Archive for September, 2009

What Do You Want Me To Do
Lou Courtney
7″ Single, 1973
Rags/Ragmar

A friend was kind enough to store his vinyl well-cared-for vinyl collection at my apartment a couple weeks ago, including the stacks and stacks of 45s in the picture below. I don’t recognize so many of them, it’s pretty exciting.

This is the first post of what may be many as I slowly work my way through them. The posts will probably be a little shorter as I’ll know absolutely nothing about a fair amount of the artists.

Case in point, Lou Courtney and Ragmar Music Corp., nice to meet ya. You’ve got a little Southside Movement meets The New Birth thing going on and I like your style. (He apparently has a bit of a catalog but it’s new to me.)

Songs are available for two weeks.

Be My Husband
Joy Jones
Unreleased, 2009
(I highly recommend that you check her album Godchild here on iTunes)

I almost posted this song a few weeks ago but I didn’t know why it wasn’t on Joy’s album and whether or not she wanted it circulated. After last night’s interview I know it’s “something for the people” so I am more than happy to spread the love.

This is a stellar cover of one of this Nina Simone song I posted a couple years back. To my very pleasant surprise, Joy produced this song herself. Nina’s version consists of just voice and one hand clap/cymbol combo at the end of each bar. Joy keeps that clap and builds a full song’s instrumentation around it complete with layers and layers of vocals and yet manages to keep the song sounding stripped down and simple.

I am kicking myself for missing her show at S.O.B.’s on Saturday night because she did this song live and apparently it was out of control.

Be sure to check my interview with her on The Main Ingredient last night (the Sept. 22nd show). I think you will be able to tell we had a lot of fun together in the studio.

I have one other cover of this song that I have no artist info for. Can anyone ID the artist on this version?

Shout to Trees for Breakfast for putting me onto this song.

Songs are available for two weeks.

Following her 9/19 show at SOB’s, Joy Jones (L.A.) will be my guest on The Main Ingredient! Her album Godchild, released in July on Future Soul Records, is a thing of beauty. We’ll be playing some tracks from the album, I’ll ask her a few questions and then she’ll play some music that’s influenced her and music from her favorite current artists. Tune in!

Something To Hold On To
Bilal
Love For Sale (Unreleased), 2006

I’m 3+ years late on this one. This album was leaked online in 2006 and then shelved by Universal and has never come out officially in the U.S. (more details here). Apparently it’s available on vinyl in Europe. I don’t know if this is the actual artwork.

Wow, I like this album so much more than his first (don’t get me wrong I like the first album too, especially “You Are” and “Sometimes”). This album has that Like Water for Chocolate / Mama’s Gun Soulquarian circa 2000 vibe but it was actually made much later (in relative terms).

It was hard to decide which song to post. I opened my radio show last night with the 7:00 minute afrobeat/soul track “Sorrow, Tears & Blood” which features Common. “All for Love” is also really lush but I picked this track which is one of two that have showed up elsewhere. “Something To Hold Onto” was produced by Nottz and was also recorded by Jay Electronica (this is a crappy 128 kbps version for reference – all I have sorry). The year listed in the Jay Electronica track is earlier than the Bilal track but I have the feeling it happened the other way around – I have another track with the same tags where Jay is rhyming over “Love Is” by Common. Also, Bilal was more likely than Jay to have the budget for a Nottz Track in 2005/6.

There something really hypnotic about this track starting with the bass line and, of course, ending with the organ (I am a sucker for anything organ).

Bilal is featured on the excellent “Cheeba” on Shafiq Husayn’s forthcoming “Shafiq En A Free Ka” album coming out October 6th on Plug Research. You can hear it on my September 8th radio show.

Songs are available for two weeks.

I Love Vinyl August ’09 by scribelove

Shafiq Husayn, 1/3 of Sa-Ra Creative Partners will join me on the The Main Ingredient on eastvillageradio.com this Monday night!

From his bio:

Shafiq Husayn is a Master Teacher, someone who combines innate talent with the mental and spiritual focus needed to reach their potential. As one third of the stellar, groundbreaking production trio Sa-Ra Creative Partners, Shafiq has been using his prowess to assist some of the greatest musicians of our generation, from Herbie Hancock to J Dilla to Dr. Dre to Erykah Badu. This fall Shafiq takes a step away from collective efforts to direct his own opus—his long-awaited debut album on Plug Research entitled Shafiq En’ A-Free-Ka.