The horn part from this has been stuck in my head since I heard it sampled in the trailer for Kick-Ass:
Trifle: "One Way Glass" (Dawn, 1970)
The album this is from, First Meeting, is a great record. Like their more heavily sweated label-mates Demon Fuzz, Trifle are kinda hard to pin down: sort of jazzy, sort of psych-y, sort of funky-- basically, prog but not annoying. There's a Japanese reissue of First Meeting that's pricey but worth it.
2 Busy Saying Yeah - Why you gotta keep bringing up old hits?
In this episode I play and talk about some of my favorite songs that got reissued in 2009. The bulk of it is soul and funk, although there's also disco, psych, gospel, rap and weird foreign hybrids of many of the aforementioned styles.
Most of the selections are from releases that are legitimately licensed and carefully assembled, with proper mastering, handsome packaging and thoughtful annotations. I have a lot of respect for those who take the time and effort to do it right. I hope you support them so that they can continue the work that they do.
1. Man: “And In the Beginning” Revelation 2. Little Francisco Greaves: “Moving-Grooving” V/A - Panamá! 3: Calypso Panameño, Guajira Jazz & Cúmbia Típica on the Isthmus 1960-75 3. The Blue Rhythm Combo: “Take the Funky Feeling” V/A - Tropical Funk Experience 4. Kukumbas: “Respect” V/A - Psych Funk 101 5. Chocolate Snow: “Inflation” V/A - Eccentric Soul: Smart's Palace 6. Lyman Woodard Organization: “On Your Mind” Saturday Night Special 7. Nite-Liters: “Valdez In the Country” A-Nal-Y-Sis 8. Demon Fuzz: “Disillusioned” Afreaka! 9. The Pretty Things: “You Might Even Say” Philippe Debarge 10. P.E. Hewitt Jazz Ensemble: “Bada Que Bash” V/A - Spiritual Jazz - Esoteric, Modal + Deep Jazz From the Underground 1968-77 11. Lizzy Mercier Descloux: “Hard-Boiled Babe” V/A - Ze 30 - Ze Records Story 1979-2009 12. Gichy Dan's Beachwood No. 9: “On a Day Like Today” (Todd Terje's Friendly Children Edit) V/A - ZEVolution: ZE Records Re-Edited 13. Chemise: “She Can't Love You” V/A - DJ Spinna Presents the Boogie Back: Post Disco Club Jams 14. Cubie Burke: “Down For Double” [JM After-Session M&M Mix] V/A - John Morales - The M&M Mixes 15. Herman's Rocket: “Hanged in the Universe” V/A - Jean-Pierre Massiera - Psychoses Discoïd (1976-1981) 16. Chorus Reverendus: “Dans Son Euphorie” V/A - Wizzz! Psychorama Français 1966-70 17. Apostles of Music: “Wade In the Water” V/A - Local Customs: Downriver Revival 18. The Metros: “Since I Found My Baby” Sweetest One 19. Willie Hutch: “A Love That's Worth Havin'” Soul Portrait 20. Ronnie McNeir: “In Summertime” Ronnie McNeir 21. Andrew Brown: “You Made Me Suffer” V/A - Light: On the South Side 22. Sugar Pie DeSanto: “Use What You Got” V/A - Go Go Power • The Complete Chess Singles 1961-1966 23. The Daughters of Eve: “Help Me Boy” V/A - 2131 South Michigan Avenue: 60s Garage & Psychedelia From U.S.A. & Destination Records 24. Brigitte Fontaine: “Il Pleut“ V/A - Dirty French Psychedelics 25. 24-Carat Black: “I Want to Make Up” Gone: The Promises of Yesterday 26. Sensational Saints: “How Great Thou Art” V/A - Forge Your Own Chains 27. Amazing Farmer Singers of Chicago: “I Got a Telephone In My Bosom” V/A - Fire In My Bones: Raw Rare + Otherworldly African-American Gospel (1944-2007) 28. The Relatives: “Don't Let Me Fall” Don't Let Me Fall 29. John Heartsman & Circles: “Up From Down” Music of My Heart 30. Azambuja & CIA: “Tema De Azambuja” V/A - Black Rio 2: Original Samba Soul 1968-1981 31. Tafo: “Karye Pyar” feat. Nahid Akhtar V/A - The Sound of Wonder! 32. The Animated Egg: “Sock It My Way” Guitar Freakout 33. Natural Elements: “Tri-Boro” 1999 34. Sport "G" & Mastermind: “Live” V/A - Random Rap 35. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo De Cotonou: “Koutoulié” The Vodoun Effect - Funk & Sato From Benin's Obscure Labels 1972-1975
I've been meaning to put in a plug for a pair of free mixes my homeboy Phill Most a/k/a Phill Most Chill a/k/a the Soulman recently put out and, this, the shortest day of the year, feels like a good time for this wintry pair.
