Barely a peep from me here in 2025 tells you all you need to know about year 16 of Melting Pot…It definitely was not a sweet one, but we’re still here. When I noticed that our hosting costs had inexplicably gone up 7 times (and somehow with less memory available…21st century enshittification knows no bounds) I considered for an uncomfortably long time whether it was time to just let go, and let this blog disappear into the ether. But, we’re still here. And even though this year was the first since 2004 where I sold more records than I bought, there still feels like there is more music to share. No promises on how it will go this Summer (though what I expected to be a busy summer working on several projects, now seems to just be a chill Summer), I have a LOT of posts to update from the past, but, as ever, I’m hopeful that there will be more posts and more music and maybe even a mix or two. We shall see. Onwards & Upwards my people…Peace & Bright Moments to you all
Given that I haven’t posted anything at all here in 2025 until now, it’s safe to say that this year has been tough, in expected and unexpected ways. As a student of history, nothing about what’s happened thus far, and is likely to happen, out of Washington has surprised me. But…it’s still a lot to deal with. Add that to the unexpected death of one my mentors, Michael Burawoy, and 2025 felt like a deep deep hole that there was no way out of. But I also know, in those times where things are toughest, it only makes it more important to hold on to those things that give you joy and sustain you. At times that’s been teaching, at other’s it’s been quality time spent with people I love, and at other times it’s been listening to records.
As I’ve mentioned on this site before, Sly Stone is not only one of my favorite artists, but his music is something that’s shaped my principles, how I view the world and how I move in the world. In songs like “Stand,” “Remember Who You Are,” “Time For Livin’,” “Everyday People,” “Underdog,” “Are You Ready,” “You Can Make It If You Try” and others, Sly & the Family Stone’s music kept me focused on staying on the right path, and gave me what I needed to keep pushing forward.
Sly Stone passed on June 9th, 2025. I hope he was able to see the brilliant documentary that Questlove created, Sly Lives! AKA The Burden Of Black Genius, but he didn’t get to see the protests for No Kings on June 14th and again today July 4th. But so much of Sly’s spirit remains and continues to inspire. When I thought of how I’d pay tribute to Sly, with everything going on, it just made sense to focus on one of his songs that fits this current moment. “Stand!” initially came to mind, and its message is one that far too many have lost in this current moment. For whatever reason “Can’t Strain My Brain,” kept coming into my mind, and insistently made a case to be the song to focus on here. Especially one of the later lines, “can’t trust the land, that tries to take the loving out of me…”
“Can’t Strain My Brain” isn’t a song of apathy, where someone is retreating away from life because of how it makes him feel. Instead, it’s a rejection of a way of life that isn’t loving or fulfilling, or frankly, Human. The love we have for other, the freedom we find with those who love us and allow us to truly be free, that solidarity, that compassion, that empathy, all of those things that so many in this moment are trying to get us to ignore, is what will turn the tides and make life better for everyone. It can be hard not to give into the temptation this society propagates that you should only care about yourself and that everyone else is out to get you. But what my experiences have shown me is the exact opposite, that my life is only possible because of the connections to others, and it’s been in those moments where I was isolated that I was at my lowest. By living our best individual lives we find ways to help others find their way as well. So often this moment of modernity and this country America tries to take the loving out of us, but we have to resist that. This is definitely a moment for America to take a note from Sly’s cheeky shirt in the picture above, and get it’s collective shit together!
