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23
Jul

Truths and Rights (Deluxe Edition)

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One recent release that shouldn’t be missed is Heartbeat Records’ Deluxe Edition reissue of Truths and Rights by Johnny Osbourne. The original 1979 LP needs little introduction for reggae fans, being one of the heaviest examples of early dancehall and of Coxsone Dodd’s newly updated Studio One sound during the late seventies. All time dancehall classics like “Sing Jay Stylee” and the title-track “Truths and Rights” are just two of the gems on this timeless album. The Deluxe Edition features the ten original tracks along with six bonus cuts including extended mixes, dub versions, the “West Gone Black” deejay version by Jah Jesco & Lucey Bravo over the “Please Be True” rhythm, and a previously unreleased (on CD) gem named “Jealousy Heartache and Pain”. All of this in fine packaging and accompanied by quality liner notes and personnel details… how can you refuse. So whether you are a reggae veteran and just like the idea of a remastered CD with a few bonus cuts, or a novice when it comes to Johnny Osbourne’s work or Studio One’s early dancehall sound, this release definitely belongs on your want-list.

Pick up the album here

23
Jul

never can say goodbye…

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In case anyone has noticed the slow pace of things here at MusicMNP in the last couple of months, I just wanted to let you know that we are still here, the blog is still alive, and we will do our best to keep the posts frequent. I have had some things to take care of in my life lately so I apologize for not finding time for this website… thanks to anyone who has continued to check the site, I promise there is a lot of things in the works right now, so expect big things around these parts in the near future.

–Trizlam–

the photo above was taken by Prasanna Balasundaram, check this space for more of his work…
21
Jun

schizophrening

This video was brought to my attention by my colleague Joseph P.  I think maybe it is relevant in some way or another.

21
Jun

MNP Interviews: Duppy Art creator Scally Ranks

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When I first heard the words ‘dancehall’ and ‘claymation’ in the same sentence, they didn’t really seem to fit… and then I watched Duppy Art’s ‘Beatin’ video, and it all began to make perfect sense.  In an industry full of oversized ego’s, publicized feuds, and overnight superstars that fade from the spotlight as quickly as they entered it, one man has managed to inject some completely original humor with a relentlessly hilarious dancehall claymation video series.  MusicMNP linked up with Duppy Art creator Scally Ranks in June, 2008 and here is what he had to say…

MNP - Who is Scally Ranks, where are you from?

SR - The name Scally Ranks comes from two direct influences in my life. ‘Scally’ is a name often given to a youth growing up in the Northwest of England, often dressing in a certain style—’trainer’s tracksuit bottoms and a baseball cap’—and of course ‘Ranks’ comes from Dancehall. Shabba was the first ‘Ranks’ I heard of and then later as I got more into it I came across others and I combined both names ‘Scally Ranks’ to show a diversity in my style of art and music.  I was born in Manchester UK on a rough estate in Salford, and didn’t experience much ethnic diversity growing up in a mainly white area. I was always curious to see and hear culture from other places in the world.  Seeing Bob Marley on TV for the first time with his dreads and big hat and speaking in a poetical manner my curiosity grew and I became interested in the Jamaican culture, including art and music.

MNP - How did the idea for Duppy Art first come about?

SR - It was purely by chance that I was developing my art style from sculpturing and painting to film and animation. I was learning how to do stop motion animation, but my sculptures where too rigid to me moved, so I experimented with a softer material and came to find I could make my work using plastercine.  Also by chance I was heavily into dancehall and one day the idea came to me that I could make Deejays from the dancehall community in plastercine and then film them moving to their own soundtrack/song and I started to learn Claymation. The name ‘Duppy Art’ is hard to track back exactly when I started using it, although I feel it was influenced first by Yellowman’s “Duppy or Gunman” and also Bounty Killer using the phrase Duppy in many of his outbursts.

MNP - How long have you been working with claymation and animation?

SR - Roughly only about 3-4 years, although I have been sculpturing for round about 8 years.

MNP - How many people are involved in producing the videos or is it just yourself?

SR - With the Duppy Art video’s I am the soul creator. I made all the models, did all the animation, and edited all the content.

MNP
- How long do you spend on each video?

SR - A 3 minute video could take up to 2-3 weeks depending on the content and if I had to build new models. Below 3 minutes and if I had the models made and the soundtrack edited I could film within a few days.

