Beston and The Kitchen is simply a document of the raw energy and excitement that a live band of serious musicians can produce. This is rock'n'roll spinning on its head: Beston and his dizzy crew take the hip-hop form and fling it in a dozen directions: over the favelas of Brazil, past the Mississippi Delta, to the docks of the Caribbean, and into Motor City via San Diego. And through the whole journey Gabe and Jano are wailing on their drums like banshees, Steph and Marnie are crooning like songbirds, and Joe is pounding out the bass like Vulcan at his anvil. Beston, out in front with guitars akimbo and mike strapped to his shaved noggin, is thumping truth like a brimstone preacher and generally talking too fast for his own good. What it boils down to: all-new, all-original, good fun.

Lyrics and Credits

Beston and The Kitchen is:

Beston Barnett - lead vocals and guitar

Gabriel Damasceno - kit drums

Joe Hilgeman - bass and vocals

Stephanie Hentz - vocals

Marnie Havert - vocals

Alejandro Galindo - percussion

and featuring:

Rafi Benjamin - synths and sounds

Gianni Staiano - organ

Russ Gonzales - tenor sax

rollercoaster

written by Beston Barnett (with respects to "Schwee" Michael Schwartz)

featuring Gianni Staiano on organ

You-ou don’t know

What you-ou got with me

I’m bout to get B Y Z

I’m just about to rock ya like the rollercoaster

Ye le ye le

Pop, pop, co-co-co-co, pop, pop

Watch the rhythm explode as I begin to rock

Pop, pop, co-co-co-co, pop, pop

Watch the rhythm explode!!

We was all there, it was real I swear

It was raw like green onions, and rare like spare ribs

No fibs’ what I’m sayin though I gotta speak glib

Every sucker want dibs when he suffers to live

In the spotlight on the floor that night

The light fantastic shine celestial bright

Went right round, and then we shook up the town

When the kitchen started kickin it down

Pop, pop, co-co-co-co, pop, pop

Watch the rhythm explode as I prepare to dock

Pop, pop, co-co-co-co, pop, pop

Watch the rhythm explode!!

I got the knife, the spoon, the fork in my hand

I got the hip-hop and the be-bop and the funk in my band

we got the supersonic skills to build a bridge to Japan

it’s the kitchen with a mission hittin pots and the pans

who the man wreckin records I reckon it’s Superman

learn your lesson, here’s confessin I’m testin your width-band

on the lickety rickety quicker-than-spit wonderland tram

with the operator yellin back, who got the plan!

Pop, pop, co-co-co-co, pop, pop

Watch the rhythm explode as I blow my top

Pop, pop, co-co-co-co, pop, pop

Watch the rhythm explode!!

it's alright

written by Beston Barnett

featuring Rafi Benjamin on synth and Gianni Staiano on organ

Got to rock

Got to shock

Got to tick-tock

Got to rock

Got to try

Got to fly

Got to get high

Got to try

Put away your pouty face, babe

Put away them puppy-dog eyes

No need to slave away, babe

Ain’t no need to compromise

I know it’s every little thing

I know it’s every little sting

But we’ve got voices

And we can sing

And it’s alright baby, alright, sugar

Nothing in this world can stop what you’ve got

And that’s love, love, baby, love, love, sugar

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey

Will I fall flat on my face?

Am I holdin the ace?

Runnin the rat race?

In outer space?

Yo, I got to be the diplomat?

Is the kitchen where it’s at?

Rich like a fat cat?

It’s like that, it’s like that

Let’s go down to the river

Let’s take a walk around

Can’t nobody help but shiver

When the rain starts pourin down

Come on, come on, let’s go

Come on, I’ll race you home

We can strip these wet, wet clothes off

And then, shake it from head to toe

the bill earner

written by Beston Barnett (with respects to Junior Walker)

featuring Gianni Staiano on organ and Russ Gonzales on tenor sax

Who’s the bill earner?

I’m the bill earner

Who’s the bill earner?

Yo, you think you're the bill earner?

Who’s the bill earner?

I’m the bill earner

I be stackin that stash, dancin tango in cash

I be rakin that loot in my three-piece suit

Will I am

Will I be

Will I concede to see

Wills I done worn out already

Will I earn her enough to buy stuff til she says never this man

Will I forget

Will I break ground like Gehry

Will I hit like Hercules and zap like Zeus

Will I have the juice

Will I can-can with my band like a sea-man on a slow boat to Japan

I know about singin my song

And I know about getting words wrong

We ain’t made to suffer that long

No, no, no, no

I said Reverend please can you marry me

Don’t let La Migra catch my cutie

He said let’s discuss fees allegorically

Mr Jackson won’t do, I need old Benjy

I cried please is un mil pesos enough

he said no substitutes only good green stuff

bills of chlorophyll fill my pillow’s fluff

without my beauty sleep I get rough, come on

when i rise

written by Beston Barnett (with respects to Sweet Honey in the Rock)

In the mornin when I rise

Wanna rise up rise up, singin, when I rise

If you are sitting alone in front of the TV

I hear the voice of your mind

As the wind over misplaced canyons

Go our industrial prayers for forgetfulness

In this time of boxes, walling in or out

When stasis must pass for life signs

Even the five must connive to strive

And motivate past this regretfulness

Can any one man or woman in this house

Live lives that are not largely bounded?

