CRUSHES BONES, SPLITS SKULLS, BLASTS BRAINS

Was anybody going to tell me that there's a new bio-flick about Rudy Ray Moore? I just checked Funky 16 Corners and Larry over there re-posted a mix, on the occasion of the movies release. Funky16Corners Meets Dolemite! with all sorts of Grade-A soul and funk and sound bites from Dolemite. After listening to a good chunk of it, I decided to check for a trailer for the movie. Holy shit, Eddie Murphy's is in it, as Moore aka Dolemite.Wesley Snipes and Keegan-Michael Key are in it too. Check the trailers for the the film, Dolemite is My Name, at the link below, but first dig the OG:

I was able to find a few things, some oddballs. Blast 'em in your cubicle, totally fuckin' safe for work.

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Listen:
Rudy Ray Moore - Human Tornado mp3 at Big Money Hustlas 
Rudy Ray Moore - The Sensuous Black Woman mp3 at Tumblr
Rudy Ray Moore - The Sensuous Black Woman Pt 2 mp3 at Tumblr
Dolemite Radio Promo mp3 at Probe is Turning-On the People
The movie:
Dolemite Is My Name at Netflix Four trailers and a few other shorts

BUT DOES SHE HAVE LONG BLACK-A HAIR?

This song is so entirely baddass it deserves a post all by itself. Fucking Kip Tyler. Bringing the menace of Link Wray, the pace of "Rumble", with no distortion to lean on. Rather a Duane Eddy-like opening riff, tough sounding though it is. The vocal is restrained, practically spoken, like a stoned Ricky Nelson. Too sombre to put out the effort. On top of everything else, a filthy sax solo followed by a fully qualified scream. The dial turns right. Don't be soft.

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Listen:
Kip Tyler - She's My Witch mp3 at Hey Cool Kid

IN HER MEDIUM LENGTH BLACK-A HAIR PHASE

I know, I know, you're up to your eyeballs with Halloween type music. Well pull an eyeball out and make room for more, because this particular holiday is not only an excuse to raid thematic standbys, they're also an excuse to force the Sonics on you. You got it, "The Witch", with absolutely no shame. "Psycho" is down there too. Not quite a Halloween song, but close enough. Dig the screams.

What the hell, I've given up trying to find mp3s of the Creepy Creeps, so a video of them doing a cover of "The Witch" will have to suffice. You will note that the singing Creep pays proper respect by preserving Gerry Roslie's diction, as in "she's got long black-a hair". True to cool.

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Listen:
The Sonics - The Witch mp3 at Tinyvices
The Sonics - Psycho mp3 at The Adios Lounge
Video:
The Creepy Creeps - The Witch (live) at YouTube

STAY GOLDEN PONY BOY

I'm not all that into the Black Lips, not enough to know anything about them other than they're from Georgia, use guitars well and don't seem to take themselves very seriousy. I don't even know if they're still together. I don't care. This is listening at its lamest. I've never pulled apart a single song or read a bio. I just click on their stuff when I see it and go about my day. That all said, random sampling over the last ten years or so have shown a trend of not sucking and, more to the point, caring only a fraction of a fuck, if that.

Here's a couple songs I ran into from an old post of someone's Best of 2007 list. A ten year old post still spreading the love. The video clip is of a couple of them being interviewed by a local TV station a few weeks ago here in San Diego. There's only a couple of them and they seem a little too goofy for that early in the morning. They may very well be drunk. The interviewer doesn't seem all that flustered or pissed. She could even be thinking "If these were the Rolling Stones I'd put up with it" because she doesn't know who the fuck the Black Lips are. For all she knows they could be as big as the Stones.

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Listen:
The Black Lips - Hippy Hippy Hurrah mp3 at Central Village
The Black Lips - O Katrina mp3 at Central Village
Video:
The Black Lips on Good Morning San Diego at KUSI

THIS COVER PAYED DIVIDENDS

I just ran into U Roy's "Runaway Girl". It was the first song on the first U Roy album I ever bought, Dread In A Babylon. The very first time I'd ever heard U Roy. I was about twenty years old and was sucked in by the photo on the cover. Excellent marketing. That was decades ago and it's been a favorite ever since. I've posted it before, but the old link is dead, so there's not an ounce of lazy guilt in this corner. The other song below, "Chalice In the Palace" is the second song on the Dread album. It's about smoking out with the Queen (chalice = bong). Yeah, baby.

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Listen:
U Roy - Runaway Girl mp3 at Pixieradio
U Roy - Chalice In the Palace mp3 at Pixieradio

WHAT THE HELL WOULD THIS SMELL LIKE?

