WOEBOT

MP3 Blogs.

Who gives a shit what I think about the ethics of offering up mp3s for download? I mean, REALLY, it's none of my business! Practice your own ethics I say. However, not being an mp3 blog myself, I do feel able to evaluate these things in much the same manner as I might offer up a critique of a record store. Commenting on one's fellow blogger's blogs (not mp3 ones that is) is altogether stickier. It's easier to just be nice, and praise their strengths, rather than focussing on their manifold weaknesses (tee hee, only joking!) I do believe the same cloying chuminess which many people say ruins "The Bloglom" hampers the mp3 blogs. It's most obvious side effect, in my humble opinion, is that the quality of some blogs is inordinately less than their online profile would lead one to imagine. Some mp3 blogs are clearly at the top of their own links bars.

I've looked at in the region of 100 mp3 blogs and on balance I was pretty appalled by the lack of care and thought that went into the process of offering up other people's music for free. Blogs seemed, in the main, terribly designed with little or no thought going into the attached writing. The music offered up seemed at once pretty ropey and poorly assembled. It's a condition with these things that the writing seemed a pretty pointless exercise anyway, I mean, what's the point in reviewing music which is (thanks to you) instantly available. On the other hand, I don't go with Mark Fisher's argument that reading writing about music you haven't the opportunity of hearing is a waste of space one iota. That renders most music journalism a redundant exercise (er, pretty much like it is, grin). It's the job of the music critic to impart his enthusiasm, to MAKE you want to hunt down sounds, to stroke your lobes till they fizz with uncontainable desire.

For these reasons the best mp3 blog of the lot, gabba pod, almost entirely dispenses with writing, cuts to the chase and hits you with the stuff; not a skanky remix in sight. Obviously this is manifoldly disproved by some music blogs which use mp3s merely to illustrate a written theme. Here music blogs which have crossed over into being mp3 blogs are a case in point. For instance both Oliver Wang and Nick Gutterbreakz have both run eminently readable blogs up until a few weeks ago, and now they carry over their discerning taste and eloquence into this new medium.

The thematic approach to presenting mp3s, a whole bag of tracks from a similar area of music, is another useful trope for the mp3 blogs. The point here is to know your strengths. One of the most awful things I've ever witnessed on the Internet was some witless coot's mp3 guide to Reggae, a fucking embarassment, a travesty even. Some pull this approach off with real flare, like for instance Christopher Porter at The Suburbs are Killing Us others choose wisely to stick within a certain remit, like the truly excellent 20 Jazz Funk Greats mp3 blog (strictly perverse noise) and the superb Cocaine Blunts site (Hip-Hop old and new skool). Still others power their offerings through an extremely intense, exquisitely personal idea of what music should be. Music lovers and their sites like Jordan Himelfarb's Said the Gramophone, Stuart Buchanan's Fat Planet and Loki's An Idiots Guide to Dreaming.

All of this goes some way to explaining why I couldn't find a truly decent Pop mp3 blog. NYPLM doesn't count I'm afraid as it's only one tenth an mp3 blog. Lest you think I'm biased to "dead" music, I'll admit to being a little disappointed at this shortfall. Maybe Pop fans are too busy having fun to labour in this deeply nerdy way, presumably they're all too busy surfing Limewire and Soulseek sourcing their instant highs to bother with the hastle of collating and documenting mp3s, perhaps it takes the monomaniacal collector's ethos to weld together an mp3 blog which plays to the medium's own strengths. Without further ado...

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...THE TOP 11.

Gabba Pod
The clear undisputed winner. Incredible and painstakingly sourced tracks from the foamy edge at the tip of the wave.

Boom Selection
The home of the bootleg mash-up now offering up fantastic looking mixes.

Fat Planet
Beautifully collated catholic selection.

Gutterbreakz
Drool! Real underground stuff. Recent highlight being Nick's LFO compilation, the Moog special and Nick's excellent Robert Rental special.

Said The Gramophone
Flava in your ear. Currently plumbing the fathoms of post-rock.

Cocaine Blunts
Dedicated to Hip Hop, and lets hope it stays that way.

Soul Sides
Nourishment stylee. This man knows the deal.

The Suburbs are Killing Us
Authorative and free-ranging without being pompous.

20 Jazz Funk Greats
Close to my heart.

An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming
Ace. Invisible hand of Kek-W (of Kid Shirt fame) in evidence.

Stypod
Stylus wrestles profitably with it's student audience.