MNP - What gave you the idea to make dancehall claymation videos? This is a pretty unique project, where did your inspiration come from?

SR - I wanted to be part of the Dancehall scene.  As a white English youth I thought it would be almost impossible to get my music out there and be taken serious.  Letting my art do the talking takes away people’s pre-conceptions about the artist and concentrates their focus solely on the art. As I said earlier, I feel it came about randomly, just one of those things which seemed to work, and something i hadn’t seen before.  The more I developed the style, the more I felt I had something worth keeping.  I’m glad that I have brought a new style forward and even more glad that people seem to like and enjoy watching my video’s.

MNP - What kind of other projects do you work on outside of Duppy Art?

SR
- I’m currently working on projects for Manchester Social Media ‘MSM’ keeping with the claymation style and making my videos on a much bigger scale, also constantly developing my dancehall song writing style with my band ‘El Bastardos’.

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MNP - What kind of reactions have you gotten from the artists featured in your videos?

SR - I’ve  had good reactions from the featured Deejays such as Twin of Twins, Tiger, Chris Goldfinger, Robbo Ranx, Dj Warm n Easy, and I’ve heard that other Deejays featured in my vids are also pleased.

MNP - How about Twin of Twins, are you in contact with them? Have they seen your videos?

SR - I’ve developed a good relationship with the management of the twins, working together with ideas for the ‘Beatin’ video and also the ‘Kirk’ and Tupac and Biggie vids.
I’ve always had great respect for the twins’ works and found working with their audio a great thing in my career.

MNP - Do you plan on releasing the 2007 videos as a series?

SR - I would like to, although pirates copied my youtube vids and tried selling the dvd’s via e-bay and audiomaxxx, which only gave me more reason to keep working on them
and produce a better product than they where selling. Watch this space…

Read the rest of MusicMNP’s Scally Ranks interview here… 

15
Jun

massisa who?

15
Jun

Tubby T Tribute

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London’s Silver Star Sound System put together a nice tribute mix to the late great Tubby T who passed away last month.  Here is the write up on their website, and here is the mp3.

15
Jun

Ned Sublette on the Crescent City

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There is a great interview with the multi-talented Ned Sublette (author of the dope, dope, Cuba and Its Music) in Bomb Magazine about his latest book, The World that Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo SquareIts well worth reading.  I had the opportunity to speak to Ned a few years ago in New York and not only is he incredibly knowledgeable, but he’s also a very nice guy… and he takes great photographs like the one above. peep.

**via**

13
Jun

“im gonna go out on a limb here”

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05
Jun

Peter Hunnigale Interview (Part 1)

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Hailing from South London, Peter Hunnigale is one of the UK’s most respected and talented Reggae artists. From the beginnings of his career during the 1980s through to his latest release Free Soul, he has remained a successful artist both locally and internationally, and has toured extensively across Europe, the Caribbean, and North America. I got the chance to sit down with Peter at his Studio in Brixton back in April, here is the first of our conversation, focusing on the foundational stages of his career, his record label (Street Vibes), his work with Tippa Irie, and what it was like growing up around some of London’s heaviest Sound Systems.

MNP - To start off what was your first exposure to music growing up?

PH - Im not sure (laughs) it was just something that’s just part of me, I don’t know where it came from as such. My parents are form Jamaica, but the actual bug for music I’m not sure where it comes from, but as long as I can remember I’ve always loved music. Music’s everywhere, I’m from the UK, I was born in the UK, and I guess the music that I was exposed to at the time was sort of like UK pop music which was early days Manfred Mann and everything else, and obviously Jamaican music from my parents and stuff. But then, there was no such thing as Reggae then, it was Ska, Blue Beat, Rocksteady and stuff. So I had the best of both worlds, you know what I mean? That was my food if you like, my true knowledge, my pool of knowledge, and I drew everything from there.

MNP - At what point did you make the decision that music was something you were going to seriously pursue in your life?

