11/4/08 posted by O.W.

TODAY'S EVENTS AS SUMMED UP IN SONG posted by O.W.

THIS IS JUST WRONG posted by O.W.

I just hope Fontella Bass is getting a nice check off this ad. Otherwise, my opinion of its usage can be summed up thusly.

WORD(LE) UP! posted by O.W.

Right above is Soul Sides's "word cloud," in other words, a visual display of all the words listed in our RSS feed, sized by frequency.

Make your own (just be warned it's a huge time suck).

AND NOW FOR THIS MESSAGE... posted by O.W.

Young Jeezy feat. Nas: My President Is Black
From The Recession (Def Jam, 2008)

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BTW: Congrats to R. Brandt and L. Paulson for winning copies of the Bronx River Parkway CD!

SOUL SIDES ASKS posted by O.W.

So let me turn the tables around and ask a question of the SS massive, especially anyone out there with either/both a carpentry or/and mechanical engineering background:

I want to build a custom record file cabinet...in other words, something designed like a file cabinet that can hold 12" lps: two drawers, vertically stacked, each on rails/casters so they can be pulled out.

I'm quite surprised that I've never seen this anywhere before even though it's not a radical idea. It leads me to wonder if that's because there's some basic engineering problems with load distribution?

Here's the basic (interior) dimensions for each drawer: 13w, 13h, 13l. Each drawer needs to hold up to around 80 records (6lps/inch), which would be around 40 lbs (.5lb/lp). If it'd be possible to increase the length to around 15-16", then each drawer could hold an even 100 LPs (50 lbs).

Any handymen/women out there want to offer their expertise on the feasibility? And if you also happen to be in Los Angeles and would like to sell/barter your skills for designing such a device; let's talk!

Meanwhile, as a thank you for people's indulgence of this query, here's two recently digitized songs in my "party crate" (alas, not one on casters however).

B&G Rhythm: Hibaros
From S/T (Polydor, 1978)

Patucchi: Red Lamp (Blackbeard Edit)
From 12" (Scenario, 2005)

The B&G is a late '70s, Latin-influenced modern soul record which I don't know jack about except that B&G stand for arranger and bassist Donnie Beck and his partner, percussionist Steve Gutierrez while jazzman Wayne Henderson produced the album. As far as I know, it's the only album B&G ever made. I'm feeling "Hibaors" - sounds like something Roy Ayres and/or Ramsey Lewis might have dreamed up together, with some Deodato Brazilian flavor sprinkled in too. Love the use of Rhodes (Bobby Lyle) and the slick groove Gutierrez lays down on the drums, plus the vocal melodies. All this really needed was a breakbeat drum solo to bring it all together at the bridge.

"Red Lamp" was originally by French composer Daniele Patucchi (though the song appears on a Spanish label). The Blackbeard edit is fairly loyal to the original - it strips down the intro and lengthens it and does so again towards the back half, but otherwise, keeps all the elements of the original. I could be crazy, but this song reminds me of the Nite-Liters' "K-Jee." The horn melody is pretty much identical and I suspect Patucchi borrowed from it to lay down the basic melodic riff for the song. Either way, "Red Lamp" smokes on its own (love the handclaps).

ASK SOUL SIDES posted by O.W.

In an effort to improve our site's interactivity...

Ask...anything you've ever wanted to know about [music, records, writing, finding ramen, etc.] but were afraid to.

ANSWERS AFTER THE JUMP...

Q: "I'd like to know where you guys learned what all of the different musical genres and terms mean."

A: Genres are tricky things. Some of them evolve "organically" out of cultural communities in which they were invented - hip-hop or soul for example. But certainly marketing plays a big role in this too: genres are useful to radio stations and record stores and record labels and so they have an investment in perpetuating genres that are neither organic nor make any sense: see "world music."

But as to where one learns it - certainly, if you read music magazines or books, that's one place to pick up a basic vocabulary for different genres. My point above is just to take them with a grain of salt - genres are always subjective categories, open to interpretation and contestation.

Q: "How do you go about reviewing music? What sort of process do you go through up until you review it?"

