Sunday, August 28, 2011

Last Funk  


Bevin Fagan was most well known as the lead singer and producer of one of the UK's biggest reggae acts, Matumbi. Yet in his time he was involved with and influenced by all sorts of music that was going on in South London during the seventies and early eighties, even being part of a prog rock band named 'Stonehenge' even at one point in his youth.

Guardian Angel was a roots reggae project with his wife (or maybe sister) Sylvia Fagan on vocals. They put out a few lovers rock type singles, but if you flip the accompanying album over, the B side is mostly (and oddly) unique sounding funk and disco tracks, of which 'Last Funk' is the most left of center and hard hitting of all.

Through some miracle over the years I have managed to come across two copies of this LP from British reggae collectors who don't rate it as Fagan's best work and are turned off by the funk on the flip. One man's trash as they say. If you want my double hit me up.

Guardian Angel - Last Funk

Posted by Black Shag | 7 comments

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Thursday, August 25, 2011

do you feel like a party  


Lee Moore was a disco producer who unfortunately only released a few tunes during his short career. His first and most common track came out on Source Records in 1979. It appears that after his brief relationship with a large label he took matters into his own hands and cut a track on his own LM imprint. This track has a raw feel that is apparent when the guitar comes in too early after a few bars of the loose drum and bass groove. The white noise synth sound used to accent the snare also gives the beat a lot of character.


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Monday, August 15, 2011

will you be the one  


Here is a later era downtempo lazer soul track released by the short lived New York Music Company in 1985. Vocalist Bernice Frazier delivers an outstanding performance here with her first recording. This tune was produced by Mitch Ervin AKA Mitch Race who also had tracks on the legendary 25 West Records. I love the minimal production with 808 drums, Juno 106 bass, and DX-7. Mitch discusses the details of his productions on his youtube page, check it out and drop him a comment if you appreciate his work.


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Sunday, August 07, 2011

Wrap It Up  


Touche was one of the many projects of the Bronx's own Dennis Bell, then a much respected producer and keyboard session musician and now a significant figure in music education on the east coast, especially in the field of jazz piano. He was the studio wizard on a few early hip hop records, working with Doug E Fresh etc, but Wrap It Up and Just Like A Doorknob are probably his biggest solo dancefloor hits.

Wrap It Up has been posted far and wide before, and the vocoded vocals are excellent, but I never saw the instrumental floating around anywhere..so..here it is..

Touche - Wrap It Up (Vocal)

Touche - Wrap It Up (Instrumental)

Posted by Black Shag | 2 comments

Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Cookie  



Here is a great one-off jam from Cookie, who as far as I know only came together to make one 12" on Le Jazz records in 1982. Danny Weiss co-produced the track and also produced for The Players Association. This jam departs from disco and finds him in heavy boogie funk mode.


Cookie - Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover
Cookie - Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover (instrumental)

Posted by Dogtones | 2 comments