Here's a fantastic little documentary on the time when Jazz, Rock'n'Roll, anything sung by an emigre, even 'gypsy' music was illicit in the USSR.
How people managed to distribute music is extraordinary - they used x-rays.
X Ray Audio: The Documentary explores the curious, sometimes fantastical story behind Soviet Russia's strangest cultural exports, and is part of a larger project which has seen Stephen Coates and Paul Heartfield publish a book and host muitple live events (the next of which will take place at Rough Trade East in London on March 9). As their website explains, "Giving blood every week to earn enough money to buy a recording lathe, one bootlegger Rudy Fuchs cuts banned music onto such discarded x-rays to be sold on street corners by shady dealers. It was ultimate act of punk resistance, a two-fingered salute to the repressive regime that gave a generation of young Soviets access to forbidden Western and Russian music, an act for which Rudy and his fellow bootleggers would pay a heavy price."
Take a trip back to a time and place it's nearly impossible to imagine with X Ray Audio: The Documentary.
Watch the documentary and four examples of groovy, Soviet-era music after the jump.
Any DJ who knows anything will know who Larry Levan is. The pioneer of club/dance/whatever the kids are calling it music. Infamous for his 80s sets at the NYC club Paradise Garage.
Levan was a gay black DJ, killed by AIDS, whose rep transferred to the gay white Sydney friends who I knew who had experienced his genius - and that rep transferred to countless others and that rep lives on.
It features STACKS of old farts (just like myself :]) getting down (via François Kevorkian, David DePino, Joey Llanos and Jocelyn Brown - they get down too! + some of the DJing reminds me of me at my most inept, but it doesn't matter!) to the greatest hits of the Garage. And it is f-ng, life affirming, insanely wonderful. I love this crowd. Just viewing this crowd is joyful.
BEHOLD THE INTERSECTIONALITY!
Video of the day starts with Jean Michel Jarre, which if you understand Levan's deejaying is sooo appropriate. Then right into my fave track of forever. Kill. Me. Now.
"Oooh, make me move. Make me feel like my whole world is on FIRE."
"You make me feel. Mighty, mighty real."
".. the light of love will shine on us, forever and a day."
Something to brighten your Tuesday, this is a stonking disco non-hit.
The obscure Harlem group with the dodgy name made this in 1979 on the Buddah label, home for many other classics. Like Love Sensation and countless others it drives on relentlessly, has a brilliant breakdown and an earworm of a hook (they collaborated with legend Patrick Adams). And put aside that it compares lurve to injecting hard drugs ...
After hearing some covers and a handful of house tracks which sample Mainline, it’s safe to say that nobody even comes close to the magic that happens on the original. In fact, just as I was writing this I saw that Tensnake is releasing a very uninspiring version himself, so I’m glad I get to share “the real deal” with you before this song title gets overloaded with a bunch of undeserved hype.
Organic instrumentation wins this round. You can’t deny the power this track has when it ditches it’s narrative verses before the halfway mark in favor of a loopy disco hook, percussive-break down and cheerful lyrics that will stay in your head forever. Please play this by my bedside if I ever end up in a coma. Seriously.
Not a good time for me right now, maybe last post for whatever?, but a rather odd link to Go-Go from DC, goddam Chuck brown, sorta via Tomansky and Youtube related linked me back to this transportation. Fitting. The first music which really got me into black American music, + thence a world beyond my little one.
Yeah, it blew me away as a 70s, white, Brit, provincial teen. I was 14. I had a friend intense in his Greenwaldian way (he later joined Militant) determined to convince me on the Nobel obliqueness of the Beatles. Via BBC American chart reports I discovered this, Earth, Wind and Fire's live album, and Ringo and Lennon and my mate's pretentiousness could forget it. I wore 'Gratitude's grooves out.
Right after this I discovered George Clinton and P-funk and ... and I still cannot stand unfunky white whiney #firstworldproblems music.
The shadow EWF turned into - if you hear this? Well, depress me some more. Don't Googles. Nile Rodgers is a hyper-exception. This music is jus raped by Grand Theft Auto millenials as pimpsic. Fuggit yr racist aholes. This was my G-spot in 70s Britain, + this is their G-spot as history.
This is the great Mahalia Jackson performing at the conclusion of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, fifty years ago today.
She almost didn't get to perform, having been barred by the Daughters of the American Revolution. This was reversed after intervention by Eleanor Roosevelt.
24 years before the black opera singer Marian Anderson had also performed at the Lincoln Memorial, after those same Daughters of the American Revolution had barred her from singing in Washington’s Constitution Hall.
