Sunday Music: Dibbs, War Pigs, The Sound Of Worlds Colliding

I am impossibly betting that sometime in 2002 I saw Atmosphere on the God Loves Ugly tour in the 300ish person room below Pearl Street in Northampton, MA. If you know otherwise, or if you gave me a ride there, or whatever, feel free to clarify. The internet has failed me in this regard.

And, more specifically, I saw Atmosphere, a bunch of Rhymesayers artists, and Mr. Dibbs.

DJs have always been fascinating to me. Mr. Dibbs included. The curation and choices and room-reading (and occasionally lack of room reading) fascinates me.

It was probably all the years in high school I spent playing for real money in cover bands in bars, relative to the time I spent playing for minimal door money in original bands in indie/all-ages clubs.

Getting a room to appreciate an original is really hard. It’s your art and it’s being judged. LIVE.

Now, copying an oldie but a goodie in a cover band, while easier and you have better odds of achieving audience approval, you still need to do something to either make it your own or strive for the level of mastery the original artist had.

I won’t turn this into a rant on my hatred for lazy cover bands. They exist.

But, I will take this back to my admiration for DJs who don’t have to play cover songs because they can play the source material. The best DJs can even make something special out of it. Originality in DJ routines is magic to me (and massively undercelebrated).

Most of all, I appreciate when a DJ brings in something out of context or that they can juxtapose with just enough mood from the room with a brand new idea that ripples like a shockwave across a dance floor.

I’m already on the record for this, but I always loved Black Sabbath. “War Pigs” in particular was always special. The buildup by those “dun-uh” guitar chords.

I remember hearing Earth Crisis do their “Firestorm” chug-gah intro at a show for the first time in the 90s and thinking, “Is this my generation’s ‘War Pigs’?” All while knowing it wasn’t. Because even confused teenage me could tell the level of confused post-teenager energy in Earth Crisis wasn’t that focused.*

“War Pigs” was a different level of intensity. Enduring, to say the least. But also, bigger than their style, or music, or - in Atmosphere terms, “bigger than the Beatles and bigger than breast implants” (extra teenager bonus points there guys).

So on stage that night, mid Atmosphere set with Mr. Dibbs on the turntables, out of nowhere - this was an indie hip-hop show, Dibbs puts “War Pigs” on and the room for a moment got hyped up and silent at the same time.

I don’t know what corner of our collectively shared experiences meant that enough of us knew the song and what to do next, but - it was a subconscious shockwave through the room. Sing. Then, get ready to go wild.

A group opened up space for a pit in the middle, a bunch of us pumped fists and sang along with the group on stage.

And then the beat dropped - it was such a great routine, and - pandemonium, in the best of live music ways. There’s a raucous hip hop beat. There’s cutting and scratching building on, around, and through the “dun-uh” intro and where Dibbs takes it. It’s a mosh pit on wax. It’s a mosh pit on the dance floor.

Black Sabbath opens their second album in 1970 with the song. 30-odd years later it’s being mashed up at an underground hip-hop show. Because that’s what great art does.

Great art transcends. Great art has an energy all its own. Great art brings people together, even if it includes slam dancing them together, in an act of religious fervor.

300 or so people, watching an indie-band from halfway across the country in an all-ages club, vibing to a song that under any normal circumstances would have been reserved for a biker bar jukebox down the road.

You can’t write that. But somehow a great DJ can pick that. There’s magic in that moment.

Every time I hear “War Pigs” - to this day - I think of the energy in that room, all those years ago.

PS. Here’s a cool mashup tour video I found on YouTube showing it. Apologies for the first few seconds but - more teenager bonus points I guess, what can I say? What I love the most about my memory of this is - the tour footage here all shows bigger rooms. I know I saw this in a cramped space. I also know that cramped-ness contributed to the chaos and why I’ll never forget that moment.

*Ok this isn’t fair that THIS exists - so I can’t find any evidence of an Atmosphere show from the early 2000s, but I can find footage of a Sea Seas show with Earth Crisis (which might be the one I’m thinking of)?! Oh well, and oh, ‘97 hardcore shows, you were pretty fun. That stage was 6 inches off the dance floor and it shows. There’s at least 150 if not 200 people directly to the right of that camera person. Jump to 6:30ish.

Black Sabbath at the California Jam in 1974 opening with “War Pigs” in front of the rainbow… This might be the audio/visual soundtrack to 2025. h/t Ryan M.