Archive for the 'Music Appreciation' Category

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.

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.

Get Ready (Lookin’ For Love)
Patti Labelle
Released, 1980
Epic Records

I found this song recently and played it in my set at the I Love Vinyl party this Saturday. I feel like Patti Labelle gets an especially bad rep with people young enough to only know the corny 80′s duets and over-the-top tv/awards show performances but she’s done some really good (and really out there) stuff.

With Labelle (the group, with Nona Hendryx and Sarah Dash) she did made some really interesting mixes of funky soul and…(seemingly unrelated) space suits – see the video below. During this period they worked with New Orleans veteran Allen Toussaint a fair amount. He also produced the eternally sampled Meters who played on several of Labelle’s records. 1980 found Toussaint still working with Patti in her solo career. The Meters were not in the band at that point but David Barard’s prominent bass line really takes this song from good to great. It sounds even better at body shaking volume levels as I found Saturday.

Songs are available for two weeks.

Inside Out (Live)
Eska
Download Only, 2009

Inside Out
Odyssey
12″ Single, 1982
RCA Records

One of my favorite singers covered one of my favorite records of all time and she did it damn well. This cover game has rules (or at least I have rules that I judge covers by), I’m sure I’ve mentioned them before: do it different, do it better or don’t do it. Chances are if the song is good enough to cover, you aren’t going to do it better (there are exceptions, for sure). Eska completely flipped this song and extended the already lengthy 6+ minute original to 8+ minutes, all of which completely hold my attention. Instrumentally, the original is almost inappropriately peppy under fairly somber lyrics. Eska slows it down and completely changes the instrumentation to almost a campfire vibe but then builds it up in waves. My favorite part of the song is at 5:19 where, after dropping everything down to percussion, hand claps and voices for a full minute it seems like the song is going to end (it would still be a stellar song if it ended there) but instead everyone comes back in and they go into an unexpected climax (at 6:15). This is another song that puts me back in my band days because they use dynamics in such a powerful way that I can’t help but notice.

Eska’s paragraph on the song:

I loved this song from childhood when pops used to play this Odyssey album called Native NewYorker. I thought those 3 angels with bejeweled and woven hair where from another planet. They sang about ‘roots’ – things my dad would continually remind us about: I’m first generation Afropean (Born Bulawayo, Zimbabwe). There weren’t many Zims in the UK back then, not like now, since Zim suffered a catastrophic exodus over the past 5 years! I have always loved the lead singer’s vocal delivery, sincere and relaxed. The musicianship on this record is stellar. I mean, check the bass line for ‘Inside Out’. What is that?????? As a frustrated bass-player, I can only play air-bass to this tune, and even that feeeeeels gooooood…don’t you just wish you were in that band???? But as a kid, the thing that struck me was the lyrics. I didn’t know what this song was about, I couldn’t relate to it but I wanted to – you know that moment when you understand the words to every love song and you hear them completely differently when it’s accompanied with experience ‘….I wanna be inside out, oh darlin’, I wanna be so deep that you’ll be turning inside out, oh darlin’…’ Ouch! Can’t get better than that, it really can’t.

My love Eska is well documented on this site. I (and many) have been looking for an album from her for years and according to her myspace blog, she’s set a mastering date which means it really must be (almost) done.

Shout out to Jonesy for reacquainting me with this song years back and to Put Me On It for alerting me to the Eska version.

Songs are available for two weeks.

Never Let You Go
Erik Rico
Journey Back to Me, 2007 (iTunes)
Lifenotes Music

This song was also in the running for my summer anthem. I first encountered Erik Rico MCing (somewhere between the traditional sense of the word and the hip hop sense) at the Raw Fusion Party at APT several months back and I was impressed. I usually have about :30 of patience for someone talking on the mic at a party and he managed to say something over at least half of the songs in the hour I was there and not get on my nerves at all. He had a nice way of working with the crowds energy and not overdoing it. At the very end of the party, he even spurred the crowd to keep dancing when DJ Scribe dropped “Everything In Its Right Place” by Radiohead as the last song at 4:00 a.m., even as the lights were coming up. It was a magical moment.

I later got a copy of his album and have been playing several tracks from it since. This one is my feel-good favorite.

Also recommended: Forever, Peace of Mind, Wanting You, and Wonderful. In some ways these are better songs than “Never Let You Go” but none capture the summer mood in the same way.

Songs are available for two weeks.