A: I'm not sure I completely understand the question but I'll take a stab: I don't know if I have a standard way of reviewing a record - a lot of it depends on who I'm writing it for, how much space I have to work with, etc. I'll say this much though: even though I try to listen to a record several times before I write a review, first impressions matter a great deal because it's usually on that first listen that I begin to form different angles - or even single sentences - that I want to write and that gives me the seeds to build a review from. It's not that I'm wed to sticking to those initial ideas but I think there's a natural inclination to letting your most powerful reactions guide you. I'm not like Pauline Kael - who would review movies after seeing them once and only ever once - but definitely, that first impression matters, for better or for worse.

Q: "do you (o-dub) have a desert island top 5 albums?? or does it change from month to month?"

A: As you can see on the right, I've started a basic "Top 5" for songs and albums. That'd be my rotating "desert island 5" though the fact that it's rotating defeats the whole concept of a desert island disc to begin with.

The thing is, there's a difference between "5 albums I think everyone should have" vs "5 albums I'd want to listen to for the rest of my life." I don't know if I could ever definitively commit to a playlist like the latter because, on any given day, I might favor one artist - or even genre - or another. A desert island list would be meaningless in the face of that subjectivity.

Q: "what would be the 5 albums you'd recommend?"

A: Aretha Franklin: I Never Loved a Man
Al Green: I'm Still In Love With You
Public Enemy: It Takes a Nation of Millions
Duke Ellington and John Coltrane: S/T
The Beatles: White Album

Set in stone? No.
Liable to go wrong? No.

Q: "How does the wider grooves of a 12" translate into higher quality sound?"

A: I'm not a sound engineer so I might have this wrong but I'll take an amateur's stab. A stylus picks up audio information encoded in a record groove. The wider the groove, the more information that can be encoded and (I think), the more dynamic the sound range. At the very least, a wider groove = a louder record which is partially why 7" and 12" singles play considerably louder than a 12" LP.

That said, a wider groove does not constitute "higher quality sound" - that's dependent on the recording process rather than the cutting process. It's perfectly possible to have a wide groove and crappy sound.

Q: "which is your favourite year in music? how do you rate current state of things?"

A: I'll work backwards - I don't know how quiet to rate the current state of things. If I think, for example, that music has gone to hell in a hand basket but music's still as popular as it ever has been in society; maybe it's not music that's changed, maybe it's me. It's only natural that as times change, you're less and less likely to stay attached/connected to it because most likely, your tastes won't have changed as dramatically.

As for my favorite year, I don't have an answer for that; I don't think of music in such a specific way. I like the late '60s. I was heavily influenced by popular music in the early '90s but also in the mid-1980s. But it's not like I go around thinking, "damn, I wish I could relive 1993 again!" If I had a favorite era, no doubt, it'd be the second half of the 1960s. I can't say I'm nostalgic for it (since I wasn't born yet) but if I had a time machine...

Q: "What really happened to Warren G? Why did his star fade?"

A: The pop music business, especially hip-hop, is highly competitive and unforgiving. As the cliche goes, you're only as good as your last hit and with someone like Warren G, who tended to be in the shadow of Dre since jump, it doesn't matter how massively popular he might have been back when "Regulate" dropped 14 years ago. I have no doubt that G likely suffered from bad luck, bad timing, shady industry b.s. and whatever else but that's grist for the mill in hip-hop in general. No rapper or producer is promised tomorrow, especially when whatever circumstances align to limit their ability to produce hits. Seriously, when's the last time you can remember a major Warren G song? You'd have to go back to probably 2004 with the 213 album and that's four years old at this point.

Despite its penchant for nostalgia, the hip-hop industry isn't very sentimental. Warren G's faded star is just one of many in that regard.

Q: "More on ramen! What's your current favorite place to get a bowl of ramen?"

A: That's easy to answer: Santouka. If you're in the Bay Area, then it'd be Santa Ramen. I have no real recommendations for NY. I've yet to find a ramen spot there I'm really that blown away by. Definitely not this place though.

Q: "Is there any relationship between the early-80s M.C. TJ Swann and the late-80s, down-with-Biz, singer TJ Swan?"

