People occasionally ask me: “Lord Muck, these entertaining blogposts and home-made mixes are all very well, but can you still rock a party?”
It’s a fair question, and one that will be answered definitively at Brixton’s Dogstar on 11th February when I’ll be joining forces with Mark Limb and Chris Murray to bring some afro-cosmo-balearo-whateverwelike-o vibes to SW4:
Never expected to be saying this on 500MH…but here’s a real treat for Martin Luther King Day: an astoundingly good WBLS Saturday Night Dance Party mix by Merlin Bobb that was broadcast to the people of New York just before the very first MLK day, 20th January 1986 [anorak note: the mix went out on Saturday 18th before the holiday on the Monday].
Luckily for us, someone recorded it and the cassette quickly made its way across the Atlantic to our friends at Beard Science. The original tape had a lot of the usual wear and tear of any well-played family heirloom, but it’s now been lovingly restored and presented here for your listening pleasure.
And what a pleasure. The mix is a perfect marriage between disco and early house (proving conclusively that both these genres are drawn from the same musical well) and sounds like it could have been recorded last week rather than 26 years ago.
The many musical highlights include a raucous edit of Labelle’s What Can You Do For Me? and a less well known MLK speech over the long intro of Creative Source’s version of the ultra-paranoid Who Is He & What Is He To You?. The “I have a dream” speech is of course also represented and Merlin works it to provide a real shivers-down-the-spine moment.
Connoisseurs will also appreciate the deep, resonant “WBLS in New York” station IDs – always a pleasure to hear – and Len Brown filling the Yvonne Mobley role from the rival WRKS/Kiss mix shows. By the way, if anyone has tapes of Len’s Quiet Storm slot (“one of the most delightful programmes on radio”), then please get in touch.
So…a flawless, genuinely emotional mix by an underrated figure on the New York dance scene and a fitting way to celebrate this year’s Martin Luther King Day.
My teenage son has recently got into the Beatles. Nothing wrong with that of course and the Fab Four are certainly an important part of a balanced musical diet. I however am old enough to remember the UK punk era of the mid-late 70′s when the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and similar “dinosaur” acts were suddenly about as fashionable as flared trousers.
At around the same time I started a lifelong love affair with (what was then called) black music: soul, funk, jazz, disco, reggae and the host of micro-genres that followed…so in those formative years the Beatles just never seemed particularly relevant to anything in my musical life. The fact that they were later worshiped by Oasis only helped to further distance me from them.
That said, the influence of Messrs Lennon and McCartney – and to a lesser extent Harrison – runs through popular music like lettering through a stick of seaside rock; meaning that fans of soul, reggae and (especially) jazz will have more than a few Beatles cover versions in their collection.
Which brings us nicely to Jimmy Ponders’ reading of the George-penned classic, While My Guitar Gently Weeps. From the 1974 Cadet LP of the same name, this is a brooding-but-funky outing and the rather abrupt fade-out only leaves us wishing for an extended, freakier version.
I was fully expecting to need some hangover-friendly music this morning, but suprisingly I’ve managed to escape that sorry condition. But just in case you haven’t been so lucky, here’s another instalment in our occasional series: Contemplative-jazz-records-that-mention-Central-Park (see previous one here):
Following on from the Roy Thode Morning Music post, I’ve just been alerted to the fact that Luke Howard (aka Filthy Luka of Horse Meat Disco fame) has got a new sleaze mix on his Soundcloud page. The first one was an absolute classic and I see that he is now up to Volume 6, leaving me with a bit of catching up to do:
All of which reminds me that one of my New Year Resolutions is to finally go to HMD, though perhaps not wearing the type of outfit pictured above…
OK…so it’s not the 12th day of Christmas yet, but frankly I’m ready to move on and get started with 2012. So in the spirit of seasonal closure, here’s my annual Secret Santa mix: a frivolous confection based on some of the tunes I’ve been playing at my unexpectedly-regular gig with the Unplanned team, along with one or two bass-heavy numbers that don’t quite fit that mid-afternoon empty-pub vibe:
01. White Elephant – Sir John
02. Gary Pacific Orchestra – Soft Wind
03. Pointer Sisters – Hypnotized
04. Daniel Sahuleka – Tears for the Stars
05. Brooklyn Dreams – Music, Harmony & Rhythm
06. Ian Wilson – Four In the Morning [Goodking Edit]
07. Hypnotic Brass Ensemble – Brass in Africa
08. Mustafa Ozkent – Zeytinyagi
09. Prince Fatty – Gin and Juice
10. Latisha – I’m every Woman
11. Djavan feat. Mariazinha – Nerici
12. Frente Cumbiero – Pitchito
13. Fredi Michel – Enganami [Broke Remix]
14. Anthem – Black Rose
15. Afrika Hitek – In The Streets
16. Beard Science – Unreleased track
17. Quintus Project – Night Flight [Lexx Remix]
18. Paul Simon – 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover [T2MM Edit]
Let’s kick-off 2012 with a bit of New Year’s magic from the early 1980′s, courtesy of the magnificent Roy Thode (pictured above left, with Ann-Margret and Bobby Viteritti).