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I might even download an mp3 off one of these sites one day!

Thanks to the following for their sweet reminiscences and factual feedback on the Ancient Grime post:

Kirk Degiorgio:

wow! that cover brought back some memories... one of the oddest records to come out of UK Black music... I knew very little about the history or the people involved in that - very interesting.. I don't have any of my electro anymore, I need to start buying them again... some of them I've heard again recently and they do sound HIDEOUSLY dated, but you can't beat stuff like Marley Marl Scratch, Hip Hop On Wax 1-3, Fresh, Fly Wild & Bold, etc... ET Boogie was HUGE in Ipswich... my all-time electro fave has to be T LA ROCK & JAZZY JAY "It's Yours". I had the original on Partytime which was good enough but then Def Jam licensed it and did a version with some mad flanged crowd effects in the backing which was even better... Def Jam were such an exciting label in the period where they had all purple labels/sleeves... "Drum Machine", LL Cool Jay's early tracks, Jimmy Spicer.. culminating in that monster by Original Concept... funnily enough I bumped into an old mate in Ipswich recently and he STILL has all his old electro collection... I've got his details so I must pay a visit and get them all on my hard drive ;-) I remember 'London Bridge...' as being one of the best UK electro tracks - matched only by some live tapes I had of the London Posse a few years later...

Footnote: Apparently Simon and little me get name-checked on Kirk's new album! Cool!

Julius:

u might also note that jazzy jeff tune (american yeah, once of funky 4+1, not the guy uncle phil throws out the door) was produced by a duo called the willesden dodgers!! they had this strange baseball fixation i suppose cos their rubbish lp ws called '1st base', and they only did a few outside productions for jive. but since one of those was whodini's 'haunted house of rock' on motherfucking spooky green wax and incredible pic sleeve all is forgiven, best 12 ever! (er probly better albion occult magick musick than coil or whatever too)

Dan Selzer:

oh man, London Bridge is Falling Down is totally my jam! Maybe because my education on electro-funk came from Streetsounds and Mastercuts, another example of the UK teaching us young american kids about our roots, I've been exposed to the more obscure UK stuff along w/ the us classics. I have the picture sleeve as well as an american Jive release. "this is a cool jam, this is a cool jam and I'm coming to bring you superman..."

Brazil 10.

Reeee-wind! The phone has been running red since I posted that little rap about Caetano Veloso, so I've decided to play to my audience and bash up some more sleeves from the archives. Scratches head. This looks frighteningly like the "specials" of yore! Firstly apologies for not listing all the 5 records in the holy quintet of Tropicalia classics. I omitted to mention the Gal Costa LP (which I have and only really like "Baby" off) and the Gilbert Gil record with him in the admiral's suit (which I have and is very good). I have all these on vinyl (with the exception of the Smetak, sobs) and while it's a pretty random selection from the vaults, all these are unreservedly reccommended. Spiel to a minimum.

Baden Powell/Vinicius Moraes: Afro Samba

Swee-eet. Here with a slightly dodgy cover, not the reissue you see. Vinicius is essentially a poet, as I discovered to my chagrin when I bought an impenetrable record of his on the the strength of this classic. Also in the vaults Baden Powell's "Tristeza" on the German label MPS. It's safe to say magic is wrought here by legendary arranger Guerra Peixe.

Jorge Ben: A Tabula Esmerelda

I also have "Africa Brazil", "Ponte de Lanca Africano" off which is the killer cut. I'd like to take that track out for a walk on the dancefloor (never had the opportunity to play it out) The guitar on it SLAYS. Also Jorge Ben "1969". "O Bidu" is supposed to be excellent and is swilling around on reissue. This is the winner for "Zumbi" which sprouts impossible new layers of harmony and melody. Kind of like a favela dwelling with improvised bamboo loft extensions. And of course the occult-ish cover. We like.

Jair Rodriguez: Orgulho de um Sambista

A recent discovery, as plangeant and straw-strewn as "Afro-Samba."

Edu Lobo: Cantiga de Longe

Anything with Quarteto Novo on it. Here they're fresh from the Miles Davis "Live Evil" sessions. Edu v.dread.