A: I didn't think so but I checked in someone who is far more knowledgeable on the topic and he said, no, not the same guy. More on the Biz's TJ Swan.

Q: "Not much Hip Hop covered on SS lately. Is that intentional? Or is nothing really moving you enough to post."

A: Definitely not intentional. Definitely influenced by "nothing really moving" me. Part of it too is that there are some really incredible hip-hop blogs out there and Soul Sides isn't trying to top, say Nah Right or Unkut.com. And so I'm happy they're out there, doing the work that, say, 10 years ago, I probably would have been trying to do. Whereas, I think Soul Sides is able, in its own modest way, to help fill a void that I actually think I can contribute something to rather than just being another voice in the crowd.

Also, I tend to post as guided by what I'm adding to my collection and these days, I just am not chasing after that many rap records because either 1) I already own what I need or 2) I can't afford what I want.

But hey, I'll try to knock out a few rap posts. It's not like I mind writing about hip-hop; it's just not where my musical obsessions are running these days.

Q:"I'd love to read more books about Funk & Soul, the history of the music I love so much. Can you give us a list of books worth checking out?"

A: Sure, I'd recommend you start with any of these three:

Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music. Essential reading for anyone interested in classic Southern soul music from the 1960s (not so much on Motown however).

Rob Bowman's Soulsville, U.S.A.. It's an incredible, exhaustive history of Stax/Volt records.

Rickey Vincent's Funk. It's bent towards the idea that P-Funk was the apotheosis of funk music - an idea some may or may not agree with - but it's still one of the few tomes out there that tries to tackle the history of funk in any real way.

Q: "I've enjoyed exploring sites on your excellent blog roll, but am wondering if there are two or three music blogs that you check out religiously? Or ones that you think have slipped under the radar and deserve wider attention?"

Q: "What's a good hip hop blog these days? I mean something along the lines of Cocaine Blunts, that posts mp3's of obscure hip hop artists, say, circa 1983-1993."

A: Some of the more observant folks will note I haven't updated the blogroll in months upon months. And that's largely because I don't have enough time to look at other sites very often. I'd say if there were one site I'd love for Soul Sides to be more like, it'd be Office Naps. It's so sharp, well-written and informative that I consider it a gold-standard but since I like to play things a bit looser, I've never tried to emulate it very closely with the exception of the Pick Six posts which works off a basic, similar concept of grouping multiple songs together with a central theme.

As for great new hip-hop blogs, I'm sure there's about four dozen ones that focus on obscure hip-hop from that era...but I don't know any off the dome. If folks want to contribute in the comments, please do!

Q: "what would you recommend as a few of the strongest r&b/soul albums of the last 10 years or so?"

A: I can't say I've listened to the full breadth of contemporary R&B to give a comprehensive answer but off the top of my head, I'd want these in my jukebox:

D'Angelo: Voodoo

Sade: Lover's Rock

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings: 100 Days, 100 Nights

Justin Timberlake: Justified

Erykah Badu: New Amerykah Pt. 1

Janet Jackson: The Velvet Rope

Aaliyah: I Care 4 U

Lauryn Hill: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

As noted: that's just what I can think of immediately. There probably should be an album by Mariah Carey in there somewhere but I know her singles, not her LPs so much. Same goes for Destiny's Child/Beyonce. Never found a lot of the neo-soul artists like Jill Scott or Angie Stone that compelling beyond a few songs; same goes for Musiq, Anthony Hamilton, John Legend, etc. Seriously though, my tastes in contemporary R&B vs. "vintage" R&B can run quite different so take everything with a grain of salt.

Q: how did you first start gigging? what speakers/amp do you recommend?

I started DJing in the summer of 1993 and did a few parties (most of them disastrous) but I was primarily DJing on the radio for KALX FM in Berkeley, CA. I had a radio show, more or less, continuously from 1994 through 2004.

I started gigging on a regular basis around 2001, with DJ Vinnie Esparza, up in San Francisco. We had a monthly party called Joyride that lasted for a year or so. But until boogaloo[la], that was the only other regular gig I've ever held down. It's not for lack of interest, mostly lack of effort.

