There's just no getting around Mrs. Franklin's greatness. That voice. She could pour everything she had into one sustained note and then keep right on going where most others would have to take a breather, swooping and diving from raw power to fragile beauty in but a moment, then wheeling back again to bring the house down. She had a knack for that...
The dark, low slung blues of The Thrill Is Gone From Yesterday's Kiss (with Aretha's voice weaving around that pulsing, well-deep organ figure and staggering beat) was always been my go to moment, but in truth there's far too many to count: the lush, sun-glazed soul of Day Dreaming, her graceful rocking out on Bacharach/David's I Say A Little Prayer, the insouciantly casual non-album 7" funk workout of The House That Jack Built, Get It Right's skittering electronic soul and the r&b coup of A Rose Is Still A Rose, the stunning I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You (undoubtedly one of the key sixties soul LPs), the girl group splendor of Don't Play That Song... and on and on and on.
Take a look at UR's The Turning Point double pack, where you'll find her honored alongside figures like James Brown, Hendrix, Kraftwerk and Muhammad Ali within the context of that crew's arcing hi-tek funk. Her influence spread far and wide, but its within the grooves of her records where the magic still crackles. I can still remember the day I picked up Spirit In The Dark and Young, Gifted And Black. Hearing them for the first time was a revelation, opening up vast possibilities stretching far and wide as the deep blue sky.
From Memphis to Detroit, in sound and spirit, Aretha Franklin was quite simply the definition of soul...
Baby, baby, baby, this is just to say
How much I'm gonna miss you.
But believe, while I'm away
That I didn't mean to hurt you.
Don't you know that I'd rather hurt myself?
...I'd hurt myself, I'd hurt myself...
Baby, baby, baby, baby, think of me sometimes
Because if loving you was so wrong, then I'm guilty of this crime.
...Guilty, I'm guilty, I'm guilty...
I'm bewildered, I'm lonely, and I'm loveless,
Without you to hold my hand (Reach out for me, boy)
If you'd just understand (Reach out to me, right now).
Those that we love, we foolishly make cry,
Then sometimes feel it's best to say goodbye, goodbye.
Remember when summer vacation would stretch deep into the heart of August, those long, hot days when steam would rise from the asphalt and intermix with the urban haze? One summer in particular stands out, the summer of '95 to be exact, when for a few weeks my brother and I sanded and refinished my uncle's deck out in the blazing Santee heat. The sun burned deep like a cigarette in the sky as we toiled below, with tunes like Skee-Lo's I Wish and Masta Ace Incorporated's Born To Roll coming through on the radio waves, their sun-glazed ambience syncing perfectly with those delirious days of labor.
Like Jodeci once said, Success is not hard to find.
Masta Ace IncorporatedSittin' On ChromeDelicious Vinyl
I wound up spending some of my greenbacks on an Atari2600 that I bought out in Alpine from a gentleman a few years my senior. This was of course ancient technology by then, but I was a notorious fiend for the 8-bit vibes of the vintage arcades of Tron and my own distant memories. I remember hooking it all up when I got home (after being stuck for hours in rush hour traffic), and the graphics and controls were even more rudimentary than I'd imagined (I'd previously only been familiar with its more elegant antecedent, the Atari5200). Still, I was eventually quite taken with the stunning, vivid imagery that would sometimes take flight.
The vivid imagery of Yar's Revenge
Colorful sprites would hang like hieroglyphs in stark relief against rolling vectors and gradient skies, landscapes unfurling as analogue sound effects pulsed from within. Notably, almost none of these games had music — just the warm hum of analogue arcade sonix — which freed you up to play whatever you wished. The sounds of Kleeer's Tonight and China Crisis' Seven Sports For All could mix freely with the sights and sounds of the game grid and the swirling summer heat in a heady cocktail of Indian summer proto-psychedelia.
China CrisisDifficult Shapes & Passive Rhythms: Some People Think It's Fun To EntertainVirgin
Cassette tapes spooled out the sounds of new wave and electro boogie, tunes like Adam Ant's Beautiful Dream and Mtume's Juicy Fruit blurring out into the horizon as occasional atmospheric interludes like the spaced-out ambient bliss of Jean Walks In Freshfields would stretch out into infinity. I remember wishing there were whole albums that sounded like this (fast forward a few years to the discovery of Brian Eno's Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks, Steve Hillage's Rainbow Dome Musick and Ashra's New Age Of Earth and a kid's sorted... ask and you shall receive).
Solaris will take your brain to another dimension
Aside from rugged versions of obvious classics like Centipede and Joust, a firm favorite was Solaris. This interstellar shooter pushed the machine to its absolute limit, centering around a pyramidical starship that moved over the face of various planets surface. Oftentimes throwing strobe-like visual effects and pink noise into the mix as the game swung into overdrive, moving at an evermore brisk pace (in classic arcade style) as you dodged asteroids and did battle with alien spacecraft.
