Posted on Moods In Free Time

Moods In Free Time Vol. 16: Mercurial…For Mingus

When I noticed that my April show for Artform Radio would be broadcasting on Aprill 22nd, there was just no doubt at all what I would be focused, since this one would mark the 99th anniversary of the birth of one of my absolute favorite musicians of all time, Charles Mingus. The challenge then turned out to be two-fold, namely, what single mood could possibly encompass all of the many moods in Mingus’ music and after so many years in radio and so many tribute shows to Mingus, what music would I focus on? The former issue was settled fairly quickly, pretty much as soon as I sat down to think about it “mercurial” just made perfect sense. For better and for worse, there’s probably not a better mood to describe Mingus as a man, bandleader and musician. Once the mood was chosen (as almost always seems to be the case with this show), it became infinitely easier to choose which songs to include in the show. In the brief amount of time I had, I wanted to highlight that special quality of Mingus’ music, where there were at times unexpected changes in tempo, moments of incredible intensity, matched with some of the sweetest and more gorgeous sounds my ears have ever heard…no show is ever perfect, but on those fronts, I think this one was a success. Enjoy!

Moods In Free Time 016: Mercurial

Playlist: Moods In Free Time 016 – Mercurcial…For Mingus’ 99th
{opening theme} The Visitors – The Juggler – In My Youth (Muse)

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Charles Mingus – A Prayer For Passive Resistance – Mingus Revisted (Limelight)
Charles Mingus – Scenes In The City – A Modern Jazz Symposium Of Music and Poetry with Charlie Mingus (Bethlehem)
Charles Mingus –Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams – Newport Rebels (Candid)
Charles Mingus – Moanin – Blues & Roots (Atlantic)

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Charles Mingus –Wham Bam, Thank You Ma’am – Oh Yeah! (Atlantic)
Charles Mingus – Peggy’s Blue Skylight – Tonight At Noon (Atlantic)
Charles Mingus – Bird Calls – Mingus Ah Um (Columbia)
Charles Mingus – Better Git Hit In Your Soul – Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus (Impulse)

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Charles Mingus – Black Saint & The Sinner Lady: Group Dancers ({Soul Fuision} Freewoman and Oh, This Freedom’s Slave Cries) – Black Saint & The Sinner Lady (Impulse)

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Charles Mingus – All The Things You Could Be If Sigmund Freud’s Wife Was Your Mother – Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus (Candid)

Posted on Moods In Free Time

Moods In Free Time Vol. 15: Cool…for Cool Chris

I’d been thinking about “Cool” as a mood and feeling and wondering if I’d ever do a show on it, and then I realized that this month’s show was going to broadcast (at least overseas) on March 26th, and that this particular March 26th would be the 50th birthday of Cool Chris of Groove Merchant.

Groove Merchant is my absolute favorite record store in the world and a major part of that is related to Cool Chris.  Chris is one of my oldest friends in California, one of the first people I met when I moved to the state in 1999.  He always has a knack for tracking down amazing sounds, and almost Jedi level skills figuring out the sounds that you’ll be interested in.  This month’s show features just a few of the records that have come my way because of Cool Chris. I don’t have any idea how many records Chris has turned me onto over the years, though I feel like ½ of my records either came from Groove Merchant or were records that I first heard at Groove Merchant but wasn’t able to get at that time.  I just know I’m extraordinarily thankful for Cool Chris, for his taste and his cool ways.  As I say at the end of this show, Happy Birthday Brother.

Moods In Free Time 015: Cool

Playlist – Moods In Free Time 015: Cool…for Cool Chris
{opening theme} The Visitors – The Juggler – In My Youth (Muse)

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Billy Harper – Soulfully I Love You/Black Spiritual Of Love – Capra Black (Strata East)
Dejan’s Olympia Brass Band & St. Monica’s Choir – Prince Of Peace – Give Me That Old Time Religion (Rose)
Gene Harris – Listen Here – Gene Harris of The Three Sounds (Blue Note)

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Freddie Robinson – Off The Cuff – Off The Cuff (Enterprise)
Hugo Montenegro – The Shark – The Lady In the Cement: Original Soundtrack (20th Century Fox)
Eva Pilarova – Vážky – Eva (Supraphon)
Nancy Priddy – We Could Have It All – You’ve Come This Way Before (Dot)
Haircut & the Impossibles – Sock It My Way – Call It Soul! (Somerset)
Scorpion – Great Day – Scorpion (Tower)
Csik Gusztav – Cameleon – Csik Gusztav Es Egyuttese (Pepita)

