Burl Veneer’s Music Blog

Out of the woodwork: SLAB!

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:20:37 -0700

Just days after discovering the recent resurfacing of a member of long-lost Way of the West, I've found another blast from the past: Slab! Slab's few records, released in the second half of the 80s, are an exhilarating mix of pounding, near-industrial rhythms, fuzzed-out-bass funk, scraping guitars, tape loops, weird lyrics, and, on the early records, a horn section. I have never met another Slab fan that I didn't introduce to Slab, and in fourteen years of web-surfing I still had never found one. Until a couple days ago, when I found this post on the Unfit for Print blog. At last, here was another human enlightened to the cacophonous joys of Slab! Not only that, the post engendered a long comment thread that was joined by actual Slab members! After so many years of silence, I've finally learned "whatever happened to Slab." Of course that means more records added to my wantlist, but isn't that what life is all about, seeking what you want, then when you find it, seeking something else? In celebration of this discovery, here's a Slab! track, selected by being the first one I could find the cover art for:

Parallax Avenue

Slab!

Hear more Slab! on Muxtape!

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Deep funk around the world: Japan

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:04:40 -0800

My grasp of deep funk has always been of the "I can't define it, but I know it when I hear it" variety, but now I have come up with a working definition: deep funk is funk that pretends P-Funk never happened. How's that? Japan's Osaka Monaurail (named after James Brown's "(It's Not the Express) It's the J.B.'s Monaurail") are deep funk veterans by now, having formed in 1992 "to play the late 60's - early 70's funkies," so they're quite good at it by now. Here's a track from their 2004 album, Thankful:

09 mind power (pts 1 & 2)

Osaka Monaurail

That song has a similar feel to "Ooh Baby" by Defunkt (from my very first entry on this blog): similar beat, similar structure, and similar dynamics. Here's "Ooh Baby" again:

Defunkt - Ooh Baby

Defunkt

Not entirely dissimilar? There's a concise interview with Osaka Monaurail leader Ryo Nakata on the Metropolis website; he's been into the deep funk revival since it began in the 80s. He also proves to be very insightul about the life and music of James Brown. But more importantly, he's a dynamic performer:

Osaka Monaurail in SunSetLive 2005

And finally, no responsible band would be without a MySpace page.

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Deep funk around the world: Scotland

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 21:04:41 -0800

With a name like The Haggis Horns, they'd better be from Scotland, and indeed they are. You can always trust a band with "Horns" in their name; horns make everything better! Rather than paraphrase what little I know about them, I'll just quote from their booking agency:

The Haggis Horns are one of the best live bands in the game; a brass heavy funk powerhouse that has been rocking clubs up and down the country for years, combining breakbeat funk, soul, hip-hop and afrobeat with the virtuosity of trained jazz musicians. Based around the nucleus of Malcolm Strachan (Trumpet), Jason Rae (Alto Sax) & Atholl Ransome (Tenor Sax) the Haggis Horns (yes, they’re from Scotland) extend to an eight-piece live outfit, featuring Joe Tatton on keys, Morgan Pugh on bass, Ben Barker on Guitar, Sam Bell on percussion and drummer Luke Flowers (Cinematic Orchestra). Debut 7’ Hot Damn! was released in 2005 with new single “Traveller (pts 1 & 2)” following late in 2006 to widespread acclaim.

More recently than that, they've released a full-length CD, also called Hot Damn!, on First Word Records. The Haggis's specialty is their Afrobeat angle; "Tribe Vibes" is almost straight-up Afrobeat, while Afrobeat-style guitar lines run through several of the other songs on the album. They also use more wah-wah on the rhythm guitar than other deep funk bands, for that special 70s action movie feel. The track on the album that grabbed me the most is the last one, "Who's Gonna Take the Weight":

Haggis Horns - Who's Gonna Take the Weight

The Haggis Horns

It's probably no coincidence that "Weight" is reminiscent of the godfathers of Scottish funk, the Average White Band:

Average White Band

I get jealous when I google Haggis Horns and find someone's blog entry that says "Went to the Jazz Cafe in London last night with my friend Pete. We saw Haggis Horns & Speedometer, both were awesome and some new CDs will be finding there way into my shopping cart soon." I wanna see shows like that! Waaaaa! At least I've got the Rozatones in town, if only they'd play out more.

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Deep funk and saxophones

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:46:05 -0700

When last I blogged I was trying to decide what to do next from among three choices; I have decided to knock out two of them in this post and save the third for its own, as it is a rarity that I don't want to bury. So continuing the Deep Funk Around the World thread, we come to Poland, where my friend Jeff has been sent to teach the locals how to program. Today's deep funk track is by Big Band Katowice, comprised of student musicians from the State Higher School of Music in Katowice. Their special feature: they are from the 70s! Their sole album, Music for My Friends, was recorded in 1977, so they are interpreting deep funk from a geographical rather than a chronological distance. Here is "Sorcery," which also happens to be the leadoff track on the newish Polish Funk compilation album from Polskie Nagrania:

Big Band Katowice - Sorcery

Big Band Katowice

Sounds like real funk to me! Now the song that the Bamboos reminded me of, it turns out they didn't remind me of it, the Apples did. The way the baritone sax lays down the groove and the other horns play their thing over it made me remember "Hattie Wall" by the World Saxophone Quartet: Julius Hemphill (d. 1995), Oliver Lake, Hamiett Bluiett, and David Murray. In 1987 WEA was trying to build up Elektra Nonesuch as a boutique label, or "special music" as they called it, i.e. music that critics praised but no one bought. They put out a label sampler called Late in the 20th Century (which I think I got at the Record World manager's convention in glamorous Lancaster, PA) that was actually quite good, featuring the Kronos Quartet, John Adams, John Zorn, Wayne Horvitz, and others. "Hattie Wall" was included to promote the Quartet's album Dances and Ballads, and while I never did get that album (yet another one to look for), I always loved the song:

Hattie_Wall

World Saxophone Quartet

"Hattie Wall" really opened my eyes (or ears) to how much you could do with rhythm without using any drums. Other bands have shown me that you can use drums and still have no rhythm, but they are better forgotten.

