H.P. Riot – Gotta Go (The Chant)
H.P. Riot – I Have Changed
H.P. Riot – Blame It On The Sun
School recently started at Long Beach (which is the main reason I’ve been M.I.A. once again) and I got a big surprise on the first day. As I was checking my mail, which because of the winter break, often includes a textbook or two, I noticed an LP sized box with my name on it. My first inclination was that someone had sent me a textbook in a record box. Granted, there is no reason anyone would send me a textbook in a record box, but it seemed more likely that someone sending me a record at school. When I got back to my office I opened it up to find this record. Shock gave way to the certainty that someone had sent me a record by mistake. After all, records don’t just materialize out of the blue, and especially not at school. Turns out an old friend of mine from Berkeley, Cesar “El Che” Rodriguez had sent it as a thank you gift for an academic related assist from me. It’s a tough thing to do, buying DJs records, but he chose a record that I dug and didn’t own and that was mighty cool in and of itself.
Turns out the record was pretty damn good. This was actually a record I remember seeing at Groove Merchant years ago and for whatever reason I didn’t pick it up then. It’s not something that you generally just run into. The “H.P.” in H.P. Riot stood for Hunter’s Point, a neighborhood in San Francisco where the band came from. Strangely they were signed to a Canadian record label, likely a by product of their touring and probably being “big” in Canada. H.P. Riot had a lot of Bay Area flavor to their sound, with pretty clear influences from Sly & the Family Stone. Just the kind of funk I needed here at the start of 2014. Best first day of classes ever!
Cheers,
Michael