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Ensemble Al-Salaam – Circles – The Sojourner (Strata East)
La Clave – Latin Slide – La Clave (Verve)
Rasa – Everything You See Is Me – Everything You See Is Me (Govinda)
Cold Fire Inc. – I’m Gonna Love You Anyway – 7” (Lightnin’)

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{closing theme} The Corporation – India – The Corporation (Capitol)

Posted on Ephemera

Come Back To Me…A Year Of Missing Funky Sole

When the Funky Sole dance floor opens up again, expect the whole squad to show up like the members of Cheyenne’s Comin’ on the LP’s cover!

Cheyenne’s Comin’ – Come Back To Me

If a number of things had been different, exactly a year ago today I’d be packing up my records and heading to Echo Park to spin as a guest at Funky Sole. Alas, the night was cancelled earlier in the week, along with everything else as the full weight of the pandemic hit us here in LA (well, not everything was cancelled, with that night free I did go to a socially distanced screening of A Woman In Lizard Skin at the Secret Movie Club’s space, but that would turn out to be the last indoor screening of 2020). In the period since, without a doubt one of the things I’ve missed the most was the refuge that Funky Sole provided for me. Knowing Funky Sole was always going to happen each Saturday meant there was always a reliable space for good dancing and great soul sounds where I knew the people and the people knew me. Aside from being an occasional guest DJ, I’m a regular on the dance floor, and it was something that was a major source of weekly therapy when I was getting divorced, and something that I now realize was taken for granted in the years since, without any thought that it could be taken away.

Of the many many many songs that I’ve heard at Funky Sole that I didn’t own, this one from Cheyenne Fowler’s little known group, Cheyenne’s Comin’, would frequently pop back into my mind over the past year, generally in a rare cheery situation. Or better stated, there’s something about one particular line, the line that I’d bet sticks in the mind of most anyone who hears this song for the first time, that fills me with joy every time I hear it.

“I’m smoking my smoke, I’m tooting my coke, I’m drinking my drink, I’ve had time to think…”

For some reason this line will pop into my mind in brief moments of celebration during this past year, almost always involving drink and smoke (never any cocaine…my mind tended to erase that reference when I was singing it in my apartment). Since I didn’t have the song and only went off of memory, my memory of the song and the way it would sound at the Echo on Saturday nights gave me a different impression of what was really going on. When I finally tracked down a copy a month or two ago, I was surprised that the song was actually less of a hedonistic anthem and literally more of a “baby, come back to me,” kind of song. The song itself isn’t actually cheery at all, as Cheyenne waxes regretfully about a past relationship she wishes would be reconciled. Even the line that pops into my mind is a pretty sad one, since none of these things keeps this former love out of her mind.  While the specifics addressed in the song might not fit where I’m at in this moment, where I’m missing all that used to be, that sentiment about missing a thing that you love and you used to have in your life, but isn’t now, hits hard…especially on this day, when exactly one year ago, I would have likely heard this late in the night while trading off records with Miles and Hector. I miss those days terribly, but I’m hopeful that soon they will come again.

Posted on Ephemera

Psychedelic Saturdays (And Sundays) With Carol Of Harvest

Carol Of Harvest – Put On Your Nightcap

As we approach a full year of this pandemic lockdown life, there are some real rays of hope that this stage of this moment will end in a season or two. Aside from losing our normal routines and all the taken for granted aspects of social life, this has also been a moment where we’ve started new routines, many of which are created just so that we can survive and thrive. It will be interesting to see what life is like post-lockdown, but I know that one feature of my current life that will remain is my Saturday routine, which isn’t fancy or complex, it’s mostly shutting down all the screens for one day and listening to lots of records, most of them of the psychedelic variety.

While this isn’t something that was a usual routine for me, it does connect to another time in my life. Growing up in the Atlanta area in the 1980s meant that there was still really great commercial radio, before the days of deregulation and homogenization. Atlanta radio in the 1980s was truly a golden era for music fans, underground and college sounds on WREK and WRAS, politics and left-field tunes via WRFG, jazz on WCLK, and rock on the aptly named on 96 Rock. During this time 96 Rock played long blocks of 60s tunes on the weekends, dubbed “Psychedelic Saturdays,” and this was definitely my favorite day of the week. Many many cassettes over the years recorded those shows, and the foundation for my 60s-centric sensibilities was well established before I even hit high school.

