I found this record the other week and bought it 100% because of the insert. It looks like a bunch of revolutionaries except they have keytars. Revolutionaries of 80s synthpop perhaps? Expunging the proletariat through soothing jams? I wanna control THESE means of production, YKWIS???

So aside from looking like the winners of the Motley-est Crew Award, these amazing dudes reveal nothing aside from the record. Wiki and Discogs are sadly silent in their otherwise usually enlightening insights. The amazing thing is on the back of this insert (which has color on it! that must have cost them a pretty penny in 1986), scribbled in pen, is a note that says "for bookings call Danny at XXX". I kind of want to call them and ask them some questions, because the record is amazing in that "where the hell did this come from" sort of way. It's from 86, so I imagine the breakthrough of house has a lot of influence in the music, but then it's also super lo-fi with video-gamey elements, and also kind of latin too. In other words, WTF OMG.

STOP ~ COME ON DANCE AHORA

I found this record several years ago when I went to DC with Lloyd, Andy and Kevin. Those were truly the halcyon days of yore, how verdant green was my valley etc. Andy was DJing this sneaker show or something? In a record store I think? That was the same trip that we made fun of those Magic Johnson I Have AIDS posters in the subway, and that I found out people actually heard the CD Lloyd and I did (The Neverending Party Part 2). Anyways I picked this little number up strictly for the fact that it was made in 1981. It's a nice little italo number with... acoustic guitars and a violin?

What, and also in conclusion, what?

It also has that steady synth bass squiggle budda budda budda thing that I Feel Love, Native Love etc all have, which is never a bad thing.

Azoto ~ Anytime Or Place

*img via Wolfgang's Vault

In case it hasn't already been established by everyone in the world, The B-52's are like the greatest band of all time. They are so fucking cool.

Here's a few reasons why:

*Not only does Fred Schneider reportedly have over 60,000 records, he also has(had?) a kickass radio show on Sirius, which was the first time I heard the Smithereens' Blood & Roses and some other neat songs from the 80s/90s

*EVERY SINGLE video for Planet Claire is punk as fuck, even the new ones where they look like Cruella DeVille melted down into wax and then reconstituted into human form.

*Jarvis Cocker plays them out!

*It is fun to say anything in Fred Schneider's fucking sprechgesang!
"How about! We netflix a MOOOvie!"

*The worked with David Byrne and RuPaul

*Rock Lobster on SNL in 1980!

This is not Harry Potter and the Deathly LOL-lows. I am not JK Rowling.

Here's my favorite B-52's song, it's the 12" mix which has an extended 8 bar opening, unlike the album version which has the volume fade in on the opening.

SO SICK

The B-52's ~ Mesopotamia (12" Edit)

I was doing my Friday ritual of "go to record stores and spend money" when I came across this acetate 10" of Pull Up To The Bumper @ A1. It sounds like complete shit, but it's an alternate mix of it that I'd never heard (much more guiro in the house!).

It is, to use a phrase that has fallen from grace, totally fucking awesome.

Hobbits Records really are amazing creatures, as I have said before. You can learn all that there is to know about their ways in a month, and yet after a hundred years they can still surprise you at a pinch. -Gandalf

I have finally come to terms with the fact that this is the greatest 80s R&B disco jam ever.

The Whispers ~ Rock Steady

also, a pretty good record-cleaning tutorial

I'm on a record burning FRENZY son. Since I don't really buy records anymore I oftentimes forget that I have a shit-ton already and never really go through them, which is dumb because, to quote Ed Harris (himself quoting some American dude) from The Rock:

The tree of liberty your Serato library should be refreshed from time to time by the blood of patriots records you burn from your record library.

So with that in mind, here's 3 records I'm going to put up... STRICKLY FO DA BEATZ.

KRISMA ~ MIAMI
I found this random record at A1 in tha dolla bin. Based on the label alone it looks like it could be a terrible Maserati-esque 12, replete with keytars and 8" collars, but it's actually totally nuts. It's a heavy kind of Liquid Liquid drum track with this weird bassline barely pushing it along and sound FX swooping in whenever they feel like. Is 1982 the new 1977?

JBs ~ ROCK GROOVE MACHINE
Another jam I don't really know much about, other than duh it's a JBs jam from 1979. It sort of chugs along like the Percolator.