Phill's nice with the mic, the pen, the marker, beat machines and other stuff, but he's deservedly best known for his World of Beats tape series, which was among the first to mix rare beats and breaks. Throughout the 90s, Phill regularly dropped tapes featuring obscure original tracks sampled for recent rap hits alongside unknown gems. For many people, Phill's tapes were not just an introduction to the music their favorite songs were based on, they were a gateway to record digging.
Now, having said all that, I actually was never a huge fan of his World of Beats tapes. As much as I love a lot of the music he put on them and as much respect as I have for Phill as a digger and listener, I often found them a little choppy for my taste. Like the rap songs that popularized many of the records he mixed, Phill's tapes tended to focus on little four- or 8- or 16-bar sections-- drum breaks, basslines, loops-- and however hot these pieces were, I usually felt like they didn't stick with me the way songs do.
His two new tapes are a real departure in that respect. Each is a roughly hour-long collection of songs that are minimally mixed and flow naturally.
The first mix is devoted to psych, and it's largely made up of quiet, folk-ish tunes. Many are acoustic, many are female-fronted and quite a few are gorgeous. It's a great nighttime listen and it had me revisiting a few recent reissues that are in a similar style: Dirty French Psychedelics, Fuzzy Felt Folk and Folk Is Not a Four Letter Word and Folk Is Not a Four Letter Word 2. If you enjoy Phill's mix, all are really worth buying.
The second mix is closer to traditional Soulman territory-- it's mainly made up of soul songs, although there's some jazz and a few other things in the mix, too. It's a little bit groovier than Beautiful but overall the tone is similar-- much of it is slow, pretty and reflective.
I was really sad to read that Grandmaster Roc Raida passed away, especially so soon after the death of DJ AM. I only met Raida once but he seemed like a really genuine and humble guy.
There's no question he was one of the greatest scratch/battle DJs who ever did it, but when I think of him the first thing that comes to mind is always this, which he and Knobody produced:
The X-Ecutioners: "Let It Bang" feat. M.O.P. (Loud, 2001)
I can't think of any other song that gets me charged like this does. It's also about the only time M.O.P.'s rap/metal fuckery has fully clicked for me, aside from maybe "Cold World". (I love M.O.P. but dudes, please, less Mash Out Posse, more First Family 4 Life.)
The sample always cracks me up because it starts off sounding like Devendra Banhart covering the intro to Arrested Development and then goes from soft-hands to max power out of nowhere.
Yesterday's New York Times had a brief obituary for Drake Levin, who was best known as guitarist for the 60s-era pop group Paul Revere & the Raiders. I mainly know his music through his work with Brotherhood and Friendsound, the bands he formed with Phil Volk and Michael Smith after the three split the Raiders.
Brotherhood and Friendsound operated in tandem. They had more or less the same personnel and recorded for the same label at the same time. Friendsound's sole LP has got to be one of the stranger things RCA ever put out. A couple tracks resemble songs but mostly it's a weird amalgam of jamming and experimentation with tape effects. On some tracks, like this, it really works:
I just got back from a week in the woods and turned on the computer to see lots of internettery about the Jay-Z buzz single, "D.O.A.". I'm a huge fan of Jay-Z, No I.D. (I like his Black Album a lot better than Jay-Z's) and shitting on tired trends, but think the song kind of sucks. Even so, I'm glad to see a lot of the gushing directed at No I.D. and the song he sampled, Janko Nilovic's "In the Space".
Janko Nilovic is a Montenegro-born and France-based pianist and composer who has cut dozens of LPs for sound library labels like MP 2000, Telemusic and others. As a genre, sound library music can get pretty dull, particularly when consumed in album form. This isn't surprising-- sound library music is basically designed to fade into background and usually packaged more for TV/ad producers than listeners, e.g., songs get broken up into 30-second cues.
Nilovic is one of the few sound library composers I've heard who usually stays interesting for the length of a song and the only one who's led me to sit still for a whole album, his 1974 masterpiece Rhythmes Contemporains. Rhythmes Contemporains is a big band jazz album that's funky, brassy, groovy and spooky all at once-- it reminds me a lot of both David Axelrod and Mike Westbrook. There are only 6 songs and these stretch way past the time and genre conventions of typical library tracks. It was reissued in 2000 on the Cosmic Sounds label and I recommend it highly.
