I hear cassettes are coming back in style, at least in a retro way… although I told a friend I was coming out with a new mix and was going to put it out on cassette, and he said he didn’t know if he’d even be able to play it. Well, either way, He couldn’t play it like this guy—in fact, I can’t even play records like this!
This is the pile of 45′s I came across at a random sale the other day. Great pile of Southern Soul, although some are scratchy as hell. Looks like I have some enjoyable listening to catch up on! Continue reading
My copies of the iconic tune
When I first realized that music expressed my world way better than words, I was listening to recordings on the Stax/Volt label. Otis Redding is my favorite artist, and this particular song is so iconic—I think it expresses the Stax sound: the raw funk, the big personalities, the great voices, the Southern common sense. I loved it from my first listen, and you did too. Here’s one of the best 45s I have on that label, and the songs that it inspired. And if you like the Stax label, we may have some real treats here for you soon! Continue reading
I work at an Oakland Public School. I am rewarded daily knowing that I have the best students in the world, and that students who graduate from my school shape the world (I’m looking at you, Huey, Ron, Frank, Kev, etc). My job, unfortunately is not usually rewarding materially. Until last week.
I was brainstorming how to make this year extra special and I realized it… I needed a record player for my office. But not just any record player… I needed a classic… the kind I remembered from my OUSD youth. I knew they were out there.
I’ve mentioned my nose for vinyl… it also works for vinyl accessories. Look what I found buried in the library closet, amongst inferior discarded technology.
That’s right, wipe the drool from your keyboard. It’s a genuine Califone 1845k. That means it plays 4 (pitch adjustable) speeds and powers an attached 100 watt speaker. In fact, the speaker and turntables can be snapped together to form a beautiful light blue 30 pound suitcase. It also has a microphone input, separate bass & treble controls, and an auxiliary input and output. It’s basically the highest tech durable turntable science could provide. And it sounds good, or at least it sounds loud. Hell, I remember doing a dance to a fat boys song in front of a packed house for my 6th grade talent show using one of these things.
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| An innocuous suitcase… unless… |
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| What’s this on the side? |
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| Turntable and speaker inside! |
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| In action, playing a 78… |
Oh, still think that doesn’t make up for the lowest education salaries in the Bay Area?
Note how blurry the above photo is… yes, that is a 78. Our esteemed music teacher (if you can get Jr. High students to play at Yoshi’s, you are esteemed) found a box of 78s that an old student’s great grandfather had given him. Look again at the picture above. That’s Muddy Waters on the Chess label. On 78. Playing in my office. Just another reason to love my job in OUSD.
Check the video.
I’ll put up more info about the vinyl that I found soon, don’t worry!
Well, it’s true, sometime a man fi get kuff. Sometimes I have even been that man. This tune by Shelly Thunder has been a favorite of mine since middle school… love the riddim, the lyrics, and really love the fact that it’s a female vocalist saying some (semi) empowering things!
It’s a little tricky to mix, though, so here’s an edit I made with an intro and extended outro. Soundcloud to listen or hulkshare to download.
Wow, ok, so I realize that there are a lot of my mixes that I do not have linked to this blog! That doesn’t make much sense, so I’m trying to rectify that right this very now.
Here is a digital roots CD that I released in the Winter of 2008, full of the biggest roots tunes at the time. This CD has been very popular, especially in my travels in Latin America (it’s a weird feeling to see someone selling bootleg copies of your CD… especially when you give it away for free!). 56 great tunes, all of which definitely withstand the test of time (or at least the last few years.)
Pretty sure that this was the last mix I made before I made the full switch to Serato, which means I was using a bizarre array of Technics 1200s and Denon CDJs depending on where I had the tunes. I’m putting the link here to Datpiff.com, where my mixes get a ton of listens. It’s not the most organized or intuitive website but if you dig through it you can find some decent mixes. I’m also including a direct download link as well. Enjoy!
Tracklist:
Saw a cool thread on the serato board, started by my boy Dub Cowboy, about all the pretty vinyls. I have a bunch, these were the first ones I ran across since they were in my reggae section. Not too much money is usually spent on reggae pressings, so these are no doubt pretty rare.
Gotta start with the above Black Uhuru Red on red vinyl. A fancy pressing of my all time favorite album!
This one sounds great, too, it’s got an extended version of “One Love/People Get Ready” and “So Much Trouble in the World” and “Keep on Moving” on the flip side.
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| Side A, 12″ single of One Love (extended) |
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| B side |
A real score: orange vinyl of Kung Fu Meets the Dragon by Lee “Scratch” Perry. Sweet.
