"Andre Williams makes Little Richard sound like Pat Boone" - Lux Interior
Andre Williams is a true rock & roll badass.
Started in the mid-50s, recording Bacon Fat (claimed by some to be the first inklings of a rap song), and most known for his accomplishment in co-writing and producing "Shake A Tailfeather", recorded by The Five Dutones and later Ike & Tina Turner. He wrote some songs for Parliament Funkadelic and produced some stuff for Ike Turner. But, with a bad drug habit, by the 1980s he was broke. He came back in the late 90s with some of the sleaziest stuff you've ever heard, on the album Silky. Later he followed that up with The Black Godfather which went back closer to his real sound, but it's still the primitive 50s and 60s stuff that I love.
That's all I got. I'm short on time, so just read this. I know, lame. But I'm a busy woman.
Last night while DJing, my tag team DJ lady hustler friend DJ On-Call reminded me of the existence of The Go! Team. I like them more now than I used to! Yay.
"I want to live only for ecstasy. Small doses, moderate loves, all half-shades, leave me cold.
I like extravagance. Letters which give the postman a stiff back to carry, books which overflow from their covers, sexuality which bursts the thermometers." -- Anais Nin
I'll post something more substantial over the weekend.
Well, now you have no excuse not to learn something new every day. "OCW is a free publication of course materials used at MIT". "OCW shares free lecture notes, exams, and other resources from more than 1700 courses spanning MIT's entire curriculum."
One of my favorite musical trails was found when I did some research on what that Love Is Strange song from the Dirty Dancing movie was, back in junior high.
Love Is Strange was recorded in 1957 by Mickey & Sylvia, a duo consisting of McHouston "Guitar" Baker, a guitar instructor and his pupil Sylvia Vanderpool who started out recording as Little Sylvia on Savoy records. The song was written by Bo Diddley, under the pseudonym Ethel Smith (his wife's name), with Jody Williams' credited to the unmistakable guitar riff in the song which he had recorded previously in a song called Billy's Blues for Billy Stewart.
Sylvia later went on to record on her own and had a solo gold record with the hit Pillow Talk where she did the gratuitous musical moaning even before Miss Diana Ross brought it on. Sylvia married Joe Robinson and together they formed Sugarhill Records and pulled together the members of The Sugarhill Gang, who released the first commercially successful rap single in 1979, Rapper's Delight.
(mp3s are for previewing purposes only, buy more music by the artists
you discover on this site! I spend TONS of money on music
via Amazon and ITunes, often from discovering new bands through other
mp3 blogs, and scouring record stores for obscure R&B, Soul,
Garage, and Pop. If you don't want an mp3 to be posted here, just let me
know. BUY VINYL!)
I over-analyze everything I do. One of the things I do is DJ. When I DJ, I watch people very closely. I read who walks in the door and try to find something that will grab their attention. I'll play something obvious that I know they like or I think they would know and like and then I follow it up with something more obscure that is much better (in my opinion, of course, but you wouldn't be reading this if you didn't agree that my opinion, when it comes to music, is better, or at least worth taking note of). Lately I have noticed the trend for people to dance to the bastardized modern versions of songs whose original recorded versions are much much better. The recent Quentin Tarantino film, Grindhouse, brought some of these tracks to the attention of people who follow modern music but have no clue about where it came from or that it has all happened before. Bitter? Self-righteous? Maybe. But you're here because you know I'm going to give you something. Keep reading.
April March's song Chick Habit is an English cover of France Gall's Laisse Tomber Les Filles. Everyone dances to the Chick Habit. They occasionally dance to Laisse Tomber Les Filles, until they realize it is in French and get confused because they can't lip synch while dancing. April also does a French version, and I have to say she does an amazing job recreating the original sound. But it is not new. All of a sudden people dance to it because it is familiar. Bah. But my point is - you like that, you might like some other stuff.
Try old some old Delmonas stuff. They also did 60s covers, but they did them in the 80s. Not new then, either, but more raw and real and in obvious ferocious admiration of the originals. Thee Headcoatees and really all of the reincarnations and sibling-groups of the Medway beat genius Billy Childish all cover obscure 60s garage and pop but often do it with more dirt and grime and raw emotion than the originals sound now. Instead of glossing it up, they strip it down. Back to the Delmonas. Check this video:
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See Wild Billy back there on drums? Sweet.
The Delmonas started out as backup singers and girlfriends of The Milkshakes. If you want girls covering girl music from the 50s-60s, this is where to start. Dangerous Charms is the album for you. This blog posted a link to the album on rapidshare, so go check it out. Highlights for me include the Shirley Bassey cover of Kiss me, honey honey, kiss me. (I just scored the original 45 last year on eBay. Woop woop.) You can preview the Shirley Bassey version on emusic.com, it looks like. If you want to join emusic.com, click here, so I get free songs when you join. It's a good deal, I pay around $10/month and get 40 tracks (I'm old school, I think it is 30 tracks for 10 bucks now). He Tells Me He Loves Me and I'm The One For You are also excellent tracks on Dangerous Charms. You can also get one Delmonas track on this Childish comp.
This post wandered a bit. I'm busy with work and just writing a sentence or two in between working so apologies for the non-linear rambling, but you got some music ... so hush. For those of you who already have the Delmonas album, check this Lulu video out:
Working. A lot. DJing a lot. Went to ModChicago 2007 in Chicago a couple weekends ago. Laying low mostly, saving money, watching cartoons with the kid, playing Putt Putt, swimming, eating ice cream. One of the best kids shows on tv these days is Class of 3000, a kids' show produced by Andre Benjamin of Outkast. It has great music. One of my favorite songs from that show is "Cool Kitty", and I found a clip of it on YouTube:
The soundtrack comes out on July 3rd, and has this and other pretty decent songs on it.
