Divided into two roughly equal “sides,” which I pretentiously call Program A and Program B.
Rolled by: me
Feb. ’18
TRT: 1h13m45s
- Michael Jackson “Working Day And Night”
From Off The Wall (1979)Best song on Off The Wall, overshadowed by the other hits (“Rock With You”, “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough”). Off The Wall is a total disco album full of dance songs about dancing, and that’s what makes it greater than its successor Thriller. By 82 disco was as dead as disco and rock was king. As a result Thriller is full of wack guitar riffs and laughable tough-guy posturing it would have been better off without. If only Thiller had been the disco album it was meant to be, free of the trappings of rock. Like, imagine “P.Y.T.” without that shitty guitar break in the middle. I mean, I like rock. But Michael Jackson is no rock artist and shouldn’t pretend to be.
The “special edition” of Off The Wall contains a very charming demo version of “Working Day And Night” featuring Randy and Janet (“Michael! Turn down my earphones, man!!”). I took the beginning and end of the demo and wrapped them around the album version of the tune.
- Marvin Gaye “Got To Give It Up”
From Live at the London Palladium (1977)Marvin Gaye and Art Stewart’s disco classic. The full 12-or-whatever-minute album version. (Using a song this long always feels like cheating but whatever.) I was gonna use just the “part 1” from the single version, but I couldnt deny the sax solo and all the other awesome bull shit in part 2.
- Common “Funky For You” feat. Bilal & Jill Scott
From Like Water For Chocolate (2000)Cooling things down a little bit with this smoothie.
This album still sounds good even tho—said thru the back of my hand—these days I’m waiting for Common to just go away. At the time I would have reckoned him as one of the best, but the fact that I never really could get as excited about any of his other work goes to show that maybe Like Water For Chocolate isnt so much a great Common album as a great Soulquarians album.
- Björk “Who Is It (Carry My Joy On The Left, Carry My Pain On The Right)”
From Medúlla (2004)Björk wails over the fade out of Funky For You and soon heats things up again. “They’re go-o-ing a-round”
- Jungle Brothers “Straight Out The Jungle”
From Straight Out The Jungle (1988)This album opener is my faverit faverit cut on an elpee full of faverit cuts. “In the J-U-N G-L E!”
According to Afrika Baby Bam, this whole album is basicly a pause mix, albeit using a pro tape machine not a boombox. No loops (looping samples, pioneered by the likes of Ultramagnetic’s Ced-Gee, still being relatively new to Hip Hop in 1988): using a single copy of each record they manually laid the breaks to tape and spun it back over and over and over and over again. (I can’t find a source for this but Baby Bam’s quote is on the Discogs release page, and at several other auction sites who probably cut-and-pasted it from Discogs.) The resulting lofi sound was described by Rob’t Christgau as “drumbeats so offhand I’d half swear they were live.”
The start-and-stop drum hits at the very beginning blend easily with the beat of Who Is It.
Also, this record samples Manu Dibango (“Weya”) whose “Soul Makossa” opens Program B.
- Allen Toussaint “Night People”
From Motion (1978)Disco classic. First recorded by Lee Dorsey I think but Toussaint’s own version wins over the (still good of course) Dorsey version and the whole gang of covers.
- Denise Lasalle “Breaking Up Somebody’s Home”
From On The Loose (1972)I might like this even better than Ann Peebles’s original, but both are classic Seventies soul. This might sound a little off but it reminds me of Ry & Chaka’s “Don’t You Mess Up A Good Thing”, a staple of my weird childhood.
- Thirty seconds of silence to separate the two sides.
- Manu Dibango “Soul Makossa”
US version: Atlantic 45-2971 (1973)Some sweetass Cameroonian funk to open the second side, which is a little mellower and a little weirder than the first. This song is mostly famous for being ripped off by Michael Jackson, and later Rihanna.
Took this from the Atlantic 45 which was (I believe) the first time this record was issued in the United States. The tune had become a hit, at least an underground hit, before it was widely available here; thus the scores of cover versions in attempt to cash in on the gap in the market. Which is why this disc bears the words “(THE ORIGINAL VERSION)” beneath the title.
Makossa means dance.
- ScHolly-D “Put Your Filas On”
From ScHolly-D (1985)Goofball, vulgar, old school (truly old school!) party rap. Everything on the label and sleeve of this album is hand written, and the music feels hand written too. There is an infections not-givin-a-fuckness to Scholly’s casual, almost not quite on beat flow. It’s a lot of fun to imitate.
I wish I had this disc for real but this comes from a file off th dam internet. (It’s kind of expensive.)
- Otha Turner & the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band “Shimmy She Wobble”
From “For the Time Beyond!” (1997)You know I like genre-crossing transitions. If one thing ties Shimmy She Wobble to Put Your Filas On, it is their homemade-ness. These four songs—this one and the last, Filas, Shimmy She Wobble, and the next two, Peace Ahki and Albee Square—are four different beats that kind of flow one to the next like 4 movements, 4 metamorphoses. Maybe.
Thanx to the Delta Doktor for this tape, probably bought at one of Othar Turner’s own picnics.
- Jungle Brothers “Peace Ahki” (ca. 1992)
A short instrumental from the unreleased Crazy Wisdom Masters album.
- Biz Markie “Albee Square Mall”
From Goin’ Off (1988)Speaking of goofball old-school rap, Biz Markie is the champion of goofball old-shool rap; and how much goofier does it get than a love song to yr faverit shopping mall??! This is one of those songs I’ve just been waiting to put on a mix tape. Can’t help singing along to this hook either.
- Bob James “Mardi Gras”
From Two (1975)Going in for the close….
You recognize those bells as the break from “Peter Piper” (and numerous others) but the whole thing is pretty damn funky.
Like disco, smooth jazz is a genre for which my former disdain slowly gave way to sincere appreciation. At one time I would have dismissed this album as elevator music and moved on, but rite now I love evry note of it, and the surrealist cover, and evrything else. My copy smells like a cool, musty attic record store. Probably one that sells books too, rows of sff paperbacks by Michael Moorcock and Poul Anderson….
- Hugh Masekela “Bajabule Bonke”
From The Promise of a Future (1968)Beautiful, mellow tune from the late Hugh Masekela. Flip side to “Grazing in the Grass”.
- Aimee Mann “Ballantines”
From @#%&*! Smilers (2007)And a sing-along to round it out.
- 57 seconds of silence.
fine