Tom Jobim: Matita Pere

It took me ages to work out that Antonio Carlos Jobim and Tom Jobim were the same man. Many factors complicated this. His hugely varied look, his trans-continental presence, the gulf of years he was active, the polarity between his pop persona (Sinatra and Astrid Gilberto) and his more underground work. As a rule if you're a groovy cat like me, you refer to him as "Tom." I reckon he's been slightly dismissed, completely left out of Ben Borthwick's excellent "Tropicalia" primer in The Wire (which again though it purported to be about Tropicalia, was more or less a whistlestop guide to Brazilian music) This could be owing to his strong 1950's American barbecue profile. "Matita Pere", which also comes in a brown cover with a photo of him on it (I gave my other copy to Reynolds) is his masterpiece, and I know one of David Toop's favourite records too. Words can't do it's aching windswept orchestral score and Jobim's brooding portuguese justice. I also have "Urubu" (which has it's moments) and have often been tempted by "Stone Flower" (good vintage).

Milton Nascimento: Milton

This is great. But better, indeed possibly one of the 10 greatest records of any genre, is "Clube Da Esquina". I discovered this three years ago in what was a bad time, and it's food for the soul. Indeed it was for me then, almost in defiance of music that was being made then, my "Record of The Year." When you first hear it, it can be easy to miss it's wholly unusual unique qualities. I don't tend to be one to reccommend sticking with a record, a knock-out first encounter should lead to time spent together, but here's one exception. White chapels by the sugar-cane. Also have "Minas" which is nice.

Novos Baianos: Acabou Chorarc

Repeating myself here, but can't avoid including this babe.

Quarteto Novo: Quarteto Novo

Damn I LOVE this group. It's Hermeto and Airto's first outfit and they are SO hot. What could be mistaken for bossa nova were it not well-deep and entirely devoid of cliche, the rhythm here overpoweringly conduisive. I've always thought "Algodao" sounds like Led Zeppelin, and I also bet that The Beatles must have heard this record (whether that's any kind of recommendation I'll leave to you to decide). A classic.

Gilberto Gil: Refazenda

Gil here along with the "Refavela" LP (which I have and don't think is as good) plying a vision of pan-africanism. "Refazenda" off this is such a superb tune, the way that accordian starts, like a clockwork policeman spinning backwards anti-clockwise. The whole record consistently excellent, and what a great cover!

Walter Smetak: Smetak

A recent discovery, almost the skeletal other to these well-endowed raptures. Oblique, endlessly inventive but warmly engrossing.

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A big holler to Seb Morlu, Jon Dale and Nick Wrigley.

Caetano Veloso.

This superb mid seventies Veloso record has the most sumptuos cover. Catherine said it was nice to see a man relishing in his sexuality. Go "Open Image In New Window" to witness the gatefold in a bit more detail. They're quite disorientating these images, his narcissism is so extreme here, it seems like only gay men allow themselves to pout and preen like this. What is fascinating is how this lavish self-love is paired with the experimental bent of the music, it's almost as if self-indulgence is conjoined not with closeted masturbation (well that's the critical trope for solo avant-garde wank isn't it!) but with public self-exposure. That is an altogether rarer collusion.

The record is a collision of ethnographic-style recordings of Brazilian folk, tape loops and Veloso's gourgeous balladry. Traces of Garage Rock too. I've always been intrigued by the relationship Arto Lindsay has with Caetano. Lindsay, fluent in Portuguese and with a Brazilian background, was roped in to translate Veloso's biography into English and evidently they've remained friends. He'd also done liner notes for David Byrne's "Tropicalia" compilation (a classic case of compiler thrashing around in the dark, incorrectly curating the document of a scene, misrepresenting it with tracks recorded nearly a decade after the collective activity it purports to depict). To us in muso-land Arto looms large, he's an underground celebrity, but Veloso is almost obscure. Conversely Veloso is, in fact, practically a superstar in Brazil. So you see it's all intriguingly bent out of shape.

Other completely wonderful Veloso records are: his peak period "Caetano Veloso" (Phillips 1968) (which along with the first Os Mutantes record, Gal Costa's debut and the collective Tropicalia record "Ou Panis et Circensis" is *definitive* Tropicalia), his 1986 acoustic record on Nonesuch and apparently his 1969 "White Album". In keeping with my earlier observations most of his records seem to be eponymously titled.

As luck would have it...

...I caught the Logan Sama show on Friday myself. And consequently am able to offer up the track in which Wiley answers Dizzy named "Dylan's on a Hype Ting"; a track which Silver Dollar Circle discusses movingly and sympathetically here. Hit the flashing Real icon.

As a footnote, and something Wiley may have missed in his reply to Dizzy, the Rascal was rapping "in character", adopting the voice of gossip. It's possible he wasn't suggesting that he'd been dumped in Ayia Napa. You should hear Crazy Titch's "Just an Asshole". That's another one for the lawyers...