In response, a broad coalition of civil rights advocates, with support from Eleanor Roosevelt and Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, organized a concert on the steps of the memorial. More than 75,000 people attended the performance, and millions more listened to the live radio broadcast. Anderson opened by pointedly singing “My Country Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty.” The concert lasted less than an hour, but it honored Anderson’s talents as a black artist and forever fixed the Lincoln Memorial as a symbolic shrine to civil rights.
How I Get Over was written by Clara Ward in 1951. According to her sister, Willa Ward, the inspiration was an experience Ward, Willa, their mother, Gertrude, and members of their singing group had traveling in the racially segregated South in 1951.
En route to Atlanta, Georgia, they were besieged by a group of white men. The men were enraged that Black women were riding in a luxury vehicle (a Cadillac), and surrounded their car and terrorized them with racist taunts. The women were rescued when, in a burst of inspiration, Gertrude Ward feigned demonic possession, spewing curses and incantations at the men, who fled.
I may have mentioned my liking of gospel before. As in Ryan Lochte, I can ignore the content and focus on the packaging.
That a big homo might love the lord's musique may seem at first glance odd, but this is gospel. The Black church's 'don't ask, don't tell'. Of course something clicks, stirs, even with extremely white me ..
This one should really be a hit in trendy vicar land.
After the jump, this is big ole late lamented gay Larry Levan's classic rework of big ole gospel for the Studio 24 dancefloor.
On the occasion of the UK Independence Party (UKIP)'s saturation media moment this funky moment seems apt. For the party of 'make up populist policy'.
Like a dull knife just ain't cuttin'
We're just talkin' a lot and sayin' nothing
Just sayin' nothing, just sayin' nothing
According to Brown, 'Talkin' Loud and Sayin' Nothing' was "aimed at the politicians who were running their mouths but had no knowledge of what life was like for a lot of people in [the United States]" as well as "some of the cats on their soapboxes... who were telling the people one thing while manipulating their emotions for personal gain."
A mate was panicking about them to which I responded that Brits have been here before. Troglodytes have had their moments before. The BNP has MEPs but now no councillors. Before that we had the National Front (who?) and before that Britain a/ laughed at the 1930s answer to UKIP leader Nigel Farage, Oswald Mosely, and b/ beat back the blackshirts at Cable Street.
Wait a minute, stop fellas, cool.
For a stream of laughs at Farage's expense I recommend this Twitter feed.
A moment last week caused me to send this to a friend, as an uplift.
You're a shining star
No matter who you are
Shining bright to see
What you could truly be
This is the live version from the 'Gratitude' album, which was one of the first LPs I ever brought, played to death and still love today.
'Shining Star' was one of Earth, Wind and Fire's biggest hits, though not in the UK, where their fame came a bit later. You may recognise it from samples though, or even from 'Seinfeld'!
Listen, after the jump plus bonus 'Africano' also from 'Gratitude'.
This is Philly group Double Exposure's 'Everyman (has to carry his own weight)' from '75. Mixed by the great Tom Moulton and it's Salsoul, of course.
They disappeared for thirty years but reappeared with 'Soul Recession' in 2008 (which showed them still in fine voice but wasn't that good a song and the production was awful ... ).
'Everyman' after the jump, plus bonus 'Ten Percent':
Dragged back into thinking, writing about the eighties and El Thatch, I tried, really, I tried, to think for a weekly music post of something appropriate from that time that I actually like, which I might want to listen to again.
There's plenty that works politically but not so much that still does it for me musically now (er, Bronski Beat? My first publication was on them but I don't want to actually hear it again). Britfunk was still, er, finding its feet. Sooo, as I had this saved on my 'maybe post this sometime' list ... here's Brooklyn Funk Essentials' slamming 2000 sweet FU by extension to Thatcherism and Thatcher's children.
It's addressed to the NYawk version of those same Londonist a***holes. NYLON if umust ...
I got cash in fuck you quantities
Know what?
That makes you uncomfortable?
Fuck you and the Range Rover you drove in on
Fuck your Saab convertable
And fuck your twice weekly trips to the analyst
Stupid mutha fuck
Here's something of a 'lost' Aretha Franklin classic.
It's from the 1974 album of the same name and from a time when Aretha wasn't bothering the charts much.
The title track and single (listen, after the jump), which she wrote, is a barnstormer, building to a rocking climax and fade. Her vocals are at the top of her game.
The seriously underrated album is great too, with contributions from Stevie Wonder, Burt Bacharach, Hal David and Arif Mardin production.
Apparently, you can only find this second hand and it's never been released on CD. For shame.
Giorgio Moroder is one of the most famous and influential disco producers, although the kidz all appear to know of him just because of Daft Punk and not because of Donna Summer's seminal 'I Feel Love' (which is embedded after the break).
