If You Want Some Funn

"Now's the time, forget your nine to five. Come on, have some funn."
Okay, I will thanks.

The Gunchback Boogie Band - Funn

BT Magnum's Stimulation

I created an exclusive new DJ mix at the request of my friends Remy and Lamar aka Portland's Monorail Boys. These guys throw the best parties in Portland hands down and do a damn fine job on their blog as well. Indicative of my current DJ sets, this mix leans heavily on the boogie-funk tip with a bit of early house, italo and late era disco thrown in for good measure. As always its all live, hastily mixed at home after a long, shitty day a couple weeks back. Anyways, go to the Monorail blog, download the mix and take a look around. You will also find some other stellar mixes by the likes of Ulysses 82 and San Serac amongst other goodies.

I also have posted the Stimulation title track here on this blog. Stimulation is a semi rare and ultra heavy vocoder track by The Strangers from the Salsoul Records stable circa 1983.

Stimulation Tracklist:

Prestige - Cheating
Squirmin Herman - Move and Shake Your Body (Inst.)
The Strangers - Stimulation
Pleasure - Sending My Love (Inst.)
Aurra - Baby Love (Shep Pettibone's Mastermix)
Slave - Feel My Love
Wizardz - Boogie Slyde
Sinnamon - I Need You Now (The Fierce Reprise)
Jamie Principle - Your Love
Inner Life - (Knockout) Let's Go Another Round
Stephanie Mills - Put Your Body In It
Weeks and Co. - Go With The Flow (Inst.)
Leather - Nervous
Electrik Funk - On a Journey (Inst.)
Eazy - Project Funk (Inst.)
A Number of Names - Sharevari
Kano - Now Baby Now

BT Magnum - Stimulation Mix
The Strangers - Stimulation

Paparazzi

Its my day to post and I couldn't get to my recording rig, so I'm putting up an edit I did a while ago for a set that never happened that I just found on my mp3 player and put up from this borrowed computer. Paparazzi were a short lived British New Wave band that released a couple of singles on MCA before breaking up and having their debut album unfortunately shelved, although there is a bootleg recording of it floating around. Their 12" 'Stop' has some great synth work, I stripped out some of the vocal bridges and chorus lines to make it a little more compatible for contemporary dance floors, but still left the instrumental parts of the arrangement pretty much as was.

Paparazzi - Stop (BlackShag's Dance Edit)

Tell You (Today)

I could tell you a few things about this song. Maybe you would like to know that it's written and produced by Arthur Russell. Or maybe that it is mixed by Larry Levan. Perhaps you would like to know how it's got amazing piano, horns and whistling. But really, you probably just want to listen to this track and get your ass up and dance around your room in your underwear. Or, is that just me?

Loose Joints - Tell you (Today) (Vocal)

Move On

This is a very nice upbeat track from Cleveland, OH based artist Frederick. Move On was buried on the B-Side of a throwaway ballad 12" entitled Gentle (Calling Your Name) released in 1984 on private label Time Trax and later reissued on LA Based Heat Records in 1985. I really like the sanguine gospel feel to this cut, reminds me of a less polished Leroy Burgess-Stan Lucas production. I apologize for the impurity of this rip, but I had to chop off the sliding piano line in the intro. It was just too cheesy and distracting to an otherwise great track.

Frederick - Move On

Fo-Fi-Fo

Here is something smooth for you to enjoy this Monday evening. Pieces of a Dream was produced by the late Grover Washington Jr. and they put out three albums. Their sound was very tame and smooth with polished production. While many of their tracks are a bit too smooth, this one has a nice poppy snap that is reminiscent of a Change record. Dexter Wansel helped pen this one.

Pieces Of A Dream - Fo-Fi-Fo

Magnum Force 1984

I came across this 12" recently in a deep stack of what seemed like mostly jazz records. It's by Rory and Rick Starr, also known by the moniker Magnum Force, under which they released some sought after funk and boogie LP's, in the late seventies through to the early eighties. This record though dates from 1984, and goes into my limited collection of what I would identify as one of the earliest examples that I own of pure Chicago house. I don't have anything that can be pinned down to that genre from 1983, close, but not quite. Both the A side and B side are well worthwhile, definitely a little too polished to have been made by a 17 year old with a Roland drum machine in his bedroom, but clearly influenced by them and the electronic sound being played on Chicago radio at the time as well.

I'm also posting Persia's Inch By Inch as was requested. All time roller boogie classic.

Magnum Force - Get In The Mix

Magnum Force - Cool Out

Persia - Inch By Inch (Album Version)

Megatron Man - The Life & Times of Patrick Cowley

In 1975 Patrick Cowley and Jorge Socarras began a friendship and musical partnership that spanned several years and the end result was an LP's worth of material that saw the light of day in the United States for the first time just yesterday. The story of how things got to this point is an interesting slice of San Francisco history. It all started when DJ Ken Vulsion of Honey Soundsystem spun some records with legendary SF producer/ DJ John Hedges at Cafe Flore about 3 years ago. Hedges took over running Megatone Records with Marty Blecman after Cowley's death in 1982 from a mysterious and deadly new virus called GRID. Hedges was already a legendary disco DJ since the mid 70's at this point having been the house DJ at The Mineshaft and the City Disco. When Marty Blecman passed due to complication from the Aids virus in 1991, Hedges became the steward of the huge Megatone back catalog.