Gone.

How does it go? Baong baong, Tchack Tchak, baong baong, Tchack Tchak, baong baong. Umpber de de de de, umpber de de de de, umper de de de de. Or as Silver Dollar remarked the other day: "BONNNG! A clapclap clap BONNNG!"

I must say, as a chronic record collector, the current climate with regards to Grime is completely different to how it's been over the past decade. You used to be able to saunter into the second hand stores and pick up tunes from the past year or so that had been either discarded by DJs with only so much room in their boxes, or had been cast aside as unloved promos by music biz ingrates. Nowadays? Forget it. FORGET IT! Recently people have remarked to me: "Oh I have to have that tune on that CD of yours!" Well, I'm sorry but that music has gone. Forever. A victim of the tiny circulation of white labels and almost certainly of mp3s.

I was *so* delighted to pick up a copy of this brittle, jack-knifing, crudely-pressed dubplate. But nowadays the secondhand Garage bin is full of little else but major-label sorties on promo (coughs, Shystie) and old Locked On releases.

Bloglomerati.

Stelfox has a piece in tomorrow's Independent on 'Women in Dancehall' and me and some other twits are being interviewed on Resonance 104.4 FM tonight at 8.30pm. So don't listen to the radio and don't buy any newspapers.

Pete Frame.

Rediscovered Pete Frame's "Rock Family Trees" via a secondhand omnibus of them. This kind of completely pointless, lunatic scholarship is generally absent in dance music. Dance music bods *can* get excited about catalogue numbers but there are boundaries to their nerdishness. The nearest thing is probably something like Freddy Fresh's recent 'The Rap Records', but that didn't entail the same kind of turgid engagement with the raw facts. It must have taken Frame AGES to synthesise these awesome (also in the sense of terrifying) charts. In the preface he says: "On an average, I'd say each chart takes about three weeks of solid graft- including research, interviews, transcriptions, digging, checking, plotting, drafting and drawing." Blimey.

I do believe at the core of his programme there is a healthy dose of humour. In fact I'd like to see a similar chart drawn up for the Grime scene, detailing God's Gift, Doogz and Riko Dan's various trajectories through different crews. It'd be particularly funny in fact as it would wind up people who complain about rock-ist readings of dance music. I was going to post the Roxy Music/King Crimson history (which shows the intertwining of those two bands through the ages) though feared Mark Fisher might think I was taking the mick. Here instead is the "Resolving The Fairport Confusion" history, which I particularly like because of the absurd amount of incarnations the band went through. 14!

Download it here...

A dark force squats in the corner of my mind as I eat pasta.

Was sat on the table beside Yoko Ono at lunch. Another diner stood up mid-meal and took a flash photograph of her! In the car on the way home the consensus was that it had been vulgar to bother a celebrity in such a manner. At which point I was secretly relieved I hadn't surreptiously snapped her with my mobile.

More Sunny Ade.

The Nigerian graphic designers who worked on these Sunny Ade sleeves were truly masters of the form. I'd attempt to spin some pseudo narrative around these like I did the previos batch but Matos would almost certainly catch me out like he did last time. "Check E" I read raved over by Robert Christagau in a Village Voice column I picked up whilst over in NYC last year (maybe I'll manage to come over again in the next few years). Unlike the Juju Music/Synchro System/Aura Island records it's a peak-period domestic Nigerian issue. Almost as great as "The Message", and that's saying something, the steel guitar as predictably electrifying. I paid c$10 for this at the Music and Video Exchange! What is it with people's failure to see beyond Afro-Beat? Doh!

This one is definitely a few years younger than the rest (catalogue number SALPS36), is lavish and spacey sounding with drum machine to the fore. Widely touted as his classic recording. Got this for $15 from cdandlp.com (which is great if you haven't checked it out) On the strength of these sleeves you'd think all the Sunny Ade records were lovely looking, but no, there's a whole slew of white covers with bad typography and ropey photography; records like "Jealousy". I'm tempted to think that those releases aren't up to the same standards as the ones shown here.

Woebot Banned.

A correspondent informs me that his dad, upon pointing his browser at this website was greeted with the following warning message:

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How the hell did that happen? Not a tit in sight. It's k-punk with the saucy photos!

The Flashing RealPlayer Icon.

Yeah I hate it too.

Ancient Grime.

"My cousin came over to London town to check out how the people roll down."

