Stubborn Heart & Tiger's Milk

Need some deep-in-the-crates funky grooves? Solid Steel has you covered. 

 

Bunch of 45s, Volume 2

I've been working on digitizing my 45 collection, and it's been a wonderful opportunity for spontaneous curation. Here's a few gems from the last batch of recordings. 

Tracklist

Donnie Elbert - I Got to Get Myself Together

Ray Charles & His Band - Green Backs

Carter Bros. - Booze in a Bottle

Tony Clarke - Woman, Love a Man

Arthur Alexander - Black Knight

Hot Sauce - I'll Kill a Brick (About a Man)

Pointer Sisters - Yes We Can Can 

Funkadelic - Biological Speculation

Okieextremist Moondog - Reefer Blues

The Temptations - Cloud Nine

Paul Humphries & His Cool Chemists - Detroit

Aretha Franklin - Rocksteady

James Brown - I Got Ants in My Pants

Kool & The Gang - Funky Stuff

Brick - Push Push

Tony Camillo's Bazooka - Dynomite

Rick James - Hollywood

Lonnie Liston Smith - Space Lady

Windy City - Spank

Man Parrish - Hip Hop, Be Bop (Don't Stop)

DL. 

A Bunch of 45s: Volume One

After going without records for a month or two during the process of moving to a new apartment, once we got settled, I had a renewed interest in digitizing my 45 collection. Here's a few gems I uncovered in the process. 

Tracklist:

Shirley & Lee - Let the Good Times Roll

39-21-46 - The Showmen

Little Junior Parker - In the Dark 

Toussaint McCall - Shimmy

Kasandra - Don't Pat me the Back and Call Me Brother

Undisputed Truth - Mama, I Got a Brand New Thing

The Emotions - Boss Love Maker

Louis Curry - I'll Try Again Tomorrow

Charles Brown - Just a Blessing

Candi Staton - Never in Public

Peggy Scott & JoJo Benson - Soulshake

Ronnie Dove - Cry

Teardrops - You Won't Be There

The Peppers - Pepper Box

Giorgio Moroder - Paul's Theme (Jogging Chase)

Billy Cobham - Bolinas

Yambu - Sonny

John Williams - Close Encounters Theme (Disco Version)

John & Ernest - Superfly Meets Shaft

DL

Mostly 45s

Get weird. Get funky. Get this all-vinyl (and mostly 45s) mix from DJ Ray B. down in Savannah, GA. Shout out to everyone at Vinyl Appreciation. 

Spooky Tooth

Behold the power of this psych rock gem... Your head might explode... 

Astro Nautico dreams of vinyl

This rising Brooklyn-based label specializes in atmospheric electronic sounds spanning the possibilities of tempo and style. Regular readers might recognize their name from a few posts here about their nicely curated compilations featuring all sorts of quality producers (Obey City, Kuhn, etc.). Now they want to transcend from digital to physical, and are asking for support. If you've ever jammed one of their tracks, pony up a couple bucks. 

Brik-a-Brak's Dilla Tribute

The Denver-based DJ/record collector drops a nasty all-vinyl set at the Solution paying tribute to the records behind some of Dilla's hottest. About 8min into it, he starts dropping beats into the mix too. Just dope. 

Can

Far out. Can's "Lost Tapes" will soon be born into the world as a 5-LP set thanks to Mute.


More info (via the press release):

 ‘Lost Tapes’ were discovered when the legendary Can studio in Weilerswist was sold to the German Rock N Pop Museum. The new owners sentimentally preserved everything, including the army mattresses that covered the walls for sound protection, and relocated it to Gronau.

Whilst dismantling the studio, master tapes were found and stored in the Spoon archive. With barely legible labeling, no one was sure what was on these until Irmin Schmidt and long time collaborator Jono Podmore started to go through over fifty hours of music.

What they found was years of archived material--not outtakes, but rather tracks which had been shelved for a variety of reasons – soundtracks to films that were never released and tracks that didn’t make it onto the final versions of albums due to space.

