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May 14, 2005
A Chapel Hill Staple
Graduation weekend is always a pretty wild time here in Chapel Hill, but this year seems like it's going to be a little more memorable than usual. I know a few cool folks at WXYC who will be receiving their undergraduate diplomas tomorrow, The IronDog will be getting that Master's Degree in City and Regional Planning, and a sizable chunk of my crazy SILS crew will be awarded with Master's Degrees in Library Science. But while I tip my hat to all of those folks, I gotta save my biggest "congradulatory" shout-out for one of my favorite Chapel Hillians ever, my friend Jay Murray. I think Jay actually started going to UNC back when Bush the Elder was in office, and even he himself recently joked about how he had probably set "some kind of Van Wilder record for years in grad school". But Jay successfully defended his doctoral dissertation last fall and he's finally getting his PhD tomorrow. Dr. Murray, I tip my mortarboard-less cap in your direction!
In celebration of Jay's graduation (and anyone else's), 401 Pritchard will be hosting what might be their earliest-ever "afterparty" tomorrow afternoon at 3pm. Misty Touch and I will be tag-teaming on the turntables out on the front porch, and later on in the evening Bellafea may or may not be rocking out for a while. Should be a great time assuming that we get some cooperation from noise permits and the weather.
"School's Out" by Alice Cooper is a no-brainer for a graduation party, but the other record that I'll definitely be throwing in the crate for tomorrow is the "How Hard is That?" 12-inch by MC Paul Barman. Local scene scholars may remember that Barman lived in Chapel Hill for a short stint before his rap career started to take off. His 2002 LP Paullelujah! even has a couple of MF Doom-produced tracks ("Anarchist Bookstore, Pt. 1" and "Anarchist Bookstore, Pt. 2") inspired by Internationalist Books. While in Chapel Hill, Barman lived at 401 Pritchard for a short period...and let's just say that Barman and Murray didn't always get along so well. That isn't so notable or unusual in itself, but unlike the typical trifles that most of us have argued about with our housemates at one point or another, Barman's beefs with Murray wound up being immortalized on wax via "Housemate Troubles", the B-side to Barman's 2000 single "How Hard is That?". For some reason the "Housemate Troubles" MP3 is still up on the Matador Records web site, so if you haven't heard it, you can download it here:
MC Paul Barman - "Housemate Troubles" (2.42 MB)
However clever some of those carefully constructed rhymes may be, a lot of the song's lyrics are pretty wack. I mean, c'mon..."you watch Friends while we are friends"?!? Yikes. Barman did manage to set off one admittedly funny firebomb, though:
I make rap masterpieces. You can't complete your crap master's thesis?
Barman's "rap masterpieces" boast wasn't even the only factually inaccurate part of that couplet, though. For the record, Jay had long finished his master's degree by that point and was working on his doctoral paper. When "Housemate Troubles" first came out in 2000, I encouraged Jay to call Barman's bluff on the "You're too lazy to write a rebuttal" assertion by recording some sort of response track, perhaps a Chapel Hill version of "Jack The Ripper". Jay said that the world really didn't need to hear him rap, so instead he wrote "An Open Letter To Paul Barman" and sent it to me for publication in an online issue of Tuba Frenzy that I was considering putting together. Tuba Frenzy as a webzine never really happened, and then the whole Barman moment had more or less passed. But now that Jay is finally getting his PhD and completely vanquishing the infamous "thesis" jab, I thought I might as well make good on my promise from many years ago and finally publish the "Open Letter To Paul Barman" that Jay wrote in late 2000.
Congrats again to Dr. Murray, truly "a Chapel Hill staple" and a way nicer guy than whomever it was Barman was rapping about on "Housemate Troubles". Perhaps in lieu of embarrassing Jay with the full version of the song tomorrow afternoon, I'll just rock the instrumental and let the Doc read the text of his diploma over the top of that beat.
Posted by Tim at May 14, 2005 01:02 PM
Comments
Amazing. Tell jay congraDulations for me, see that he turns that last tassle like a bitch, and also to hopes to GOD I follow in his footsteps in a few years.
woo!
Posted by: claire at May 15, 2005 06:05 PM
I'd heard the track a few times since 2000, but had missed the "Food Not Bombs bagel" reference until now. That's some impressively stale, yucky verisimilitude. I can't believe so many of my friends subsisted on those damn things.
Big shout out to Dr. Murray!
Posted by: Richard at May 16, 2005 11:46 AM
Wow. The end of an era. Congrats Dr. Jay!
And Paul Barman? That dude's gotta be living in his Mom's basement by now... He's about as important to hip hop as Brian Austin Green.
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql;=10:7adjvwbya9rk
Posted by: Stuart at May 16, 2005 01:06 PM
Beautiful, just beautiful. Lovely tribute, and big ups to the good doctor!
Posted by: Jay (Huber not Murray) at May 17, 2005 11:15 AM
Awesome! GO JAY!
Posted by: Ruby at May 17, 2005 05:26 PM
God Bless Jay Murray! I met Paul Barman once and I was sick of him after 5 minutes. Jay's been a friend for many, many years and I hope he can find some more excuses to hang around Chapel Hill for many more years.
And thanks to my down-the-street neighbor Tim Ross for spinning excellent tunes and also helping me with the audio portion of our front porch movie presentation. It went so well that I'm going to try to convince Jay to make that a regular Sunday night event this summer.
Posted by: Pete Smith at May 19, 2005 10:44 AM
first:
big ups to dr. murray. i met jay early on in my north cak tenure and i can honestly say that he is one good egg. among the finest, in fact.
and despite my love for the chap and carrboro, i hope jay absconds to new york city soon.
second:
tim's deconstruction of paul barman's lame-ass attack on murray is a sight to behold. fine work, mr. ross.
third:
i take the blame. i introduced paul to jay.
fourth:
and, if anyone couldn't finish his crap master's thesis (while paul penned his rap disaster pieces), it was probably me. i was such a disaster that semester. i blame my job at crook's corner and the two free beers after every shift.
fifth:
i just listened to "housemate troubles" for the first time and even though i think paul's actually still a pretty good guy, that kind of character assasination of a fine gentleman like jay murray just knocked him down a few notches in my estimation. alas, paul, didn't you have something better to lambast... like Jesse Helms or the anti-union UNC administration? what a sucker.
Posted by: matt smith at May 24, 2005 12:06 PM
Thanks to everyone for wishing Jay conGRADulations, thanks to Dr. Smith for his inside assessment and for taking the blame for introducing Paul to Jay, and thank to Mr. Smith for running the movie setup at Jay's shindig. I too had a great time. Favorite bizarre party moment that I just can't let go without a mention here: late in the evening after we've turned up the speakers a bit, Misty Touch drops KRS "Sound of Da Police". Chapel Hill's finest show up with a noise complaint a couple minutes later. Hmmm....
Posted by: Tim at May 26, 2005 12:54 AM