As for speakers/amps - can't help you there. I don't have a mobile set-up so I'm always dependent on the equipment at the clubs/bars where I spin. I do use a Rane TTM 56 mixer which is an excellent piece of equipment, well worth the price.

Q: "i have the impression you focus more on the musical aspect than the lyrical side of hiphop is that true? who do you think is at the top of his form the best hiphop lyricist?
can you recite some of your favourite couplets?"

A: I think, in general, I've always been foremost a fan of hip-hop's sonic impact; a song with great lyrics and wack beats will lose my attention faster than the inverse. That's not to say I don't appreciate good lyricism - not at all - but where my ears tune in first is the production.

As for best lyricists, it's a pretty standard list: Rakim and Nas for writing, Chuck D and Ice Cube for passion in delivery, Jay-Z and Lil Wayne for swagger, etc. Ghostface for being Ghost.

In terms of favorite couplets, there's a few that have always stayed with me, including Nas' "NY State of Mind," Inspectah Deck on Gangstarr's "Above the Clouds" and of course, the entirety of "Freaks of the Industry" by Digital Underground. Oakland, holla.

Q: "What ten records would you say are a great foundation for Boogaloo/Latin groove?"

A: First of all, boogaloo was more of a singles phenom than an album one insofar as it was relatively unusual to find an album that was all boogaloo. There were many, to be sure, but a lot of the best boogaloo songs tended to come off albums that had a mix of boogaloo, guaracha, bolero, guaguanco, etc.

As a result, in some ways, compilations are the best place to start since they isolate the individual songs that are worth considering. I'd recommend you look at this.

But in terms of individual albums, I'll give you three to start with.

Joe Cuba: Bang! Bang! Bang!
Pete Rodriguez: I Like It Like That
Joe Bataan: Gypsy Woman.

But since you ask for "foundation" albums, I'd also suggest checking out any of the early to mid 1960s albums by Ray Barretto and Joe Cuba. Pre-boogaloo, you can hear the evolution of the Latin soul sound beginning to happen to their prodigious output from that era. Start with Barretto's "Charanga Moderna" and see if you can find an early '60s compilation of Joe Cuba's Secco output put out by Musidisc called "The Exciting Joe Cuba."

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Q: "I'm a Chinese-American and frequent visitor to your site. I'm curious as to how your love for soul music started. What were your first experiences with it? What drew you to it? Why this genre, and not other genres?

The question is rooted in my own experience, being a first-generation Chinese (I came to the US with my parents when I was 4 years old), and growing up enjoying primarily hip-hop music. Why didn't I grow up enjoying rock, or pop? It's an interesting question, and one I don't really have an answer or even a sounding board for."

I had two primary exposures to soul. The first was growing up with my father who was into oldies stations and so that gave me with my initial exposure to the Motown "greatest hits" catalog as well as other major '60s/'70s crossover R&B stars like Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding. The other main point of entry was hip-hop and more specifically, hip-hop sampling. Because hip-hop was my first big musical love, the more I learned about it, the more it lead be backwards into the musical past and that invariably meant soul and funk. At some point though, my interest in soul between its own thing, detached from any direct connection with hip-hop and I've since continued along that line.

As to the second part of your question - I don't think there's a way to really explain why somethings appeal to you while others do not. I don't think, in this case, race or ethnicity necessarily brings much to bear. I know plenty of Asian Americans who are into rock and pop, I know many who love hip-hop and soul. There's not, per se, a direct correlation except perhaps one of geography - where you grow up, the kind of cultural influences you're likely to experience on the basis of that geography and the demographics of ethnic settlement will make a big difference. Back in the 1980s, when I was growing up in the suburbs, mostly around other Asians and Whites, I was exposed to mostly rock and pop; hip-hop was something I discovered on my own more or less rather than through my friends. But you talk to other people who grew up around Black neighborhoods, usually though not exclusively in urban centers, and they're more likely to have grow up with soul, gospel and hip-hop as the music "in the air" around them.

