Heather
Billy Cobham (wikipedia)
Crosswinds, 1974
Atlantic Records

iTunes | amazon mp3s | CD

I played “93 ‘Til Infinity” a couple months back and my friend Jackie Sommer (of Analog Soul) came up to me and said that phrase I love to hear: ” You know what this samples right?” I didn’t and she told me it was Billy Cobham’s “Heather” which, of course, it turned out I already owned but hadn’t gotten around to listen to yet. I immediately went home and recorded it and then while catching up on the moovmnt blog last week, I came across this track from Black Spade (who I’ve featured before) which also uses “Heather” but in a mood much closer to the original.

The Black Spade track doesn’t hold together as a complete song (in my opinion) but I heart the first 1:10, especially:

it’s the history of our misery that’s keeping me from trying to succeed again, breathe again, love again, pray again, stay again, stay a friend.

The title track “Crosswind” was also sampled for a Golden Era hip hop track.

Songs are available for two weeks.

Intimate Friends
Eddie Kendricks
7″ Single, 1977
Motown Records

We scheduled set times at the last I Love Vinyl party until 3:30 a.m. and after that it was sort of a free for all. This is the song I wanted to end the party with, but I didn’t elbow my way to the turntable in time.

Does anyone know the where this song first came out? This 45 says it’s from his “At His Best” compilation but it doesn’t seem to have come out before that. Is it one of those age-old “tack some new studio material onto a greatest hits so that the people who have every album still have to buy it” things? Well, if so, this was a great song to do it with, although, putting it out on 45 would sort of defeat the purpose.

Common (Immenslope, actually) sampled this on “A Penny For My Thoughts,” his first song on his first album in 1992, when he was Common Sense…before he tamed his flow.

Songs are available for two weeks.

Go On With Your Bad Self
Consumer Rapport
7″ Single, 1975
Wing and a Prayer Record Co.

Kid tested. Big Daddy Kane approved. We want that old pimp sh#% too!

The first time I heard this 45 was an extremely gratifying experience. It was one of those sounds that had taken up permanent residence in my brain ever since I heard it on “Big Daddy’s Theme” in 1989. But like so many sounds from my junior high years – a time when I didn’t care about the details of music, it took me a while to remember exactly where it was from.

So, my question is: who is Tone (of “Yo Tone, play me some old pimp sh#%”)? The credits say the track was produced by Kane and the other major players were Mister Cee, Scoob and Scrap (obviously), Marley Marl and Easy Mo Bee.

There doesn’t seem to be that much out there on Consumer Rapport. Discogs.com has a bunch of variations of singles that all have the A-Side of this 45, “Ease on Down the Road.” No albums. Anyone know anything about them?

Songs are available for two weeks.

Sea of Tranquility
Kool & The Gang
Kool Jazz, 1973 (iTunes)
De-Lite Records

This track may have minimal impact if you aren’t a D’Angelo fan but…who isn’t a D’Angelo fan? I might be late to the party on this one but I was listening to my “K” records late last night and my jaw dropped when this song started. It took me about ten seconds to place what it was because it was so out of context for me. Aside from the track that DJ Premier produced, I didn’t realize that there were any samples (or interpolations) on D’Angelo’s Voodoo album; especially one as big as this, he basically edited out some parts and added lyrics to this song. I was hoping the sample wouldn’t be credited but, of course, I’m not that cool, it is.

Am I wrong to be let down that he didn’t write the (whole) song? I always loved that it was one of his only songs that was in 3/4 (the other being “Untitled/How Does It Feel?” / as regular readers know, I’m a sucker for any good song not in 4/4).

This is recorded from The Kool Jazz compilation that came out in 1973 but the original version is from the collectable Kool & the Gang self-titled debut from 1969. This is one of my scratchier vinyl recordings, sorry. The song is available on iTunes.

Songs are available for two weeks.

Tired of Fighting
Menahan Street Band
Make the Road By Walking, 2008 (iTunes)
Dunham Records

The Menahan Street Band is best known for the title track of this album which was sampled shortly after it came out for Jay-Z “Roc Boys” which was produced by Diddy, LV, and Sean C. I have trouble imagining that Puffy is getting the Daptone newsletter and buying 45s; I would love to hear how got in their hands.