Like Dr. Octagon once said, Polygons fighting pentagons.
Dâm-FunkToeachizownStones Throw
In retrospect, I recognize that I was trying to recreate the atmosphere of Dâm-Funk's Toeachizown, those rolling waves of computer blue g-funk, before they'd even happened. The record would have been perfect in that setting, back in the day. See also Model 500's Deep Space and JT The Bigga Figga's Dwellin' In Tha Labb, two records that we did have in 1995. As I've said many times before, Kleeer's Tonight and Mtume's The After 6 Mix Juicy Fruit Part II are the square root of these shades of digital funk.
Picture a game like Battlezone, its vector landscapes closing in all around you, as the soundsystem pumps out rivers of synth flowing across drum machine rhythms. Records like Ken Ishii's Echo Exit, Freaky Chakra's Blacklight Fantasy or Alexander O'Neal's self-titled debut shimmer in the moonlight, gliding across the spaces between the spaces shading out that neon architecture of the grid, elegant and austere and surreal. Keni Stevens' Night Moves Ultra-Sensual Mix captures the mood in half-lit neon, born under a rhythmic moon.
Freaky ChakraBlacklight FantasyAstralwerks
Like Symbols & Instruments, it's all shorthand for the realm of the imagination: Tales From The Mental Plane. If wherever you find yourself isn't where you want to be, then move your mind and the rest will follow. You gather the materials you need to build your starship and then you build it. Everything else is the waves lapping at the shore: a result. All those years ago, it was the unlikely combination of a boom box and a 2600. Before long, it was a Tracker and the music in my mind, and then and MPC3000 and an ARP, and so on and so forth... and it turned out pretty well, all things considered. The wave rolls on, and we ride it still...
Summer in full swing, electronics in the system, the bug in the bassbin. Triggered breakbeats and rhythm boxes in full effect. Theme From Hot Burst by Yage unfolds in fractals of digital color (exclusives from Earthbeat — compilations, the art form of the 21st century). Jumpin' & Pumpin' grooves rotate on spinning wax, the vivid colors feathered in stark relief against the Westside records, tiles like Slam and Tonight. Debut with Chile Of The Bass Generation, Mental Cube's Dope Module and Q: Art Science Technology, I Can See For Miles.
Various Artists EarthbeatJumpin' & Pumpin'
So This Is Love... who put this thing together? Yage's Quazi and Coda Coma (from the Fuzzy Logic EP alongside Papua New Guinea Dumb Child Of Q Mix (perhaps it should have been Journey To Pyramid or the 12" Original on the beatbox tip). Indo Tribe's Owl and Semi-Real's People Livin' Today in full effect, rubbing shoulders with Smart Systems' The Creator and Candese — You Took My Love. By Any Other Name...
Inner CityWatcha Gonna Do With My Lovin'Virgin
Humanoid's The Deep and Crystals, Sunshine & BrickGlobal Humanoid. Dance traxx by The Future Sound Of London and Kevin Saunderson (Inner City, The Reese Project, et. al.) and Underground Resistance all intertwine in a pre-minimal subliminal. The absolutely sublime Knuckles/Morales Def Mix of Watcha Gonna Do With My Lovin' and those beachfront pianos ringing that jazz across the ocean breeze. Jeff Mills and Made Mike hit the clubs with Your Time Is Up and Living For The Nite, mixing it all down with the Happy Records. Davina's Don't You Want It and Kenny Dixon Jr.'s Soul Sounds. Meanwhile Back At Home...
MoodymannSilentintroductionPlanet E
Something Happened On Dollis Hill. Earthbeat and Parallel Universe, 4 Hero mutate the breakbeat, dwellin' in tha lab. The Octagon Man and Depth Charge messing with the same breaks and different speeds, the nodes connecting Free-er Than Free to The Demented Spirit to Disko Airlines and beyond. Did it all happen to soon? The Freestyle Files Vols. 1-4 coming thru on X-Radio in the summer heat, Blue Note pianos wrapping the Fine Young Cannibals' Good Thing, Class Action's Weekend, Free-er Than Free and Massive Attack's Unfinished Sympathy in a Gaussian blur.
The Octagon ManThe Demented SpiritVinyl Solution
Electro mixes for miles lead to The Egyptian Lover's Egypt, Egypt pick out of a crate on Zion circa 1998. Electro in the Heights, bombing down Grantville streets to the strains of the Elecktroids' Midnight Drive. Dave Clarke selects the records but you miss him when he comes to L.A.The Octagon Man pushes on from Aux 88's Take Control Mix of Electronic Warfare by UR... that was an institution! Think back to the Hack TV introduction sequence and that LockedownRebirth beat that seems to have vanished from the record altogether.