In this moment, in addition to the late night sessions where I listen to records with the lights off (and often with the echo effect on), I’ve been specifically listening to psychedelic records throughout the day and just…chilling. Sometimes the good vibes extend into my Sundays too. Of all the records that have given me mellow joy during these chill sessions is the single LP by the German Kraut-Psych band, Carol of Harvest. I first heard this album at a Rappcats pop-up, and looking over at discogs I knew there was never ever ever a chance I’d own an OG copy, I kept the album in the back of my mind, hoping to find a 2nd press, which I eventually did track down at the start of 2021. The album is an interesting one, because it seems a bit out of place. It was recorded in 1978, but most of the sounds would be welcome a decade earlier. The band is often thought as being a part of the krautrock era, but their sound is very pastoral, and more in line with English folk-psych groups like Fairport Convention. “Put On Your Nightcap,” is the magnum opus of the album, as it covers almost the entire first side. The length of the song and the many places the band travels makes it ideal for moments of pure reflection and the special bliss that comes from setting aside a bit of time for yourself to not do anything except chill out on your couch, check out the sights of the neighborhood out your window and listen to some epic psychedelic sounds. If you haven’t done it, it is something I highly highly recommend.

Posted on Moods In Free Time

Moods In Free Time Vol. 14: Yearning

I’d mentioned on the post for last month’s show that it was likely February’s show would be focused on love. Even though I largely feel Valentine’s Day is over commercialized, as a romantic it’s hard not to be focused on love during the month. I knew that I didn’t want to focus just broadly on “love,” but the dilemma for me was what form or type of love would I focus on? As time got closer to the show, I simply couldn’t decide, but I noticed that I was listening to some very specific types of love songs, and tried to sort out what the feeling was that was in theme. As the month went on, my mind kept going back to the previous year, and how at this stage in 2020, we all had no idea what was coming for us with the pandemic. I started thinking about the anniversaries that were soon to come, the last movie I saw in a theater, last time I was dancing with friends, last concert I saw, last time I went on a proper date. In the midst of that remembrance, I realized that all of the songs that I’d been thinking about as potentially using were about different forms of longing, more so, an intense yearning. And so, “yearning” became the theme and I started to solely think of songs that had that feeling, which leaned a bit heavier than normal on Soul. No predictions at this point for March. We’ll see where the muses take me soon enough. Until then, enjoy the show!

Moods In Free Time 014: Yearning

Playlist – Moods In Free Time 014: Yearning
The Visitors – The Juggler – In My Youth (Muse)

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Nolan Porter – If I Could Only Be Sure – Nolan (ABC)
MFQ (Modern Folk Quartet – Every Minute Of Every Day – 7” (WB)
The Precisions – What I Want – 7” (Drew)
The New Holidays – Maybe So, Maybe No – 7” (Soulhawk)
The Embraceables – Here I Go – 7” (Sidra)

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Johnny Hartman – I See Your Face Before Me – Songs From The Heart (Bethlehem)
Doris & Kelley – You Don’t Have To Worry – 7” (Brunswick)
Ponderosa Twins Plus One – Bound – 2+2+1 = Ponderosa Twins Plus One (Horoscope)
Steve Kuhn – The Meaning Of Love – Steve Kuhn (Buddah)
Al Green – Your Love Is Like The Morning Sun – Call Me (Hi)

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The Fabulistic’s – Absence – 7” (Scorpion)
Aretha Franklin – Daydreaming – Young, Gifted and Black (Atlantic)
Sass – I Only Wanted To Love You – 7” (20th Century)
David Porter – Can’t See You When I Want To – WattStax 2: The Living Word (Stax)

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{closing theme} Tony Williams – Wildlife – Believe It (Columbia)

Posted on Moods In Free Time

Moods In Free Time Vol. 13: Anticipation

As was the case I would imagine for so many others, I simply could not wait for 2020 to end. And while 2021 has been a wild ride thus far the case remains that in contrast to the seemingly never ending dread of 2020, things are turning the corner this year, and at some point in the Summer or the Fall, we’ll be putting this moment behind us and returning to gathering in bars and clubs for dancing and meeting together again to watch and hear live music. With that in mind, the mood for this month’s show was “Anticipation,” and more specifically a hopeful anticipation focused on the bands and artists that I’m most looking forward to hearing live or getting new music from later this year. Highly likely this February I’ll be focused on one form of love or another, but still sorting things out. Until then, enjoy this month’s show.

