Soul on a roll, but you treat it like soap on a rope
‘Cause the beats in the lines are so dope
Yeahh Boyyyyy!! Friday night is fun night* and los amigos my records don’t get much funner than Anthrax & Public Enemy Bring The Noise. Well, actually it does because I own a copy that has been scientifically enhanced by top NASA scientific funologists, just check out the fun overkill here:
- It’s on 10″ – 10″ records are 32.59% more enjoyable than bigger, or smaller ones.
- It’s a picture disc – picture discs, as everyone of school age and above knows, offer 52.13% more happiness than black vinyls.
- It comes in a three-part gatefold pull-out boom box style pack! Oh, yes!
- It’s limited edition** which always makes me feel a bit select and special (I know, I know it’s a character defect of mine).
- It has one of my fave noisy tracks ever on the A-side and My third fave Anthrax track on the B-side.
It is as though scientists were trying to harness the raw power of fun in order to create the perfect doomsday ray! Seriously.
Run DMC first said a DJ could be a band
Stand on its own feet, get you out your seat
Beat is for Eric B. and LL, as well, hell
Wax is for Anthrax, still it can rock bells
Ever forever, universal, it will sell
Time for me to exit, Terminator X it^
Okay, so I need to get off the fence here and just say this version of ‘Bring The Noise’ is one of my favourite tracks ever, I’ve always been a real sucker for the whole rock/rap hybrid ever since I first heard Run DMC. I was a Beasties fanatic and I can remember buying a cassette copy of It Takes A Nation Of Millions in WH Smiths in Carmarthen when I was 18, a couple of years after it came out. The density and intensity of the noise was like nothing else I’d ever heard, bits of it frightened me, honestly! The track ‘Bring The Noise’ was the main one I fastened on to during my first few listens, it was somehow poppier and they name-checked Anthrax in it, which I thought was way cool*^.
I had no idea at the time, but there was a big mutual appreciation society thing going on, thanks in the LP credits, constant wearing of PE T-shirts. We’ll gloss over the execrable ‘I’m The Man’ though for now, if that’s okay with everyone. The upshot of it all was their collaboration in 1991 and their recording of ‘Bring The Noise’.
Bring The Noise is just like a musical version of the Large Hadron Collider, smashing two aggressive, loud, uncompromising styles of music together and monitoring the Particles of Ultimate Perfection (P.o.U.P) formed in the carnage. It’s just perfect. I have heard it so many gigazillion times, I could rap the whole thing acapella – I tried in my car this morning (it’s the scene of most of my vocal experiments) and only got unstuck twice. I love the track, the message, the silliness – what are those noises Anthrax are making at the end? the whole thing just trips the adrenalin pumps in my aged, decrepit body and has me stomping around the room like a deranged gibbon. In a good way. Seriously, I don’t think heavy music gets any better than this. I’ve seen both groups play ‘Bring The Noise’ separately and incredibly well, what I wouldn’t give just to see them do it live once for me.
B-side is ‘I Am The Law ’91’ which really is a curio. This track doesn’t seem to exist anywhere else at all that I can see, it certainly never made it onto Attack Of The Killer B’s or any later Anthrax compilation. It is listed as 5:59 long, as opposed to 5:54 for the original version. I am also struggling to detect much of a difference, unless it is better, deeper production – but that may just be the difference between hearing it on vinyl and Spotify (I’m too lazy tonight to walk 20 feet away and get my copy of Among The Living out). Whatever, it is a great track and a true and proper homage to old Joe Dredd – who rated big during my whole childhood/adolescence/current extended adolescence.
In a word? yadirfnikufsin.
623 Down.
Sorry – vid is crap quality, I couldn’t find a better one anywhere online:
*despite diet, teetotalism, constant rain and big bomb scare in Liverpool today, a street away from where I toil.
**possibly to only 52,000,000, or so – I’m guessing that neither set of my elderly neighbours owns a copy.
^PE score massive 1537 bonus points for having the audacity to rhyme ‘exit’ with ‘Terminator X it’, it’s the sort of thing that makes me smile all day long.
*^even though I didn’t like thrash metal at all then, they were still part of my metal family/tribe/sinister cult.