Stones Throw just announced they're releasing an album of music by Tony Cook, who was responsible for my favorite track from BBE's American Boogie Down compilation and this proto-house classic:
Tony Cook: "On the Floor (Rock-It)" (Full Moon, 1984)
I knew Cook had produced a handful of dance records in the 1980s but had no idea he had also been a drummer with James Brown during the late 1970s and 1980s. Apparently Stones Throw has access to multi-tracks with lots of unreleased mixes and songs. Hopefully, some of them are stronger than the lead single.
This week I play a mix of dance music that kicks off with late 70s/early 80s disco, funk and soul, shifts into some current stuff (including new tracks from the homeboy DJ Eleven and the folks at Solid Bump!) and then loops back around to a few classic favorites. No talking, no drops, just music for dancing. The tracks I play are these:
1. Too Sweet: You’ve Got to Find Yourself
2. Idris Muhammed: Could Heaven Ever Be Like This
3. Candido: Thousand Finger Man
4. Kenix feat. Bobby Youngblood: There’s Never Been No One Like You
5. GQ: This Happy Feeling
6. Tony Silvester & the New Ingredient: Cosmic Lady
7. Sir Bentley: Street Shuffle
8. One Way: Music
9. Radiance: You’re My Number One [Dub version]
10. George Clinton: One Fun at a Time
11. Aaron Broomfield: Polyphase
12. Casper: Casper’s Groovy Ghost Show
13. Alton McClain & Destiny: It Must Be Love
14. Cloud One: Don’t Let This Rainbow Pass Me By
15. Final Edition: I Can Do It (Anyway You Want It)
16. Duck Sauce: aNYway
17. Laberge: We Don’t Know
18. DJ Eleven: Dance Our Way
19. Domu: Worldwide [Solid Groove’s Wednesday at Midnight mix]
20. Ultramagnetic MC’s: Poppa Large [Matthew Africa’s Switch RMX]
21. Dan the Automator: Rapper’s Delight [Tepr RMX] feat. Casual & Chali 2na
22. Malente: I Like It [Riva Starr Snatch! RMX]
23. The Juan Maclean: Happy House [Chateau Flight RMX]
24. Soul Central: In-ten-city
25. Fred Falke: Back to Stay
26. SoulPhiction & Move D: The Limelight [Trusme RMX]
27. Status IV: You Ain’t Really Down [Jazzanova RMX]
28. The Rolling Stones: Under My Thumb [Todd Terje dub]
29. U-Tern: Without You
30. Toby Tobias: In Your Eyes [Tensnake RMX]
31. Dayton: We Can’t Miss
32. Heaven & Earth: I Really Love You
33. Starpoint: Don’t Leave Me
My folks from the NYC DJ crew the Rub are about to release the third volume of their internet-platinum series, It's the Motherfucking Remix. They've been leaking songs from the project at a rate of one a day over at the Rub website and they just posted one I did.
I combined two records I love: the Ultramagnetic MCs' "Poppa Large" and Switch's "A Bit Patchy". Neither needs a bit of improving but I smushed them together because, well, that's how DJs do in the 2000 decade. I'm told it's been getting some run from the homies DJ Eleven and DJ mOma, among others. Now you can enjoy it, too.
Feist: Sea Lion Woman (Feisty RMX) Moodymann: Tribute Omar-S: Day Puzique: Don't Go Earth People: Dance DreDay: Spider People Kid Sister: Get Fresh INST
I had completely forgotten that Feist had covered Nina Simone's "See Line Woman" until I saw this 12" up at Turntable Lab. I didn't get the hype over Feist's Reminder LP but I thought it was a really cool song choice and liked how spare her version is. The remix is subtle but really good-- they strip the guitars and dub it out a little, but leave the best parts intact. There are a lot of good versions of "See Line Woman" but I think Yusef Lateef's is my favorite.
I haven't posted a radio mix in a while, which is a shame because I don't really play any dance music on my show outside of that. Even though I record these live it ends up being a huge time-suck due to editing curses, dealing with bouncing out of ProTools, etc. However, this week I got motivated to because a couple friends of mine just came out with records and I'm hyped on both.
First, my homeboy Trackademicks's debut single FINALLY came out on Fool's Gold. He's a super-talented dude and it's about time the world found out about him and his crew, the Honor Roll. I put the Sammy Bananas mix on here, but my favorite track from the single is "Topsidin'", which I've been running ever since The [Re]Mixtape Vol. 2 hit my sweaty hands. Go buy the whole EP here or just about any place music is sold online.
The other is the new Pleasure & Pressure Vol. 1 EP, which my dude White Girl Lust put out on his label, Solid Bump. I admired the two previous Solid Bump EPs, which were like a lightly glitchy electro take on the stuff that fed 90s West Coast rap (Zapp, P-Funk, etc.), but this time out the sound is a little sexier. I've included WGL's "Blackout!", but I like all four tracks on the EP, including Laberge's and DreDay's.
DJ Sega: "Colours" N.A.S.A.: "Gifted" feat. Santogold & Kanye West (Jim Sharp Re-Shuffle) Trackademicks: "Enjoy What You Do" (Sammy Bananas RMX) White Girl Lust: "Blackout!" BladeRunners: "Disco Juice" Busta Rhymes: "Don't Touch Me" (U-Term RMX) Lykke Li: "Breaking It Up" (Punks Jump Up RMX) Tepr: "Minuit Jacuzzi" (dATA RMX) Treasure Fingers: "Come True Tonight" (dub) Blaqstarr: "Get Off" Do or Die: "Po Pimp (Do You Wanna Ride)" feat. Twista Da Organization: "Can't Stop No Player"
For those parked near a radio or a computer from 3 to 5:30 today, my radio show airs on KALX Berkeley 90.7 FM and streams here.
