I have the day at home so I took a little time to try and find something festive to record and put up on BE, but after listening to a couple of options I decided that was a bad idea and instead of putting up some garbage for the sake of it I will put up a thrift store score from my walk up Haight Street's record store strip yesterday.

 Captain Sky doesn't really need much talking up, his steez epitomizes everything I love about the era, he wore a sparkly silver cape, had a super hero persona and his funky proto-rap 12"s were thick with synth and super heavy.

 This is the instrumental B-side of an ok sing song sort of disco rap that he put out on WMOT, its basically just the instrumental with session keyboard player Aaron Jamal jamming on a moog for the duration, I like the dreamy piano chords and cosmic edge this has over the forgettable vocal side.

Captain Sky - Station Brake (Innermission)

 Someone was asking for the track listing to a mix I did, and I was a dick and didn't provide it but you have to understand it was mostly due to the fact that we are in negotiation to re-issue something I put on there etc, so I wanted to keep it quiet. They then asked me to at least identify one track in particular, so I thought I would go one better and post it up on here as a sort of apology for being the sort of secretive crate digger snob that B.E proclaims to hate.

Dizzy K has been much written about over the past seven years or so years since the interest in 80's Nigerian funk, soul and synth  really started (I won't say revived, as I doubt there was ever a popular interest in post Fela era Nigerian lo-fi electro funk in the west until now). He is historically significant because he is regarded as the first African artist to rap on record, on 1982's EMI Nigeria released album 'Excuse Me Baby', I own it and it's hard to front like I scored this or any African pressed funk record I own during some basement digging expedition, the reality is they don't exist in California and I bought it on the internet from a Nigerian dentistry student living in Frankfurt.

 I played this one cut off the B side out for many years anytime I was ever stupidly allowed to play at peak hour, but the recycled Lagos pressing plant vinyl isn't holding up to the heavy club needles and it's probably time to retire it before I ruin it forever:

Dizzy K - Link The Boogie

I'm also putting up a slightly pumped up, louder version of an edit I did years ago that I like and seems to end up on some back packer type mixtapes but every time I hear it the volume would suddenly drop, which was embarassing, as it was au naturale and uncompressed or limited, from back when I thought people cared about dynamic range. This is sax legend Benny Golson's I'm Always Dancin To The Music, without all the bits that used to make people stop dancin to the music:

Benny Golson - I'm Always Dancin To The Music (BlackShag edit)