U2PopIsland
TB-303s over a downbeat rhythm (the Miami Sunrise effect). Early days messing around in the studio, interfacing with the music. Cutting up the waveforms like Burial, seven years before the fact. The Robotz Garage Mix of U2's Miami, all those Pop traxx much-maligned but sounding even better with every passing year:
Do you feel loved?
Do you feel loved?
Do you feel loved?
Do you feel loved?
Said let the music play...
The Chicago Transit AuthorityThe Chicago Transit AuthorityColumbia
Cyberpunk in the sunshine and The Playboy Mansion. The Black Dog remix of Radiohead's Talk Show Host — dusted beats in the El Cajon heat, The Chicago Transit Authority on the car radio (Armando, Lil' Louis, Jamie Principle and Adonis), picking it up from Parkway Plaza in a beat up Impala and on to the ska show down the street where The English Beat's Mirror In The Bathroom plays and three brothers sit in the back looking on, echoes of Stolen Documents and Open Up still ringing in their ears.
Scott Weiland12 Bar BluesIsland
Those sun-glazed visions in Disco Godfather technicolor light, The Dust Brothers' Nickel Bag mix of Filter's Hey Man Nice Shot, Soul Coughing's 16 Horses and Beck's Deadweight set in stark relief against Scott Weiland's electro vision Jimmy Was A Stimulator. Shades of Bowie in Berlin and Peter Gabriel 3: experimentation in broad daylight. Nuggetsin the 90s. Dude's got an 808 he's gonna use it.
Dorothy AshbyAfro-HarpingCadet Concept
Late summer bizzness, seen: Pharoah Sanders' Elevation, Alice Coltrane's Journey In Satchidananda and Dorothy Ashby's Soul Vibrations like the steam rising from sticky asphalt streets. The World Is A Ghetto coming from War and Harlem River Drive's Idle Hands. Galaxy's Innerzone version sings It's out of sight! Like Eddie Palmieri said, Condiciones Que Existen. Excise it from the radio waves (are you crazy!?), you leave only the sterile pulse of what you're left with today. I start to lose interest... back to the drawing board I'm afraid.
Ken IshiiX-Mix: Fast Forward & RewindStudio !K7
When the radio won't suffice, you improvise. Driving down Jackson Drive with tapes of techno in the heat as July gives way to August. Ken Ishii's X-Mix and the strange shapes of Buckfunk Discotheque, Flare's DIR.R and United Future Organization's Fool's Paradise (acid jazz to a man, memories of Paso Picacho and the self-sames tapes surfacing in the Suburban) rubbing shoulders with Ishii's totally singular Echo Exit and the Ghetto BrothersPumpin' Bass Manoeuvres, the Jedi Knights' Dances Of The Naughty Knights and Mood Optimystic Mix by Symbols & Instruments (house don Derrick Carter, Chris Nazuka and Mark Farina — he of Mushroom Jazz fame — working the machines way back in 1989). That's Terminal Vibration territory for real.
Fretless AZMOceans Of LightHolistic
The juke joint house of The Innocent's Theme From Blue Cucaracha (moreDerrick Carter for your eardrums) and Basement Jaxx's Fly Life, and then off to Bumbuphone and the Holistic jazz of Fretless AZM. Organs pulse subliminally, those drums back techno as if it were before its time. Ultimately, it all leads down to the rabbit hole until one day you realize you've tracked down every CD, every 12" of Max Brennan's oeuvre. Alien To Whom?O.H. Krill's The Krill Papers. Allegedly.
John ArnoldSparkleFragile
Underground Resistance and Drexciya against the backdrop of the selfsame Ken Ishii and Dave Clarke mixes, orders from Studio !K7 and Submerge arrive by mail weeks at a time. C.O.D.Reese traxx the perfect counterpart to the Lakeside heat, dot matrix Submerge catalog printouts pored over for hours in search of 430 West, Fragile and Red Planet 12" records. John Arnold's Universal Mind tracing those stripped down traxx back through boogie and disco, funk, jazz and beyond.
KleeerWinnersAtlantic
Wonderland and Twin Golden Dragon — it's 1994 again — with cabinets like Toobin' and Discs Of Tron. Kleeer's Tonight and Green Light by Mtume... Deep Space Radio, off the hook. G-funk traces routes back to back in the day. Remember old school? people say, low riders and Cadillacs and whole sections I wish I could have seen. I Still Love You by Kleeer and You Did It Again too, smooth as silk and predicting Nate Dogg's cadence on Warren G's Regulate in it's lustrous languor.