There’s probably not much more to say about New York’s legendary palace of gay excess, The Saint, that wasn’t covered in our Jim Burgess post last January, other than perhaps to puzzle over it’s continuing fascination for *cough* straight, middle-aged Yorkshiremen. There’s actually some debate among disco-anaraks as to the exact vintage of this recording – the “official” date is NYE 1980/81, but some say it’s actually from the 81/82 celebrations, which would make it exactly 30 years ago to this very day, so 500MH is tempted to go with the latter scenario.
Musically we are in the Disco sub-genre known as morning music….or sometimes sleaze (though there are purists who can draw distinctions even between these two close bedfellows). All the general listener needs to know is that this is the music that was played at the very end of the night (i.e. in the morning), mid-tempo in pace but off-the-scale in terms of emotional drama. Largely a phenomena of the gay scene, this was a musical world where the likes of Sharon Ridley’s Changin’ (a classic of the genre) could rub shoulders with…er…Cliff Richard.
As usual, thanks go out to some of the old-timers on DJHistory for the help pulling this together, including the almost-complete track listing hidden in the lyrics tab of each file:
As a footnote, Roy was also a participant in one of the odder remix projects of the disco era – along with Larry Levan he reworked C is for Cookie by Sesame Street’s very own Cookie Monster. Perhaps 500MH can dig that out later in 2012…
500MH is taking just enough time-out from the eating / drinking / arguing / sleeping to wish you a fabulous christmas and a wonderful new year…and share the festive musical stylings of Product 97:
One of the many pleasant aspects of running this blog is getting to know some of the artists/DJ’s in what is sometimes referred to as “the scene with no name” (a term that is only slightly catchier than nouveaux-disco-afro-balearic-cosmic-slomo-edits-scene). A good example of this would be a blossoming bromance with the mysterious collective known as Beard Science – intrepid sonic explorers and veterans of five splendid 12″ releases (with, we hear, a sixth one on the way).
Anyway, one of their shadowy number – lets call him JC – got in touch to tell me about an old cassette tape that he recently discovered in the cellar at Beard Towers. Early indications showed it to be a Tony Humphries mix from the mid 80′s, but to be on the safe side he sent it over to the 500MH lab for further forensic analysis.
Well, the results are in and we can say that this is a classic Mastermix Dance Party session from New York’s WRKS-FM (aka Kiss FM 98.7), hosted by the ever-delightful Yvonne Mobley. Aired in 1986 it shows TH cutting up early House records, contemporary soul/funk and the occasional earlier classic. But in addition to the flawless musical selection, Humphries seems to be pushing the limits of what was possible with two turntables in the context of “proper DJing” (as opposed to pure turntablism). Very ocassionally you fear he might have gone too far, but just when it seems it might all fall apart he brings it back with a disco bomb like “Bad Girls” and it all takes off again.
All in all, sublime stuff which really does sound as fresh today as when it first troubled the airwaves 25 years ago. And to think that this (and mixes just like it) went out to the people of New York every week, commercial-free for three-and-a-half hours.
Finally a word about the artwork which Beard Science created especially for 500MH’s presentation of this mix – lovingly hand-drawn and reminiscent of the great Marvel Comics artist…and native New Yorker…Jack Kirby, this truly is the icing on the (Christmas) cake.
So there you have it – 500MH’s yuletide gift especially for you. Enjoy and stay tuned in 2012…
With less than a week to go until the Big Day, I must admit that the festive spirit hasn’t yet infected 500MH to the same extent that it did last December. So to get proceedings started here’s the result of some Internet “research” I recently conducted.
When I learned that contemporary Italo-influenced producer, Brionski, took his early inspiration from the Mixage vinyl mix-albums that were lying around his childhood home, I felt moved to investigate further.
After a few carefully-placed clicks, and some 500MH tidy-up work I found myself listening to a fascinating instalment of this series that ran from 1983 to ’87 on Italy’s Baby Records. Mixed by Massimo Noè and Pino Santapaga, these records contain all you’d expect from an 80′s Eurodance franchise – sublime highs followed by unfathomable lows and all executed with a melodramatic, nay operatic, fervour that would make Puccini blush.
Turning to the example at hand, it was released in 1983 with a Baby Records Catalogue number of BR 56051 (the actual records were all simply titled Mixage). Musically this one ranges from an interesting Euro-medley of Jeopardy and Billie Jean..through the mega-hit Vamos a la Playa…to the Black Lace-esque nonsense of La Bionda’s One for You, One for Me. Add in a seasoning of faux-classical pretension and some basic-but-effective mixing and you’ve got a recipe for Yuletide dancing fun.
So push back the sofa, put this on the virtual gramophone and party like it’s 1983.