PH - Its kind of a good question, because I thought about that as a young man. You think to yourself ‘I wanna be an artist, I wanna play my guitar and sing when I grow up’ or whatever, but if you’ve got that spirit—I can’t explain where it comes from—I think you’re vocation is to be that. The decision is what commitment you’re gonna make to it. I think to myself, ‘well, I love music, and no matter what I do with my life I’m going to have to, you know, give it a try’. I love the guitar, you know, so my interests are there, so when I got to secondary school I made sure we was able—me and a few other friends—was able to forge a lesson from the teachers. Instead of doing other subjects we could do guitar and stuff, and we can learn about music and the guitar and anything else. Certainly from a young man, from as long as I can remember, through what we call junior school, or grammar school, the interest and the love was ever so strong. Reggae music was fabulous back then. You’re talking about sixties, you know what I mean? It was like, infectious, you know? But the best part of the professional side and the working side came for me through secondary school, that we was able to get a few teachers to say ‘look we don’t wanna do RE’ and stuff like that, and a few like minded people like myself we decided that we wanted guitar classes and stuff. And that’s where it came from, that’s where my nurturing actually began.

MNP - Tell me a little bit about your first recording at De Wolfe studio.

PH - How I managed to be at De Wolfe, life again. Going back to that story when I was in secondary school, one of—and he’s my partner today, still is today—I met a like minded colleague called Fitzroy Blake. But Fitzroy Blake came from the other side of music, you know. He started life out pulling radios apart and ‘hows that work’ type of things, you know? He’s sort of like a very electronically minded type of character. We got to about 15, 16 in our Secondary School years and Fitzroy disappeared, cause he’s a year my senior, and he went on to do Tape Op work at De Wolfe studio. That was his first apprenticeship. After being there for a period he won himself free weekends in the studio , when office hours closed he could work in there and do little tape spins and whatever. Obviously, myself being a musician, guitar, and a few other colleagues that was cool he would say ‘look, come down on the weekend to De Wolfe, you know, we can do a few recordings in there’ whatever. And that was my first exposure to a real working studio back in the day. Proper 8-Track studio it was, and it was something else. It was quite a learning curve, I was quite fortunate to be in tat situation. And that went on for a good while, you know what I mean, weekend after weekend when we could get in we’d be up at De Wolfe in a professional studio, getting the best of, you know what I mean? Learning our craft, you know, playing guitars and getting the odd drummer to come in and play sessions and stuff. At the end of the day, what was the tracks that was born… one of my first recordings was a track called “Slipping Away”, and “Slipping Away” was recorded at De Wolfe studio—at least some of the bits and pieces of it was. That was, I suppose, something indicative of the time we spent there. De Wolfe himself was a really great guy to us, helped us along a little bit, you know? Because after we had “Slipping Away” me and Fitzroy continued to produce records—him mixing and me playing and singing them. And our first label which was Street Vibes label, our stuff was recorded at De Wolfe studio. We saved our money together, and got our own label together, and made our first recording.

MNP - Going back before Street Vibes tell me a little bit about Vibes Corner.

PH - Vibes Corner, again, Fitzroy Blake, my partner, he put a 4-Track studio together back in the day—pre-digital, you know we had no digital information, no drum machines, everything we used we would play live, real drums, real bass. Vibes Corner was a great place, if I can explain Vibes Corner in a nutshell, it was born from the concept of Fitzroy Blake and another colleague of ours called Raymond Simpson. But it had its extensions because there was Jimmy Simpson, who was Raymond’s elder brother who also contributed to building. In actual fact we built the studio in Jimmy’s flat, you know what I mean. And then around that came Barrington Levy, myself, Al Campbell—the legendary Al Campbell coming from Jamaica and cutting his teeth in the English market. It was a great place, I learned a lot of my musical skills there. And the ironic thing of it all was, we had no teachers. We taught ourselves, and we had great discipline for music. Well, I’m one of the main exponents from those days, Vibes Corner. So Vibes Corner was a 4-Track studio put together by Fitzroy Blake, Raymond Simpson, and around we had the musicians like myself and whatever, that was great days. We had one recording from that, we released one record and it was called “Dancing Time”, Raymond Simpson being the primary singer and me sort of like dueting and doing the harmonies and guitar work and everything else, you know what I mean. It was a fabulous track, but unfortunately it was the only song we ever released at Vibes Corner. If you can find it now, keep it, cause it was a good track (laughs).

MNP - How was the process of starting up your own record label (Street Vibes)?

