Folks know that “Blind Alley” is one of my all-time favorite breaks.1 Just wanted to say that Altered Tapes does a killer little edit, apparently by remixing the original multi-track stems with a little BDK thrown in for good measure. In fact, it might be the very first example of how I learned what a … Continue reading BLIND ALLEY – ALTERED TAPES REMIX
Remember that “Blind Alley” challenge I put to folks about a few weeks back? Here is a running tally of our entries: First was an entry from TBird of TBird and the Breaks. TBird: Blind Alley Flip Then came a flip from 2 Mello: 2 Mello: Blind Alley Flip First off, I like how both … Continue reading BLIND ALLEY: THE FLIPS
Given that we’ve been talking about the various flips of “Blind Alley,” we figured: why not see what other creative steps people can take to work with this? Here’s the original stereo version of the song: The Emotions: Blind Alley For beatmakers out there: what can you do with it that hasn’t already been done? … Continue reading THE “BLIND ALLEY” CHALLENGE
In Part One, Matthew Africa and I broke down The Emotions’ “Blind Alley” based on its production and arrangement. For Part Two, we look at how it’s been used as a sample source. (My comments are in plain text, Africa’s are in italics). In general when producers categorize samples, they often break them down into … Continue reading BREAKING DOWN “BLIND ALLEY” PART TWO
The Emotions’ “Blind Alley” is one of my favorite Stax/Volt songs of all time and it’s been nearly eight years since I’ve written about it. I’ve been meaning to revisit it and do up something more elaborate after seeing how it got reissued in that Never To Be Forgotten boxset I just wrote about. It’s … Continue reading BREAKING DOWN “BLIND ALLEY” PART 1
Five years ago, I was trained in a digital humanities platform known as Scalar. Among the things you can do with it is to annotate media files so that the annotations effectively pop-up during the playback. I thought this was an incredibly cool tool and at the time, I used it to create three “breakdown” … Continue reading A RETURN TO SOUL SIDES / SLICED
Large Professor: Listen (Blast Off) (Geffen, 1996, 12″) Junket’s Robbie Ettelson has part of the story behind what the hell happened to Large Pro’s solo LP but all I know is that folks were hype in ’96 at the idea that LP was about to drop The LP. As far as teaser 12″s go, this … Continue reading LARGE PROFESSOR: WHO REMAINS CHECKING
As I learned from Michael Gonzales, March 8 is the 20th anniv. of Gang Starr’s third album, Hard to Earn. (Obligatory “20 years already?” lament) I always felt I was in a minority of fans for whom Hard to Earn is our favorite GS album. It always seemed perpetually stuck outside the top 3 (though … Continue reading HARD AS HELL
Never To Be Forgotten: The Flip Side Of Stax 1968 – 1974 Light in the Attic created this 7″ reissue set for Record Store Day and it’s a very cool way to 1) pay tribute to one of the greatest labels in soul history and 2) break true fanatics off with 10 reissued 7″ singles, … Continue reading THE FLIPSIDE OF STAX
Little Milton: Packed Up and Took My MindFrom Stax: The Soul of Hip-Hop (Stax, 2009) Over the last couple of years, I’ve noticed that Stax Records has been finding new ways to package their back catalog. For example, there’s the Soulsville Sings Hitsville comp as well as the Stax Does the Beatles album. The most … Continue reading STACKS OF STAX
