Archive for June, 2008

Followed Path
Karl Hector & The Malcouns
Sahara Swing
Release Date: July 9, 2008

I recently started getting promos from Stones Throw which is exciting. This cd showed up last week and I’ve been stuck on this track since then. Sahara Swing is on Stones Throw’s “Now Again” subsidiary which I thought was solely dedicated to reissues. The cd is clearly marked with a 2008 release year but considering the sound, I was able to ignore it and assume it was the a new copyright year for the reissue. It wasn’t until just now that I went to Stones Throw site to get to the bottom of it, and apparently “Now-Again has taken more to new artist development and signings” and this is brand new music.

The horn harmonies that first appear at :57 seem so familiar without actually knowing them. It’s actually something I would have dreamed of playing back in my young alto saxophone playing days. Not so complex but oh so moody and cinematic.

I don’t know anything else about this group other than what the Now Again site says so I’ll just quote instead of pretending:

Now-Again Records follows up…with an album of Afro-tinged funk music originating from the Southern Sahara and recorded in Germany.

Karl Hector has, to date, only appeared on one 7-inch, from 1996, as the leader of the Funk Pilots. For this album, he has teamed up with Jay Whitefield (producer and guitarist for the Poets of Rhythm and the Whitefield Brothers, and founder of the now defunct Hotpie & Candy Records) and Thomas Myland and Zdenko Curlija, founders of The Malcouns.

Alongside Bo Baral, other members of the Poets of Rhythm and crack Munich-based session musicians, Whitefield, Myland and Curlija have crafted nearly twenty tracks that follow the musical roads that Hector has travelled. The underlying groove that ties these ideas together, of course, is as rooted in James Brown as it is Fela Kuti. As informed by Mulatu Astatke of Ethiopia as it is by Jean-Claude Vannier and Can. This is an album of the world. Not “world music” – but that will appeal to any culture ever transfixed by rhythm on “the one.”

>> right-click –> here to download the 192 kbps version [6.6 MB] or here for the 320 kbps version [11.0 MB].

Come Over - Estelle
Bittersweet - Me’Shell Ndegéocello
It Takes More - Goapele
Connected Mattalike - Zaki Ibrahim
Easin’ In - Edwin Starr
Alright - D’Angelo
Give Me Your Love - Curtis Mayfield
Honey (DJ Day Remix) - Erykah Badu
I Want You Back - Raphael Saadiq
Love For The Sake Of Love - Claudja Barry
Summertime - Last Order
More Shine - Si*Sé
Waltz of a Ghetto Fly - Amp Fiddler
Things U Do - Q-Tip
Lovely Day (Up Hygh Mix) - Bill Withers
For Da Love Of Da Game - Eric Roberson
Love (Your Pain Goes Deep) - Frankie Beverley And The Butlers
Oh No Not My Baby - Aretha Franklin
The Light Remix Main (It’s Love) - Common feat. Marsha Ambrosius & Bilal
Slave - Steve Spacek
Between The Sheets (Steven Lenky Marsden Remix) - Isley Brothers
Sun, Moon, Stars - Mos Def
Ghana Emotion - Omar
I Need You - Alicia Keys
The People featuring Dwele - Common
Bedda At Home (Yam Who Remix) - Jill Scott
Soldier - Erykah Badu
Free Like Me featuring Dee - HandinHand
If It Isn’t Love - New Edition
Take Me Home - Sara Devine
Cornbread, Fish & Collard Greens - Anthony Hamilton
Rising To the Top (7 Samurai Remix) - Keni Burke
Happy (Only You Can Make Me Happy) - Surface
Gente Ordinaria - Aloe Blacc
Used To Love U (Yam Who Remix) - John Legend
Body Parts - Raphael Saadiq
Sacrifice featuring Nelly Furtado - The Roots
4u - Eric Roberson
Jazz Thing - Gang Starr
Where I Stand - Raheem DeVaughn

[AYO’S PERFORMANCE]