PH - Although we recorded our first song at De Wolfe called “Slipping Away”, it was released through a young entrepreneur in the area called Lloyd Roberts, and he had a record label, and he had a bit of cash he’d put up to get a release done. So we released that record through him. But ideally that wasn’t the thing to do, it didn’t benefit us in any way and it was a nightmare, truth be known. So me and Fitzroy decided that’s really not the way to go. Now the concept of Street Vibes records comes from Fitzroy. He had the idea, saying ‘let put a label together’ you know what I mean? ‘Lets go about doing the artwork’ and everything else we need to do, and do our own thing. So we said ‘ok’, got a designer in, designed the label, found a printer who would do it, and that was the birth of or own stuff. Because Fitzroy and myself, we were still producing. When we had left De Wolfe we was at Fitzroy’s flat up in Kennington, in his bedroom, you know, myself, his young brother who’s Commander B, and some other colleagues playing keyboard and flute with us at the time. Delroy Clarke, you know, we’d be up there, producing stuff, and it had to come, we needed an outlet for ourselves, there were no record companies signing us at the time. And I guess it was a great way to learn the business, hard, but it was good, it was your own. So we got this label manufactured, and we went on to check out, like, processing, and the record, getting it pressed, where we could go to and have that done up. And we learned a whole new school about the industry. So I think it was the need that really brought us to having to develop our own label, cause if it weren’t for the record company, we’d be cool, you know, we’d be on a record company’s label, half the things I know about, I probably wouldn’t know. Because we had to do everything ourselves, it was really difficult, you know? But it was good, it was a great learning curve. So yea, that’s where the concept comes from, Fitzroy Blake. We ended up with thirty-two titles in our catalogue, and an LP, so not bad.

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MNP - Tell me about your first album In This Time.

PH - In This Time was a celebration of what Fitzroy and myself—and now we had taken on other colleagues—what we had achieved. The new members to the band was, like I said, Delroy Clarke was playing keyboards, a percussionist by the name of Tucker Rainbow, he was a Rasta bredda, lovely bredda. And various independent musicians around the area, Philip Linton who’s sadly no longer with us, he’s a talented keyboardist. Local talents around the time, you know, lending harmonies, Yaz Alexander, she did a few harmonies on the tracks, on some of the bits and pieces we had developed at the time. And it was a celebration of what we was doing, me and Fitzroy produced so much stuff that we said, ‘look, its lime for an LP’. I had a successful single from my Street Vibes days called “Be My Lady”, and it was off the back of that, you know, that was like a springboard for me, and it brought me into notoriety in terms of the UK Reggae scene, you know, ‘this young guy Peter Hunnigale, we’ve heard of him before because we know he’s been popping around in bits and a few people’s projects and stuff’. And they had heard about me but this track “Be My Lady” really got my name into the charts, and at that time it was the UK Reggae charts, it got to number four, and I got a lot of respect out of that because the Jamaican market was dominating the UK scene. And from there we just used the springboard and kept it rolling.

MNP - In the late eighties you linked up with Tippa Irie, was it a big transition for you to start working with a Deejay?

PH - Yes, it wasn’t strange but it was new for me, and it wasn’t planned. What happened, Delroy Clarke, our keyboardist, went to America, had some work to do in the States, and he come back and was saying ‘yea Peter man, the Dancehall things going on out there and its cool’. Now, as simple as it is, your buddy comes back from where he’s at and he’ll be talking, and you’re musicians you know what I mean, and the man’s talking about a particular musical vibe, and you’re saying ‘yea yea’ and make a little beat out of it. Well I developed this Dancehall thing, you know, and I make the music at the crib, so I developed this beat, you know, this Dancehall thing, just off the vibes that Delroy was telling me cause you’re feeling it, you know? And I built this rhythm track and I though to myself, ‘right, some lyrics that will sit on it’ and it’s a Dancehall track so you can’t put no lover’s stuff on there, and I’m not really a hardcore Deejay, so I’ve gotta put something commercial on it. So I put a commercial/lover’s rock track on there, something catchy and whatever, and it was about this ragamuffin girl, “she’s no chicken stuffing”—nothing to do with food, the terminology is ‘she’s not soft like chicken stuffing’ she’s a hard core girl, you know what I mean, and then go on to explain the lyrics and whatever. Anyway, I don’t this recording, and the guys are saying ‘yea yea’ they’re saying ‘it’s cool, but get a Deejay on it.’ Now, my partner Fitzroy Blake, he’s got a younger brother called Paul, and Paul is who we now know to be Commander B from Choice FM. He had a bredrin called Tippa Irie, and he came and said ‘Peter, yea, Tippa can do that’ you know what I mean? We knew Tippa from the days but Tippa is slightly younger than me, so we knew Tippa and Paul from me and Fitzroy were Bredrin. So anyway Paul says ‘yea bring my bredrin Tippa’ and we said okay cause we need a Deejay to do something on it. Now Tippa didn’t take any lyrics from me, didn’t take any concepts form what I’d written, he had already had the lyrics, going “rice and peas and chicken stuffing” so it was just like ‘okay, just put the two together’ and it worked out. Now, that song was fabulous for me and Tippa simply because when we first made it a lot of people were saying ‘why they talking about chicken stuffing, and da-da-da that ain’t gonna happen, that’s a flop, they’ve gone mad’ you know what I mean? And after I’ve released the song after my first LP and everything else, I’d gone crazy, all the critics were saying. The song went to number one, so a lot of those critics was sort of like ‘ohh, okay’ and even members of our own team was asking us if we’d gone crazy and stuff, you know what I mean? But, when the money came in, then they didn’t ask ‘was this so crazy’ after all. So it was great, and me and Tippa have never looked back, that was the beginning of a Deejay/Singer marriage, and we still move together today, we’re still like skin and bone.