But all that aside, ultimately, what appeals to you sonically are often qualities that are impossible to rationally explain - what we find pleasure in can't be reduced to science and for me, it's one of those mysteries in life that I'm more than happy to let remain enigmatic.

AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR posted by O.W.

Ed Wong at Sandbox Automatic is a huge reason why Soul Sides exists: back in the day, I need a place to park my websites and he graciously offered me his server and extra bandwidth and from that, Soul Sides was able to become a reality. So I am very, very grateful to Ed for that largesse and I recently sat down with him for a chat about the state of hip-hop retail, the death of vinyl (or perhaps not) and the fact that he's about to auction off a ton of deadstock rap records. All in all, they'll be 1000 put up on eBay (you can see the lists here). There could be some nice gems in the mix - Ed's blessed me over the years, including tracking down stuff like this and this. At the very least, those still needing to finish off their Rawkus collection will no doubt find the records you need.

Hint: if I were you, I'd be looking at this, this and this, for starters. They don't mention this but I'm pretty sure that last one (the Jurassic 5 EP) is the version with the full version of "Concrete Schoolyard" that includes Akil's verse (it had to be chopped from the Interscope version of the EP b/c of sample clearance). Rare, bro.



Here's my informal podcast with Ed where we talk about the threat to vinyl, the challenges in hip-hop retail and how the rap industry only has itself to blame for poor sales (he doesn't blame Souljah Boy though).

GRIP THE GRAIN posted by O.W.

I'm totally derelict for forgetting to post about this but my man Dave aka Moodswing9 started up a rather amazing design-centric blog called Grain Edit. It is to found design ephemera what Soul Sides is to records. Except that his site looks better. And has more consistent content. And has much more eye candy.

And damnit, he's even got music! For real, that Mike 2600 mix has some nice joints thrown in.

But in the meantime, here's some of that eye candy:

HOUSEKEEPING posted by O.W.

1) Summer Songs will launch within a week. Either myself or Greg Tate will kick off the proceedings.

2) Le Blogtheque just released a very cool concept mixtape called "Cadavre Exquis: Across the Continents". The "exquisite corpse" is an artistic process where a sequence of people take turns adding onto an existing work - in this case, songs. It's a simple but creatively powerful idea and one that I'd love to put in effect at some point.
CONTINUE READING...


3) Sasha Frere-Jones writes about everyone's favorite audio aid to hate: Auto-Tuning. I especially like what Sasha says here:

"there is nothing natural about recorded music. Whether the engineer merely tweaks a few bum notes or makes a singer tootle like Robby the Robot, recorded music is still a composite of sounds that may or may not have happened in real time. An effect is always achieved, and not necessarily the one intended. Aren’t some of the most entertaining and fruitful sounds in pop—distortion, whammy bars, scratching—the result of glorious abuse of the tools? At this late date, it’s hard to see how the invisible use of tools could imply an inauthentic product, as if a layer of manipulation were standing between the audience and an unsullied object. In reality, the unsullied object is the Sasquatch of music. Even a purely live recording is a distortion and paraphrasing of an acoustic event."

Also, Sasha undergoes the Auto-Tune process himself in a humorous and enlightening podcast segment on the magazine's website.

4) Todd Inoue put me up on this article in GQ about Arnel Pineda, the Filipino-born singer who used to sing in a Journey cover-band and now LEADS Journey. Incredible story. (Here's another interview, done on the CBS Morning Show. And here's Journey, with Pineda, rockin' "Lights").

5) There have been several important passings of late. As I've often noted, we're entering into an era where many of musical giants will be dying, seemingly daily. R.I.P to:


Jimmy McGriff


Bo Diddley


You all shall be missed.

OUT OF FRAME posted by O.W.

You can find more of these "extending album art" creations at b3ta.com. It's more miss than hit but there are a few I thought were quite clever:

CONTINUE READING...

FRESH AS F--- posted by O.W.

This is all from a kick ass concept for a blog: Record Envelope

Learn Something posted by O.W.