Tony! Toni! Toné!Sons Of SoulMotown
That same summer and J. Beez Wit The Remedy, the Jungle Brothers — Crazy Wisdom Masters — warping the fabric of hip hop moments before it twisted into the darkness forever. Cypress Hill, Cypress Hill,Rammellzee raps on stage at the park, cold rocking the party. Raphael Saadiq's Instant Vintage and the whole dusty soul trip traced back to Sons Of Soul and I Couldn't Keep It To Myself. The Breeders and Björk, Invisible ManCome To Me. Janet Jackson's That's The Way Love Goes, chillin' up at Palomar Mountain... it all happened that same summer.
Norman ConnorsMr. CArista
Norman Connors sleeves down in A.G. as the Nautilus rises from the bubbling depths, Captain Nemo pumping keys on his organ set to ramming speed. The kids playing Rub A Dub Stylee in a kidney shaped pool,Starship Orchestra and Bobby Konders records spinning on the Technics again. Let There Be House and The Future. Those same blue note pianos return, like a feather on the breath of memory, and those deep, deep basslines echoes in the mist, dub disco vibrations push waveforms as they twist and turn through the cool night air.
Ten, twenty, thirty years after and the song still remains the same...
Summertime, and the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high
Your daddy's rich and your mama's good-lookin'
So hush, little baby, don't you cry"
George & Ira Gershwin (Porgy And Bess, 1935)
Bobby Konders & Massive SoundsBobby Konders & Massive SoundsMercury
It's a midsummer night's dream, and where I come from we don't play.
I recall wandering the vast corridors on an indoor mall only to find a record shop nestled in one of its murky corners. Two separate instances swell from the ocean of memory to overlap: the first was some time ago in the tropics of Camuy on the north side of Puerto Rico, while the second came more recently in the sun-baked heat of Palm Desert.
David BowieDavid LiveRCA Victor
12" disco dubs in the mall's casual spaces, Jark Prongo records and Dimitri From Paris way back when and Ronnie Laws and Bowie's David Live nestled in the stacks. It brings to mind summer of '98 up in the Bay Area, nights at Mushroom Jazz and long afternoons on the pier. Beginnings at an errant house party, Chicago and The BucketheadsStreet sounds swirling though my mind — with the steaming percussion of Fela Kuti in the mix.
D-TrainYou're The One For MePrelude
Cut adrift in the dog days after disco had died, in retrospect a golden age when the dancefloor was suffused with the deep dubbed-out flavor of island sounds. It turned out that you couldn't kill it after all, no matter how hard you tried, it lived on in the electroid boogie of D-Train's You're The One For Me and the tropical slow-burning post-disco mirage that had begun to take shape.
King Sunny Adé & His African BeatsJuju MusicMango
Wild shapes permeated Larry Levan's lush sonics at The Paradise Garage, the gulf stream drift of Eddy Grant and Grace Jones setting the stage, with Compass Point and the All Stars fleshing it out into four dimensions. The masterful fourth world Juju Music of King Sunny Adé & His African Beats and Tony Allen's Afrobeat 2000 excursion rubbing shoulders with Brian Eno and David Byrne's My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts launched it all into the outer rim.
Bobby KondersA Lost Era In NYC 1987-1992International Deejay Gigolo
Wally Badarou's shimmering synths flow through it all at low tide, from Echoes in 1985 through Jamie Principle and Larry Heard's early sides on into Bobby Konders' House Rhythms and beyond — the Nu Groove flavor (Here Comes That Sound Again). Scores of moody 12" records blur the lines between deep house, downbeat hip hop, rave and dub reggae, while a secluded path drops out into Bristol, stretching from Carlton to Massive Attack and a whole new decade on the rise.
Eddie PalmieriSentidoCoco
The low-slung flavor of The Brothers Palmieri and Harlem River Drive flows just below the surface all along, and the sampladelia laid out by Marley Marl, Prince Paul and The Dust Brothers brings it back into the foreground, mirroring those earlier incursions of low-slung, sun-baked riddims in the era of the breakbeat.
Big Audio Dynamite IIThe GlobeColumbia
Countless groups and their records heed the call, filling out the shoes of Nuggets for the nineties. Perhaps the likes of B.A.D. and Neneh Cherry were the bridge between the twin poles, along with myriad other elements thrown into the blend (as is so often the case). Just check The Globe, Kool-Aid and In My Dreams right alongside Paul's Boutique for a crash course in dusted breakbeat architecture, while Neneh was drawing up her own blueprint for the future with tunes like Buffalo Stance, Buddy X and Trout (featuring one Michael Stipe; see also R.E.M.'s Monster, attn. I Don't Sleep, I Dream).
Morgan GeistMovesEnviron
At any rate it's been there all the time, surfing below the surface like the Vertigo Steel out in Lakeside, representing all the discos that might have been. Multi-colored lights flash against mahogany brown, mirrorball spins in slow-motion to the throbbing pulse of Moroder's tronik disco. The skeletal strains of Morgan Geist's Moves EP and the psychedelic filter disco of Kenny Dixon Jr.'s Silentintroduction bridge the gulf of twenty-odd years.