Follow Me - Red Astaire
That’s What I’m Talking About (Featuring Rell) - Pete Rock
When I See Love (ColdFusion Mix) - Lizz Fields
L.I.N.N. (featuring Linn) - Freddie Cruger
Keep it Up - Milton Wright
The Blast - Talib Kweli & Hi-Tek
Coming Home (Featuring Dwele) - J-Live
Meant To Be - Kindred (The Family Soul)
Didn’t I - Leela James
I Just Realized - The Brand New Heavies
Rising Up (feat. Chrisette Michele & Wale) - The Roots
Light It Up - Nicolay
Love You Inside Out - Bee Gees

[DWELE’S PERFORMANCE]

Fantasy - Earth Wind & Fire
I Like It - DeBarge
A Long Walk (Dodge Remix Pt. 1) - Jill Scott
Real Thing (Music Is Everything) (Green Lantern Remix) - Erykah Badu
Rock The Boat - Aaliyah
Tainted (Featuring Dwele) - Slum Village
Too Fly - Dwele
Too High - Stevie Wonder
By Your Side (Cottonbelly Remix) - Sade
I Want You featuring will.i.am - Common
Deep Inside - Platinum Pied Pipers
You Gonna Make Me Love Somebody Else - The Jones Girls
Sexual Healing - The Hot 8 Brass Band

Dwele’s “Sketches of a Man” is in stores today.

You and Me
Stevie Wonder
My Cherie Amour, 1969

I was putting the full court press on a lot of my friends to come to the WONDER-Full™ party this year and at the last minute (when I was eating a burrito across the street from the Hammerstein) I got nervous that I might be overselling it. I got there pretty early (9:30, doors opened at 9:00) and was surprised to find out that the event was in the actual ballroom (”Hammerstein Ballroom”) on the 7th floor, not in the concert venue on the first floor. I was quite a shift from last year’s all concrete warehouse setting. The ballroom featured carpeting and an expansive wedding-style wood cube dance floor that was placed in the middle for the occasion.

As usual Keistar/Spinna/Bobbito brought in their own sound which, in my estimation, has been really heavy on treble for the last two years. I brought 8 pairs of earplugs for friends after Ben was so kind as to save me the morning-after-ear-ringing last year.

There were maybe 100 people there when I got there and a quarter of them were already dancing (mostly alone on the huge almost empty dance floor) and I felt better about my campaign already, remember how serious the Wonder-Full crowd is about dancing. By 11:15, the entire dancefloor was full but the real treat came around 1:00 a.m. when Stevie showed up. There was a commotion as he (and his daughter Aisha and the rest of his entourage) walked along the side of the ballroom making there way to the front and very quickly, what had been a free-moving dance party turned into a uni-directional cell-phone-camera wielding semi-reverent mass.

That picture doesn’t do justice to the number of recording devices being used. As has been pointed out on other blogs, people seemed so consumed with trying to capture the moment that a lot of them seemed to forget to be in it. After endorsing Barack Obama and mentioning that the party was a month late (it’s traditionally been within a week of his birthday, May 13th) among other things, he sang “That Girl,” “Uptight (Everything’s All Right),” “Superstition,” and “Do I Do” more or less a capella with intense crowd participation.

He left the stage after that but came back 10 or 15 minutes later to just sit down and hang out. The funny thing was, people couldn’t handle it. Everyone rushed back up to the front and starting taking pictures…of Stevie sitting…and it went on for a while. It was a little silly. Someone asked me “why is he just sitting there?” to which I more or less replied “he’s hanging out, the real question is, why are we just standing here?” Just when people finally went back to dancing, Spinna played “Master Blaster” and Stevie got up and sang with it [insert rush-to-stage part 3]. Then talked about Syreeta (his first wife) who died in 2004. Then he left (for 15 seconds) and Spinna played “Isn’t She Lovely” (written for Aisha) which he came back and sang for her.

I thought I would post this song, one of my favorite Stevie album cuts, as a tribute to the party and his concert at Jones Beach which I saw last night. This song is also on my Music For My Funeral list. As it says on that page and it worth repeating, “You and Me” is not to be confused with the (also awesome) better known and more predictably sentimental “You and I” from Talking Book. “You and Me” instantly makes me picture sunshine and hills. It’s very much a “closing credits” song and therefore perfect for the list.