At about the same time there were also a bunch of other reissues that contained many of the funk and rock-oriented songs he cut in his series of "Impressions" LPs for MP 2000 (Pop Impressions, Supra Pop Impressions, Psyc Impressions, Soul Impressions, Jazz Impressions, etc.). I don't think any of the reissues featured "In the Space", which No I.D. sampled from Psyc Impressions, or this track from Supra Pop Impressions, which is one of my favorites:
Gloria Taylor has a really scattered discography. During the '60s and '70s she recorded for a half-dozen labels (King Soul, Silver Fox, Mercury, Selector Sound, Columbia, House Guests, Glowhiz, Whizenglo) and seems to have moved around a fair amount--Cincinnati, L.A., N.Y., etc. The only constant in all the recordings is producer/arranger Walter Whisenhunt.
On Selector Sound she cut some collectible disco, a decent Leon Ware cover and this moody oddity, which is the eeriest "Welcome to Dumpsville, Population: You" song I know.
I know this 45 is lurking somewhere in my house, but damn if I can find it to make a scan. I wish I knew a thousand more records that sounded like this.
EDIT: A-ha! Found you! Now tell me where the APG Crew and Khemistry LPs are hiding!
A few weeks ago I was shopping at Amoeba and came across a relatively recent Sundazed reissue of the Animated Egg's self-titled LP.
The Animated Egg was a band name invented by the Alshire label to package a bunch of psych instrumentals cut by an anonymous group of studio musicians. Alshire was a '60s-era budget label that sold cheaply recorded music packaged to appeal to the most uninformed impulse buyers-- LPs of hack cover versions and muzak that were sold in liquor stores, grocery stores and the like. Although most of the output of Alshire and related labels like Custom, Wyncote and Contessa is pretty useless, the Animated Egg recordings are wild, funky and thoroughly groovy. For years psych and funk collectors puzzled over who created the music, since the credits on the Alshire release reveal nothing.
The new reissue has liner notes that unravel the story of the recordings and reveal the guy behind the Animated Egg, a session guitarist named Jerry Cole. During the '60s, Cole played on records by the Beach Boys, the Byrds and countless other acts that recorded in L.A. He also led a group called the Id, who cut one fuzzy, psychedelic LP for RCA in 1967. At about the same time he recorded an album's worth of instrumental jams which somehow found their way into the hands of the Alshire/Custom/Contessa family of budget labels.
These recordings, together with some alternate versions of material from the Id album, were released not only as the Animated Egg album, but also repackaged (sometimes with overdubs) on a dizzying number of releases including the 101 Strings' Astro Sounds from Beyond the Year 2000, The Black Diamonds' A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix, Haircuts & the Impossibles' Call It Soul, the Projection Company's Give Me Some Lovin, T. Swift & The Electric Bag's Are You Experienced? and the Associated Soul Group's Top Hits of Today.
During the '90s, many of the releases were rediscovered by psych folks, sample hunters and kitsch fans, particularly after Astro Sounds was prominently featured in a Re:Search book and bootlegged on CD. Apparently Cole was unaware of the fuss or even of many of the budget label releases containing his music until relatively recently. He passed away last year, shortly before the Sundazed reissue.
My favorite song from the reissue is "Sock It My Way"; this is an alternate version with awesomely eerie string overdubs:
Elysian Spring was a Massachusetts quintet, although this track features only four of them: two guitars, vibes and bass. The tune reminds me of "The Look of Love" and the performance has a beautiful intimacy.
As the weather gets fall-ish I tend to want to cuddle up with psych and jazz records.
These two songs kind of straddle the boundary between the two. Both were cut in the late 1960s by L.A.-based jazz groups who cut pop-influenced one-offs.
The Advancement was a group headed by Gabor Szabo's rhythm section, bassist Lou Kabok and drummer Hal Gordon. Kabok, like Szabo, was a refugee from Hungary and based this track on a Hungarian folk song. Their record is solid and really slept-on.
The Aquarians were a studio group led by Russo-Belgian pianist Vladimir Vassilieff and featuring established jazz players like Bobby Hutcherson and Joe Pass as well as Lynn Blessing, who coincidentally plays vibes on the Advancement record also. (Oh, and the Bill Plummer record, too! I guess he was kind of the Forrest Gump of the jazzy pseudo-psych world.) The Aqurians record is more or less a latin jazz LP with some flower-pop touches.