E-DancerHeavenly/The Human BondKMS
Meanwhile Back At Home, the raw Chicago sonix of Steve Poindexter and DJ Skull get down and dirty with a hard-edged magic all their own. Old Reese records like The Sound and Just Want Another Chance lay the bedrock, Tronik House's Smooth Groove and E-Dancer's The Human Bond too, while Todd Terry's blinding 12" slabs of noise are never far from the turntables.
694 Jazz Funk ClassicsPlanet E
On the road again in the space between dances, rolling low to the pavement in a little brown DodgeColt and bumping the sounds of Beck's Deadweight, Scott Weiland's Jimmy Was A Stimulator and The Egyptian Lover's My Beat Goes Boom808 beats banging through the vehicle walls down into the steaming asphalt of Mission Gorge Rd. in the blazing heat. Modern Funk Beats soundclash featuring the blurred edges of If Mojo Was A.M. and Carl Craig's skewed take on hip hop. People Make The World Go Round. Nothing wrong with a little history in those grooves, passed down through the years and picking up 'nuff flavor along the way.
The MetersRejuvenationReprise
Between the proto-hip hop beats of The Meters and Chic's lush disco grooves lies a galaxy of sound; betwixt Gwen Guthrie's neon-spangled shapes and the dusted beats of Cypress Hill lies a lifetime. The blunted corners of those Soul Machine EPs seem to split the difference between the two, spooling out their various strands into a fatback beat before unfurling back again, out into the Möbius of time... there's more to come when they inevitably return.
The grand architect of rock 'n roll guitar, Chuck Berry stripped contemporary rhythm & blues down to its framework and rebuilt it like a Detroit muscle car. More often than not, he'd rev the engine of this souped-up sonic machine and race it down the road at a blazing speed, drums pounding at a furious pace — his wild guitar sound at the focal point, cutting through the mix like a straight razor. Along with Bo Diddley's red hot sides and The Sun Sessions, this is where the future was laid down in steel and chrome.
Elvis PresleyThe Sun SessionsRCA Victor
Whereas many of the early rock 'n roll sides would often employ what amounted to a downsized big band orchestra, Berry's sound was rugged and raw; where many of those bands still traded in the rhythm of swing, he accelerated the beat to a motorik stomp. Horns were out, and pianos played but a supporting role. He'd have been rock's first minimalist if he weren't rock's first, period. Where earlier artists might have gestured in the general direction — songs like Ike Turner & Jackie Brenston's Rocket 88 and Hank Williams' Move It On Over offering the first warning shots — he was the living embodiment of rock 'n roll.
Chuck Berry invents the power stance
Not only did he redefine the guitar's place in music, he was also an ace songwriter and lyricist: rock's first singer-songwriter-performer... he was the whole package. Songs like Thirty Days To Come Back Home played like episodes in an ongoing travelogue (think On The Road with a sense of danger and a killer backbeat). He'd return to many of his favorite themes again and again — the road, school, women and the music itself — circling back to look at them from another angle, inhabiting different characters and descending into further capers each time out.
Chuck BerryThe Great Twenty-EightChess
You listen to something like The Great Twenty-Eight (where I first started with Berry way back when), and the songs race past thick and fast — Maybellene zoom! Oh Baby Doll zoom!! Johnny B. Goode zoom!! — and the passage of sixty-odd years does nothing to dull the rush, the man's guitar simply tears out the speakers. This was one of my go to records when I'd cruise out past Lake Henshaw on one of my periodic sojourns back in the day, its shimmying beat the perfect soundtrack for hitching Highway 78 — by way of the 67 — and winding out past Santa Ysabel and beyond.
Chuck BerryAfter School SessionChess
Now obviously that run of singles was red hot (and the basis for his legend), but his trio of excellent fifties LPs — After School Session, One Dozen Berrys and Chuck Berry Is On Top — broaden the scope considerably to include diversions like the Latin-tinged beatless pulse of Havana Moon (also the b-side to You Can't Catch Me, one of my favorite 7" singles ever), Drifting Heart's exotica-in-all-but-name, the circular, proto-surf machinery of Jo Jo Gunne, Down Bound Train's careening pulse and the gutbucket instrumental blues of Low Feeling, all of which betray a vision that expands far beyond the parameters usually ascribed to the man.
Bo DiddleyBo Diddley Is A GunslingerChecker
And yet even those usual parameters are simply staggering: from the fast-forward groove of Can't Catch Me — with Berry's rapid-fire delivery sliding across its shimmying surface — to the raw swagger of Around And Around and the complex tumbling rhythms of I Want To Be Your Driver, this is is some of the greatest rock 'n roll you'll ever hear. With the exception of Bo Diddley, nobody rocked harder at the time, and while you could call Bo a hard blues man in the tradition stretching from Howlin' Wolf to Captain Beefheart, with Chuck Berry you were dealing with something different altogether.
