sampler, playing a sample of Skog saying "Porn Star" backwards. Depending on how he said it, you could hear "Hot Snowp" or "Rats Nrop" or other strange variations. The reversed drums on the title track is a hint to this derivation.

Porn Star Rap Music: Cash On Delivery

Porn Star Rap Music
Cash On Delivery (C.O.D.)
Timeframe: 1992

Tracks:

1: What Do I Have To Do?
2: I'm On It
3: Telephone Song
4: 3 Score 6
5: Lore Song
6: The Porno Lounge

These were the first "real" rap music tracks that we produced, in the Summer of 1992. P-Dog and Dr. Jako had become disillusioned with the garage band scene (The Aaron Stryker Quartet), so DJ ZuLu suggested recording some rap music. He drew up a prototype logo (based on the Converse All-Star), and we began.

P-Dog borrowed a Farfisa Mini Combo Organ from Tom G. Fields III at Telstar Studios. The drum loops were picked by DJ ZuLu and P-Dog and sampled with the Akai S900 sampler at Telstar. The tracks were recorded onto a Tascam Porta-05 4-track cassette multi-tracker. The instrumentation consisted of the Farfisa Organ, the Drum Loops, a Vocal track, and a misc track for samples or other noises.

These tracks were heavily influenced by The Beastie Boys third album, Check Your Head. The album title is a reference to the lyric "Cash on Delivery, like a C.O.D." from the Beastie Boys first album.

Various cassette duplicates were created, ranging from black clone tones with a "star" sticker on them, to transparent clone tones with gold or silver paint pen writing, to cassettes with actual printed labels.

Because the vocals were recorded to one track, P-Dog and Dr. Jako had to record their lyrics in the same pass, using one microphone. They taped their handwritten lyrics to the wall in front of the microphone stand. D.J. ZuLu says "Porn Star, 92 ... 92" at the end of the album.

Various Bitties were recorded calling up the P-Dog answering machine, but the Bittie at the start of the album is SarahT.

Two tracks from this album were performed live at the East High Rap Show, twice, during both lunch breaks. In theory, IcePick still has a video copy of one of these two performances.