But will those who’ve sounded with struggle reside

Singing Found on the other side

Things to do tomorrow:

Write this wrote, play this played

Paint this painted, make this made

Record this record, make it kick

Kick it live, resurrect and bring the dead alive

Forge in the smithy of my soul

The uncreated conscience of my 24-hour party people

Flip the dominant paradigm until such time

That pointed only inward every steeple

And take this seed ever deeper

Let the suicide decide between the stone and the seeker

Cause every brother’s keeper is the reaper

The cliched must be remade

The tired rewired, the mired retrieved from the muck

What was sundered and undone

Must be made whole again, the two made one

Backtrack forward from this frame of fragments

To a figmentary rain of hope for tomorrow

And every sorrow sees its start in expect-ation

And every regret reads its rite in moder-ation

And every moment meets its maker in itself

Created and destroyed like a record on the shelf

Make this mark upon your forehead and your heart:

The only continuity is Art

love is where you are

written by Beston Barnett (with respect to Brazil)

Flowers are burning, grass is singing

Sun is shining on me

Stars are blooming, planets winging

Spiralling through infinity

On the beach, on the boardwalk

On the backstreet, on the get-away

At the bar, in the nightclub

Where you’re shakin, you’re shakin, you’re mad, mad, shakin

Love is where you are

love is where you are

ye le ye le ye

le ye le ye

it’s only words, it’s only words

don’t you go getting yourself unwound

tongues of gold, strings of silver

a choir of sunbeams

words and bones, a forking river

with banks of smoky green

on the stage, in the spotlight

at the crime scene, in your death bed

at the door, with the last word

when you’re shakin, shakin, you’re tremblin and shakin

le, le, le, put down your guns

written by Beston Barnett featuring synth and sounds by Rafi Benjamin

my mom called me up yesterday said what she had to say

“Beston, you’re my only one

you’re my only shinin sun”

you see my best friend met the man

of her dreams – in the land of milk and honey

though blood’s in the streets

they got a wedding scheme – in the land of milk and honey

now I do not support

Sharon’s regime – in the land of milk and honey

but for my friend I got to go

by any means – in the land of milk and honey

see what war does to love?

breaks its strings, clips its wings

“mom, I gotta go”

she said, “picture me without a son”

le le le, put down your guns, Jerusalem

le le le, Israel’s flower is Palestine’s

le le le, swords into ploughshares, yours and mine

le le le, love can’t fly without wings

I’m gonna walk through the streets, bible in my hand – mm mm

I been a stranger in a strange land – mm mm

did Egypt know the heart of a sojourner? – mm mm

hast thou lost the love of thy neighbor? – mm mm

thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge with the children of thy people,

thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself

thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge with the children of thy people,

thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself

soul, hip-hop, and tropicalia

written by Beston Barnett (with respect to Cuba)

featuring Rafi Benjamin on synth

Spinning through this wrinkle in time

And each rhyme that rushes touches universes split by parallax

Waxing poetic, this emetic solution loosens

That part of your heart that’s not afraid to cross the tracks

Back through this self-doubting, re-routing my creed:

That my seed’ll push your need towards the abstract

Stacked behind blind spots from TV and CG,

We be the thumb to counteract these cataracts

Cracks in your crystals collide as my

Stellar geometries create your zodiac

Won’t bow, won’t kneel, won’t wheel, won’t deal … listen to me

Ain’t no way we’re turning round

Ain’t no way we’re gonna let you down

Sharing the shadows, this network of free-men

And fighters in never forsworn blood-pacts

Their black consecrations conserving this one

Manifest reigning aim: to preserve the pax

Shackled by mundane, tamed, too sane

This poet-army maintained to counteract

Contracts with community support retort

The notion that conformist pleasure principle attracts

Wracked with self-flagellation, this nation

Of meta-maniacs turns backs to the facts

Won’t see, won’t hear, won’t heal, won’t feel … listen to me

tocalo como lo toco yo

tocalo con la cocina

proper

written by Beston Barnett (with respects to the Lil Rascals Brass Band)

early one morning, fore sunrise

woke up to the smell of bacon frying

I knew right then, knew right there

I smelled them angels cooking in the air

I knew the reason, I knew why

cause we all got spice and we all got fire

yes, we all got spice, all got fire

with that angel band, gonna take it higher

we rock proper

come up proper

my girl always proper, she a showstopper

we rock proper

cherry tip-topper

my girl, come on, can’t stop her

how do I get to the other side?

