TV Sounds Orchestra was the blanket name used for all of super producer Tony Valor's inhouse backing band and instrumental efforts. On the flip of many of Tony's hits throughout the seventies and early eighties you will find a dub credited to the TV Sounds Orchestra and this one comes off of the B side of Fantasy's 12" electro funk single 'Live The Life I love'.

 Tony Valor came up through the 60's Brooklyn music scene, first as a soul singer, then moving into engineering, production at the birth of the disco scene then eventually talent manager and label owner with TVI records and alongside Tom Moulton as one half of T'n'T records. I read somewhere he was a New York beat cop and music industry lawyer for a while too.  He is a savvy business leader and still produces and manages creative assets to this day. Here is a quote I liked from a 2003 Pedro Lopez interview with him I read on discomusic.com, giving his typical crotchety old seventies record executive take on the ever villainized modern evil..'sampling' (boo hiss, *shakes fist*)...

'This was a good opportunity to ask Tony Valor how he felt about sampling and he responded, "I’d rather people sample and pay the fee. There’s a singer in the U. K. named Rhianna with a song called "Oh Baby" which is fabulous. They did a whole thing from one of my 1958 records called "I Forgot About That / Latin Nights In Manhattan." They paid very nice and her record has done very well. I’d rather them do that than just copy. It gives you money and credit. Sampling to me is fine, the creativity of years ago-you can’t beat it. There are very few good musicians. With MIDI there is no need to be a good musician.'

TV Sounds Orchestra - Live The Life I Love (Instrumental)

 Sometimes I get a little too hung up on whether something has already been posted somewhere else, or whether its a well known track or not etc before I will consider a record for recording and putting up on the site. I have decided to drop those pre-requisites, because whether a track is known or not is really relative to your level of sad record collector beardy'ness, and whether it is posted or not is usually relative to how many medifire or rapidshare links you are willing to click on, plus who cares anyway. I took a quick look around for this one and couldn't see it easily available, so thats good enough for me, especially considering it's, as they say in the jazz world,  a standard. 

 Lime are a well known disco pop duo from Montreal composed of husband and wife Denis and Denyse LePage. Denis was a prolific producer in the Hi NRG scene, and hence a lot of Lime records turn up in San Francisco record bins, SF being a Hi NRG city. On The Grid is in contrast to most of their releases as it is a predominantly instrumental italo jam, with a sparse vocoder vocal line. It turned up on some bootleg compilations a few years ago, but here I offer you both side of the Prism records 12", the dub and the "remix". I have never really been able to tell the difference between the remix and the dub versions, and back in the day would just play either side at random..listening now I think the 'remix' version is better.

Lime - On The Grid (remix)

Lime - On The Grid (dub version)

I just got in from Chicago this afternoon and I had a really great time. It is such a clean and beautiful city and I was blessed with mild weather. I tried to see as much of the city as I could but it is huge! It seems like each neighborhood is the size of SF. I was on foot, bus, and subway but didn't get a chance to ride the el. I met a lot of cool hipster foodies; ate and drank well. I also thought I was tanking my life in my hands when I went to this huge sports bar in Lincoln Park to see Congressman Pacquiao beat the crap out of the much bigger Margarito, but Chicagoans are civil people. I was working the most days, but I was able to break away and get a grip of records. I have posted a track that I picked up.

This J. Blackfoot cut came from the cool janky modern soul LP City Slicker, which is loaded with great basslines and synth work. Blackfoot is a bit of a swooner for my taste and has filled all spaces with this voice. This is a bummer because I would like to edit the tracks to make them less vocal heavy. It came out on Sound Town Records in 1983.

Also posted it an edit of one of my favorite party jamz. I have wanted to do this for a while and since my lady wants me to clean the house I finally got it done.

J. Blackfoot - Street Girl
Positive Force - We Got The Funk (LeBaron Edit)

 In honor of LeBaron's trip to Chicago, I'am posting the greatest ode to the midwest's greatest city. Roy Ayers' Chicago first appeared on a 1983 album named (according to my memory) Silver Vibrations, but also appeared re-recorded on 1988's Drive, from which these recordings game from the 1992 Japanese CD release.  Everybody and Fast Money I imagine would have sounded a little dated in 1988, but then the 'acid jazz' revival of the sound Roy pioneered was just about to occur so maybe it was no accident.

Roy Ayers - Chicago

Roy Ayers - Everybody

Roy Ayers - Fast Money 

If someone told me that this was the new Glass Candy or Chromatics track, I would totally believe them. This, to me is a perfectly executed slow burner. Stacey Q producer Jon St. James put this out on Synthecide Records in 1988. It's much more of a bedroom track than one for the club, for sure. When your girl screeches, "do you ever listen to anything other than disco?"; put this on and you have 5 minutes to do your thing. It puts me in a winter state of mind and is priming me for a trip to the cold ass mid west next week. Give me a shout if you know where I should be in Chicago next weekend.

Bardeux - When We Kiss

 I was going to meet my mate Steven from dub.com for a beer, but sadly he has been in California too long, and has turned from a once dependable Dubliner, ever a reliable drinking partner and record beard discussion catalyst, and metamorphosed over the long years into a true San Franciscan, i.e a flake, having been caught up in the Giant's world series riots the previous evening.  But even though my meeting with the reggae don fell through, it got my thinking about all the island tinged boogie and so on I could bring up in conversation with him before I eventually got out of my depth and exposed for what I really am, a lame poseur. 

 There is of course tons and tons of reggae disco, dubbed out B side instrumentals, jamaican boogie, london carribean scene funk and what have you, and by all means put your favorites in the comments section. Reggae and dub hit the north american and european mainstream the same time as disco and punk (right? or no?), so it figures I would guess. Out of my depth already. These two tracks though are from my own collection and I could not find them elsewhere on the greater internet, and are both very different from one another, so I thought would make a good post. 

 Landscape were a UK New Wave band, that had some artsy electronic 7"s in the seventies and a couple of radio played synth pop tracks in the 80's (one was called 'Einstein' or something, and had a great video with the ghost of Einstein in it haunting a chemistry lab(?)). 'The Fabulous Neutrinos' is a dubby instrumental B side to the harsh on the ears single 'So Pure, So Good, So Kind', unearthed from a dollar bin many moons ago.

 Frankie Paul, sometimes called the 'Jamaican Stevie Wonder', because of his poor vision, is a dancehall singer who was associated with the Coxsone soundsystem. 'Funky Reggae Party' is an out of place mid tempo electro funk track that sits weirdly on the B side of the South London produced and recorded dancehall reggae album 'Ripe Mango' on Blacker Dread records in 1983. I forget which part of south london the Blacker Dread record store is in, but its still there. Flipping the record over and finding this was a nice surprise: 

Landscape - The Fabulous Neutrinos

Frankie Paul - Funky Reggae Party