Route 66 stretching through the desert
In an era when Eisenhower's Interstate Highway System began its stretch from sea to shining sea, Berry laid down the definitive soundtrack. There may have been car songs before Chuck Berry (see Nat "King" Cole's Route 66 and the K.C. Douglas Trio's Mercury Blues), but he crystallized it into something in which the form matched the content. It's tempting to extrapolate the man's early years working on the assembly line at the Fisher Body automobile assembly plant into the mean machine music he'd ultimately engineer.
The Fisher Body Plant in Detroit, Michigan
You Can't Catch Me — again! — is the blueprint, but the motorik drive of a song like Carol makes this point as well, stretching well into the future and presaging Neu!'s endless horizons on the Autobahn. Cars, motorik, Detroit... all of this is no coincidence. In the mid-fifties Chuck Berry did to rhythm & blues what Juan Atkins would later do to electronic music in the mid-eighties, rebuilding it into a lean street racer set to overdrive and pointed toward the future.
The Rolling StonesEngland's Newest Hit MakersLondon
The man's songs would form the bedrock for early rock 'n roll and beyond, endlessly cribbed (see The Beatles' Come Together, The Beach Boys' Surfin' USA, etc.) and covered, fueling the nascent scene as it gained steam to go on and conquer the world. There's loads of crucial covers — The Stones had their hand in more than a few — some of them even managing to exceed the man's original vision, but then you hear a song like Too Much Monkey Business in its original context — shot through with a spartan elegance and those nagging vocal asides — and it becomes clear that its never been bettered on its own terms.
Link WrayEarly RecordingsChiswick
Along with Bo Diddley's work, this is ground zero for hard-edged rock 'n roll spanning from Link Wray and surf rock to The Rolling Stones and Nuggets and beyond (it's not hard to hear the interlocking gears of Queens Of The Stone Age in Berry's metal machine music). This is where the whole rock endeavor accumulated the energy it needed to reach critical velocity and escape orbit, where it took on molten form and splintered into myriad shards and sounds in the process.
Ushered in by a brown-eyed handsome man from St. Louis, it's a sound that live on in the present day, over sixty years later. All of that, and the man lived to be ninety, riding off into the sunset a legend. So when all is said and done, I say so long Mr. Berry, and thanks for leaving us the music.
Back to cruising into the wilderness, through Ramona where Chicago beatboxes hold sway and the sound of TR-707's chugging alongside Main St. Threading the expected strains of Larry Heard and Armando, I dreamt of playing Can's Future Days and Basic Channel in my apartment there. Long hazy August afternoons and the sounds of Electric Ladyland and Cosmic Slop drift out into the the magenta haze. Just beyond the hills skirting the town lay a record shop, its wood paneled walls cut their silhouette into the looming sun on the horizon. DağlarUp In The Mountains.
CanFuture DaysUnited Artists
Travel deeper into the forest, where lodges sit nestled in riverbed canyons and the sounds of dusted country sides seep out their windows and into the great plains toward Santa Ysabel and beyond, passing the Krautrock Barn along the way where lines stretch north to the great cabin on the shores of Lake Henshaw and east toward Lake Cuyamaca. It makes sense that Cheyenne would hole up here...
Alexander SpenceOarColumbia
This is the land of Skip Spence's Cripple Creek, J.J. Cale's Naturally and the whole of Laurel Canyon. It's the sound of mystery dwelling deep within successful hills and Marjory Razorblade on the turntable. I do remember the sounds of jazz funk in that cabin on more than one occasion, but the sound you'd come to expect was rustic folk and country.
Kevin CoyneMarjory RazorbladeVirgin
Then, at some point, country and kosmische mixed in my mind and I heard them at once as hallucination, a whole sound stretching from motorik country — it glides along the highway while the beat marks time with fence posts passing as hills roll gently into the horizon — to a Jaki Liebezeit-fueled tumbling cosmic-funk beat. The closest thing I've heard might be Willie Nelson's Whiskey River, while the former I've only heard in dreams.
Willie NelsonShotgun WillieAtlantic
The last time was a week ago and I was in Colorado sitting outside a service station, looking up at sunlit clouds tumbling in the sky, the sound of analogue sequences and a gently brushed beat in harmony with pedal steel and the song of a world-weary troubadour played over the loudspeaker. Surely these records must exist somewhere? If not, someday I hope to put it all to tape.
Captain BeyondCaptain BeyondCapricorn
Wandering beyond the lake and Traction In The Rain, the odd tree punctuating the creep of increasingly dusty plains, and high desert rock comes into play: the sounds of Captain Beyond, Randy Holden and the Blue Öyster Cult trilogy. Morrison Hotel and Indian Summer in the sunset, Ship Of Fools in confusion dawning.