Is this the UR-text of Grime? It's not a terribly distinctive record if the truth be told, delivered in an American accent, only passing references to (coughs) indigenous London in the form of complaints about "the boys in blue." But amazingly the aesthetic is quite grimy. The rhythm track even sounds like a Playstation offcut!

I thought the Greg Wilson-compiled UK Electro compilation on Streetsounds might predate this track, but no. That came out in June 1984, the label on this says 1983. As for that being the product of six distinct acts, Wilson sets the record straight here. Apparently the Rapologists contribution was the only one NOT masterminded by the collective of Wilson and his pals (Kermit from Broken Glass, later of the Ruthless Rap Assasins, musicians from Magazine and A Certain Ratio!) The bunch of aliases were concocted to give the illusion of a proclivity of UK Electro. Norty norty!

Here on this excellent site dedicated to UK Hip Hop there are details of other artists who emerged subsequent to Morgan Khan's compliation: ' Junior Gee and the A Team, MC Westrock, Jive Junior, Dynamic Three and Freshski.....etc....." The Newtrament record is on Jive, and subsequently I was curious to know about this record from 1985 also on Jive, and actually which is pretty excellent:

I think Jazzy Jeff IS American, but the record is recorded at Battery Studios, London. I'm confused! Have a look at this again if you have time, Simon's ultra-compressed notes on the Roots of Grime. That's a classic piece. Oh, but no more slagging off Nicky Lockett aka MC Tunes.

CD Mixers.

How totally weird these machines are! Verging on the bizarre, the pointless. You spin the central dial back and forth to make a sound which approximates the sound of vinyl being pulled back and forth through a needle. It's straight out of "Snow Crash" or "The Diamond Age" isn't it? Aftertrails of old technology.

Actually the point about those sonics one can generate through the turntable is they foreground the process, they ritualise the materiality of playing the record and the deck becomes (in the truest sense) an instrument. But these synthesised "record effects" have absolutely no intrinsic connection with playing a CD whatsoever. It's rubbish really. Still, not sure I'd want to hear a CD deck which was deliberately sensitised to compact disc data corruption "glitch style".

Jazz Memoires.

Been slowly going through the select list of stuff that Kirk Degiorgio gave me, tracking down records, appraising them, stroking my chin deliberately, thinking. I've found Donny Hathaway's "Extension of a Man", Linda Lewis's "Lark", Eugene McDaniel's "Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse" (thanks to Luke's extreme generosity), Weldon Irvine's "Spirit Man", and Jon Lucien's "Rashida" None of which are exactly obscure or rare, more kind of "classic" well-rounded LPs in a Jim Clarke stylee (Jim is a connoisseur of the LP form, his round up of 100 British records turned my head in a major fashion). The thing is, I was au fait with 75% of Kirk's Jazz Funk Greats list already, because I have a shady background as a Funk afficionado.

I know! Now he tells us! Just the other day in fact Derek Walmsely was chastising me for saying that the DJ Spooky mix record I reviewed in The Wire (yeah that was OK) was marginally more Cecil Taylor than Horace Silver. But sir, opined Derek, Horace Silver is a genius, dontcha know. I laid my circumspect knowledge on De'ek and he appeared to be satisfied. I DO enjoy Horace Silver, cherish my copy of "Song For My Father" and yes I guess I was being sorta glib. I can appreciate Kirk's depth of respect for the Blue Note label. In the past I've had Wayne Shorter's "Juju", Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder", Donald Byrd's "A New Perspective", Bill Evan's "Undercurrent" free records by Ornette ("The Empty Foxhole") Cecil ("Conquistador") and Eric Dolphy ("Out to Lunch") as well as (consults Google to refresh memory) Monk's early sides. The Jazz Funk stuff I picked up later than the free stuff, that was accrued largely as a result of slavishly following Lester Bangs's lines of flight, thanks to Lester I have a copy of Archie Shepp's "Fire Music" and Albert Ayler's "Spiritual Unity" which truth be told, don't hit the decks all that often. But we're talking Funk, or Jazz Funk here, and the period when I picked up those more accessible Blue Note records was in the early nineties.