I think there was a significant lag (a year and a half?) between the release of their first 7″ single (“Make the Road by Walking” b/w “Karina”) and this album and I lost track of them (ok, I wasn’t signed up for the Daptone Newsletter either, but I am now). I just got a few tracks from the album and they have a very similar vibe to the title track, chunky drums, airy horn harmonies (2:10!), sliding guitar chords that makes your mind go on vacation and lots of reverb.

M.S.B. were also the backing band for this amazing track I posted almost exactly a year ago. Daptone brings the ruckus…

You can also find “Make the Road By Walking” on the Slangcast 001 podcast I did in conjunction with Slang Inc. last year. We are putting the finishing touches on 002 – be on the lookout for it!

Songs are available for two weeks.

Hope That We Can Be Together Soon
Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes (Featuring Sharon Paige)
To Be True, 1975

In my ongoing systematic effort to “lock down” my record collection (listen to every record, mark and record every good song, etc., see pics below) I get reminded of the foolishness of my task. That happened recently when I went back through my Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes records that I had I had originally marked five or more years ago. I looked at my old ratings with “I didn’t know any better” nostalgia. I can see how I was listening to records trying to find something I was looking for as opposed to just listening to hear what was there. Case in point, I pretty much passed over this song because (I’m guessing) it didn’t sound gritty. Of course, the rhetorical question is will my taste shift/expand to in the next five years?

Ghostface borrowed this for his “Teddy Skit” on his 2001 album Bullet Proof Wallets.

Songs are available for two weeks.

Pains of Love
The New Birth
It’s Been a Long Time, 1973

And This Is Love
Gladys Knight & The Pips
Neither One of Us, 1973

My Man’s Gone Now
Nina Simone
Nina Simone Sings The Blues, 1967

Love (Your Pain Goes Deep)
Frankie Beverley And The Butlers
The Sound Of Philadelphia, 197?

This is a response/continuation of a post on Captain’s Crate, one of my favorite mp3 blogs. The post is called “Desperate Times Call For Desperate Pleasures” and the four songs posted are about “The kind [of anguish] that can reduce a grown man to pathetic teary desperation.”

“The Pains of Love” by The New Birth was the song that immediately came to mind and gave me the idea to do a Part 2 on this theme. I love how this guy’s woman left him and he’s giving her a lecture on the pain that she’s going to be in. He’s just projecting away, “Why am I hurting this way?…you will say.” He ends the songs whispering “You’ll be lost, you’re gonna need me…”

The Gladys Knight song was sampled on “It Takes More” by Goapele. This one is definitely over the top. It’s basically a list of things objects/memories like “drinking too much pink champagne” that remind her of her former man. There are few interesting items like “how you used to cheat at checkers” and “a TV Guide.”

The Nina Simone song is a slow burner but builds to an intense ending. I actually recorded this from “The Best of Nina Simone” on RCA but wanted to give the original album info.

I found this pre-Maze Frankie Beverly track on The Sound Of Philadelphia compilation. It’s originally from this 7″. Not sure if there is an album or not. I love how he slow he says “now the pain keeps getting deeper” at :52, its as if the pain is affecting his speech.

Anyone up for doing a Part 3 on this theme? Send me a link if so.

Songs are available for two weeks.

Everything Good To You (Ain’t Always Good For You)
B.T. Express
Do It (‘Til Your Satisfied), 1974

I’ve been meaning to do a post about bootleg vinyl breaks compilations for a while…and this isn’t really the post I was writing in my mind but that’s ok (as I can’t really remember it). I feel like I have to say that what write is inevitably going to be colored by DJ Premier’s tirade on breaks records on Gang Starr’s Moment of Truth album (text below).

That aside, I have to give respect, well, at least acknowledge that a lot of my early record shopping was fueled by the names and tracks found on those compilations. That said, the producers of these compilations take some serious liberties when preparing the tracks for release. This B.T. Express song is a great example. It appears on Strictly Breaks Vol. 5 which come out in 1998. Its listed, like the rest, with a subtitle that says who sampled it, in this case, “Used by DMX for ‘Get At Me Dog’” (it was also sampled on “Get The Bozack” by EPMD 9 years earlier). The Strictly Breaks folks knew that DJs would want to play it right before or after the DMX song which was getting a lot of attention at the time so they went ahead and decided it was ok to slow the song down from 117 beats per minute to…104 (i.e. a lot, making it much closer to tempo of the DMX song – 97) and repeat the first bar four times (creating a clumsy 11-bar intro).

