TEEGARDEN & VAN WINKLE + SCHOOLHOUSE FUNK: AN EVENING AT HOME GETTIN’ FUNKY



Teegarden and VanWinkle: Can’t Get Enough of Your Love
From An Evening at Home With Teegarden & Van Winkle (Plumm, 1968)

N/A: In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
From Schoolhouse Funk II: Raw Business (Cali-Tex, 2005)

Still cleaning out the sound file closet…we lead with Detroit’s pair of blue-eyed funk/blues/rockers, Teegarden and VanWinkle (I would have thought they were British actually). This is actually a pretty cool, very listenable live album (well, presumably live, you can never tell if they’re just overdubbing the audience post-recording) that has the two vamping up some surprisingly funky tunes, most of them original compositions. It’s VanWinkle on organs and Teegarden on drums – a very spartan band but they have a louder sound that their numbers would suggest. VanWinkle, in particular, is tight on the drums.

That cover of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” comes off Dj Shadow’s sequel to his Schoolhouse Funk series, sub-titled, Raw Business. It’s more school and stage bands for you (all names concealed), all doing funked up original and cover songs (including a surprisingly good cover of Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” This is one of those albums, strictly for the uber-funk nerds (which would be, you know, me) who find little delights in random bits of musical happenstance…such as a high school marching band trying out their own rendition of Iron Butterfly.


By the way, I preview the new Kanye West album here. No sound files though.