Moods In Free Time 013: Anticipation

Playlist – Moods In Free Time 013: Anticipation
{opening theme} The Visitors – The Juggler – In My Youth (Muse)

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Voices Of Creation – Let The Sun Shine In – [21] (Dublab)
Brainstory – Beautiful Beauti – Buck (Big Crown)
Billy Uomo – Feels Like The First Time – Looking Through Tears EP (Terrible Records)
Kelsey Lu – Rebel – Blood (Columbia)
The Heliocentrics & Mulatu Astatke – Blue Nile – Inspiration Information (Strut)

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Deradoorian – Red Den – Find The Sun (Anti)
Thee Lakesiders – Parachute – 7” (Big Crown)
Sault – Sorry Ain’t Enough – Untitled (Black Is) (Forever Living Originals)
El Individuo – Piensa – 2020 Escribo (INTL BLK)
Dexter Story – As Is (Mark De Clive Lowe Remix) – MDCL Remixes Vol. 1 12” (Mashi Beats)

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Shintaro Sakamoto – You Just Decided – How To Live With A Phantom (Other Music)
Reyna Tropical – Calor – Sol Y Lluvia (Self Released)
Jamael Dean & the Afronauts – Akarama Remix – Black Space Tapes (Stones Throw)
Sons Of Kemet – My Queen Is Angela Davis – Your Queen Is A Reptile (Impulse)

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{closing theme} Tony Williams – Wild Life – Believe It (Columbia)

Posted on Mixes, Radio

Melting Pot Radio Hour: Top Digs Of 2020

Thought I had a solid groove with posts where I was gonna get this rundown done and up on the site weeks ago, but 2021 has been a whirlwind already and the first month ain’t even over yet…But, without further adieu, here are a selection of some of the best vinyl I “dug” up last year. Lots more where this came from, so let’s be hopeful that I’m able to sort out my routine and keep sharing music on a weekly basis, in addition to the monthly “Moods In Free Time” on Artform Radio / Worldwide FM. Dig it!!!

Melting Pot Radio Hour #19: Top Digs of 2020

Playlist:
{opening theme} La Banda Colorada – South Side Mama – In Memory Of Jimmy Dan Song (CB Records)

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Thom Macke – Lonely Weekends – 7” (Omega)
The Dells – I Can Sing A Rainbow/Love Is Blue – 7” (Cadet)
Minnie Riperton – Oh, By The Way – Come To My Garden (GRT)
Tin Tin – Family Tree – Tin Tin (Atco)
Richard Twice – If I Knew You Were The One – Richard Twice (Philips)
Spirit – Aren’t You Glad – The Family That Plays Together (Epic)
Spectrum – Quiabos – Geracao Bendita (Todamerica/Shadoks)
El Son 7 – Ode To Billie Joe – Brasilia Jovem (PR Studio)

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Dom Salvador – Tio Macro – Dom Salvador (CBS)
Celia – Na Boca Do Sol – Celia (Continental)
Rato Venance – Min M’mi – Djaitan (Discogram)
Don Cherry – Brown Rice – Brown Rice (EMI)
Vincent Gemignani – Le Grande Mouille – Modern Pop Percussion (Concert Hall)
Jackie McLean & Michael Carvin – De I Comalee Ah – Antiquity (Inner City)
Carmel – Love Affair – EP (Red Flame)
Sun Ra – Constellation – Media Dreams (El Saturn)

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Pure Pleasure – By My Side – 7” (QC)
Lady Brown Sugar Bell – The Lady Is Armed & Dangerous – The Lady Is Armed & Dangerous (Mersey)
Leon Lowman – Tears Behind The Smile – Synthseas (Part I of II Records)
David Astri – Safe & Sound – Do It Right (Award)
Steve Kuhn – Meaning Of Love – Steve Kuhn (Buddah)
Flow – Arlene – Flow (CTI)
Donald Jenkins & The Delighters – Music Revolution – 7” (Black Beauty)

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{closing theme} Bernard Lubat & His Mad Ducks – To Yasmina – Bernard Lubat & His Mad Ducks (Les Disques Pierre Cardin)