About a year after the gig, Kenvulsion received a call from Hedges informing him that he was selling his old studio and house in Buena Vista Park and moving to Southern California. He would be giving away a huge chunk of his personal record collection and all of the Megatone back catalog. Several of the honey guys found their way over to John's house with a large truck and raided the basement storage space they came to call the Mineshaft. After digging through over 4,000 records, Ken and co. discovered 4 boxes of quarter inch tapes. Half were session copies, others were totally unreleased masters by Cowley. One of the reels ended up being the pre-Megatone full length recording entitled Catholic produced with Jorge.

Fast forward to 2009, the honey guys did a few parties to celebrate their massive record score and easily persuaded German label Macro to issue Catholic for the very first time. The beauty of this recording is that it displays Cowley as much more than just a disco producer. This early period shows him in another pioneering mode: Post Punk. Before the genre even existed. The seemingly timeless Catholic sessions would fit nicely as a DFA release or could have been a celebrated gem on 4AD or Mute back in the day. These recordings further solidify the fact that Cowley may have been the most important and groundbreaking producer San Francisco has ever seen.

This Sunday, Honey Soundsystem hosts two events to commemorate Patrick's 59th birthday and the release of Catholic. All of the details are here and suffice to say there will be special guests (Paul Parker and John Hedges!) in attendance and one can expect these events to delve much more deeply into Cowley's backstory and the history of SF disco than I have been able to explain today.

You can preview tracks off of Catholic on their myspace page. Here I have posted the 1987 Megatron Man 12" version remixed by Joseph Watt.

Patrick Cowley - Megatron Man '87

Goodbye America

I should probably be building an arc right now because California is going to be washed away into the sea in a couple of hours. I have been practicing parting water, and I think I may have it figured out just in the nic of time.

Manu Dibango - New Bell

No Matter

I have played this for a few people over time and I have gotten mixed responses, perhaps they were just not in the right mindset, or perhaps the heart felt, atonal, choppy English as a fourth language vocal put them off. Its a weird tune for sure, but I think maybe Lowell's No Matter is one of the unsung Italo greats, dark and brooding, with a touch of electro and soul, sang by a light Swiss version of Tina Turner circa 1985. Its not Italian, it is Swiss, and I think all of the recordings off of the short lived Tam Tam label were made in Switzerland. Extremely hard to find, often a little off color somehow.

Lowell - No Matter

Above & Beyond

I haven't been home much lately. I haven't posted much lately. I haven't been to the gym much lately. What I have done though is work, work, work.
But it's Friday, it's Fleet Week in SF and I finally remembered on the right day it is my time to post.
What I have this week is Edgar Winter's instrumental track "Above & Beyond". It's bad ass and full of amazing sonic ear candy. It's cosmic, it's weird and it is made Mr. Winter who looks as though winter landed all over him.
I scored this record, actually 2 copies of the white label, nicely filed in alphabetical order whilst digging at a record store. Talk about a score.
Enjoy.

Edgar Winter - Above & Beyond (Instrumental)

Looking From A Hilltop

Thought I would switch it up for a change and post an 80's synth pop track from the legendary Factory Records stable. This cut from Section 25 was a staple of mine some years back when I incorporated quite a bit of new wave and post punk into my DJ sets. I dusted this record off in anticipation of the upcoming Section 25 show at Mezzanine in SF and it served to remind me that I still love this kind of stuff. The British in particular were damn good at making new wave/synth tracks. They tended to add a more soulful element that their American counterparts were not quite as adept at pulling off. Looking From a Hilltop was released in 1984 as the first single off of the From the Hip LP which was produced by Bernard Sumner of New Order.

Section 25 - Looking From a Hilltop (Restructure from FACT 90)

Jack Is The One Who Gives You The Key To The Wiggily Worm

"Jack boldly declared: 'Let there be house!' And house music was born."

Larry Heard AKA Mr. Fingers produced this record in 1986. This record was a follow-up to his 1985 release Mystery Of Love. Early in his music career he was in a jazz fusion group with Adonis (whose music also has a similar sound). He later fronted the group Fingers Inc. and started producing tracks under several monikers. His tracks ushered in the deep house sound with an ethereal, serotonin laced groove that can give you a sense of the elation that those dancers felt on the dancefloor of The Warehouse in the mid-80's. This is the instrumental version, the more common version features a Dr. King like sermon about Jack and the origins of house music.

Mr. Fingers - Can You Feel It (Instrumental)

Be Thankful For What You Got

This picture is of Khalis Bayyan's living room. At least his living room in 1983. I'm not posting any of Khalis' or Kool And The Gang's tracks, I just like the picture. It looks like my mum and dad's living room in England, apart from with analogue synths in it.

San Francisco on the other hand is jumping this weekend, my neighborhood is locked down with the lovefest meth techno activities, the police put blockades up either end of my street, so I sort of feel trapped inside, alone with my records. These two were the highlight of my day, excuse the Craig Peyton record if it sounds a little warbly at the beginning, my copy has a slight warp the first inch or so. Would love to mint up on this one:

Funkapolitan - As The Time Goes By

Craig Peyton - Be Thankful For What You Got (Instrumental)