CoS reports that Moroder, now 72, is releasing a whole stack of tracks from The Time Before Disco: Schlagermoroder (Volume 1: 1966-1975). And the lot, plus some later tracks, can be heard, for free, on Soundcloud. “Enjoy my tracks, some of them are rare," says he.
Much 80s music appears to be suspicious these daze. Maybe the techo innovations then sound dated now. This is certainly true in most dance music. Sample-rich classics sound clunky. 80s Detroit techno sounds clunky.
This one is an exception which I pulled from ma dejay days memory. Still hits home!
It's a dub. 'Suspicious' is actually a track by the group Ten City but this version doesn't even credit them, just the producer. Dub in this house music sense is a version which technically comes from reggae and has the same 'stripped down' relationship with the original.
This surviving clip on Youtube, probs from radio recordings?, is solid keyboard, a type of track which especially tickled my ivorys, an orgasmic marriage with 'deep house'. After the jump, plus the gospel touched original:
Got a nice package all right, guess I'm going to have to ride it tonight ..
Whoah, Janet!
I just saw a doco about Janet's career -- from BBC Wales of all places -- and had forgotten this, her big hit from 2000.
Could have picked maybe ten other Janet tracks I love, and which all have interesting backstories. This one samples the timeless Change track 'Glow of Love', vocals by then unknown Luther Vandross.
Change are one of my favourites ever. 'Paradise', with its killer baseline, would be up there for favourite ever toon ... (Here's a Youtube playlist).
Anyways, watch Janet flirt with a gorgeous guy with a gorgeous package after the jump .. as well as hear Luther sing .. after the jump » »
Have loved gospel music since discovering Andraé Crouch in my teens. I didn't know it then but there is a strong gay participant in the African-American art form from where so many incredible singers have been drawn.
Sounds of Blackness are from from Minneapolis/St. Paul -- same place as Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and Prince.
'Optimistic †&♥', written by Jam + Lewis, is from their funky high charting point in the early 90s. It seems real for my relaunch of blogging :]
Watch/ listen to a live performance of Optimistic / Hold On (Change Is Comin') after the jump » »
Being Paul Morley it's hyper-intellectual but all three of his panelists pick up on one DJ trick which I recall being the mark of a great DJ - finding that obscure, forgotten track which you made your own.
I was too young for disco in the 70s except on the radio but by the time I'd started DJing in 1987 in Sydney I'd also started rummaging through Sydney's great second-hand record shops for obscure disco classics to play first on my Saturday night radio show 'Move On Up' and then later in parties, bars and clubs.
Raw Silk: Just in time and space
From New York's consistently brilliant West End Records. The best version of this is the trip-out dub, which I found on YouTube. Yay! :]
That's exactly the sort of track which would find a home at Paradise Garage, the legendary New York club which the best of my contemporaries in Sydney had been blown away at and then started Sydney's dance party scene in homage to, especially the incredible Black Party which ran for years and only ended when two of its three founders died. (It was named after the notoriously sleazy party held at NYC's Saint club but in Sydney people came mainly for the dancefloor not any sleaze).
Kervorkian produced many left-field dancefloor hits like his remix of U2's New Years Day that my favorite Sydney DJ the brilliant, technically and creatively, Stephen Allkins would drop in a set because on a dancefloor they worked, especially late late when everyone was well mashed.
The last session was always the one where experimental DJs like Allkins came alive - not only were you not playing to a crowd which just wanted what was then in the charts but you could also throw in the left-field, slower and funkier tracks. The highlight of my DJing career was the 5-9am at a New Year's Eve Rat Party held at the RAS Showgrounds (now Fox Studios) where the decks were directly on the floor so on my favorite long, funky mid-tempo tracks I could nip out and boogie around with mates and several thousand others.
This was the sort of track you could play during the 'last shift', if you were Allkins or Black Party's late, great Ron Oram.
Taana Gardner: Heartbeat (Larry Levan mix)
That's on West End Records. Salsoul is another label from which you'd buy a track just 'cos it was on it and you knew it'd be good.
There is a Larry Levan mix of this Salsoul track but I couldn't find it on YouTube.
Skyy: First Time Around
You'd buy records on the Sleeping Bag label and be guaranteed a great track too.
Dinosaur L: Go Bang! #5 (François Kevorkian Mix)
More Salsoul and a Shep Pettibone mix (there's also a Frankie Knuckles one). This is a classic (classy) gay club track 'cos it's got fantastic female vocals and listen out for some of the most used samples ever.
First Choice: Let No Man Put Asunder
Last - must stop before the page download grinds to a halt - one of the all-time best dancefloor fillers and another track from which a zillion samples have been taken. Hamilton Bohannon: Let's Start To Dance
Check out my music tagged posts for a heck of a lot more Dissssssssscoooooooooooo ...
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