The DoorsMorrison HotelAtlantic
The torch passed to Kyuss, later Queens Of The Stone Age and beyond... I always liked how Josh Homme singled out the seventies records of ZZ Top for praise, citing them a crucial piece of the rock story. Cheap Sunglasses into Don Van Vliet's Mojave-born basis for the whole endeavor, the Groundhogs taking it perhaps furthest of all.
Adam And The AntsDirk Wears White Sox U.S. VersionEpic
Then there's the angular badlands racket of Adam And The Ants' Dirk Wears White Sox U.S. Version hanging over everything here like a question mark in the sky. Leather jackets in the dust of the high desert heat, a lone dingy dive in the waning sunset where a band of outlaws — the original Antz, those angular punks — ply their trade.
E-DancerHeavenlyPlanet E
Over the hills and past Warner Springs, through the pass until you see the vast Anza Borrego desert spread out below. See the lights of Borrego Springs down there in the valley. This was the setting of Laundromat when it all went down. Maybe someday I'll put it all into writing. It's in the twilight here that the deep pulse of techno makes perfect sense, reverberations mirrored back by the rocks and sand and sky, Transmissions From Deep Space Radio — Octave One, E-Dancer and Dobre & Jamez — twisting through all the canyons and mud caves and beyond. The sounds of the Juan Atkins Re-mix of Heavenly drifting through those hallowed canyons.
BanduluCornerstoneBlanco Y Negro
High desert mystics and the sound of Bandulu pulsing in the twilight, deep roots vibrations like loa hieroglyphics projected onto the night sky, Slam's Visions shimmying out into the night and the spectral presence of one Dot Allison felt in the air. Rhythm Of Rhythim's Icon Montage Mix can still be heard echoing over the sands and into the tranquility of The Well Of 8 Echoes, where Kao-Tic Harmony dwells.
Rhythim Is RhythimIcon/Kao-Tic HarmonyTransmat
And then into the city itself, where somewhere in the dusk neon begins to glow its firelight in a wavelength dawn. It glows and it grows, a grid stretching at right angles in every direction, shooting into the darkness and from somewhere the sound of bass starts to build deep within...
Picking up where we last left off, it was January of 2006. I found myself back in the Heights — living with my brother in a spot off El Cajon Blvd. — after a year spent living between Hillcrest and Balboa Park. The neighborhood was my kind of place, with a varied working class population crammed into a timeworn infrastructure that pre-dates the second world war. There was a public library a few blocks away and an excellent bar down the street called Shamrock's that played a selection of vintage rock (of the San Francisco variety) or block rocking hip hop and r&b, depending on the night.1 As Lamont Dozier might say, I was going back to my roots.
ForrrceKeep On Dancin'West End
A couple of synchronous events had occurred just before the move that colored the next year or so. For one, I discovered Woebot's blog by way of his epochal list of The 100 Greatest Records Ever (via a timely link from Blissblog2), which — more than any list I've ever found — seemed to align with my own musical priorities.3 It was uncanny! In truth, I'd only heard about half the records in the list, many of which were among my own favorites, and I'd heard of maybe another 30%; the rest represented a new frontier. It quickly became clear that most of them would be right up my alley, and it was time to get hunting.
Edu LoboMissa BreveOdeon
There were loads of cool revelations, like how often our favorite records by key artists overlapped: Kraftwerk's Computer World, Herbie Hancock's Sextant, The Velvet Underground's self-titled record, Neu! '75, Rhythim Is Rhythim's The Beginning and Captain Beefheart's Safe As Milk.4 His list also tuned me into the music of Scott Walker, Virgo, Edu Lobo, Brigitte Fontaine and Allen Toussaint, sounds that would come to mean the world to me. This isn't even taking into account the writing itself, which always came off witty and warm, coloring even his most esoteric excursions into the avant garde with a down-to-earth flavor. Without a doubt, discovering Woebot's scurrilous activities in sound remains one of the key moments in my musical life.
SA-RA Creative PartnersSet-Ups & JustificationsGetting Out Our Dreams
The other event that went down toward the end of my time at the 1808 was the near-simultaneous appearance of SA-RA and Hot Chip on the pop music landscape: two crews that were so very tailored to my tastes that it was almost comical. There's a piece I've been working up centered around their appearance (in light of the recent Hot Chip show), but for now suffice it to say came along at just the right time for where I was at in 2005.