(Stokes his pipe with the finest Golden Virginia, rests the brandy on a small leather-topped mahogany table aside his shabby winged armchair and gazes into the lambent flickering flames of his calor gasfire. A harpist strums descending variations in C)

Jazz Funk was a university thing thing, a student thing. My first year at Glasgow was spent in a state of such insane abstraction it's almost comic. Weighing in at a princely seven stone, dedicated to taking all my course notes in my left hand (naturally right-handed, I thought my mental balance needed correcting, the notes subsequently illegible), wandering around with my right eye shut, wearing either red or green from top to toe and talking to no-one at all. Scary, and I guess my trajectory out of lonely travels through the Third World and experiments with hallucinogenics. Wasn't the counter-culture supposed to be fun? Somewhere along the way, I'd pretty much lost touch with the laughs. That's the thing about dionysian "mob" culture when it involves drugs isn't it? So often the paths lead away from the comfort of the herd at steep tangents.

Come the second year I'd started to fluff out at the edges a bit. Someone told me where the student union was! I visited it a few times! I also found a couple of friends who were interested in records, both of whom were into the Talking Loud strain of Acid Jazz, and dutifully I joined in. It seemed to be more fun than the extremes of noise and nihilism that were my tastes at the time, indeed there were a few amusing cross-over incidents: a DJ in Edinburgh extolling the dancefloor power of Miles Davis's "Rated X" (my eyebrow raised) ditto the appeal of Mahavishnu Orchestra's "Innner Mounting Flame". Then crucially there was the presence of A Tribe Called Quest's "Low End Theory" and Massive Attack's debut. Both the latter two, whilst on the one hand hardcore Hip-Hop (though Jazz inflected that's an extravangaza of rock-hard Bass'n'Drums) and the other a post-Rave lacuna, were also signposts to J_A_Z_Z. The Tribe record especially was seized upon by Gilles Peterson and Patrick Forge as validating their experiment. The first Rebirth Of The Cool compilation featured the cymbolic downbeat mix of "When the Papes Come" (seems to have been subsequently excised) and also Stetsasonic's "Talkin All That Jazz". This early the whole thing seemed like a good idea (I never made it as far as Volume Two), and The Dream Warriors "My Definition (Of A Boombastic Jazz Style)", Gilles Peterson's mix with samples lifted off Quincy Jones even gave it a chart spin. Gang Starr also made an extremely good case for the cause with "Step In the Arena", which along with The Ragga Twins "Reggae owes Me Money" was my soundtrack to Summer '92. At the time I even interviewed the Dream Warriors when they were in Glasgow such was my brimming over with unfocused enthusisasm.

I also interviewed Galliano when they made the trip across the border. You wouldn't find too many apologists for Galliano these days, though I cocked a wry glance when I noticed Simon's enthusiasm for Rob's recent Earl Zinger record. The Galliano interview was a complete debacle (I've mentioned it whilst blogging once before) I managed to completely cock up the huge clunky video camera so that my "technical accomplice" Fraser and I became aware just before the start of the interview that we weren't going to be able to record anything other than _w*h*i*t*e_n*o*i*s*e*_. Such was our intense embarassment that we decided to proceed regardless. The band were surly and defensive and when I (gently) challenged them about the Acid Jazz movement's uncritical omnivorousness, it was meant to be a talking point, ("So Freez are now a Jazz Funk outfit!") Galliano became enraged. At the concert later on he stopped mid set to rail at the audience about the idiotic journalist (cough splutter) who had interviewed them beforehand. A proud moment.

The chief delight of being a Jazz Funk afficionado came in the past treasures one discovered. Billy Cobham's "Spectrum" (caned by Massive Attack), Aaron Neville's "Hercules", The Blackbyrds "Rock Creek Park" and the "Flying Away" LP (both since sold!), Donald Byrd's "Blackbyrd", Johnny Hammond's "Gears" (the last four all Mizell Productions), Hustler's Convention's "Sport", Deodato's "Thus Spoke Zarathusa", Leon Thomas's "Shape Your Mind to Die", Roy Ayer's "We Live in Brooklyn", Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man", Leroy Hutson's "Hutson", Bob James's "Nautilus", Allen Toussaint's "Touissant" and "Southern Nights", everything by The Meters, Gabor Szabo's "The Sorceror", James Brown's "Pass The Peas" and all the People productions, Charles Rouse's "Hopscotch", David Axelrod and Shuggie Otis's records, Chocolate Milk's "Action Speaks Louder Than Words", Al Green's LPs (right up to but not including "The Belle Album") and the Winley Breaks compilations. Just a slew of awesome stuff essentially, and hearing these monsters for the first time was quite a rush. It's strange to see how the same pillaging that collectors of vintage Reggae practise has somehow remained hip, remained current, while the jazzbos are slated for being retrogressive. I guess at the time the main impetus behind the rediscovery of these records was galvanised by Hip-Hop's voraciosness for breaks, indeed if A Tribe Called Quest sampled it, it was usually marked down as instantly desirable. Funny too how one of the prime machines for disemmination of this stuff back in the day, namely Soul Jazz, has subsequently become indelibly associated with the reggae reissue programme.