MNP - What was your relationship with the local Sound Systems?

PH - Oh my god man let me tell you something about the Sound Systems. Sound System, and its true to say, a lot of the most successful productions in terms of Reggae come from producers who own Sounds. That’s coming from Jamaica, you know what I mean? A lot of the best producers come from the Sounds. Now here, as a young man, they were fabulous days, when I was growing up and was able to sort of like, go to the local club down the road when I was about eleven, twelve; back those days you had a great Sound culture here in the UK. Man would build speaker box that were big like the wall and, you know, three, four speakers in there. It would take six man to carry that into a dance. Its like you had to be part of a Sound, its like part of a football team, you know what I mean, you had to be part of a Sound. Now, I’m born in Brixton, right? So we’ve got one of the world’s famous—at least Europe based—Sounds which is Coxsone, in our neighborhood. Then we had Tubbys, we had Neville King, we had so many prominent, popular Sounds of the days, you know what I mean. And my Sound—I can’t say my Sound, the one I used to follow—because there were so many good Sounds. When I was a youth Woppi King was my Sound, that one used to play down the road. As I grew up a little bit older Supertone—he has a record store here in Acre Lane—and then as you’re getting a bit older up the scale Stereograph, who came from Soferno B Sound System, who was a popular ravers sound of the day. So Sound has got a lot to do with my life in terms of music. Most definitely I make records, but also got this thing, I like the way they look as well, I don’t know what it is, it’s a childhood thing, you know (laughs) but I’ve cooled out of it. So yea, it just thrills me to the bone, Sound System has played a huge part in my life and I’m still with it now because I still make a lot of specials for Sounds, globally now with the clashes and everything else. And I like the clash thing, although I’m a lover’s rock singer and I’m not a hardcore artist—in terms of hardcore music—I still like clash, because, you know, clashes is like a sport now almost, you’ve got different legs and you’ve got Sounds from around the world, Japan, Germany, its like a little sport to a degree. And if you can get a clash winning song on one of the top Sounds, you know what I mean, its good for you as well. Yea I do like it, my hearts still there, and plus one of our youths is David Rodigan as well and he’s fighting from the UK camp as well and we support David Rodigan. Hes a great exponent of UK music in terms of its output and radio play. And also Sounds like Saxon and all those Sounds they’ve done a lot to put UK music on the map as well, you know, globally they’ve represented well. So nuff respect to them and quite a few Sounds, just to show the importance they play in Reggae music.

Photos by Prasanna Balasundaram

Words by Tristram Keefe

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**Part 2 Coming soon…**

05
Jun

when you dont know whether to laugh or to cry…

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04
Jun

7 Songs

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Recently i came across this little 7songs thing on another blog where someone is supposed to tag you and yadidiyadi you’re supposed to list some tracks you are liking at the moment. Well, I liked the idea but unfortunately I don’t really have many (any?) weblog-based friendships, and no-one ‘tagged’ me. My first reaction was to feel like I am worthless and should give up on life, but then I got to thinking and, well… I decided to do it anyway. I also decided that I wasn’t gonna ‘tag’ anyone else, further breaching the terms of this little internet game. So, here are seven songs that I love that have been helping me get through my days lately. Maybe we will feature some more selections in the near future from our special guest contributors (to be named if they actually hit me with some words). Enjoy.