Posted on Dig Deep

Best Of 2020: Top 5 LPs

Lost my groove there for a second, with the start of the semester, but getting back into, with this post and the one tomorrow, where I dust off “The Melting Pot Radio Hour,” to spend a little more time with vinyl I dug up in the previous year. While I didn’t buy that many 45s, the same could not be said of LPs. 2020 was on par with more recent years (though not quite as much as my all-time year of record therapy in 2015), even though I only made it to three stores all year long, and most of my buying was in spurts & batches. I’m not sure if there were any themes in what I picked up, though I feel like I focused on getting more than a few records I’d wanted to get for a long time, as well as a number of things that I hadn’t heard at all until someone put it on my radar, and then I immediately had to have it. As ever, I’m always amazed by how many records are out there still to be discovered. After a little over 25 years as a collector/DJ, the record game continues to surprise me, which gives me hope that there’ll never be a day in the future where I won’t want to share the sounds I discover. For now, here are the top 5 LPs I tracked down in 2020.

Vincent Gemignani – Ophis Le Serpentaire

This one came my way along with a small grip of records from a dealer in France. I hadn’t heard anything from Gemignani prior to checking this album out, but hearing just a few seconds of the vibe was all I needed. There’s apparently another version of this LP with suitably groovy cover art, but I’m more than happy to have this one in my collection, and you’ll definitely hear more from it in a later post.

Dom Salvador – Tio Macro

This one has been on my want list for at least five years, when I first heard a tune from it from one of Joel of Tropicalia In Furs Ebay sales. As a big fan of Brazilian music, there’s little doubt why I’ve been fiending for it once you hear “Tio Macro,” with it’s heavy drums and slinky piano and subtle psychedelic tones. And then…and then, everything drops out in the final moments and you have nothing but clean, booming drums. The whole album is a real treat, and it’s always nice when you’ve long wanted an album that it turns out to be so much more than just the one track that hooked you to begin with. Easily one of my favorite Brazilian jazz/samba/funk albums ever.

Flow – Here We Are Again

I’ve already written a good bit about this album. Highlighting it here reminds me that I need to track down those other vocal non-jazz albums on CTI. Hard to fathom that any of them could be as good as this folk/psych/jazz/country marvel.

Steve Kuhn – Meaning Of Love

Even though there was only one proper Rappcats pop-up in 2020, Egon still had a sizeable influence on my tastes. The thing that I appreciate about collectors and DJs like Egon is that they rarely hold back when there are albums that they truly love and that they want people to hear. There were multiple posts about this album, which is a real contender for a “Don’t Judge A Record By It’s Cover” award, and hearing just a snippet of it, along with Egon’s effusive praise, was enough to get me to track one down. “Meaning Of Love” is my favorite track on the album and though it’s new to my ears, it’s clear it’s gonna be a long time favorite, as are many of the other songs on this wonderfully eclectic album.

David Astri – Safe And Sound

There were a lot of very rare records, definitely more expensive records, that I picked up last year, but nothing gave me as much pleasure as this solitary album from David Astri. So much of that is connected to “Safe And Sound,” which about as close to perfect as an early 1980s song can be. Finally sorted out that the lovely vocalist on the tune was Karen Goldberg, who recorded an album of her own, with Astri in tow, from around the same time, but nothing on there compares to the magic they achieved on “Safe And Sound.” Without a doubt, there wasn’t a song I listened to on repeat as much as this one during the wild year that was 2020, which cements it’s place at the top of this list.

Posted on Dig Deep

Best of 2020: Top 5 45s

2020 was an interesting year on many fronts. In comparison to recent years, I didn’t buy a bunch of 45s, in fact, in total I only got 13 over the course of the year. A big part of that is of course pandemic related, since a major source of my 45 digs over the last several summers would be from hauls at the Rappcats pop-ups, especially the annual one hosted by DJ Shadow. But though the pile of 45s was meager, the ones that I did pick up were a mighty bunch. And so, here are the top 5 45s I “dug” up in 2020!

MFQ – Every Minute Of Every Day

This is actually one that I had bought years earlier only to have it disappear in the mail (or perhaps off my porch after delivery, one never knows these days). For a time I think I held out hope that it was just taking a long long time to get to me, but after a while I think I simply moved on to other wants and desires. But then during the summer with my 45th birthday on the horizon and a plan to do an all 45s mix, this one, something I originally heard on Matthew Africa’s last mix, was one that I definitely wanted in that mix. And so, I rolled the dice again and thankfully this time it arrived safe and sound.