Two down, that leaves the band-with-a-self-titled-theme-song thread to follow up on, which I may do tomorrow, but probably later.

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The Real James Taylor

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 18:00:57 -0700

When I talk about James Taylor, some people think I'm talking about some weedy American singer-songwriter from the 1970s. I am not. I am talking about the modern British master of the Hammond B3 organ, the leader of the James Taylor Quartet, the New Jersey Kings, and more recently James Taylor's 4th Dimension. He's been playing cop show and spy music since the 80s, such as this original theme from the imaginary movie of the same name, "The Money Spyder:"

01-The Money Spyder

James Taylor Quartet

Get it? Spyder, as in spy? The 1990s saw the original quartet grow to a septet (at least) with the addition of horn players and a percussionist, but kept the Quartet moniker. 1997's Creation album included Taylor's first original theme for a real movie, "Austin's Theme" from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Also on the album were two cop music covers, Lalo Schifrin's theme from Dirty Harry, and the theme from Starsky and Hutch:

01-Theme from Starsky and Hutch

James Taylor Quartet

Creation was an important album for me, as it introduced me to the Acid Jazz scene that had been going on for years without my knowing about it. And it came out just when I needed it: my previous musical interests were all drying up, and I didn't like much of what I was hearing otherwise. My son Pierce was three years old when I brought this home (he turns 13 today!), and he liked it too, so we ended up listening and dancing around to it together a lot. He's too cool to dance now, but he'll get it back someday.

The JTQ was back down to a quartet in the 2000s, and the new James Taylor's 4th Dimension is a quartet as well. It's on my list of things to get around to.

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Al Hirt plays cop show themes

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 18:53:21 -0700

We now break from fake cop show themes by contemporary artists to bring you some real cop show music by a past master. Trumpeter Al Hirt was a titan of the New Orleans music scene (literally, he was nicknamed "The Round Mound of Sound"). When The Green Hornet made the leap from radio to TV in 1966, Hirt was chosen to play the theme song, a swingin' & rockin' new arrangement by Billy May of the old theme song, Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee." And while he was at it, he recorded a whole album's worth of cop show music, The Horn Meets The Hornet. Here's the "Green Hornet Theme:"

01 Green Hornet Theme

Al Hirt

It was heard more recently in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, Vol. 1. I played the trumpet once upon a time, but I could never get the hang of double- and triple-tonguing. This song requires a veritable tongue fandango to play, and Al Hirt makes it seem effortless. The third track on the album, "Night Rumble," is not a proper cop show theme, but it would easily fit into a cop show: in a scene where the cops go to a nightclub to gather information, this would be the music that is playing while women flail around on the dance floor. Or it could be the music playing at the gang hideout:

03 Night Rumble

Al Hirt

I always wanted to get that electric piano sound, but I could never make my Fender Rhodes sound like that. I found out just last year that it's a Wurlitzer I want. I use that intro piano lick to check out keyboards and VST instruments.
Among the other treats on The Horn Meets the Hornet is Al's take on the Batman theme:

06 Batman Theme

Al Hirt

Weaving into another thread, when making my "Odies" tape I was hard pressed to come up with something to follow the groovy horn bacchanalia of The Shocking Blue's "The Butterfly and I." "Hornet" worked out perfectly, picking up where "Butterfly" left off and running.

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The Shocking Blue: Ritual Music

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 07:24:46 -0700

There are a great number of songs which I have decided to describe as "invocation and manifestation:" the first part of the song is all right, but it's really just preparing the way for what comes after. The introductory portion serves as a ritual, the lyrics as an incantation, the musicians as vessels for the Music Gods who will be unleashed and flow through them if the ritual is conducted correctly. (Mrs. Veneer tells me this is "building a cone of power.") Think of "Free Bird;" the plodding verses and choruses are not the point of the song, they are the invocations, the journey that must be completed before High Priest Ronnie Van Zant can sing "Lord help me, I can't chay-yay-yay-yay-yay-yay-yay-yange" -- unleashing the God of Drums -- and then finally "Oh won't you flyyyyy hiiiiiigh, oh freeeeee birrrrrrrd, yeah," unleashing the full power of the Triple Guitar Gods* who lead the guitarists into a seemingly endless bacchanalia of soloing, duoing, and trioing, and the audience into a frenzy of cheering and air-guitaring (not to mention drinking and smoking), until everyone is spent and the whole enterprise grinds to a halt.

Skynyrd is not the subject of this post, though; The Shocking Blue (of "Venus" fame) is. Their finest recorded moment is "The Butterfly and I," an invocation-and-manifestation song from their 1969 album At Home. In this case the sitar-backed verses and choruses with nonsensical hippie lyrics and a "White Rabbit" beat summon up the gods of drums and horns:

The Butterfly And I

Shocking Blue

Another "Odies" track restored! Sadly, singer Mariska Veres died in 2006 at age 59.

* Quoted section just under halfway through:

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