As it does, there are likely some dark days ahead, and it can be hard to see the light in times of darkness. I’m thankful that artists like Sly Stone created music that shined so very bright, and no matter how lost we seem, the music will always guide us home. Take care of yourselves and those you love…Peace & Bright Moments
{Update 7-4-25} 2025 has been a fucker from the start, as evidenced by my complete and total lack of posts this year up to this point…But my mentals have finally adjusted, so perhaps I’ll be updating these ahead of our anniversary on 7/7, maybe after. But this (and all the other delinquents on this site) will be updated soon and I’ll be back to sharing more from the platters that matter…Peace & Bright Moments
{Update 7-4-25} 2025 has been a fucker from the start, as evidenced by my complete and total lack of posts this year up to this point…But my mentals have finally adjusted, so perhaps I’ll be updating these ahead of our anniversary on 7/7, maybe after. But this (and all the other delinquents on this site) will be updated soon and I’ll be back to sharing more from the platters that matter…Peace & Bright Moments
{Update 7-4-25} 2025 has been a fucker from the start, as evidenced by my complete and total lack of posts this year up to this point…But my mentals have finally adjusted, so perhaps I’ll be updating these ahead of our anniversary on 7/7, maybe after. But this (and all the other delinquents on this site) will be updated soon and I’ll be back to sharing more from the platters that matter…Peace & Bright Moments
{Update 7-4-25} 2025 has been a fucker from the start, as evidenced by my complete and total lack of posts this year up to this point…But my mentals have finally adjusted, so perhaps I’ll be updating these ahead of our anniversary on 7/7, maybe after. But this (and all the other delinquents on this site) will be updated soon and I’ll be back to sharing more from the platters that matter…Peace & Bright Moments
Okay…I know how this looks. There’s been barely any posts in 2024, and the many of the ones over the past year still haven’t been updated. Look…2024 was a tough year on multiple fronts, but a New Year brings with it new possibilities, and so, as ever, I remain hopeful that I’ll finally get around to getting everything here on Melting Pot back up to speed in the new year and also get into a steady flow of posting & sharing music again…But I have plans and want to make sure that I at least post up the last album I got in 2024, as is tradition…I’ll have a proper post here in the new year.
Today would have been Matthew Africa’s 53rd Birthday and every year around this time, here on Melting Pot, we pay tribute to Matthew, who was a singular influence on my musical sensibilities. This record is actually another one from Matthew’s personal collection, bought almost exactly a decade ago during a sale, the proceeds of which went to those he left behind. When I bought this LP it was sealed, but I have a memory of Matthew playing this on his KALX show while I was there, which is over twenty years ago at this point. It’s those drums on “The Lurcher,” recorded during a session at the BBC, that are particularly unforgettable. It does have a bit of lurch to it, and the slight offbeat nature of it really gets kicked up a notch when the saxophone comes in.
“Do So” may be short, but after the heaviness (in all the variety of meanings that word suggests) of “The Lurcher” closing out that first side with such a whismy little tune feels a bit odd, but Faust has always seemed like a bit of an odd bunch, even amongst the Krautrockers of this time. I’m not a big enough fan to know what the situation is with the other four tracks on the 2nd side. They aren’t from any conventionally released album, but do show up on a more recent collection of music recorded from 1970-1973. I suspect this mysterious LP, where I don’t know who put it out or when they put it out, was their first appearance on wax. “Party 9” is a pretty lovely weird number, but “Meer” is an extraordinary piece of meditative, slightly melancholy, musical goodness. Such extraordinary range with The Faust, as is the case with so many other German bands of this period.
Matthew & I shared an affinity for this type of music, but we rarely spoke about it. I wish I had a chance to have the kind of listening sessions I often have these days with friends, where we just bring a bunch of records, sometimes on a theme, generally not, and just try to melt each other’s faces off with the wild stuff we’ve found. It would have been nice to have seen him look at a record for the first time and say “No, I’ve never seen this before…” though that happened so rarely when he was around, it’s much more likely he would have said, “Oh yeah, I got that…in fact, I got an extra sealed copy you want that instead of this one you got?” MKA always seemed to have doubles or triples of whatever dope record you could think of. I’m eternally thankful for his friendship and the effect he had on me, and thankful that I get to share another record in his memory this year. In sharing those sounds, Matthew Africa lives forever. Peace & Bright Moments
I may have missed our Anniversary by a day, but never ever will I forget to pay tribute to our patron saint on his birthday, today August 7th, Rahsaan Roland Kirk. This year’s selection is his debut for Mercury records, where he would record for most of the 1960s, Domino. At this time, Rahsaan must have been flying pretty high. He’d just been in Charles Mingus group, immortalized on the album Oh Yeah (and later on the album of outtakes from that session, Tonight At Noon), and while he had been seen as almost a sideshow artist previously, his skill and his talent was winning more and more converts.
