Drown Radio - Me Geek Pretty One Day

How to Speak Hip, the comedy album by Del Close & John Brent, has recently been posted in it’s entirety on Skyelab Music (via). Currently, they only have a flash player, so you can’t download the tracks, but a quick torrent search may provide you with a downloadable copy.

How to Speak Hip is a classic “how to” album that mocks both the “beatnik” scene and the 1950’s “square” crowd. Although you might not have realized it, you’ve probably heard bits and snippets of this album before. I’ve been heavily sampling segments of the album for a long time, in fact you may recognize quite a bit of this album as part of my Drown Pirate Radio podcasts.

I first heard skits off of How To Speak Hip when I was 15. I had delved deep to the beatnik culture of the 50’s, and came across some compilation tapes that featured parts of this album. I remember digging on lines like when the square reporter says “… in other words I’m saying that I am hip.”  and the hipster authority responds with “Dig yourself baby, you’ve got a way to go.” I’m so glad to find this album in it’s entirety now, up until yesterday I had never heard the whole thing, even though I’ve been so affected by the parts I had heard for the last 15 years.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 5:16 pm and is filed under musical writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.