Irmin Schmidt explains “Obviously the tapes weren't really lost, but were left in the cupboards of the studio archives for so long everybody just forgot about them. Everybody except Hildegard, who watches over Can and its work like the dragon over the gold of the Nibelungen and doesn't allow forgetting.”

The final cut of tracks, dating from 1968-1977, features studio material recorded at Schloss Nörvenich and Can Studio, Weilerswist with the Can line up of Holger Czukay on bass, Michael Karoli on guitars, Jaki Liebezeit on drums and Irmin Schmidt on keyboards, and on most tracks, vocals from Malcolm Mooney or Damo Suzuki.

Details on the release from the label.

Brick and Mortar Record Stores

Here's a trailer for a new documentary about the difficult times for record stores. The doc centers around Ear X-tacy in Louisville, KY. If you've ever bought records, or loved a record store, this will resonate.

No Warp Record Jamboree

If you're wondering what to do on a Wednesday that will have awesome music, you should stop by Hangfire - play trivia early - then hang out for a psychedelic freakout courtesy of the Milwaukee Couple, Kris and Rebecca, who have a nice collection of all things groovy and far out. Kris put me on to Demon Fuzz a few weeks ago at Vinyl Appreciation. Good stuff.

Savannah Record Fair 04/10/10

If you love music and comics in their physical form, and not just how they sound in your iPod or your Kindle, then you need to swing by here. For vinyl junkies in Savannah, this bi-annual fix for crate digging itch is a must. More info here. Also, a thumbs up to SCADradio for getting this together.

On a related note, I heard a rumor that we could be just a few months from having a new record store here in town, the first since the shuttering of both State Street Records and Discount Records and Tapes in late '07/early '08.

Secondhand Sureshots

Nice. Dublab has the bright idea to send Daedelus, Ras G, J.Rocc and Nobody out to thrift stores to dig for records and then record the musical results. Maybe you only really get into this if you love vinyl and beatmaking - but it's practically porn if you do - and have a little knowledge about the west coast scene.

It's out in Feb as a CD/DVD/12". Here's the trailer.

dublab presents...SECONDHAND SURESHOTS (preview) from dublab on Vimeo.

For more info, click here - you can also grab an mp3 of the J.Rocc beat that's playing at the end of the trailer.

Vinyl isn't dead

I was overjoyed to read that sales of music printed on vinyl has grown so significantly that Best Buy is making moves toward creating a record section in stores across the country.

Maybe it's because of the success of grassroots campaigns like Record Store Day.



Where digital sales have hurt, and will soon kill, the CD, I think the tangibility of vinyl makes it more appealing to consumers and connoisseurs of music. If you are going to sit down and enjoy a record, it's nice to hold a large-print cover sleeve in your hand while you do. It comes down to experience.

The experience of pressing play on a CD player is no different than pressing play on an mp3 player. However, the experience of putting on a record, watching it spin, and dropping the needle represent an entirely more gratifying process. And teaming that with resulting analog audio creates an organic experience which is thoroughly endangered in the information age. Vinyl is does not just represent nostalgia, it represents a lifeline back to simpler times.

The format of vinyl also lends itself to more of a symbiotic relationship with digital music, and I've been pleased to see more records being released with download codes for digital versions. The best of both worlds.

Even 7"s, the most infamously indie of all formats, are making a comeback.

Fader magazine has partnered with Southern Comfort to release a series of limited edition 7"s featuring some of their favorite bands, and #10 in the series features a curious nautical theme: Wavves' surfy-freakout "Friends Were Gone" b/w Windsurf's electronic smooth-porn groove "Vapour Trails."





Vinyl has even become part of the business plan for smaller labels. Black Iris is an indie that would appear to make most of its money licensing songs to ad agencies, then rinse their souls clean by releasing limited edition 7" for fans. Their composers include members of The Walkmen, Earlimart and others, like Foreign Born, who will be dropping a 7" this spring. The a-side is "Vacationing People," which reminds me a lot of Peter, Bjorn and John (in a good way).