who’s gonna lead when I’ve fallen by?

will my soul from my body fly?

don’t nobody know

will the world find us here

lookin back ten thousand years?

all our hopes and wasted fears

don’t nobody know

slip through the cracks with me

slip through the cracks to the underside

fly the less-traveled sky past shark’s teeth to empty beaches

where the trail reaches outreaches hang a left

crest the levy and press on past lonely towers

when the sage flowers brush breaths past your nose

know that waiting in a magic silence she is there

air trembling, stories in the shadows, singing

"don’t nobody know"

zulu

written by Beston Barnett

Everybody think they gotta tell me what I gotta do

Everybody wiggling their tongue in my ear

Ambition ain’t my thing, I’d be happy working at the zoo

But I got my full-time guitar, my pad and pencil too, and I bring em here to sing to you

I got to love you

I got to get drunk and dance like a zulu

Everybody got somethin they just gotta do

And I got to love you

I got two guitars, one for work and for play

I got no hair and I like it that way

I got two singers in my band and they like to sway

I gotta head full of words that no one understands, but I get up here anyway

Do I gotta do, what I gotta do, what would you do, yeah?

the mark inside

written by Beston Barnett (with respect to William Burroughs)

There is one mark you cannot beat

The mark inside

Spymasters of the world,

Pimps and pushers, usurers,

Manipulators, syndicates,

Know this

And fear this

There is a cosmic retribution

There is a righteous punishment

It is nothing like what they told you

It is simple and clean and true

Know this

and fear this

me and my girl

written by Beston Barnett

Shout loud, c’mon everybody

Shout loud, c’mon now

Trouble times comin, spider times too mmm

Spider bite comin, lay it on you mmm

Black and white has turned green and blue mmm

And the days of the wicked and the wise are through

Only one, only one, only one you

Only one, only one, only one me too

Me and my girl, rockin the world

When the air surrendered to a magic spell

For a Mexican boy with a flag to sell

And I all stood starin down a deeper well

When the air surrendered and the towers fell

If I die, if my pencil fall

Walk on girl, walk on girl

If the cherry rots and the pit is the world

Walk on girl, walk on girl

If the bridge collapse and the engine stall

Walk on girl, walk on girl

To the broken hearts and the stepped on girls

Walk on girl, walk on girl

playing with matches

written by Beston Barnett (with respect to J. J. Cale)

Mama come stop me…

I’m playin in the street

Just glass and bare feet

Knife in my hand

I’m singin in the band

I feel like I’m dangerous

I feel like I been playin with matches

I feel like I’m on fire

I feel like I been playin with matches

Mama come stop me…

I’m jumpin on the bed

I’m shavin my head

Ain’t where I oughtta be

I'm watchin my MTV

Got to get it together

time to work it out

written by Beston Barnett (with respect to Stevie Wonder)

there ain’t nothin like lovin a woman

so hard you can’t help hurtin, but I know

time will wash these love wounds away

if my love’s true and yours is too

ten thousand chariots couldn’t tear us, but I know

sometimes you gotta look farther than today

I know we can make time to work it out

I know we can make time

simmer down sweetie, come down easy

we say these angry words, but I know

we’ll stay up all night just to get it straight

wishin and wantin, tossin and tearin

turnin our words around cause I know

we’ll make love tenderly by the break of day

so many heartbreaks, so much achin

so many mixed vibrations, I know

this thing ain’t no fling, it ain’t no game

baby take me, hold my hand

lay your head beside me, I know

we don’t wanna watch our love dreams fade

watch your back

written by Rafael Loiederman (with respect to Jorge Ben Jor)

featuring Rafi Benjamin on synths

watch your back, watch your back, back

here come mr. policeman with his shackles

clack, clack, clack

he'll put the cold metal right on your wrist

he'll tell you right then you must cease and desist

you'll try and reason with him, try and pump your fists

but it's no use, you're on their black list

you head up to the hills so that you can meditate

roll up a spliff of herb which to Jah you dedicate

just when you're feelin irie and about to levitate

here come mr. policeman, make your freedom terminate

you try and reason with him, say your soul it medicate

he'll say you are the virus that we must eradicate

put on these here shackles and accept them as your fate

cause tonight you'll be singin through that cold, steel grate