To expect more integrity from a compilation who’s “copyright” line says “Warning: Unauthorized duplications of this joint will end you up with cement shoes at a river near you!!!” is perhaps foolish. But that it doesn’t say “Re-Edit” or “*Remix by Louis Flores” like the Ultimate Breaks and Beats series seems irresponsible. I guess the lesson is that if you are going to get your samples the “lazy” way then you are getting something on par with the amount of effort you are putting out but something about it still bothers me. I guess its that the state of affairs is only getting more sloppy in the internet age of “crate digging.” I haven’t been djing that long but I felt like a senior citizen when a young DJ recently asked me “where do you get all those samples? because they’re really hard to find at good quality [read: download at good quality], trust me I looked…do you [pause] dig?” with a tone that implied he expected me to laugh, say ‘hell no” and tell him the right place to look online.

…and one other thing, what’s the deal with you break record cats that’s putting out all the original records that we sample from, and snitchin’ by putting us on the back of it saying that we used stuff – you know how that go – stop doing that – ya’ll are violatin’, straight up and down! word up man, i’m sick on this sh-t; ya’ll motherf-ck-rs really don’t know what this hip hop’s all about; so while you keep on fakin’ the funk, we gonna keep on walking through the darkness, carrying our torches…

Songs are available for two weeks.

We Almost Lost Detroit
Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson
Bridges, 1977

I haven’t been record shopping much recently but after taking the reMitch to The Thing and picking up 10 records, I uncoincidentally found myself walking into Good Records on East 3rd street, saturday after East Village Radio. This was the first record I found – a record I’ve wanted for about 7 years. I think the records are trying to tell me something (“don’t stop digging!”).

This is another one of those tracks that’s been sampled, then re-visited and re-sampled. The floaty keyboard intro was first sampled by the French duo Air on “Modular Mix” (you didn’t see that one coming did you, Dale?). I am pretty sure that was off the radar of J. Rawls who smartly chopped up the pieces of guitar between the lines of the first verse for Black Star’s “Brown Skin Lady” in 1999, which was definitely on Kanye West’s radar when he sampled the keyboard fills between the lines of the second verse for Common’s “The People.” I wonder if he was consciously trying to one-up J. Rawls, especially as he used the same technique. Who’s next? There’s still the horns at the end that are up for grabs.

From the album sleeve:

Wikipedia makes it really easy to know who Karen Silkwood was. He actually performed this song at a concert called “No Nukes” at Madison Square Garden in 1979.

>> songs are available for two weeks (192 kbps) [7.4 MB]
>> songs are available for two weeks (320 kbps) [12.2 MB]

Black Patch
5th Dimension
Individually & Collectively, 1972

I’ve had my eye out for this song since reading the (incorrect) sample credits for “Trying People” on De La Soul’s AOI: Bionix album. They were only off by a letter (they listed it as “Black Path”) but apparently that was enough to thwart my lukewarm research efforts for um…6-7 years? (yeah, yeah, so I only checked once). Luckily, my girl Geraldine in the Bay put me up on it via her excellent radio show The Need To Calm (set your iCal/Outook to remind you to tune in Fridays at Noon EST/9:00am PST – this wasn’t the only song that made me beg for a tracklist).

I’ve historically been pretty dismissive of the 5th Dimension; it always seemed that their music was a little too light and potentially geared to a white audience. I still think that’s true but I’m coming around on them between this song and “Dimension 5ive”.

“Trying People” by De La Soul is pinnacle of you might call De La Soul’s “grown a$$ man” period (both Art Official Intelligence albums). This sample was perfect for themes rarely heard in hip hop such as:

Got fans around the world
But my girl’s not one one of ‘em
And my relationship’s a big question
Cause my career is a clear hindrance to her progression
Said she needs a man and our kids need a father
I’m not at all ready to hear her say don’t bother
And break and this i know i can’t take but uh
C. Smith said to hold on…my brother Luck (?) said to hold on…

If you know the De La song already, it will be a little surreal to hear the rest of “Black Patch.” The intro provides the expected ethereal-ness but then the song immediately launches into a much more traditional, almost big-band thing. The weirdest moment is when the “people are you ready?” part from the intro comes back in over the horns at 1:59.

Bonus Question: can anyone tell me – what is Black Patch? (“Woman child on the sad street – flashin’ in black patch”…??)

Recommendation: set the start time of “Trying People” to 0:28 and the end time to 4:25 (how to do that is here).

>> songs are available for two weeks (192 kbps) [6.4 MB]
>> songs are available for two weeks (320 kbps) [10.3 MB]