52 posts tagged “us”
With an album title like Instrumental Action Soul to announce their intentions, how could I not love the Diplomats of Solid Sound? With a Hammond-centric sound courtesy of Nate Basinger, this band from Iowa City delivers a spot-on mix of Booker T. and the MG's, Isaac Hayes, and Lalo Schifrin. Here's the whole album, but if you only have time for one track, make it "Chinese Connection":
Perhaps you remember listening to Styx's Pieces Of Eight album, scratching your head at "Aku-Aku", the mellow instrumental at the end of the album, and writing it off as filler. But I posit that young Robin Guthrie took it as divine inspiration, forming the basis of his guitar and composition style that would come to fruition in the Cocteau Twins. Compare "Aku-Aku" with a representative track from Blue Bell Knoll:
Martin Perna not only leads Antibalas, the most politically hard-hitting of American Afrobeat bands, he also creates the most blissful grooves imaginable under his Ocote Soul Sounds alias, in conjunction with Adrian Quesada of Grupo Fantasma. This year saw the release of their third album, Coconut Rock, on the Eighteenth Street Lounge label, the home of blissful grooves:
Tonight the kids and I watched the Star Trek episode "The Way To Eden" -- the one with the cult of space hippies who commandeer the Enterprise to take them to the legendary planet of Eden. Apparently the Star Trek writers thought that any group of hippies must include a troubadour who would recount the group's story as it happened, so here we have Adam, the space-guitar-slinging space-hippie who has a song for every occasion and looks uncannily like Will Forte (which makes it even funnier than it is already):
Don't worry, that space-hippie-chick's bicycle wheel but turns out to be yet another variety of space-guitar, and she jams out with Spock on it:
And now for something completely different: a trip into my vinyl vault! John Fred and his Playboy Band had been together, off and on, for over ten years by the time their song "Judy In Disguise (with Glasses)" (my one and only karaoke experience) rocketed to #1 in 1967. While the song is always described as a parody of the Beatles' "Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds", I think it's more accurate to say that the song's title is a parody of the Beatles' song's title; that's where the similarities end. Still, John Fred remained in the shadow of the Fab Four; despite having a crack Lousiana R&B band behind him, his songwriting always leaned towards Beatlesque pop. This holds true on his last album for a major label, 1970's Love My Soul (with a largely reconstituted Playboy Band). The leadoff track, "The Big Show", is an intro song in the manner of "Magical Mystery Tour" and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", and even links the Playboys to the Beatles with the lyrics, "While Judy in disguise, her glasses hide her eyes, is walking hand in hand with the leader of some lonely hearts club band" (cue trumpets):
(Oddly, "The Big Show" was not written by John Fred but by Robin Hood Brians, owner of the Tyler, Texas, studio where the album was recorded, and two co-writers. Amazingly, Brians and his studio are still around.) And then, when the Playboys stretch out into a real southern groove, it's on... a cover of a Beatles song!
Daptone Records of Brooklyn is the acknowledged US leader of the soul-funk revival, and the membership of their bands is so intermingled that I can't keep track of which players are in which bands. The Budos Band mixes together everything great about instrumental music (funk, soul, jazz, reggae, afrobeat, and rock) and plays it with a healthy dose of horns. They released a self-titled EP in June which is a mix of old songs and new ones; Lala.com is the only streaming site that has the whole thing, so I'm using their widget for this entry*. If you had a party and put this album on repeat, you would have no complaints.
From the vaults of Daptone Records, comes a collection of 6 unreleased tracks from the infamous Budos Band. Recorded after the Budos Band I sessions but before those for the second album, this EP is a fascinating glimpse into the group's evolution as musicians and recording artists.
Listeners may be familiar with two songs previously released and universally recognized as “Budos classics.” The Proposition, a hit single released on 7-inch by Daptone Records, incorporates the style now known worldwide as Budos swing responsible for drawing so many a listener onto the sweaty dancefloor. Mas O Menos, included on the band's smash hit album The Budos Band II, exemplifies the group's feel for soul with its infectious bass, tightly intertwined guitar and organ and soaring horns.
Smoke Gets In, created on the anniversary of the six hundred sixty-sixth rotation of the Budonian lunar calendar, finds the band returning to its dusty roots. It is both sonically and literally other-worldly. The psycho-tropic venom found on the Budos Band II may have originated in this very session. Is this actually happening or are your ears melting?
Named for the goddess said to have bestowed powers upon the knights of old Budonia, Ephra incorporates rollicking guitars, juxtaposed with haunting horns and pervasive highlife rhythms. The existence of such complexity within a seemingly simple tune is the truest metaphor for the Budonian knight himself. Nobody's Bulletproof references the ever-evolving relationship of the Budos Band with their ancestors and predecessors. The stabbing horns and break-neck percussive pace hearken back to the band's Afrobeat roots. The near-militaristic cadence is a constant reminder that no one is safe from the scorpion's sting. As the greater warrior has said, “The sword cometh and hath not yet purged the depths of thine soul.”
The Budos Band EP is a must have for Budos and Daptone fans alike. It stands as a vital account of the band's movement between musical styles and records a singular moment in the group's existence. It will indeed stand the test of time and remain a bedrock of Budos lore.
As an addendum to yesterday's post of C Cat Trance's cover of The Tymes' "Hypnotized", here is the other cover from their first EP, the Chairmen of the Board's "Dangling On a String". CCT added a hard edge to "Hypnotized", but they change the tenor of "Dangling" entirely, transforming a rather average uptempo Motownesque number into a charging locomotive of desperation with angry outbursts of sax:
(This version included on the 1988 CD release of Play Masenko Combo restores about three minutes that were excised from the original EP with an abrupt fadeout.)
Medium Medium were responsible for what may be the definitive postpunk single, "Hungry, So Angry". Two of their members, Rees Lewis and Nigel Kingston Stone, left the band to form C Cat Trance, a band I hold in such esteem that to even begin to write about them is an overwhelming proposition. They hit upon the perfect combination of rock, funk, skronk, and Middle Eastern music, and while many rock bands who try to incorporate world music into their sound end up with watering down both genres, C Cat Trance kept a sharp edge through the course of several albums and singles. So while I'm still thinking about postpunk bands covering R&B songs, I present C Cat Trance's version of "Hypnotized" from their first EP, a song that I found out just tonight, after 26 years of searching, was originally by The Tymes on their 1976 album Tymes Up. Thank you Google, Discogs, and DISMARC!
More C Cat Trance to come.
Maybe the idea of having Joy Division cover an R&B hit was not so far-fetched after all. It has occurred to me since my July 26 post that JD's fellow Mancunians A Certain Ratio turned out a decent cover of Banbarra's "Shack Up". (Banbarra were from Washington, DC, and I grew up just outside DC, but I never heard their original "Shack Up" until recently, oddly enough. I was nine years old at the time of its release in 1975 and was not yet attuned to anything outside the national Top 40. Shame on me.) Postpunk fellow travellers Siouxsie and the Banshees' version of Ben E. King's "Supernatural Thing" was pretty smokin' as well.
That seems to be what he is aiming for with his Woven Hand project, variously described as "Gothic Americana" or "Dark Country." His cover of Bill Withers' secular "Ain't No Sunshine" is pretty comepelling:
My Groups
-
We♥Music Updated: Yesterday
-
Nine Inch Nails Updated: Oct 9, 2009
Neighborhood
Explore friends, family, friends & family, or entire neighborhood.