I love this song for the vocal and, in particular, the way the naive, dippy lyric ("we can do better/there won't be wars/that kill good people/there won't be walls/between the people/there won't be laws/for certain people/there won't be hate/among the people") gets echoed or maybe undercut by the mindless and strangely affectless responses that follow each line, "uh yeah yeah yeah" and "oh yeah".
The song was recently collected on Sounds of She, which was put together by the folks behind the cool Soft Sounds for Gentle People sunshine-pop comps. In the liner notes, they speculate that the vocalists on this one, credited simply as the Gemini Twins, were probably Alyce and Rhae Andrece, twins who cut weird, late-60s jazz-pop records for Verve and for Limelight with the group Sound of Feeling. I had been thinking that, too.
Oh, and-- here's a song from the second Sound of Feeling LP:
It combines wordless vocals and moog with stuff that ought to suck, like a 7/4 time signature and microtonal improvisation, but instead of being a leaden, pretentious mess, it's actually kind of strange and awesome.
A jazz vibraphone player gets sent to the studio to make an album of pop covers saddled with sitar and strings and draws a Beatles cover. Beatles covers are inherently really hard to pull off because (duh) the band were so fucking great. This works, though.
Being an instrumental, McCoy is freed from having to sing Lennon at his most self-indulgent and precious ("sitting on a cornflake"? "elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna"?) and can focus on the deliciously off-kilter melody.
You are now about to witness the strength of epic nerdery.
A few weeks ago I was buying groceries when I heard Doug Sahm's "She's About a Mover" over the P.A. at Trader Joe's. It's a great song, but it made me want to go home and dig out this version:
I'll always associate this song with the Solesides crew, who murdered it on their Radio Sole cassette. (Or at least that's how I remember it-- what was the line-up, Shadow cutting while Lyrics Born sang? Anybody want to send me a rip of the routine? Mine went MIA about ten years ago.)
While I was ripping, I noticed that on the same album Head recorded covers not only of Dyke & the Blazers "Let a Woman Be a Woman", but also of two great, but genuinely obscure songs:
The first one isn't that surprising a song choice. The Steppenwolf-ish beast was produced by Texas genius/purported child molester Huey P. Meaux, who also produced Head's album and probably foisted the tune on Head. The original version was reissued on the Le Beat Bespoké comp of a few years back. James Anderson had at least one other record with Meaux, a blue-eyed funk single licensed to Cotillion.
The latter is surprising. Body & Soul was a L.A.-based band. Their lone LP, for the short-lived National General label, got national distribution from Buddah, but it's a pretty damn obscure record. I emailed the song's author, Charles Green, and even he wasn't sure how it ended up on Head's record.
To follow the thread a little further, nestled away on Body & Soul's LP is a cover of this:
In my private mind garden, this song was a huge hit inspiring legions of moody psych soul imitators. In reality, the Shades of Black Lightning album probably only inspired a cover because Burbank's Freddie Piro produced both albums.
I was reminded of this song the other day when I heard it on Dr. Delay's REM Sleep psych mix. Delay is a Brooklyn producer/DJ who has made several great mixes over the past few years-- Psycrunk, in which he somehow managed to pull off a CD worth of psych and southern rap mash-ups, the Medium Rare tapes, which draw together loads of late-80s rap singles I wish I owned, and Rajaz Meter, which freaked funky Middle East and Indian sounds.
While I'm jocking, let me say that his Spoon remix is retardedly hot:
Dirty Filthy Mud: "The Forest of Black" (Worex, 1968)
According to my homeboy Vernon, Dirty Filthy Mud were from Oakland and only had one release, the single pictured above. I've never seen a copy of it, but "Forest of Black" has been bootlegged a bunch of times; the bootleg I have features both sides of the single. The other side, "Morning Sun Flower", is folk-rockish but on this track they really knock the psych + electronics steez of Fifty Foot Hose and United States of America out of the box.
One of my favorite albums of the moment is Bully's Obsession comp, which collects a lot of obscure, international '60s and 70s psych. Mike Davis of NYC's Academy Records compiled the set. Whenever I've shopped at Academy, it's seemed like the store was super picked-over; I guess I know why now.
The selections are mostly from Latin America (5 from Brazil, 2 from Peru, 2 from Uruguay and 1 from Argentina), but there are also 3 tracks from Turkey and 2 from India. Unlike, say, the similarly-themed but always disappointing Love, Peace and Poetry comps, all of the selections are good to great.
The track I've posted is kind of an exotic cousin to the Creations Unlimited's "Chrystal Illusion" (which appeared a on two cool, long-deleted comps, the Rustler's Because You're Funky and Dante Carfagna's Chains & Black Exhaust), so I've posted that, too.
