2. Modest Mouse - "Heart Cooks Brain" Modest Mouse's landmark Lonesome Crowded West album is full of decisions that only Modest Mouse would have made. It's hard to imagine any other band adding relatively by-the-book DJ scratching to a song like "Heart Cooks Brain." It works because "Heart Cooks Brain" is aesthetically a hip-hop song, built from an eternal loop with motific lyrics. Even Isaac Brock's whammy-bar guitar lead is treated like a sample. The scratching could have dated this track, but it is just another element of a song frozen in timelessness.
1. Beck - "Where It's At" A large portion of the population can't even hear the word turntable without thinking of "Two turntables and a microphone," popularized by Beck on "Where It's At." The hit from the masterful Odelay is not exactly a rock song, but it's not exactly hip-hop or any other genre either. The DJ-in-rock-band scenario was a direct result of the kids who were raised on MTV rap starting their own bands. Beck had the same interests as, say, Limp Bizkit or Linkin Park. But where those bands forced hip-hop or metal into conflicting contexts, Beck copied and pasted his fascinations into pop art collages; "Where It's At" is the ancestor of Girl Talk's copyright infringing party mixes. The talked about turntable makes an actual appearance in the song after the first chorus: wiki wiki wiki "That was a good drum break." Yes it was, Beck. Yes it was.