I just ran into Sun Ra branded perfume at Norton Records. Ostensibly a promotional tool for a Sun Ra book, I can think of several uses regardless of what it smells like. You could put on your knick knack shelf and just wait until someone notices how cool you are. Or you could put it in the medicine cabinet so everybody thinks you have a girlfriend that has excellent taste in wacked out interplanetary jazz. Or you could use it as a litmus test. Just leave it laying around when you're just starting to date someone. If they see it and ask who Sun Ra is, BAHHHHHH! [game show wrong answer buzzer], save yourself the agony of grooming their musical tastes.  If, on the other hand, they get excited when they see it, jackpot! Get down on one knee, take their hand, look them in the eye and ask them, with all the sincerity that the occasion demands, "Do you have a mint copy of 'Rocket Number Nine'?"

Programing note: I have a friend visiting from out of town, so I may not be updating for a couple days. But, heck, there's 2,970 posts here. Dig around. You may find something you haven't heard before.

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Listen:
Sun Ra - Seen III Took 4 mp3 at Rising Storm 1970 Sun Ra discovers the synthesizer
Sun Ra - Music From the World Tomorrow mp3 at Rock Town Hall 1956
Sun Ra - Angels and Devils at Play mp3 at Rock Town Hall 1956
Sun Ra - There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of) mp3 at Melting Pot
Sun Ra - Rocket Number Nine (streaming) at YouTube Six minute version

IS POST-CUMBIA A THING?

It happens from time to time. When I get bored with music I'm familiar with, I get the hell away from my record collection and nose dive into something I know nothing about. It's usually some sort of international music. Today I went cumbia crazy. Actually started last night. The thing that gets me, as little as I know about it, and in terms of what I've heard (basically other peoples mixes), cumbia's been hot shit a long, long time.

Here's three mixes. Two are downloads, one is streaming. A nice good binge, think of it as a reset button sort of thing.

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Listen:
Cumbia Costeña by DJ Slim Jenkins at Musica Del Alma 15 song mix, go there for the song list.
¡Guepa Caramba! by Alex LaRotta (streaming) at Nerdtorious 17 song mix
Cumbia 78 RPM Mix - Quantic mix mp3 at Paris DJs 28 minute mix, single mp3, awesome

NEVER TOO SOON TO PLAN A PARTY

I don't think that a title has ever grabbed me quite as quickly. I mean, I perked up, noticeably, the instant I read three words. The funny thing is, I'd heard the song before but forgot about it completely. I think it was from an old issue of Waxpoetics, it had to be at least five or ten years ago. Something about how it's been sampled a zillion times, and it has. Listen to it. You may have heard some of the elements, the drums in particular. Just a short list of people who've sampled it includes Eric B & Rakim, N.W.A., Tupac, Wu-Tang Clan, Ice Cube, L.L.Cool J, De La Soul, Nas, and Biggee. And that's just in hip hop. There were plenty of others that dipped. Prince, George Benson, Amy Winehouse, and Stevie Wonder, to name a few. Reason enough to listen to it.

Another reason to listen to it is that, although written in the Nixon era, there aren't any references to Nixon by name. Here we have a song that truly is relevant a second time. Oh, and it's good song, regardless of lyrics, it nice and funky. But you'll want to sing along. You'd better.

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Listen:
The Honey Drippers - Impeach the President (streaming) at YouTube
Visit:
Impeach the President (song entry) at Wikipedia
Impeach the President at Who Sampled Clips of songs that sampled it.

SQUEEZE IN THERE GUYS. CLOSER. CLOSER...

Okay, I ran across this surf mix. The first song is Dick Dale's "Let's Go Trippin'" and I've heard that one a million times, so I skipped ahead, right to the end of the song, then heard the beginning of the second song, "Surf Rider" by the Lively Ones.  It was good to hear again. In just the first few bars, I thought about how their Surf City LP used to be in just about every thrift store in town, and they were always kind of a second tier surf band. You didn't go looking for their records, you just kept running into them for practically nothing. You had to buy. But they never really got a lot of attention, not until they appeared in the soundtrack of Pulp Fiction. They've probably got more attention from that then they had during their entire recording career.

So, that's what I thought after hearing just a few bars of "Surf Rider". I can't go through a fifty song mix worth of commentary in this mood, so I'm cutting out. But dig the mix. There's a lot of classics, the Belairs, the Astronauts, Eddie and the Showmen, the Sentinals, the Pyramids and a bunch that you probably don't know. "Mr. Moto" is there. "Baja", "Penetration". Beats what you got.

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Listen:
The Lively Ones - Surf Rider mp3 at The California Girls
Mix:
Surfin' Hangover - 50 song mix mp3 at Internet Archive
Surfin' Hangover - Song list and streaming mix

RISE OF THE TURTLENECKED STONERS

I don't know, am I supposed to hate this? It seems like the sort of music that some chump with sideburns and a sports car would play in a tender moment with his would be lady. The sort of guy who thought he was counterculture because he read, actually read, Playboy. A Mort Sahl man.