Work To Do
The Main Ingredient
Afrodisiac, 1973 (not available on iTunes)
RCA Records

Since I seem to be naming everything The Main Ingredient, I figured I should give some love to the namesake. The Main Ingredient are from Harlem and the best-known member is the original Cuba Gooding (Sr.). The group was formed in 1964 but he wasn’t part of the group until 1971 when another member died unexpectedly. The early 70′s recordings that feature him on lead vocals became their best selling material.

This is their 1973 cover of The Isley Brothers classic “Work To Do” which came out the year before (it was also covered by the Average White Band in 1974). The Isley Brothers version will always be the definitive version but I like the way Main Ingredient took it down a notch and added the classic 70′s illustrative spoken interlude:

(phone ringing)
her: hello
him: it’s me baby
her: when you you comin’ home?
him: well i ain’t tonight
her: but why? baby why?
him: because you know, i got to stay out here and take care of this business i’m doin’
her: but i had something good for you tonight baby
him: i know, i know it’s good but i just can’t make it tonight, i got to take care of business
her: but i need you, i need you now
him: i need you too but we need the rent too, listen!

Also have give them props for being a little risqué for 1973 with the art work. It’s no Ohio Players album but that is a nipple.

Shout to Nat/Busquelo for giving me this record.

Songs are available for two weeks.

Starting Tuesday, my friend Jay from White Market Productions and I will be starting a party in conjunction with my radio show (both called The Main Ingredient) at the Blue Owl Cocktail Lounge. Click on the flyer above (it will take you to soundcloud.com) to download The Main Ingredient Mix Vol. 1 and hear some of what you’ll hear at the party.

All Alone (Captain Planet Remix)
Alice Russell
Unreleased (As of Yet), 2009

This is a repost from mixtaperiot.com (a site that should definitely be on your RSS feed reader / weekly rotation). Chuck Wild/Captain Planet posted a bunch of his remixes including this one of Alice Russell’s “All Alone” which I love.

I was pretty underwhelmed by Alice’s most recent album (granted, she set the bar very high for herself). She didn’t really “move in a new direction,” it was produced by TM Juke who has produced most of what she’s done and it sounds similar; it just didn’t hit the same musical peaks as her previous work.

The album version of “All Alone” is fairly emblematic of this. The song doesn’t really seem to start until there are :29 seconds left. The minimal intro is great but the “hits” that come in at :49 are super-tame (1. adj. Brought from wildness into a domesticated or tractable state.) and the drums that follow at 1:11 just don’t deliver. Maybe I’m missing the point and this is supposed to be a chiller song than I want it to be but…I keep waiting for it to start.

The drums and tempo of the Captain Planet remix match vocal much better. Alice is running a remix contest on her site and this song is, uh, in the running. You have to create a username to vote (that’s asking a lot, I know) but the upside is that you’ll end up on Alice Russell mailing list and that’s a good thing.

Songs are available for two weeks.

Got To Change
McFadden & Whitehead
McFadden & Whitehead, 1979 (iTunes)
Philadelphia International Records (wikipedia)

This is another song from the album best known for the classic “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now.” That classic is so classic that it has become mainly the province of (black) block parties, family reunions, and weddings and it’s a song I don’t listen to at home. It (and the too-smiley picture on the cover…and that it came out in 1979) had me rushing through listening to this album assuming it was going all going to be happy/corny songs that weren’t as good as “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now.” Accordingly, I was very pleasantly surprised to find the somewhat darker “Got To Change” starting off the B-Side.

I knew “G. McFadden & J. Whitehead” had done a fair amount of songwriting for Philadelphia International by seeing there names on album credits over the years but I thought it was usually on the same albums with bigger hits written by Gamble & Huff. I didn’t realize until reading their wikipedia entry that they wrote as many hits as they did during their pre-recording-artist days.

From wikipedia:

The duo later joined Philly International Records, where they wrote hit after hit, the first being “Back Stabbers” in 1972 for the O’Jays. It became No. 1 across the board in one week.

McFadden and Whitehead also wrote hits such as ” I’ll Always Love My Momma,” “Bad Luck,” “Wake Up Everybody,” “Where Are All My Friends,” “The More I Get, The More I Want”, and “Cold, Cold World”. The production team also worked with Melba Moore, Freddie Jackson and Gloria Gaynor, Teddy Pendergrass, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, Gladys Knight, The Jackson 5, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Lou Rawls, Archie Bell & the Drells and The Intruders, just to name a few.

Songs are available for two weeks.