ART OF NOISE ~ LEGACY
I've totally done a 180 on AoN recently. Yes, all their 12s are like 8 minutes long, and yes they did a song with Tom Jones and Max Headroom, but whatever dude, it's not like I never wore a Yaga shirt. Anyways this is basically a slowed down version of Legs (itself basically the best song ever), with a lot more little flourishes and elaborations on a theme. Sorta More Beats & Pieces-ish (let's play a game. every time I make a ninja tune reference on my blog you give me a dollar whoops you're broke) but way more atmospheric.

Please Christ nobody put Lil Wayne over this. Ever.

The new video from Rex The Dog is fucking insane town.


*via Helene
*more from the guy who made this here

Maximum smiles times were had last night... big shout out to Rok for dealing with technical difficulties while all 15 minutes of Miss Me Blind played in the background and wires were going every which way. Plus thanks to Mixwell for throwing in a classics and dance set to start the night off correctly. By the time I got on I was already drunko and doing all kinds of bush league mistakes like flipping the line to phono and playing the song from the beginning by accident (FUCK YOU SERATO WHY ON EARTH IS THAT EVEN A FUNCTION) but once I got started I was of course thinking of how many moves it would take me to get to What Makes You Think You're The One (you know, standard operating procedure).

I don't remember what we played last night, except Rok played Janie Jones and I played I'm Too Sexy. This is apparently what happens.

Here's a great hangover day record... enjoy

Gwen Guthrie ~ Padlock EP (Larry Levan mixes)
*via San Pasquale Entertainment

the interweb's least favorite picture:

I heard about this through This American Life. Basically Komar & Melamid are two guys who conducted a survey asking people what kind of paintings they liked, what kind of colors and themes were most appealing to them etc. Then with this information they set out to create the most pleasing image possible. It's kind of awesome, the American one is essentially a big landscape with a lot of blue and George Washington. Their composer friend Dave Soldier then set out with the same premise, except with music, and you can view his music survey here at his site, which asks a series of innocuous questions (what type of instruments do you like/not like, what song tempo do you like etc).

Then he went in to the studio to record the song. The Most Wanted Song, a 5 minute throwaway piece of dentist waiting room muzak, is an inoffensive 80s/90sy production rife with trite lyrics about love, a rock/jazz midtempo rhythm, a totally generic low voiced R&B chick, while some guy with sunglasses and a ponytail plays the synthesizer drums:

Then Dave took the results of the least favorite elements people wanted to hear in a song, which include:

• opera


• country


• rap


• kids singing


• songs about holidays


• songs over 10 minutes


• accordions


• bagpipes

...and recorded what is possibly the most amazing insane piece of music I have ever heard. It's a 22 minute clusterfuck of a female opera singer over a traditional country home on the range rhythm, cutting suddenly into grating children's voices screeching about Halloween, Yom Kippur, Easter and Thanksgiving, going into a rap (in opera voice) while a tuba and bagpipes blare away. I couldn't listen to it in its entirety, but it's definitely worth scrolling through... Nina Hagen and TMBG would be proud.

Sorry posting's been slow this week, I had a shit ton of work fall into my lap out of nowhere. Plus I'm DJing all over the place this weekend. In the meantime, here's a promo I cut for my job:

YT: My Life Would Suck Without You

It's always not so heartwarming when artists clearly try to put out a part 2 to the song that made them famous.

I'm going through my disco records now... taking out all the random $2 disco records I've amassed over the years, when pretty much the only criteria I had was "was it produced in 1981? Yes? I'll buy it!" Here's a random smattering of what I found:

SICKEST. RECORD. EVER.


HEY Don Ray, guess what you're actually totally wrong. Because THIS is the sickest record ever! I sure hope my mind's not pregnant because Cerrone FUCKED MY BRAIN WITHOUT A CONDOM


In case there was any doubt, this is the back:


This is just funny. Fucking Willie Hutch got the glow over here!


Also, Clarence Carter = most underrated music artist of the 20th Century. Even Daniel Johnston got a documentary made about him:

When I was in New Orleans I went to Jim Russell Records, an institution down there. I went with a belly full of duck gumbo and positive vibrations bursting out of my eyes and a credit card in my pocket. I only spent about an hour in there -- there were way tons of records, completely unorganized, in every possible condition. DJ collections, blank reel-to-reels, picture discs, framed 45s of famous local New Orleans funk groups, giant velvet blankets of Elvis, etc.