Pure Pleasure – By My Side

I first heard this one late, late into the night at Funky Sole, from Music Man Miles. We’d reached the portion of the night where it was almost closing time, there were only a few handfuls of people still there and we were playing things that we really dug, but were hesitant to drop in a set with a crowded dance floor. Pretty much as soon as the needle dropped and those horns started, I was in love. Historically, it’s pretty rare for me to pick up any funky stuff from the 1980s. It’s not that I don’t dig the sound, it’s just there’s so much more from the 1960s and 1970s that I 100% dig and, for me at least, the quality of funky tunes drops way off in the 1980s. However, “By My Side,” is nothing but quality and is the kind of thing that really gets me rethinking my prejudices as a collector.

Doris & Kelley – You Don’t Have To Worry

I’m not sure where I heard this first…I feel like Oliver Wang of Soul-Sides was involved in one way or another, either from a post, or a share at a Rappcats pop-up, but my memory for this one is a bit hazy on that front, something I’m just gonna chalk up to lingering 2020 mental haze. I picked this up at the same time as the Thom Macke 45 that’s also on this list, though as I mentioned in the original post on that one, this arrived a month before that one was found after being lost. I don’t have much to add from my early post on this sweet, sweet tune, except to say that it’s sweetness never fades with repeated listens, particularly Doris’ phrasing at the close of every line she sings…so sweet and fine.

Donald Jenkins & The Delighters – Music Revolution

While I couldn’t recall where I first heard Doris & Kelley’s “You Don’t Have To Worry,” I know that I first heard this one 100% from Oliver of Soul-Sides, after he’d been hipped to it from another of our Sociology soul brothers, Steve Osuna. As I mentioned in a previous post, it’s one of the tightest, sweetest, most soulful tunes I’ve heard in a mighty long time, a truly dynamite Soul Boulder, and well deserving it’s inclusion of the best 45s I tracked down last year.

Thom Macke – Lonely Weekends

I’ve said a ton of words about this one already. I felt lucky just to have come across it during a bit of digital digging for music last Summer. But then to track it down from a dealer, only to have them say it was lost, and then to have it be found and make it safe and sound into my collection before my 45th, that was for real for real one of my absolute highlights of 2020. From the production, to the performance, to the sentiment in the lyrics, without a doubt this was the best thing I picked up over the past year.

Posted on Fotos

Best of 2020: Favorite Artwork From The Past Year’s “Digs”

After looking forward to just escaping 2020 alive, 2021 has been something else in it’s first two weeks. In insane times such as these, I find a bit of solace in ritual and tradition, and so the next several posts will be taking a look back at vinyl “dug” up throughout 2020. I’ve put “dig” and “dug” in quotes, because in all of 2020 I only made it out to record stores THREE times. As first class record addict, I’ve had some weeks in the past, hell some single days especially now that Highland Park (and hopefully they’ll all reopen when it’s safe) has five of the best record stores in LA, where I’d made three visits to record stores. But just because I didn’t do much technically “digging” in 2020, I still bought hella records. 2020 brought on lots and lots of record therapy, and hopefully I’ll be able to stay on track to share so much of it and the others in my collection I haven’t shared yet. And so, to begin this week’s “Best Of” posts, here’s some of the best, wildest, weirdest and most beautiful artwork that was featured on records that I picked up in the past year.

Don’t get too excited for me…it’s the reissue!
Posted on Dig Deep

Dig Deep: Beast – S/T – Evolution (1970)

Beast – Inlook
Beast – Communication
Beast – Don’t You Think It’s Time
Beast – Migration

As I’ll detail next week in the New Year when I post my traditional rundowns of records I picked up over the past year, despite not being able to go out for much of 2020, I still did quite a lot of record therapy.  With a year like this one I was especially thankful to be able to be able to close it out with a trip to one of my favorite LA spots, Avalon Vintage.  Today marked only the third time I was actually in a physical record store during this year.  As bonafide record nerd/addict, in usual year there might be some days that I’d go to three stores, let alone weeks or months, so as I said, being able to close out this year actually being able to dig through a collection in person was about as nice a way as 2020 could close out.

And what a person.  Rodney is one of my favorite record people.  His tastes are broad, he tells the most amazing stories connected to his life and music and it’s always a joy to be in his space, newly re-designed a few months ago.