It’s fascinating listening to Domino, and realizing that it’s actually the album that premieres some of Rahsaan’s hallmarks during this early period. We Free Kings, released later that same year, might have truly been his breakout, especially with it’s iconic, “Three For The Festival,” but listening to the selection of tracks here, particularly “3 in 1 Without The Oil,” you see that Rahsaan was already on a different level right from the start. When you think about later iconic songs, like “Serenade To A Cuckoo,” again, you hear so much of what Rahsaan would be working on then, here right at the start. It’s a lovely, largely brisk album, as Rahsaan, on flute, tenor, manzello & stritch, is accompanied by Andrew Hill on the first six tracks, including all of the ones I’m sharing, and then backed by Wynton Kelly and Roy Haynes on the final four tracks of the album. Bassist Vernon Martin does stalwart work throughout, as of course also does Rahsaan.
I know this copy I currently have of Domino, which I’m fairly sure I bought during a birthday week jaunt to Groove Merchant years ago, isn’t as minty in terms of sound quality as we all might like, but at the same time, none of those minor issues with the vinyl can take away from the brilliance of these performances…Bright Moments!
For the first time since I started this blog, I neglected to do an anniversary post on the actual birthday of the Melting Pot, 7/7…Now, in a way, 7/8 works just as good, since this was our 15th year (7+8=15!), and I wish I could say that was the plan all along, but plans going awry or not being put in place when they needed to be was very much the theme of the past year. Took a bit of time, but the website now looks more or less how I always wanted it to look. All of the posts are integrated once again on a single site. Our 14th anniversary mix by the one and only Cut Chemist was more than even I could have imagined, and despite never being able to find the time to post regularly (though there was a major reason why that was the case over the past year, which I’ll talk about in a separate post), Melting Pot remains, as does my desire to share music. We’ll see what year 16 brings, not gonna make any promises or any predictions. It will be what it will be, and we’ll just see what it will be as the year unfolds…Onwards & Upwards my people, Peace & Bright Moments to you all.
Despite not having posted much of anything for four months, there was no chance that I was going to pass up the opportunity to post about a band called Eclipse on the same day that there was a total solar eclipse here in the Americas…Picked this LP up on my first visit (and perhaps still only visit, though I’ll change that in the Summer) to Sonido Del Valle in Boyle Heights. I’d gone to get a cumbia record they had posted about on IG (back when I had social media), but I always make sure to spend a fair amount of time in a new spot and love to hit up parts of the store that aren’t the specialty of the shop, just to see what oddities there might be.
With the cover you see above, and some barely legible computer like writing on the back, this record caught my eye. I’d originally thought this band was French, but then I noticed from the rather snazzy insert that almost all of the band members were originally from Montreal or Quebec (and oddly, at least to me, Manitoba), so French Canadian instead.
Thankfully Sonido Del Valle had some turntables for listening so I could drop the needle on the album instead of just taking a flyer. As you’ll hear, Eclipse definitely have some Dark Side era Floyd influences, and at the moment I was heavy in a moody, slow, psych kind of mood, so that style was music to my ears. Somewhat strangely, at least in comparison to the other tracks, “La Reve De John W.” is a straight funk track with a super long drum break at the start. It seems on later releases, the band ditched the Floyd-isms and just went straight disco. But here on this record you get both sides, without one eclipsing the other (sorry, had to do it!). I’d been meaning to post this one up for some time, but thankfully it’s here now, on the absolute most perfect day to post it. We’ll see if I can track down more eclipse related music by the time the next one, in 2026, comes around…
{8-11-24: As you might have guessed, given the fact that I usually post up “Best Of” posts during the first week of the new year, 2024 hasn’t exactly gone according to plan…But the times they are a-changing, and I’m trying to get back into the swing of things…and that means a return of the “Melting Pot Radio Hour,” which of course has never once, ever, been only a single hour, in the very near future.}
{8-11-24: As you might have guessed, given the fact that I usually post up “Best Of” posts during the first week of the new year, 2024 hasn’t exactly gone according to plan…But the times they really are a-changing, and I’m trying to get back into the swing of things…so, while there won’t be any 45s this year, I will break down why these 5 LPs made me oh so very happy last year, in the very near future.}
