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Wednesday, December 30, 2009
RFC/ATLANTIC
The late Ray Caviano was the A&R man for T.K. Records and its offshoot Marlin during the peak 70's disco era signing Voyage, Kat Mandu and a slew of other artists. Caviano left T.K. in 1978 to become the Executive Director of Disco (dream job) at Warner Brothers Records. Warner gave him his own imprint RFC Records titled after his initials. Caviano executive produced many LP's and 12"s in the late 70's/early 80's for Warner/Atlantic and struck up a partnership with Quality Records in Canada with some notable releases from Jimmy Ross and A Number of Names amongst others. Today I am posting a few jams from the RFC/Atlantic stable circa '81-'83. All told, if you are out hunting for disco or boogie 12's and see the RFC imprint it's quite likely you will have a pretty decent cut on your hands.
Tomorrow's Edition - U Turn Me On
Prestige - Cheating
Suzy Q - Get On Up Do It Again
Attitude - We Got The Juice
Change - This Is Your Time
Monday, December 28, 2009
Expensive Shit
Fela Kuti was a very accomplished Nigerian multi-instrumentalist and recording artist who was the founder of afrobeat and funk. His 1975 record Expensive Shit was ground breaking with its long and funky tracks. Here is one of my favorite jamz.
Fela Kuti - It's Not Possible
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Good Times
So this is a picture of classical jazz pianist Oscar Peterson with the Roland TB-303 and TR-606, taken from the original Roland brochure in 1982. This is what they intended the machines to be used for when they designed them I suppose, and Oscar is probably smiling, wondering when this easy money photoshoot will be over so he can go back to the studio and lay it down with a real drummer and bass player. I doubt many Oscar Peterson's bothered picking up either machine, but they did take off, hence the blog exists probably. I just thought the photo was funny in retrospect, it would have been cool if old bebop guys in tuxedos jammed on the 303 a little more.
I'm putting up a soulful electro boogie jam by Chuck Stanley, produced in 1984, two years before his Def Jam era began, and two records I found whilst digging recently, a proto techno number from Egyptian Lover named Computer Love, and a novelty electro instrumental mashup from Italy of Chic's Good Times with Stevie Wonder's Superstition (ha! no its good) :
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Jive Afrika
In keeping with the spirit of Black Shag's Africa post and Beat Electric's permanent ban on any Christmas related music, today we celebrate the African-American holiday Kwanzaa with this Hugh Masekela joint on the Jive Afrika imprint. Jive Afrika was created as a catalyst for Masekela's early 80's output which shifted towards electronic and boogie oriented sounds. The sub label never grew much beyond Masekela and a couple of other artists, but I like the idea behind it. I just wish they could have dug up more African boogie gems such as this one.
Hugh Masekela - Don't Go Lose It Baby (Stretch Mix)
Hugh Masekela - Don't Go Lose It Baby (Dub Mix)
Hugh Masekela - Don't Go Lose It Baby (BT Magnum Edit)
Monday, December 21, 2009
Reputation
This track led to Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis getting kicked out of The Time. The two band mates produced this record while on a brief hiatus when they were in Prince's group The Time. After this recording session, they got stuck in a blizzard and were stranded in Atlanta; unable to meet the band for their next tour date. Prince fired them. The subsequent success of this record launched their long production career.
Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis had an amazing ability take an act that had disappeared into mediocrity and mold into a powerful force. The duo rescued the S.O.S. band from workout disco obscurity when they penned this jam that was released on Tabu in 1983. This track is the epitome of their lazer soul sound that went on change the face of R&B into the late 80's.
The S.O.S. Band - Just Be Good To Me (Long Version)
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Africa
There are much better resources out there for African dance music than BE, in fact I should run up a list of some of my favorites an append them to this post. African electro boogie is a hot and hard to come by commodity, and in my collection I only have a few stand out pieces, its not something you find digging around the US West Coast. I'm going to put up my two favorite slightly westernised takes on Afro Disco by the known and widely distributed Manu Dibango, off of his self titled 1978 LP, I love these:
As an added bonus, here are 3000 thirty second to a minute snippets from a collection of mostly ultra rare high life, disco, funk, psych, electro and boogie 45's from throughout Africa. They are not complete tracks, but then I can entertain myself for hours just flicking through, taking in all the different sounds and influences. Beat and sample hunters, merry christmas etc: