“Passport” broadcast from 12.17.07
with special guest Victor Axelrod aka TICKLAH

“Passport” broadcast from 01.07.08
with special guest Marcos Garcia aka Chico of CHICO MANN

“Passport” broadcast from 01.14.08
BEST of 2007! (all new releases)

“Passport” broadcast from 01.21.08
nothing special here, just good old Passport funkiness…

Playing catch up on the radio show podcast tip. I know some of you are still too lazy to click your way over to WNYU.org, so I’m doing the work for you. However, if you want to get the complete playlists, you’re gonna have to search through the playlists calender over there.

Been really lucky with the guests lately. Two members of Antibalas who have their own kickass projects that their working on these days. You should already be familiar with their music if you’re a regular reader here, but now you get a chance to glimpse inside their highly creative minds. Who woulda thunk, that two of the world’s heaviest Afrobeat players list “Off The Wall” and Lisa Lisa as some of their biggest musical influences?!?

Specks Williams: We Gave the Drummer Some
From 7″ (Jax, 196?)

Little Hooks w/ Ray Nato and the Kings: Give the Drummer Some More
From 7″ (United Artists, 1972)

Nothing too elaborate here – I picked up this Specks Williams 45 recently and automatically thought of the Little Hooks song; thought the two made sense to pair together. As it turns out, there’s an interesting coincidence b/t the two, insofar as Baltimore’s Little Hooks w/ Ray Nato and the Kings were first signed, back in the 1950s, to the Jax imprint, same label as Newark’s Specks Williams put his single out on. The Little Hooks song, however, came out on the Hollywood label, Enjay before getting picked up for wider distro by United Artists.

Of the two, I’m actually more partial to the Williams single, 1) it has the better drum break and 2) I like how it opens loud but then slides into a slick little guitar jazz number; not what you’d quite expect from it. “Give the Drummer Some More” wins for the better intro though, no question.

Charles Bradley: The World (Is Going Up In Flames)
From 7″ (Dunham, 2007)

Anthony Hamilton : Do You Feel Me
From American Gangster Soundtrack (Def Jam, 2007)

Jay-Z: 99 Problems (Royal Edit)
From Armed Snobbery (2007)

Look…I know that it already seems like I’m on Daptone’s payroll or something but frankly they’re just in an amazingly productive period right now and alas, most of it is great so the more good sh– they put out, the more likely I will be to write about it. And look at it this way: this post is Crackhouse free!

The Charles Bradley is one of the new 45s on the Dunham subsidiary (you’ll recall that excellent Menahan Street Band single was another one) and this copy of the 45 was given to me at the Sharon Jones show in L.A. by the guy who wrote it. Maybe that biases my opinion but *whistle* this single is easily one the best things I’ve heard from the Daptone’s camp yet. Just a beautiful, powerful song and personally, I like Bradley better on his ballads than doing the uptempo funk swang.

A Soul Sides reader put me up on the Anthony Hamilton – the Dap-Kings are backing him here on this cut off the American Gangster soundtrack (the Jay-Z free version, dig me?). Definitely a Memphis vibe on this one, especially infusing the song with a Hi Records flavor. I like that slow thump and Sunday organ sermonizing. (It’s also a better tune than the more JB-esque Hamilton song off the soundtrack).

Ok – Jay-Z IS back on this last cut; it’s a remix by the “Prince of Ballard” who runs the Armed Snobbery blog. After hearing the 50 Cent meets Sharon Jones mash-up, he sent me a few tracks in a similar fashion. You can peep the whole spread of his “Royal Edits” here. Out of the batch, I dug this and the Eazy E the best but his “99 Problems” edit is the better produced between the two: he fits Jay’s verses with the Dap-Kings instrumental track impressively well. Peep how those horns drop in when Jay-Z asks for the “hit”.

Brownout: Laredo 77 + Barretta
From Homenaje (Freestyle, 2008)

I’ve recently been enjoying the sounds of Brownout, a Latin funk outfit out of Austin, Texas. They’ve been around for a minute in the form of Grupo Fantasma except here, they’re strictly instrumental. What I like about these guys is not only that they have their chops down but rather than following a strict revivalist route, their sound has a clear Latin influence but isn’t holden to simply trying to sound like it’s East Harlem 1968 again.

