SUMMER SONGS 2010: BRENDAN IRVINE-BROQUE

Mid Air: Ease Out
From 12″ (Full Scope, 198x)

(Editor’s intro: If you recall, Brendan collaborated with me to produce the updated Digitizing Guide and apart from helping me sell off a few grails, dude is just an all around, frighteningly impressive record hound who knows more at age 23 than I do now as nearly a 38 year old. If he wasn’t such a good guy, I’d probably hate him (though I’m still at least 15 years away from really entering the “bitter old man” stage). Seriously though, keep an eye on him and his Cavern Productions. Big ‘tings on the horizon. –O.W.)

In California, no summer is complete without the requisite road trip between the Bay and LA, zooming down I-5 (or if you’re from Southern California, the 5) without so much as an In-and-Out in sight, switching off the A/C to stop the car from overheating on the grapevine. I have a bad habit of being woefully unprepared with music for such trips, and there are barely any FM radio stations for most of the drive, which has resulted in some truly surreal listening experiences, including two hours of commercial-free Gagaku music, driving through no-mans land questioning reality (road-trip requisite #2 – oddly-timed philosophical discussion).

This year though, I’m coming prepared with music, and the song that captures summer of 2010 for me is an elusive one that I’ve never had a physical copy of – “Ease Out” by Mid-Air. Early 80s funk at its absolute peak, “Ease Out” stays in rotation every summer – for me it’s the song I throw on before heading out the door to go out on a warm summer night, jam while getting down to business on a new project, or blast in the ride going a few too many over the speed limit – summertime should always be a few dBs louder.

There is, to my knowledge, very little info out there about the group – they were from Chicago and there are two pressings (green lettering is original, purple is the remix), and “Ease Out” was their only song that ever saw the light of day. I can only speculate alongside my Sweaterfunk peoples at how massive “Ease Out” must have been in nightclubs of the era, on massive sound systems, and cruise down to Los Angeles with my summertime jam on repeat.