Gasoline Dreams – Outkast

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The peeling rock riff staggering around Andre 3000’s opening salutations is a kick arse intro. It’s like Matthew McConaughey dare not show his face around the opening of this tune less he get caught up in the gears. Stankonia is a killer album. I picked my copy up on CD at an airport before flying off with two old friends to go on an adventure in the Spain. It was the millennium year. I’d been working two jobs full time since my girlfriend and I split up and for the first time in a long time I was in my mid twenties, solvent and free to do anything I wanted.

What I wanted was to see the old world. I never really did The Grand Tour. Mostly in my eyes, that was because I’d always been dirt poor and working hard just to stay afloat. I’m sure I could have traveled more in the 20th Century if I’d just been a little bit more imaginative but now I had a passport to fill and nobody at home to miss me when I was gone. Espania. Home of good food, hot sun and some seriously beautiful sight seeing. Buenos dias mi Amigos!

Stankonia had that track on it that had been unavoidable all summer. “I’m sorry Ms Jackson, I am four eels. I never meant to make your daughter cry. I am just four fish and not a guy.” That one. Well, it was a hit at the club night Basky ran at The Philanthropist Living Room. These were my DJ days (3rd job, this one didn’t actually pay anything that wasn’t spent there in the venue or back at the print shop for flyers) and Outkast were a hit. We played the album every night of that holiday. It takes me right back.

“Don’t everybody like the smell of gasoline? Well burn motherfucker burn American Dream, Don’t everybody like the taste of Apple Pie? We’ll snap for your slice of life I’m tellin’ ya why”

The crowd friendly noises of So Fresh, So Clean and I’ll Call Before I Come would pack the floor almost as well as that massive hit single but Gasoline Dreams felt like a secret weapon. I was the rock DJ. I was there to play quite a lot of stuff I was struggling to like. Nu-Metal was all the rage. While I was more than happy with the Rage (as in RATM) or Deftones or the shorn-haired Metallica of 2×4 I never felt right playing too much Limp Bizkit or Puddle Of Mudd. I did build a reputation at the time for putting out genre spanning mix-tapes (well CD-R’s and Mini-discs) under the banner All My Friends Are Metalheads (Hey! We all get our ideas from somewhere) where I’d mix Indie, Rap, Metal and Dance for 55 minutes a time but none of them to my knowledge survived the fire and flood of 2002 (some other time)

“I hear that mother nature’s now on birth control, The coldest pimp be looking for somebody to ho, The highway up to Heaven got a crook on the toll, Youth full of fire ain’t got nowhere to go nowhere 2 go”

Gasoline Dreams could easily get your from Missy Elliot or Naughty By Nature to Korn or Slipknot or some classic AC/DC. I did a thing with Kid Rock/Eminem/The Smiths/Charlatans (UK) that I’m still proud of to this day. If you lost anyone along the way or wanted to get everyone back in guitar mode before the band came on. Gasoline Dreams would do the job for you. Best way to follow it in a set though. Ike and Tina Turner. Nutbush. People freak out. Every. Time.

It’s November 5th in the UK (well, I do realise it’s November 5th everywhere). The day we set fires all across the nation to remember the gun powder plot. Some celebrate the fact he got caught. That the Parliament building was saved and the insurrection averted. Others celebrates the act of anarchy. The two fingers up to the old order of things. We celebrate it together. Side by side never discussing which aspect of what brought you out into the dark cold October night to Ohh and Ahh at fireworks, drink spiced rum and remember remember.

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