Now would be a good time to remind you that Lysergic Funk is a bad ass place to find oddball funk, soul and shit like this. There really is a lot of good stuff over there. I just picked this one because it's almost comical in its laidbackness, both in song selection and execution.

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Listen:
Gabor Szabo - Stormy mp3 at Internet Archive
Gabor Szabo - Stormy (streaming) at Lysergic Funk

DEFERRING TO DEBBIE D.

You never know what you'll find digging through old posts. Wander and you will occasionally hit pay-dirt. Sometimes it will be click after click. Sometimes it will be the first random click of the day, and that's what happened here. Just a chance click on a post from 2010 (!) at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban found a great mix by the always reliable Debbie D. She's not even posting there or at Beware of the Blog anymore, but I knew from years past that, with her name attached to it, there's going to be some good shit. (How can you go wrong knowing that her favorite band is the Oblivians?)

So this mix was ostensibly for New Years Eve, but being that there is no running holiday theme the intent was likely to free up the hosts so they could guzzle more champagne. So, yeah, good for year round listening, a great mix, varied in styles and eras. You get the familiar (Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley, Aretha, the Shangri-las) and the insanely obscure (Parting Gifts, Los Sirex, the Unrelated Segments) in all sorts of styles (first album era Modern Lovers and Charlie Rich in the same mix!). Twenty seven cuts and a few sound bites in a post that you never would have run across, put together by a woman with excellent taste. I sure do miss Debbie D.

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Listen:
Midnight Blues -  27 song mix at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban Individual mp3s in a zip.

HONK AND GRIND, SPILL YOUR HAMMS

A couple more here from Big Jay McNeely, one of the finest honkers to ever pick up a saxophone. There are more technically proficient sax players, more innovative and so forth, but McNeely just flat out wailed. Check out the songs on this post for some examples of that. He also excelled at strip tease type instrumentals. Here's a couple of them and surprisingly "Strip Tease Swing" isn't even the best of the two. Though I've only heard a fraction of McNeely's output, I can't imagine anything surpassing his cover of "Night Train" for backing the bump and grind. Amazing that it was recorded in 1984, right about when metal invaded the strip clubs (as I've been told...). What a damn trouper, keeping that tassle twirlin' torch lit. Fuck that "Cherry Pie" shit.

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Listen:
Big Jay McNeely - Strip Tease Swing mp3 at Internet Archive
Big Jay McNeely - Night Train mp3 at Internet Archive
Big Jay McNeely - Four more songs on this old post. This is the crazy shit.

YO SAINT PETER, BEWARE!

Here's a quick evolution of a young man's musical taste: The radio brought Cream. Cream brought Ginger Baker. Ginger Baker brought Africa. Young man is duly mindfucked and has to re-access what he knows as music. True story, happened to me. Baker was my first link to non-Western music. Up to that point it was pop, blues and rock 'n' roll. After Cream split up, Baker high-tailed it to Africa to go to the source. Back then, to most people the mission must have seemed quixotic. The result was an LP by Fela Live with Ginger Baker and Baker's own, Stratavarious (which has Fela on keyboards). So, there's a high school aged me, who picked up the latter expecting a bombastic Cream-like LP that just featured more drums. When I put it on, I thought "What the hell is this?" It took years for me to really appreciate what had been done. During the interim, it was a weird album with one eight minute drum orgy on side two.

You've probably heard that Ginger Baker died this morning. That is a huge loss. He was one of the all-time greats, not just among his peers in rock 'n' roll, but among all drummers. Afro beat, jazz, blues, you name it. Because most would know his work with Cream, here's some lesser known stuff. The first one, "Wade in the Water" is early, mid-sixties, when he was with the Graham Bond Organization. The chops are already there, very there. The second is from the Fela LP, the third is the eight minute drum orgy mentioned above, "Blood Brothers" which is basically two drummers, Baker and Ghanaian drummer Guy Warren, playing an eight minute solo in sync. You'll see why that was a draw for a kid that knew nothing about the Afro-beat which permeates the rest of the album. (There's a link to a site with the whole LP in individual mp3s down there as well). The last is from Why, his last LP from 2014, with just him, a bassist and a sax player. For a trio, while sparse, there's a whole lotta shit going on. Considering it's his last LP, it's interesting to note that the sax player includes licks from "Wade in the Water", a song on the first LP Baker played on.

The first video linked below is Baker jamming in Africa, roughly 1971. The second video is him playing along side Tony Allen at a tribute concert for Fela, in 2013. It's cool to see the two masters, who had known each other for close to forty years, checking each other out while they're playing. The last video is the complete documentary Beware of Mr Baker, which you should check out right away because it's always getting yanked from YouTube.