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| Another very random Bob Marley Picture disc… |
As a kid, I would always spend my time reading the music magazines while my mom was doing grocery shopping. I remember in the 80′s leafing through Rolling Stone and seeing reference to the album Red by Black Uhuru. By 1989, I had reached hard-core music addiction and saw the reference again, this time as #23 on its list of best albums of the 1980′s. At that point, I had already given up on most genres of music represented by Rolling Stone at the time, and headed to Rasputin’s where I found the cassette used. Best purchase ever.
I went on a road trip that spring with the family, and I was glued to my genuine Sony Walkman the entire trip. This Uhuru album was the first time I’d really deviated from mainstream reggae like the Marley family, Jimmy Cliff, UB40, and what Burning Spear was releasing at the time. It was a breath of fresh air.
I remember gazing at the blue sky out the back window of our family’s Subaru station wagon as the now familiar guitar lick of “Sponji Reggae” finally penetrated my consciousness. It was a very different sound from what I’d been hearing of reggae, with the urban edge I had embraced in hip hop and a more contemporary sound than what I’d heard from so much of the 70′s stuff I had. The interplay of the bells, bass, and guitar gave me chills. Additionally, it was my first real exposure to Sly and Robbie, and I imagine most of us can remember our first exposure to them (if you can’t, wait a few more weeks and I’ll do a post on them!). Over all, my mind was blown and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Years later, I also happened to catch a Cosby Show episode where the song was played, much to my utter astonishment.
I spent most of high school and college making sure that I had every recording by the Black Uhuru lineup that featured Mykel Roze, Puma, and Duckie. I made myself the promise to also be sure to buy every copy of Red that I came across (which wasn’t that many, to my surprise, I guess even casual reggae listeners love it… or of course it wasn’t pushed by the label!). See below to see what I’ve found, and download some of the rare copies of Sponji Reggae I’ve digitized!
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| UK 7 inch single |
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| 12″ Sponji Reggae single as released in USA |
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| Black Uhuru Red USA Version |
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| Black Uhuru Red Vunyl UK limited pressing |
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| Sponji Reggae UK 12″ single version… 10 minutes long! |
Here is an old review of the album Red that Island posted on its website.
Hey folks, still trying to format & flesh out some of the interviews I’ve been receiving from various DJs that I look up to or have worked with. There are going to be some real gems in the next few days, but in the meantime, here’s one of my oldie & still goodies.
Summer Blaze 2003
I recorded this mix (obviously) in 2003, to help promote a new weekly Tuesday party that I had started at Carbon, near where I lived. It really blew up quick, and was actually written up in the New York Times that summer. At the time, dancehall was making inroads on urban radio with Wayne Wonder‘s “No Letting Go” and Sean Paul‘s “Get Busy,” and I thought if I showcased those with a few similar pop-friendly riddims, I could draw in neighborhood folks and the always elusive “college crowd” (you’ll notice a lot of productions by Lenky). I recorded it live at Carbon one evening in the late Spring and released it as Summer Blaze 2003. It’s all vinyl, mostly 45s. For that evening, I brought my 1200s and my really fancy Numark 2000x mixer to the club. I recorded on a minidsic recorder, which I thought really put me in the future. I did some mastering on my handy-dandy revision 2 iMac, which is a really slow way to do it. I printed and sold 500 before June was over, ran another few 100, and basically paid for my move North later that Summer.
Listening to it now, most of the tunes withstood the test of time. The one that doesn’t is “Pon di River,” which kind of surprises me since it was such a huge hit at the time. This was also around the time that dancehall started shifting to faster beats. Many of us were kind of surprised by how fast Diwali was when it came out, but obviously Time Travel and Egyptian were much faster and most of us didn’t know what to make of them. I put them at the start of the CD, DJ Special‘s answer was just crank the speed to +8% and play it, and Lightning just stayed away. Nowadays, I still stay away from such fast riddims, I’m just a little old school and had too much of my dancehall paradigm written by Dave Kelly and Patrick Roberts.
Enjoy the mix, and if you like it, pass it along and click “like” on the site! There are lots of other good mixes floating around on that website.
Every year, The Oakland Museum has it’s White Elephant Sale, which I have been enjoying as a visitor since the late 80′s (before that, I just got the toys and books from Dad). It’s definitely one of the best annual events in the entire Bay Area, and if you like digging for treasure this is the spot. Look below to see what I found, listen to it, and learn about it! It’s vicarious crate digging!
