Man, sometimes you find the craziest things. OK, stay with me on this one. I'd been on a tear recently, trying to get all my vinyl cataloged into a mobile database so I know what I have, what I don't have, and hopefully stop buying so many doubles (unlikely). So there I was, somewhere in the "I" section, entering data, when I came across some record I'd never seen before. I mean NEVER. Not something I'd ever bought (or remembered anyways), nothing I'd ever touched or even laid my eyes on. The record didn't [...]
One of my favorite things about Hip-Hop has always been stumbling upon samples and references. Whether it's hearing a now-commonly used phrase or melody on a 1980s rap record (think pretty much every line on Paid in Full ) or catching a sample that I didn't even realize was there (I definitely wasn't thinking about Shawty Lo when I put on Mandrill's "Children of the Sun"), Hip-Hop's constant nods towards the past create infinite opportunities for spontaneous discovery for a music lover. Last time I contributed a Daily Funk , I highlighted [...]
During the mid 1950's William Burroughs wrote to Allen Ginsberg from Tangier, Morrocco regarding his experiences with liquid oxycodone. Sold over the counter in the International Zone under the German brand name Eukodol, he described at length spending extended periods of time locked away in his room, only moving to inject himself every two hours. [...]
Flowers bedeck the fragility of the convict and I garlanded myself, lovingly pursuing a journey through sweat, sperm and blood that led to prison. Without what people call my evil, I am castrated. Un petit-bourgeois rien. There was a moral vigour in the acceptance of my destiny. I was hot for crime. I give the [...]
What's big and purple and lives in the ocean? And so Moby Grape was named.
Here's a few last minute funky jamz to ring in the New Year! Any of these tunes will spruce up your set-list. Happy Downloading: Let's Rave On by The Ravenettes from Chain Gang Of Love Flavor by JSBX from Orange 01 Expensive Shit by Fela Kuti (1975) Soul Searching by the Electric Flag from An American Music Band / A Long Time Coming Get On The Good [...]
Here's a few pieces featuring the late Mike Bloomfield. The first one is The Electric Flag. And with Junior Wells... And from a great record called Super Session from 1968, with Stephen Stills and Al Kooper. Finally with a very electric Bob Dylan at Newport in 65. Wow. So sad that Bloomfield checked out so early of a drug overdose. He didn't even make 40.
The historical importance of this unassuming album can't be overstated. It was the first rock sampler album I ever saw or heard, and almost certainly the first such ever released here in the UK. It was in fact the first time I saw the actual term "rock" used to describe the music at all; previously the successive labels "underground" and "progressive" had been coined to cover the diverging (from "pop") stream of album-based, art-for-art's-sake music that had started with Dylan and Hendrix. It was the new music's first budget release; at a time when the standard price of an album [...]
Before Hendrix, there was Michael Bloomfield. The greatest unknown. An outlaw, a steel six string slinger whose golden finger tips ran the board like no other. For those ears who have never heard Bloomfield before, his sounds are a lucid dream scape. A manic snowstorm of notes, with near breaking point string bends, and with a wizards touch, the most graceful use of tension and release that has been heard on record. The stethoscope first heard those golden finger tipped sounds on Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited". It was one of the first times that I heard a [...]
The Ripple Effect
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The Cargo Culte
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The orchestra is dreaming
American Idol Finalists: where are they now?