Dedicated to Fifi who got ran over by a Pathfinder with loud music
In the late 80s/early 90s there was a generation of NY house producers who dabbled in rap music. The most obvious is Kenny Dope, who produced a couple obscure but now much-sweated rap releases (Kaos's Court's In Session, N.M.C. & A.D.J.'s 12") before he had house hits and has intermittently done rap-related production ever since. Another is Todd Terry.
Todd Terry's biggest contribution to rap music is his production of the Jungle Brothers' "I'll House You", which was a rap remake of "Can You Party?", a song Terry released under the name Royal House.
In an attempt to duplicate the success of "I'll House You", Warlock/Idlers also put out a rap remake of another of Terry's best productions from that era, Black Riot's "A Day In the Life":
Big shout to my boys the International Hip House Gangsters.
At about the same time, Royal House released an album entitled Can You Party? ("Yes I can!", someone wrote on my copy; this post's title is from the credits of that release). The album was an odd mix of house and sample-heavy rap instrumentals that sound like some of Mantronix's production of that era ("Listen to the Bass of Get Stupid Fresh Part II, "King of the Beats", etc.):
This and a few other cuts from the LP are dope enough that I wish he had continued with more productions in that vein or like this, a remix which I believe only came out on this bootleg:
Public Enemy: "Bring the Noise" (Todd Terry RMX) (Lost Hip Hop Classics, 19??)
This is totally unrelated to Todd Terry, but it's a good remix, too:
For a long time, this was the only house record I owned. Even back when I disliked house music, there was just no fronting on it.
Fingers, Inc. was an alias for Larry Heard, better known as Mr. Fingers. The original version features Robert Owens singing and is an absolute Chicago classic; it's widely comped and available. This version, featuring excerpts from Dr. King's March on Washington address, was tucked away on the b-side.
Every time I hear it I'm knocked out by the power of Dr. King's language. It seems like one week a year I hear snatches of the March on Washington speech on the radio or TV, but it's usually reduced to the greatest hits soundbites ("I have a dream...", "... join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'free at last'", etc.) and robbed of context and detail. Here, heard in longer form, the beauty, simplicity and clarity of his words shine, like when he describes Mississippi "sweltering with the heat of injustice" being "transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice" or says that "every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain and the crooked places will be made straight".
I'm back on the air at KALX 90.7 FM Berkeley, doing a weekly show on Wednesday afternoons, 3 to 6 p.m. (Live streaming, but no caching is available here; playlists are here.)
For this week's show I recorded a mix of a bunch of house stuff, both new-ish and classics. It was a one-take mix and I let most of these songs run kinda long (8-and-a-half songs in 38 minutes? jeez!) but that's cuz I like them.
As I ever-so-gently ease myself back into my excuse for a grind, I've gotta send a shout out to my homie Nick Catchdubs, who just put out his fourth (!) full-length mix in the last three months (!!!).
I have no idea how Nick manages to crank out tapes at that rate while running the Fool's Gold label, holding down a weekly with DJ Ayres and touring (not to mention finding time to check for my bullshit!), but my pet theory is he's actually three people and none of them ever sleeps. Regardless, Nick not only cranks out tapes, he makes really good ones.
The new new one is Radio Friendly Unit Shifter, a 90s alterna-rock mix he cooked up with his former Fader colleague Eric Ducker. Taking Spinbad's almighty 80s tapes as their inspiration, dudes put "big hits next to unexpected favorites with lots of movie dialogue and interludes for jokes, all smashed up in a dance party megamixxx".
As someone who managed to insulate myself from pretty much everything rock-related between the time Sonic Youth signed with a major and Pavement broke up, it's not the trip down memory lane that they intended. But for anyone white, over 25 and college-educated who also happens to be normal, it's probably a pretty awesome encapsulation of those years.
Then he's got an artist mixtape with Izza Kizza, a Georgia rapper who's working with Timbaland and to me sounds more than a little like Chamillionaire (download here). There are a lot of good tracks on the CD, but my favorite is this, produced by Trackademicks:
Then there's his hipster dance mix, Slick, which I suspect is more or less a representation of Nick's current live sets (embarrassing disclosure: because he insists on only getting himself booked in the Bay on nights when I'm working or out of town, I've never actually seen the boy play). It's available here with accompanying interview.
And finally, his second collaboration with D.C. rapper Walé, the Seinfeld-themed The Mixtape About Nothing, which drew a rave from Pitchfork, although those boobs somehow neglected to mention Nick.
All of the above tapes are available free in digital form-- just follow the various links.
The Masters At Work dudes have always been way on the funky end of whatever was going on in house at the moment, but in the early to mid-90s they were drawing pretty heavily on hip hop, too. Kenny Dope, in particular, was killing it with rap-inspired party break records like "Supa", his "Budy Bye" remix and "Get On Down." (Ooooh, gotta remember to rip that one.) This was one of my favorites in that vein.
I'll always associate this record with a Thursday night party Dedan and Toks used to throw in SF back then. There was nothing flashy about the party. The spot, Zanzibar was a nondescript restaurant-- the front was a bar and booths, the back a smallish square room. You had to squeeze through a bottleneck of people playing dominoes to get to the back where Toks played dancehall and Dedan played a mix of R&B, rap and house. It had the intimate, sweaty vibe of a great house party.
Both dudes are still around. Dedan plays soulful house at a weekly in Oakland. Toks pops up a little less often, but folks who followed him in the olden days are still geeked.
Masters At Work: "I Can't Get No Sleep" feat. India (Down Low mix) (Cutting, 1993)