There was so much crap in here that I basically had to tear myself away. There was also no rhyme or reason to where shit was, and after shopping in NY for so long I found that I was totally warped into looking for disco/house records, even though there was a ton of NOLA funk and soul that I should have been like "hey nice counter lady, tell me all about some stuff I can't get anywhere else." Instead I walked away with a Street Player promo 12 and that Purple Flash italo record for $5 each, an overpriced Merle Haggard record, and a Seeds 7".

Here begins my photo journal! I am basically B+!


More copies of Thriller than I have copies of records with Morrissey on them:

There was also this rad old school book about the size of 7 phonebooks that just listed what it purported was every single piece of vinyl in the history of forever up until the very moment it was published. I did a little background checking. While it did not have "The Banging Rocks On Ground Out of Unidentifiable Angst Blues" by Caveman Sitting Next To Fire, released on Upper Brow Records in 2.5 Million B.C., it did have some other more readily identifiable albums. You're no internet, but your story checks out, giant book!

And of course what record store would be complete without animated bobble head dolls of James Brown and Ray Charles, or a giant wall of Nintendo games for that matter:
DOWNLOAD some NOLA jams!
Ernie K Doe ~ Mother In Law

Zombies ~ You've Really Got A Hold On Me / Bring It On Home (again!)

LISTEN (to some country)!
Townes Van Zandt ~ Dead Flowers
Lefty Frizzell & Shelley West ~ You're The Reason God Made Oklahoma

Best use of Windowlicker EVAR

New trailer for the Watchmen, thankfully omitting the Billy Corgan song with TONS of new footage!


*via Hey Mister

Honest Jon's just reissued a rad 12" of Steel An' Skin on their label... blurb here:

Great, great rewind from Afro-Caribbean London, 1979. The 20th Century Steel Band compounds intricate Afro-Trini rhythms with reggae and dub, funk, disco and soul, not to mention the eco-operatics.

Eco-operatics notwithstanding, the Afro Punk Reggae dub is super dope -- it's an ESG-y proto house jam that vacillates between disco and reggae with dubbed out vocals filtering in, sort of like that TW Funkmasters jam. It got me thinking about that track that JD Twitch released on his 10" which is reportedly a "JD Twitch remix" but is an unaltered handoff of the dub that Honey Bane did on the original record. Actually this is not the first instance of inaccurate "remixing" on the part of Optimo: the version of Memorabilia that was on the mandatory-to-own How to Kill The DJ ep cites it as an edit, but it's pretty much the same version as the import pressing of the original. Ugh, who knows how heavily it's even changed, that Daft Punk remix of Take Me Out was essentially the same song with some scronky squelching acid distortions thrown over it and then the Frenchies went out and cashed their check.

Steel An' Skin ~ Afro Punk Reggae Dub

Honey Bane ~ Guilty Dub
*via Always Searching For Music

Lip dub madness! Featuring CTown from the DIOYY video!

I've posted about the blue-eyed soul lizard lounging of Robert Palmer before, but that was for his super 80s synth monster Didn't Mean To Turn You On. In this post I'm putting up a few more tracks by him. Ignoring the dross of Barack Obamasistible and Addicted To Love (which, if you YT the videos feature the same chicks as the Turn You On vid), Robert Palmer did a lot of weird new wavey genre cross-pollination in the early 80s. In the same way that I totally love Spandau Ballet, so too am I beginning to heart Robert Palmer. Here's 3 jams by dude:

Johnny & Mary
According to Allmusic, the inspiration for Rod Stewarts' Young Turks, itself a jam that Springsteen would later rip off for Dancing In The Dark. From Yorkshire to Jersey!

Some Guys Have All The Luck
Interestingly, another jam that Palmer laid down 3 years before Rod Stewart. Hey Stewart! Come up with your own genius! And while you're at it, snatch your naked-picture-posing jailbait daughter away from the jaws of defeat (ie Tommy Lee, Jude Law, et al)!

Si Chatouillieux
The B-side for Some Guys, this quirky little digital reggae jam features whistling, French lyrics, and what sounds like an automated bubble sound generating apparatus.

ROBERT PALMER PARTY PACK!

Totally rad BBC versions

Joy Division Live @ BBC

The Cure Peel Sessions
*via Italians Do It Better