Perhaps it’s fitting the final record (well, in truth, I bought a bunch of records today), is by a band called Beast, since 2020 was such a beast of a year.  There’s not a whole lot that I know about this group, a seven piece outfit at this time, apparently based originally out of Denver, Colorado.  I have vague memories of seeing this record, somewhere, at some point in the past, and having the cover haunt me until now.  Now that I’ve actually listened to the album, with songs like “Inlook,” “Communication,” “Migration” and “Don’t You Think It’s Time?,” it’s a little hard to believe I haven’t had a copy before.  In terms of their sound, there’s many elements in Beast that I love dearly, there’s a bit of hard psych (“Move Mountain,” which I’m not sharing is maybe the best example of that), with more pastoral sounds, as well as CSNY harmonies, all mixed up with a bit of jazz, and some flightly flute.  After a year of so much uncertainty and (as I’ve written below) so much loss, it was nice to finish the year doing one of the things I’ve done the most in my life…digging for new and old sounds and finding a few gems of records along the way.  So, looking forward to 2021 and can’t wait for my “I Survived 2020” T-shirt to arrive.  Happy New Years folks!

Posted on Ephemera

RIP Maestro Daniel Dumile

KMD feat. Daniel Dumile aka Zev Love X bka MF Doom – Peachfuzz

Today we learned that Daniel Dumile, perhaps best known as the masked rapper MF Doom, passed away on Halloween in 2020.  Though we’ve so many legitimate giants, this one hits especially hard, since at 49, Dumile perhaps had decades of choice material to release, but now we’ll never know what he might have created.  While I’m sure I’ll spend a great deal of time with my favorite recording from the MF Doom years, Madvilliany, today I felt like going back to the beginning, and when I heard Daniel Dumile  first, when he was known as Zev Love X in the group KMD.  “Peachfuzz” wasn’t the first time I’d heard his unique style, as he’d first popped up on my radar, as was the case with many, due to his guest verses on 3rd Bass’ “The Gas Face.” 

Returning to this early work upon hearing of his passing, it’s fascinating to note how different both the flow and the beat sound from other groups of this period.  It’s not as if it’s an entirely unknown or unexpected sound, but there’s still something about it that sounds…just…different.  Some of it is in the that rapid, verbally dexteritous, flow that became a hallmark of MF Doom, but it’s also in the choice of samples.  Hearing this now, in an era where it’s so easy to look up on the internet and figure out the samples of records, I was surprised to learn that the song is based primarily (in addition to familiar drums from Funkadelic’s “You’ll Like It Too”) on two separate songs from soul crooner O.C. Smith.  Surprise mainly because, one of the songs “Sounds of Goodbye” was on a record I used to own from my family collection, but somehow I’d never ever played on “Soul Kitchen” back in my Album 88 days.  That brilliant attention to detail, a focus on samples that felt novel and wordsmithery that was beyond peer are what I’ll remember most about Mr. Dumile.  I don’t often say this, but I truly mean it. Rest In Power, Daniel Dumile aka Zev Love X aka MF Doom.

Posted on Ephemera

Leslie West’s (and Hip-Hop’s) Long Red

Mountain – Long Red

Another passing that happened after I’d recorded the “Adoration” themed December “Moods,” was that of guitarist and vocalist Leslie West at 75.  West was best known as the founder of Mountain, which recorded one of the most iconic licks in all of guitar god rockdowm with “Mississippi Queen,” in 1970.  While that song does have some heavy drums that would find a happy home in many a Hip-Hop production if the breaks were a bit cleaner, it’s the song “Long Red,” taken from a live Mountain record that somehow became a staple sample of the golden era.

You find a part of “Long Red” in some 600+ rap songs from 1986 to 2019. I’ve always been curious about how this song became a bedrock sample. It doesn’t lend itself easily to sampling. It’s a live recording, while the drums are clean at the start, it’s most often the “Clap your hands to what he’s doing!” that gets sampled (though I originally thought, due to how it was cut up in Eric B & Rakim’s “Eric B Is President,” that they were saying, “clap your hands to what is the 1, 2.” I know it doesn’t make much sense but that’s what I heard). But a bedrock sample it has become. I don’t know what Leslie West thought of his influence on Hip-Hop culture, but in addition to all the muscular licks he laid down, I’m thankful for it. RIP