Milton Henry - “No Dreams”

I just recently discovered Milton Henry after spotting a used copy of the CD reissue of his elusive Wackies release Who Do You Think I Am? Don’t quite remember my expectations but when I gave it a listen I was pretty much blown away by this album. Track after track of eerily minimalist productions courtesy of Lloyd “Bullwackie” Barnes voiced painfully well by Henry… “No Dreams” ended up being a surprising favorite after a number of listens.

Bitty McLean -”Tell Me (Remix)”

The perfect amount of echo on Bitty McLean’s voice here and when the beat drops… come on now, do I really need to explain myself? The horn line also does it for me. This one comes from last year’s Made in Jamaica LP on Peckings.

Noel Ellis - “Memories”

I love the way Noel Ellis sounds over this infectious rhythm, the feeling in his voice comes across almost too much. In part the lyrics about missing old friends and your home effect a man like myself and in part the raw quality of the production and mixing just feel so perfect… I wish the rest of the album was this good.

Brass Company - “Spanish Dancer”

Listen Here 

After far too long I have recently been rekindling my interest in Jazz music. Not exactly what I usually go for during the springtime but, well, there’s never much rhyme or reason to this sort of thing so I accept it without much of a struggle. What better place to begin an odyssey into the weird world of Jazz music than with the Strata-East catalogue. One of my favorite of the S-E records that I am fortunate enough to have heard is Brass Company’s Colors LP. I’m sure a lot of people will be familiar with this tune, and its hard for me to say just what I like about it, but suffice to say, this is emblematic of all of the things that were going right musically during the decade of the seventies.

Michael Howell - “Don’t Explain”

I think I might be exposing a little too much of my sentimental side here but this song really gets me. Simple, melodic, melancholy… I won’t try to explain. From the 1974 LP In the Silence on Milestone Records.

Joint Ventures - “Pull the Plug”

Usually when I’ve almost completely stopped listening to hip hop I encounter an album that reminds me of what it is that has kept my head nodding since days past. I never heard of the Boston hip hop crew Joint Ventures when this album dropped back in 1993… and I never really heard of them afterwords either, but I wish I had. “Pull the Plug” (and the entire LP really) is some of the heaviest east coast rap I’ve heard in a long time, taking a cue from the bassy sound then dominating most of the American hip hop market. I really wonder what ever happened to these guys.

Midnite - “Mornin”

As much as I wish I could have a list like this without Midnite, I have to throw in this track “Mornin” off the Current album as my final selection, This is one successful example of the futuristic-new age electronic production that Vaughn Benjamin seems to love so much. It is also an example of Midnite’s cryptic/esoteric lyricism that does not make me want to… yawn.

04
Jun

sounds of political freedom

this conference looks like it will be interesting…

Sounds of Political freedom – Whatever happened to the protest song?

Date: Monday 16th June 2008
Venue: (The wonderful…) Kings Head Theatre, Upper Street, Islington N1

Targeting the musical enthusiast and the more conscientious end of the musical spectrum, this evening of entertainment and debate, aims to bring together a panel of music journalists, alongside social and political commentators for an enjoyable evening, which will question the current status, relevance and impact of music of a political and protest nature.

The discussion will celebrate and assess the role of contributors to the protest song movement and ask whether we have seen the end of such music on a mainstream level. This debate will question;

* Whether protest songs can permeate the power of commercial/popular music
* Has the concept of protest/political song writing now become completely mainstream?  Have mainstream artists now replaced the ‘protest’ singer?
* Has commercialism taken over as the conduit for musical protest?
* Who are the current leaders in this area of music?
* Does it really matter anymore? With the advent of technologies and mass communication, do we need songs of protest?

List of panellists include :

* Robin Denselow; Music Journalist, The Guardian; Reporter, BBC Newsnight ; Author; When The Music’s Over – The story of political pop
* Professor Paul Gilroy, Anthony Giddens Professorship in Social Theory, London School of Economics; Author,’ Small Acts’ and ‘Ain’t no Black in the Union Jack’
* Eric Soul (DJ, Panellist for Radio 3 World Music Awards 2007)
* Stuart Baker, Founder, Soul Jazz Records (Sounds of the Universe)

there may be at least one ninja in attendance… look for me next to the finger buffet.
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03
Jun

RIP Bo Diddley

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December 30, 1928 – June 2, 2008

03
Jun

ReRelease

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Been meaning to post on this for a while and only just getting the chance.  Andrew (and others?) have put together ReRelease, a music downloading service that uncovers lost or forgotten albums and provides high quality versions of these releases available at a reasonable price.  The good thing about this is that the proceeds of these purchases go to the artists themselves (not some greedy record monger charging 300 dollars on e-bay).  The other good thing is that they are doing a little series on Jazz music from Massachusetts, a place often overlooked in pretty much every genre of American music.