There’s an impressive diversity of styles on the album and the two cuts I pulled out above can’t do it proper justice. “Laredo 77” reminds me a lot of the Calbido’s Three (who I really should get around to blogging about one of these days…note to self). Super laidback and smooth Latin-flavored soul-jazz.

“Barretta” goes in the other direction: dark, funky. with a slick kick and thump. I may very well have to play this out at my next gig (heck, I’m tempted to spin out half the album, just to see how it sounds loud).

Here’s the extra treat for Los Angelinos: Brownout is playing two shows, starting tomorrow night:

Thursday at The Root Down

Friday at Soul Sessions

These guys ain’t local so use the opportunity to catch them at least once while they’re out here!

More info:
Brownout on MySpace

Oh yeah, one last thing: I’m forever indebted to Brownout for putting this video on their myspace page. Now I can see how the boogaloo is danced, by JB himself!

Speaking of gigs, Murphy’s Law and myself will be back at the Short Stop next Thursday, Jan 31. Hopefully, this will turn into something regular there. More info on this later.

Yamasuki: Yama Yama, Kono Samurai, Yamasuki, Yokomo and Aieda
Taken from the album Le Monde Fabuleux des Yamasuki on Biram (1970)

This post stands as a warning to the fledgeling record head, a couple hundred LP’s into the game and feeling pretty good about himself and his collection of sample-heavy CTI dollar-bin’ers and lesser known funk-rock gems on Westbound and Cotillion… You don’t know how far the rabbit hole goes.

Hear me loud and clear on this one, friends: THE DEEPER YOU GET, THE DEEPER THE MUSIC GETS. There is more ill music out there than you and I can wrap our sorry little heads around and we’re suckers to think otherwise.

I’ll put it another way… the more stones you turn, the rockier the underbelly. Take for example

Yamasuki!

I have very little doubt that 90-some percent of the non-Japanese, non-LSD-loving populace that might lay ears on this record would be entirely perplexed by it. Even hate it. “What,” they might ask, “Could have possessed somebody to combine twangy Morricone-esque guitars with Axelrod beats and Far Eastern choral arrangements?” And they would be right to ask the question.

But the answer, simply, for now and for always, is Yamasuki. Yamasuki. Yamasuki.

I will further endorse this record by saying that the five tracks posted here could have been arbitrarily selected. The whole album is start to finish sonic mayhem that gets better with each go-round. Not for the weak of heart, to be sure, but a record of such originality and–dare I say–grace, that if the first hundred listens don’t make sense, you’d better hope that the hundred-and-first does because Yamasuki is like that patronizing dog in Duck Hunt: they always get the last laugh.

You’re either with ’em or against ’em, friends… You know where I stand.

Yara Da Silva: Se Kero Kantar

Ziqo: Cerveja

Dj Africano: ???

Unknown Artist: ???

All tracks taken from streetside bootlegs, Maputo, Mozambique (2007)

As promised, a few more Mozambican club jams gleaned from my travels. These selections span everything from Ms. Da Silva (who strikes me as Mozambique’s answer to Missy Eliot), American-style radio R&B and house-y type ish, to the contemporary flavors of marabenta, where, if you can avoid cringing at the floating synths utilized on “Cerveja”, I think you’ll be gratified with some pretty sweet crooning.

Mind you, Mozambique has an incredibly rich and variegated musical history and these selections only hint at the contemporary musical climate there. But if M.I.A. is any indication of taste-making, her use of Mozambican rapper African Boy on Kala, should intimate what I’m getting at here: clubs in Maputo are going off.

I wish I had more of the older stuff to sink my teeth into (in particular, I heard some tracks on the radio by a guy named David Abilio that were off the chains, but I couldn’t find anything else by or about him), but we’ll just have to live with what we’ve got.

PS. How about that flag? She’s the only one in the world with an AK featured on it… Not a bad piece of flag trivia.