{I never asked Matthew to do a guest post or come on to Melting Pot for a guest DJ set. I very much wanted him to, but figured at some point he’d be in LA for a spell and he’d come on down. Now that will never happen. So instead, I’m going to share this mix, perhaps the last one Matthew worked on, so that he can be the first guest poster here on Melting Pot. The mix brings up a lot of good memories for me, as Matthew mentions below, connected to Wednesday nights at the Ruby Room in Oakland. The Ruby was my regular haunt for a couple years before I just got too busy with PhD research and falling in love with my wife. Strangely enough, the mix was posted on our wedding anniversary and my reaction to it ended up being one my final communications with Matthew, via facebook (the final one being his compliments on my choices of first songs when we moved into our new house, “Like A Ship” from TL Barrett and “A Love Supreme” from John Coltrane).
Aside from the memories, this is just a fantastic mix, all on original vinyl, some very deep tunes you don’t hear often, flashes of rather deft mixing style from Matthew and an interesting choice at the very close. The mix ends with a very scratchy version of Otis Brown’s “Who’s Gonna Take Me Home,” and Matthew chose to let the record end and just let it spin in the dead wax for much longer than you’d expect. I don’t know why he did it, if it was on purpose, or if it was just a moment of pure chance. But given all that’s happened it just about brought me to tears hearing that sound at the end of this mix. There’s something so deeply personal about it, maybe because I can just see Matthew, after having completed a full take on this mix, going to get a drink and just nonchalantly stopping the record. I’m so glad he left that there, so glad that he shared all this music with us and blessed to have known him as a friend.}
Originally Posted on “I Wish You Would” August 14, 2012
This Friday (August 17th, 2012) I’m playing at the 45 Sessions, an all-45 monthly hosted by some friends from the Oakland Faders crew, DJ Platurn, E Da Boss & DJ Enki. (Also playing with us, the homie stromie Joe Quixx!)
These days I really never play 45 sets except when I’m out in NYC and drop in on friends who do vinyl parties like Mr. Finewine or JBX. The last time I remember doing that on the west coast was for an all-45 45th birthday party for my friend DJ Stef (an idea I may be biting sooner than I wish).
As a warm-up for the 45 Sessions, I made a little mix, pulling out about 100 records and sort of going from there. It’s mostly 70s era funk and soul– lots of classics, some recent favorites, some oddities. Hopefully there’s some “oh shit, it’s great to hear that”, some “wait, what the hell is that?” and maybe an “ooh, he’s got that?” or “wait, that’s on 45?!?” or two.
1. New Birth – You Are What I’m All About
2. The Blowflys – Funky
3. Van Grack and Company – NT
4. Ronnie Keaton & the Ocean-Liners – Going Down for the Last Time
5. The Notations – Super People
6. The Trinikas – Remember Me
7. The Quickest Way Out – Tick Tock Baby (It’s a Quarter to Love)
8. Dee Edwards – Why Can’t There Be Love
9. Matata – I Want You
10. House Guest Rated X – What So Never the Dance Pt. 1
11. Myra Barnes – Super Good Pt. 1
12. C. Fortune & J. Brinson – The Hipster
13. Tony Alvon & the Bel-Airs – Boom Boom Boom
14. Leroy & the Drivers – Sad Chicken
15. Nancy Sinatra – Bang Bang
16. Betty Chung – Bang Bang
17. Heart – Give Me a Happy Day
18. Dionne Warwick – You’re Gonna Need Me
19. The Sisters Love – Now Is the Time
20. Popcorn Wylie – Funky Rubber Band
21. Apple & the 3 Oranges – Free & Easy Pt. 1
22. Hank Ballard – I’m a Junkie for My Baby’s Love
23. Robert Jay – Alcohol Pt. 1
24. Sugar Billy Garner – I Got Some
25. Junior & the Classics – Kill the Pain
26. The Fabulous Souls – Take Me
27. Sir Guy & the Speller Bros. Band – Let Home Cross Your Mind
28. 6 Pak feat. Larry Berney – There Was a Time
29. Harvey Scales & the Seven Sounds – The Yolk
30. Dynamic Corvettes – Funky Music Is the Thing Pt. 2
31. The Jackson Sisters – I Believe in Miracles
32. Chuck Colbert & Viewpoint – Stay
33. The Isley Brothers – Keep On Doin’
34. Graham Central Station – The Jam
35. Bobby Franklin’s Insanity – Bring It On Down To Me Pt. 1
36. The Soul Company – Hump the Bump Pt. 1
37. Creations Unlimited – Chrystal Illusion
38. Joey Irving – Don’t Throw Our Love Away
39. Pearly Queen – Quit Jive’in
40. Marvin Gaye – ‘T’ Plays It Cool
41. Billy Young – Suffering With a Hangover Pt. 1
42. Lenny Williams – Feelin’ Blue
43. MFQ – Every Minute of Every Day
44. Nolan Porter – If I Could Only Be Sure
45. The New Establishment – Ridin’ High
46. Otis Brown – Who’s Gonna Take Me Home
This mix started off as a practice run playing 45s and then got more involved when I realized how shitty at it I’d become. It’s a lot less like riding a bicycle than I’d hoped.
I used to play 45s all the time. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Wednesday nights I would often grab a box of them and head down to my friend DJ Kitty’s funk party to play a set on what is to this day maybe the shittiest sound system I’ve ever played. (The Ruby Room’s system was pretty awful to begin with but after some noise complaints from a neighbor the management disabled the mixer by gluing caps over the volume and bass knobs.)
But it was good practice. I remember being invited by DJ Shadow to open for him and Cut Chemist when they did their Product Placement show back in 2001– which was a super-big deal to me– and putting together an hour-long routine in a day or so and nailing it on the first take. That didn’t happen this time. When I rolled the tape I found that I blew almost every mix and it took a lot of work to tighten things up.
Playing 45s is tough. The main thing is that a lot of the music I played doesn’t lend itself to mixing. Arrangements are dense and arbitrary (an unfrustrated person would say “creative” or “inspired”) and tempos wander all over the place, so mixing is tricky.
Then there are all the technical issues Serato has freed me from remembering how to deal with: that there are no cue points, that speeding up or slowing down a record too quickly can mess up the pitch, that records often skip when you’re cueing or cutting them and that you can easily destroy a record through normal use. This is particularly true of records that happen to be pressed not from vinyl but from styrene, a substance that often seems to cue burn at a mere glance. (Case in point, the Leroy & the Drivers 45 heard in the mix: that persistent shhhh sound and loss of high end is textbook styrene. Ugh.)
About the title of this mix: all of the records I played were 7″s, but not all were 45s– a handful were made to play at 33 rpm, so I named it accordingly. For those who care about this sort of thing, I didn’t use any reissues.
Oh lastly, if (to borrow a phrase from the Martorialist) you’re one of those poncey bastards who’ll only listen to a mix if it’s on Soundcloud then we can do that, too:
(Oh wait, I spoke too soon. Soundcloud tells me that my cover image is infringing someone’s copyright (?!) and that therefore they won’t host it. Ugh. Dispute filed.)