I guess the sad truth is that very little that was recorded in the name of this music in the UK has stood the test of time. Hand on heart (ha ha) the only records I bought back then by were The Young Disciples, quite easily the cream of the crop. Groupie that I am I was really excited to pass Femi Fem in the hallway of the house he shared with an ex-girlfriend of mine. Aah such naked proximity to the beating heart of Acid Jazz. Their "Road to Freedom" LP was a gem, and I'm gonna find a copy tomorrow if I can. K-Creative, The Brand New Heavies etc etc ALL SHITE. Returning to pick up the thread of this stuff briefly was enjoyable, though in some ways the records I've been hipped too by Kirk, who has travelled much deeper into this territory, all lack what I'd describe as terror. Terror is something you need in music. Funny also to remember, kind of elliptically, that I drove my two Jazz Funk friends completely up the wall by being a paranoid obsessive (ha ha ha).

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1471

Low Definition Ruff Squad.

See what you think of this radio show which I got off Silver Dollar. Hit the WOEBOT icon above. It's a RealAudio stream, so you'll need RealPlayer. Give me a call and come round to the house, or just drop by. We'll go round to your place and I'll download the Real software and install it for you. Seriously it's no problem whatsoever.

Oi yoi!

Thanks to SilverDollar for the tapes. Particularly interesting for me was the Logan Sama show Simon taped. Sama has a weekly slot on Rinse 100.3 FM on Friday between 7 and 9 when he plays what are now definitively described as "Vocal" tunes. As an adherent of the discipline of 4 minute concepts on wax, and someone who finds even the best open mic sessions a bit off-putting hearing this show, "the biggest vocal tune show on the FM dial" was quite a revelation.

Logan Sama has quite slyly carved himself a niche as the Stretch Armstrong of Grime. I say slyly because I reckon the grassroots heat around Grime is essentially around the live on-air MC clashes. As I've often remarked, the shops, until quite recently that is, have tended to serve as receptacles for the DJ's 8-bar rhythms, the sub lo backing tracks. For a long time it seemed that only Sticky (no longer a force to be reckoned with incidentally) took the form of the record seriously. But if Grime is to have a future it'll have to address this, note for example Wiley's shift from producing things like the Ice Rink EPs (2 12"s of MCs ride the same rhythm) to his generally more focused auteurish slant of late.

The great thing about the Logan Sama show, and I tried to catch it this Friday but came straight home from work and got stuck into my usual duties, is the sheer brilliance of the tracks. All these tunes he spins are absolutely amazing! In terms of the fecundity of the scene I reckon we're approaching the improbable quality of the hardcore scenius between 1991 and 1993 when "classic" followed "classic" What really caught my ears amongst the selection were an as yet untitled (?) Dogzee tune in which our hero recounts the tale of an evening in which he attends a boring party and necks some LSD. He ends up talking to Freddie Mercury! It's too insane and completely captures the disorientating scrabbling around one does off ones tits at parties. Between this, Dogzee's "STDs" and his "Back to School" we're witnessing someone with a whole heap of range.

Also astonishing is Roll Deep's "Shake Your Leg" which it's too easy to dismiss as a novelty track, a music-hall cum ska pastiche the backing track is luridly psychedelic, evidence of the kind of leftfield chances Grime's producers are willing to take, I guess following the notional signpost of Danny Weed's "Rat Race" rhythm. Danny also did the superb gypsy rhythm off of the Aim High Vol1 comp, so maybe this is one of his? Apparently this will be on the Roll Deep LP.

Picked up some tracks too. Wonder and Kano's "What Have You Done", quite rightly praised to the sky by Kode9 chez lui, the slightly time-stretched agonising diva a handy way of dovetailing Grime's recent R'n'B inflections into rave-tasm. Kano is plump and surly. He's efficient Kano, but he's not exactly colourful. Ruff Squad's "Anna", which has a great, quite blokey tough abstract vibe to it, but not much in the way of a hook, and their "XTC Function out Da Low" rhythm which is nice. Both releases slightly marred by that cheap parping synth sound one gets in Swizz Beatz's productions and a lot of electro. I have a difficult relationship with those tones, and still yet to be convinced by "The Squid." Finally the rhythm to Wiley's "Bastard" which Cameo seemed to think was by Geeneus. And STOP PRESS, presented here as a version screwed down to 33.