MoodymannBlack MahoganiPeacefrog
Moodymann's recent Black Mahogani LP was fast overtaking Silentintroduction as my favorite record of his, and I'd been diving deeper into disco and garage than I'd ever been able to before. The output of labels like West End and Easy Street were in constant rotation, along with some other things that I'd been turned onto by one Kenny Dixon Jr.5 There were loads of greet electro-boogie records to be found for pennies (an ongoing obsession), things like Ray Parker Jr.'s Woman Out Of Control and One Way's Who's Foolin' Who.6SA-RA dropping at this point only served to bring my various obsessions into focus.
Grand Funk RailroadLive AlbumCapitol
Shamrock's had tuned me into a whole bunch of hip hop and r&b around this time, along with a number or choice rock selections. This the era when Comets On Fire dropped their masterstroke, Avatar, sending me into the past digging up a bunch of storied Head Heritage material like Pentagram, the first three Blue Öyster Cult LPs and early Grand Funk Railroad.7 Augmenting old favorites like the Groundhogs, MC5 and Blue Cheer (not to mention Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Van Halen, of which my brother was a huge fan), it provided the soundtrack to that summer.
The ByrdsDr. Byrds & Mr. HydeColumbia
Barney Hoskyns' Hotel California had just come out around this time, illuminating the context around the Laurel Canyon scene in L.A. (something I was a bit thin on). Nearly everything I already knew I'd found out by simply following the various lines of flight from The Byrds' orbit. Things like Gene Clark's solo records, The Flying Burrito Bros and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Which then connects to Buffalo Springfield and Neil Young/Crazy Horse, not to mention of the early solo albums by David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. That's how it works, this music thing, you go from node to node. Hotel California simply fleshed it all out, and provided the impetus to dig a little deeper.
John David SoutherBlack RoseAsylum
All of which sets the stage for the second era of Radio AG, a period stretching from the dawn of 2006 to the close of 2007. I finally had a proper setup for my decks again (I'd had them laid out on the floor at the 1808). The mixes from 2006 were all coming to terms with the above tributaries, threading them into a matrix of groove-based music and taking the intended audience just a little deeper into the realm. There's that one mix where I played out the entirety of Halleluwah because it seemed like the right thing to do. The lions share of the year's mixes were from the summertime, and it shows. Lot's of high desert action, dry and dusty.
Theo ParrishFirst FloorPeacefrog
2007 was really the sea change. The winter mix was the first where I was really able to run wild with a consistent atmosphere, opening with Asmus Tietchens and closing with When The Levee Breaks. Everything had an glacial cast to it, from an unreleased Kelis tune to late-period Gentle Giant and early Simple Minds (a perennial favorite), it came on like an icy gust of wind. The next few mixes got deeper and deeper into beats, which is something I'd always meant to do. Firm favorites like Drexciya, Scan 7 and Theo Parrish all got a well-deserved look in. The table was finally set.
Various Artists Minicomp 001Sneakmove
At the end of the year, G.B. loaned me a stack of records with the stated mission to make a mix out of them. The result was Episode 012. It was a great experience, working with a bunch of records I'd never heard before (I was only familiar with something like five of them), and on the whole pleasantly disorienting (like one imagines deep sea diving to be). Especially eye-opening were the SneakmoveMinicomps and the records on Bully, which were great breakbeat-driven slabs of noise seemingly built atop live drums.8
Radio AGEpisode 012
The uniting thread throughout was a sort of post-rock, post-everything even, selection of sounds. There were beats that seemed to blur the lines between IDM and abstract hip hop, like the remix of Boom Bip by Boards Of Canada. There was James Figurine's cover of Other 99 (an old Big Audio Dynamite song that became the name of my original blog back in 2003) along with a G.B. original. It was a fascinating realm to spend some time in, resulting in the second true winter mix. Coming at the close of 2007, it's also the perfect way to close out the second chapter of the Radio AG saga.
Whereas the canonical picks at the time would have looked something like this: KraftwerkTrans-Europe Express, Herbie HancockMaiden Voyage or Head Hunters, The Velvet Underground & Nico, Neu!'s debut, Rhythim Is RhythimNude Photo and Captain BeefheartTrout Mask Replica.
Take for instance his DEMF set (available on Groovetech), where he opened with Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson's We Almost Lost Detroit before running through Curtis Mayfield and William DeVaughn chestnuts, ultimately settling into a boogie groove with The Brides Of Funkenstein and André Cymone.
I'd been seeking out this one for ages. It turned up on the floor of some indie rock shop for 50 cents and was the only record I bought that day. Cutie Pie was one of my key jams circa '93 that for whatever reason was in heavy rotation along with The Isley Brothers' Between The Sheets and Kleeer's Tonight on Jammin' Z90. I'd taped them all off the radio, along with Ice Cube's It Was A Good Day, Duice's Dazzey Duks and the Geto Boys' Six Feet Deep, on what was the first tape I ever made.
I'd actually bought a couple of their later records way back in the day based on their name alone, and Snakes and I had sampled some material for some of our earlier beats (see G-Street, for one).