1) Two giants of the funk/soul/hip-hop collecting/producing/mixtapemaking world have joined the ranks of audiobloggers:

Phil The Soulman aka Phill Most Chill is at: That Real Schitt. He's already got old remixes up, plus some choice old school footage.

Next, we have Kon, of Kon and Amir fame, with Playin' 4 Keeps. He's only on his first post, about keyboardist Matt Cassell.

Kon and Phil join other recent hip-hop heavies in the blogging world including Just Blaze and Stretch Armstrong.

2) Speaking of links - I just updated the Soul Sides blogroll.

I'll be the first to admit: I do a terrible job in keeping my links fresh and I realize, part of the problem is that folks send me links and they get buried in the rest of my email. In order to simplify, I created a new email address strictly for links. Apologies to those who sent me links over the last few months but if you don't see your site in the new blogroll, just hit me again and I'll take a look.

Main Black Guys posted by O.W.

eBay is generally filled with a lot of questionable auctions but this one deserves Hall of Shame status on several levels, not the least of which is for the stunningly racist stupidity underlying it.

"We are now certain this is not Marvin Gaye. But we are certain this is a 1970s black singer, actor or music group. The photos are from Hawaii in 1978-1980. If you can identify anyone in these photos please let us know who they are so we can change the description. Once we have identified the main black guys (we think they are the most famous) we can put a realistic price on the photos.

If you look at the photo below showing the LP cover of "Santified Lady" you can see Marvin's nose is sharper and his nostrils are more flaired than our 1978-79 guy. The 1985 LP cover was taken 4-5 years later and as far as we can tell he did not have plastic surgery so we have dismissed marvin as a canidate. If you have any thoughts or ideas we'd love to hear from you.

Circa. 1978-79 ~ at first we thought these were photos of the last days of Marvin Gaye hiding out in Hawaii... with Karen Carpenter? ...and many others. Most of the photographs are taken at an undisclosed Honolulu party house and include a backyard pot garden.This album belonged to a girl named anne, annie or anna. The photos tell a story of fame, sex, booze, drug addiction and broken down cars.

Included are ALL photos relating to the relationship between the white girl and the black guy our possession, at least 70-100 photos showing candid dating, drinking, drugs and bedroom scenes (nothing XXX). The main black guy appears in at least 30 of the photos, Karen Carpenter? is in 10 photos. That might be Tom Burris with Karen (both are dressed in all white) and Honolulu would have been a stopover on their honeymoon trip in Bora Bora. We believe she also did a photo shoot here in 1978 for "Honolulu City Lights".

The main black guy's life is cleary & personally told through these photos. We've distorted or burred the images to preserve integrity of Ebay listing.

THE FINAL BLACK & WHITE PHOTO COLLAGE BELOW IS NOT INCLUDED IN THIS AUCTION. And some of those photos are currently up for sale on Ebay. These are the photos "anne" took while she was at work at the Diamond Head Movie Studio. Most are her posing with the Stars. James Stewart, Angie Dickeson, Valerie Bertinilli, James McCarthur, Dinnie and Marie Osmond, Jack Lord and Paul Williams just to name a few... it gives you an idea of why we thought this could have been Marvin Gaye. Almost every photo in the album is of a TV or Movie legend. ALL of the personal black guy photos are included in the above ebay listing as are all of the person we think might be Karen Carpenter. photos (all of the island touring, at home and partying photos)."

(Seen at: Soulstrut.com)

Read All About It posted by O.W.

1) There's something like a gazillion blogs being created every day. The vast majority are worthless. Then there's Just Blaze's blog. It is whatever lies at the far, far opposite end of worthless, especially with posts like these.

2) Jay Smooth - a legend in three games: radio, blogs and now - vlogs). What's with the cat though?

3) KRS-One is still going after Can't Stop, Won't Stop. I'd like to take some time out to comment on this further but I'm short on time. Suffice to say, KRS actually has some compelling points to make but alas, along with his rigor comes a decent amount of mortis.

4) Everyone's favorite British soul singer (no, the other one. The brunette with bad teeth.) will be discussed today on WYNC's Soundcheck. Myself and Ann Powers will be weighing in. Should be fun.