So, this year I got there a little late, and I already know I missed some great music (because I know that Odiaka grabbed it!). But here are a few of the gems I still came up on… out of about 50 records I bought.
I didn’t get any electronics this year (for a big change) or any bikes, but I added a couple books to the final tally before going home well satisfied.
This year I was inspired by Joe Quixx‘s set at Fresh Jamz as well as mix I’ve been listening to a lot by Matthew Africa. I realize there are a lot of late 70s souly/disco records that I have overlooked because of my on–again/off–again obsession with the Stax/Volt labels and because they weren’t played much on KDIA. That is the gap in my collection I was hoping to fill on this mission, but of course this is not exactly the venue for that, and every digging adventure has a huge element of serendipity.
Top left is a live Pointer Sisters‘ album. They’ve been favorites of mine for years, and that feeling has only increased since I’ve learned that they went to the Oakland middle school where I work. It’s a two record set of a show at the SF Opera House from 1974. It’s probably the only record by the sisters that I didn’t have, and covers their early career, with a bunch of their “boogie” stuff from very early on. This performance was the first contemporary music performance at that venue.
The next record over is a set of speeches by JFK, released shortly after his assassination.There were a few copies, this was the least scratched. No doubt it has great samples, hopefully I’ll get a chance to use some.
I got three Mills Brothers‘ albums that I didn’t have, one is a cool re-issue of some recordings from the early 30′s when they were less vocalists and mimicked instrument sounds (on the back it lists the brothers by “instrument,” as in “first vocal trumpet”). If you’re not familiar with the Mills Brothers, they are a great group that my grandparents introduced me to and well worth checking out—definitely one of the most enduring vocal groups of the 20th century (2000 recordings, 50 million copies sold)! Download a super classic tune here.
The next album is just a Jazz compilation originally put out by Lucky Strike cigarettes as a promotion in the 50s. Some great artists on there with some crucial tracks, and I feel like compilations are the best way to grow a collection in any genre. My Jazz collection is great (thanks Dad!) but my attention span is terrible (thanks Dad!) so I rarely listen to entire albums of a particular Jazz artist. Here’s one of the tunes here.
On top of that one is a 7″ of Huey Lewis‘ “If This Is It,” complete with ridiculous cover picture and all the lyrics on the back cover. I forgot how funny the video was until I was writing this, but I will never forget the line “you’ve been thinkin’/and I’ve been drinkin’.” Classic.
Below that are some other great 7 inch singles (always the best way to buy music!). One is Hall & Oates “Out of Touch,” one of my all timers from the 80s. One is B.J. Thomas “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” which is a huge score. Another is Earth Wind and Fire with “Getaway,” with the instrumental on the back (!).
One is quite weird, a group called Pseudo Echo with their cover of “Funky Town.” There were a few records by them floating around, and that surprised me a bit, I’ve been digging for used records for decades and it wasn’t a group that I recognized. Then again, a lot of rock from the 80s did not penetrate Oakland. This group was actually the “second biggest rock group in Australia behind INXS” (not sure what that really means). Their version of Funky Town actually somehow cracked the pop charts in America, but was one of the few of their songs that crossed the ocean. Strangely enough, they actually re-re-did Funky Town in 1999. Check out the version on the 7 inch here.
Rick Astley, “Together Forever.” Need I say more? If you notice the awesome dot-matrix label at the top of the cover, it was part of a lot that was evidently donated by some fitness place. Each one is hilariously labeled with what part of the workout it would be good for, and even what specific area of the body should be used—this one is recommended for cool down & glutes and hamstrings. My fitness nut wife is currently testing the quality of their recommendations, but I just love the idea of a bunch of folks with leg warmers on working out and a vinyl nerd in the back of the room getting his workout by digging out the right Rick Astley album to play.
Keith Sweat, “Make It Last Forever” with an extended edit on the B side. Larry Graham—great picture eh? I have a poster of him up in my office and all the kids think he’s Damon Wayans (whom he really looks like!). If you don’t know, he is the Oakland-born inventor of the slap bass. Billy Ocean, “Get Out of My Dreams, Get into My Car.” Another one from the gym, one of quite a few Billy Ocean songs I picked up.
Lastly, the Gap Band, IV. Yes, this is the one with “Outstanding” and “You Dropped a Bomb on Me.” Sweet, huh? Looking forward to seeing what other tracks are on there as well.
As I mentioned, DJ Odiaka beat me to the sale, and picked up quite a few gems as well, which inspired his awesome top ten list for the week. Head over to his site to check it out & download tunes!
See you there next year!!
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