As if to show what a complete bunch of lame twats all my fellow bloggers are (puts up fists to enormous throng of encircling 30-something males) I've noticed that since the demise of WOEBOT there have been absolutely no visual paeans to the glory of sleeve art when they WERE all the rage. A few in it's immediate aftermath, but thereafter silence. Pathetic! It's almost inspired me to move back to my old address and keep posting JPEGs in lieu of not having much interesting to say most of the time. Almost.

Picked up two absolutely stunning examples of wondrous sleeve art today. Firstly The Egg's "Civil Service", the close up of, er, an egg, which I was annoyed to not be able to find when I was undergoing my own wee prog odyssey. It's without a doubt the best "pure prog" record I've heard, minimal with rhythms not disorientatingly off-kilter, most usually quiet and tender (none of the on-off gradiosity which I recall Mark Fisher identified as the hallmark of prog). This will be on constant rotation.

Incidentally Mark has been progging it up this week. My first bone of contention (paleontogically speaking of course) with him would be that in spite of Tony Blair declaring himself to be a fan of King Crimson, his band "Ugly Rumours" were almost certainly anything but prog, akin to the pre-Dire Straits incarnation "Brewers Droop" I was saying. Pub-rock with flares. In fact if you had enough energy you could probably spin one of those fashionable forked-roads-of-reality skits which has Mark Knopfler as Prime Minister and Huey Lewis as President of the USA. I mean, for goodness sakes, how prog a name is "Ugly Rumours"? Even Mark Sinker agreed with me, though possibly that was a tactic to create disorder and unrest.

AGAIN k-punk on prog rock (!!!) with reference to Jeff Wayne's War Of The Worlds! Vis a vis prog EARTH to Mark *You're gonna have to lay off the lemurian stuff mate, we're clearly losing you in a haze of evolved symbolism* I bought that record at the time, aged 8 before I had hitched a ride on the express-train of musical hyperlinks, and was profoundly unsettled by it. "No Nathanial", in which the wife of a rector pleads to him not to commit suicide, is for me inextricably linked with (get your hankies out) the trauma of being sent away to boarding school. Burton sounded so crushingly world-weary, so "grown-up".

The other record I picked up today was Pulsallama's 7" on Y records "The Devil Lives In My Husbands Body", which, though it sounds like a Diamanda Galas record, is brilliantly tuneful, it's hilarious dialogue delivered by a B52s-alike Stepford wife. At the end the husband, who has been barking like a dog is sent to a psychoanalyst who concludes that he has Tourette's syndrome "He's going to be barking like that for the rest of his life" and the killer punchline (in a quavering terrified voice) "And our insurance doesn't cover it!" I was hipped to Pulsallama by Stuart Argabright (Hi mate!), and I guess this single with it's completely inspired graphic design, lifting dread from ACDC and Magma:

is in some fashion the mirror image of Vivienne Goldman's "Launderette" which was a London record issued on a New York label. The b-side "Ungawa Pt.II" is an excellent tribal punk stomp in the vein of The Slits and 23 Skidoo. And best of all Stacey "Timbalina" Elkin of the band has a website where you can download some of their tracks: http://www.redlipstick.net/pls.html

Noticed Simon has put out feelers for some rare stuff by namely Donald Knaack and Kenneth Gaburo. Not even a faintest CLUE who these people are. However someone OUT THERE will know all about them. Amazing isn't it. The same thing blew me away when I came out with that list of uber-obscurities I was after the other day, when people who read this blog managed to hook me up with all of them. People still reading this guff, you're nuts.....

It occurred to me just then as I was awaiting the umpteenth Elton John render to congeal that in some way something like blissblog or k-punk (increasingly so) perform excellently as 'hubs.' Then, because I seem to write/think about little else at the moment, it dawned on me too that a magazine like The Wire must have at it's disposal the most awesome resources of knowledge. Resources largely untapped as a result of their narrow remit. In fact I can think of at least three excellent primers they have in the wings/missed out on by "colleagues".

I suppose it's a function of the flexible form of the blogs, with the writer's ability to publish at will (matched by the reader's ability to ignore at will), and the whole healthy bleed between professional writers and punters (like myself) triumphing over the mag format. Plenty of people have gems to offer up to the treasure chest of knowledge.

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