From the website:

ReRelease.net is a new kind of label. We digitally reissue the best old records, making unique recordings available to everybody. We painstakingly discover old gems, then locate artists, master the recordings to high standards, and write liner notes to tell the story. We embrace the future by investing in the past

03
Jun

RIP Jimmy McGriff

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Didn’t get a chance to post this earlier but the great Jimmy McGriff passed away on May, 24th at the age of 72.  Remembered as one of the all time baddest on the Hammond B-3, McGriff will be missed by many.

03
Jun

WCTD Radio

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Now, I’m not normally one for internet radio, but when I heard that Andrew and Jayman from WCTD were putting together a station I knew it would be something not to be missed.   Mixing together live sessions and classic dancehall records, the latest show will be playing on loop for a week or so and trust me, you will not regret tuning in.  If you’ve ever visited their page, you know that you’re in for a treat.  The station can be found at http://www.live365.com/stations/bionicoperator, so make sure to take a listen and thank Jayman and Andrew for their work.

02
Jun

Re: Champion Sound

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So I made it up to Coventry this weekend to visit the Champion Sound exhibit and documentary put together by Frontline AV.  I was overall pretty impressed with the project, and especially liked the film.  Interviews with members of Mackabee, El Paso, Sir Baggy Hi Fi and other Coventry sound systems combined with old footage and commentary from Dr. Robert Beckford and others make this film an interesting document not only of Coventry and the UK in general’s musical heritage but also of the history of that city itself.  The exhibition is equally impressive, with a mix of installations featuring records, turntables, and various artifacts from over the decades as well as informative placards, high quality photos of important figures, and even a set of speaker boxes.  Anyways, just wanted to follow up on the previous post by saying this is well worth making the trip down to the Herbert Museum in Coventry while the exhibition lasts, and look out for the documentary which hopefully will see some kind of proper release.  The only thing that it left me wishing for was some recordings of these sounds, they must exist somewhere…

26
May

gone but not forgotten

MusicMNP sends out condolences to the family and loved ones of NW London’s Tubby T who passed away last week after suffering a second stroke in four years.

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In another devastating series of events Chris Rock (Michael Rattigan) and Tony Montana (Antone Geargo Neely) from Tampa’s Poison Dart Sound System along with their associate Kevin Jordache Webster were murdered early saturday morning at the Thunderbird Inn in Auburdale, Florida.  Our blessings go out to the relatives and friends of the men and the entire Poison Dart family.memorialweb.jpg

22
May

Nino Bless - Untold Scriptures

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Brand new Nino Bless mixtape dropped earlier this week available as a free download.  Featuring appearances from Kool G Rap, Styles P, Crooked I, Saigon and more… don’t sleep.

Download Link: Nino Bless - Untold Scriptures 

22
May

Marie Queenie Lyons - Soul Fever

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Soul Fever is a recording from the mysterious Marie “Queenie” Lyons reissued by the ever impressive Madrid-based Vampisoul imprint.  Originally put out on the DeLuxe label, this album is the only full length by the relentlessly funky Louisiana native who apparently disappeared shortly after its 1970 release.  Working with the likes of James Brown, King Curtis, Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis, Lyons clearly learned from among the brightest talents of her era, and it shows undeniably on this record.  With a raw, unadulterated vocal style, she destroys each tune one after another on Soul Fever, leaving you wondering how such a crucial sound could have passed under the radar at the time of it’s release.  Standout tracks for me include the opener “See and Don’t See” and her soulful rendition of “Try Me”, but the entire album is full of  top notch material. Kept alive by crate-diggers and funk enthusiasts, this wicked collection of tunes is finally available on CD and 180 gram Vinyl LP. As always the good folks at Vampisoul have put together an impressive product with minimalist cover illustration and quality packaging, the only thing that I would have wished for is some information about the personnel and the location of the recording. Soul Fever comes highly recommended to anyone in need of some heavy r&b to begin the summer, guaranteed you won’t be able to take this one out of your rotation for a long time.

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