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Listen:
Graham Bond Organization - Wade in the Water mp3 at The Rising Storm
Ginger Baker with Fela - Tiwa mp3 at Likembe
Ginger Baker and Guy Warren - Blood Brothers mp3 at Likembe
Ginger Baker - Why? (streaming) at YouTube
The Full LP: 
Ginger Baker - Strativarious LP at Likembe Eleven cuts, individual mp3s or a single zip
Video:
Ginger Baker jams with Afro-Rock artistes (& Joni Haastrup) at YouTube
Ginger Baker and Tony Allen - Egbe Mi O at YouTube With Dele Sosimi's Afrobeat Orchestra, London 2013
Beware of Mr. Baker (entire film) at YouTube HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Visit:
Ginger Baker at Drummer World Good profile, lots of Cream stuff
Ginger Baker Official site

KIM SHATTUCK ELEVATED

I just heard today that Kim Shattuck has died. I haven't looked for the details and I'm not going to pretend that I know much about her, only that she was in the Muffs and also in the Pandoras. It made me stop and think about the Muffs, and that I'd seen them at least a half a dozen times at the Casbah, usually there to see the opening band. But they were a reliable good time. That was back when the Casbah was the only "cool" live club, at least with me and my cronies. The thing I remember was that they seemed to act like one of the local bands, saying "hi" to friends, just kind of hanging out, not as if they had some adoring receiving line like some headliners. Of course, that's the impression I have thinking back about the Muffs years later. I could be remembering it all wrong and they were complete assholes. I guess I'll find out when I actually go look at obituaries. I'd rather hold this mood for a while.

Oh course, it's not all about me. There'd be more about her if I actually did some research or even just read an obituary. I just didn't feel like it this time.

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Listen:
The Muffs - Lucky Guy mp3 at Tumblr
The Muffs - Funny Face mp3 at Tumblr
The Muffs - Get Me Out of Here mp3 at Tumblr

DEEP COOL

You all know "Take Five". You had better. I forget the actual statistics but I think I've read that the album that it's on, Dave Brubeck Quartet's Time Out LP, is the first or second best selling jazz LP of all time, neck and neck with Mile Davis's Kind of Blue. Something like that. If you have heard only "Take Five", just grab your keys and get on down to the record store and pick up baby's first jazz record.

I didn't come here to rag. I just ran across "Blue Rondo à la Turk" and went back and checked the old link here. Dead. We can't have that. So here's a new link. And a link to a tour of his former home, a mid-century masterpiece. His kids left it as-is. Smart choice. Though, I'm not the kind of person who would feel comfortable living in that. I would just feel greedy. Too much. I guess I know too many homeless people to identify that home as anything but too much. What is it? "Live simply so that others may simply live"? Hippy shit? You bet it is, but there's some truth to it.

This just happened: I was getting ready to fix dinner (part 2) so I turned on the jazz station to hear something random. "Three to Get Ready" from Time Out was playing. Too weird.

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Listen:
Dave Brubeck - Blue Rondo à la Turk mp3 at Internet Archive
Dave Brubeck Quartet - Take Five mp3 at Time Goes By
Video:
Dave Brubeck Quartet - Blue Rondo à la Turk at YouTube The bass drum makes it.
Visit:
See Inside Jazz Great Dave Brubeck's Groovy Connecticut Home at Town and Country "Groovy"? This headline writer is at the wrong gig.

BETTER THAN BAGGING GROCERIES

The Rumblers aren't a very well known group. I don't think they had anything but a regional hit. They seem like the epitome of a faceless band whose sound you dig, but you don't know anything about them and you don't bother looking for a bio because, hey, they're just a faceless instrumental band whose sound you dig. My younger brother turned me onto them many years ago after he bought something of theirs totally at random, I forget if it was a 45 or LP. The song he pushed was "Boss". Neither of us knew that it had been their biggest regional hit years earlier, somewhere around 1962. None of the members was over 18. What they lacked in age and experience they made up for in just laying down the simplest and most solid shit. Not really surf, just kind of on the cusp. Instead of the reverb soaking, their sound is fuller, kind of menacing at times, and that sax, sometimes jiggle club dirty, enough so to belie the player's age. He was 17 at the time. That's Bob Jones, that's the sax player's name. Could it be more faceless? Bob Jones. Good sax player.

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Listen:
The Rumblers - Boss (streaming) at YouTube
The Rumblers - It's A Gas mp3 at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban
The Rumblers - Night Scene mp3 at Internet Archive
The Rumblers - Here Comes the Bug mp3 at Internet Archive
The Rumblers - That's It mp3 at Internet Archive