>> right-click –> here to download the 192 kbps version [3.7 MB] and here for the 320 kbps version [6.2 MB].

By Your Side (Cottonbelly Remix)
Sade
X Amounts of Niceness, 2004

Cottonbelly is an alias of Stuart Matthewman, the saxophone and guitar player for Sade (”Sade” the band), member of Sweetback and part-producer, part-songwriter, and musician for Maxwell’s three studio albums (among other things I’m sure).

Someone enthusiastically requested this song from me a couple years back and I didn’t have it/know it. Then he told me it was on Red Hot + Riot (see this post for info on the Red Hot series) which I owned and I almost wanted to tell him that he was wrong (I thought the whole album was Fela covers). Of course he was right and the song more than lived up to his effusive recommendation.

I don’t know the history of this mix; “By Your Side” came out in 2000 but I don’t see any mention of this mix until Red Hot + Riot in 2002. I wonder if he made it specifically for that compilation. This remix changes the vibe of the song more than I would have believed possible. The original is one of the most overly pleasant poppy things that Sade have ever done (and we all love them, but they are not the most musically complex to start with). He made the tempo a third faster and integrated the vocals perfectly with samples from Fela’s “Who No Know Go Know” and Tony Allen’s (wikipedia, myspace) “Jealousy.”

The version on Red Hot + Riot is 4:40 but I posted the version on this Cottobelly compilation I picked up at Amoeba during my last trip to San Francisco because apparently, at 7:16, it’s the full version that I didn’t know existed until just now.

This sounds nice at office-volume but is a whole other beast when played at body shaking-bass levels.

>> right-click –> here to download the 192 kbps version [5.2 MB] and here for the 320 kbps version.

You can find me here this Tuesday night. I humbly recommend that you join me.

I Ain’t Got Nothing
The Temptations
All Directions, 1972

This album was best known for “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” but there are some other great songs on it as well, including a cover of Isaac Hayes’
“Do You Thing” from the Shaft Soundtrack that came out a year before, and this song. This album also contains the surprising “Run Charlie Run” — as in “Run Charlie run, the niggas is comin’!” (snippet). I guess they felt like they needed to up the ante after their less incendiary 1969 song “Message From a Black Man.”

“I Ain’t Got Nothing” is one of those songs that is totally ridiculous and undermines itself at every turn, yet still somehow achieves the desired effect, in the case, being sad. It would be perfect for a Will Ferrell movie.

You know, every house has a door and every room has a floor
Every fence has a gate and every beast has a mate
Everybody, everybody’s got something but me…I ain’t got nothing

Every stove has a fire and every car has a tire
Every fish has a bowl and every shoe has a sole
Everybody, everybody’s got something but me…I ain’t got nothing

Now I don’t care about politics and things across the see
All I want, all I want to do is love, and have somebody love me

I need, I need somebody

Every lion has a den and every little pig has a its pen
Every road has a way and they tell me every dog has its day
Everybody, everybody’s got something but me

I ain’t got nothing
I ain’t got nothing
Oh no…

(repeat)

>> right-click –> here to download the 192 kbps version [5.2 MB] and here for the 320 kbps version [8.6 MB].

Pretty Please (Love Me) Feat. Cee-Lo - Estelle
Little Bit - Lykke Li
Barack Obama - Cocoa Tea
Whats My Name? [Rock With The Hot 8] - The Hot 8 Brass Band
Hvor VI Henne - Boom Clap Bachelors
Soldier - Erykah Badu
Funk Box (Twelve Beats Return Remix) - Visioneers
Over Like A Fat Rat - Fonda Rae
Eyes Closed - Nobody Presents Blank Blue
One Love - Whodini
Life, Rain, Fall - TM Juke
Genevieve - Cymande
She’s Always In My Hair - Prince And The Revolution
Samba De Flora - Airto Moreira
A Chance For Peace - Lonnie Liston Smith & The Cosmic Echoes