Civil Attack: Crying on the Phone

 

CIVIL ATTACK!!!!!!

 

CRYING ON THE PHONE!!!!!

 

 

HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!!!!

It’s come to my attention…

…that people are still downloading stuff. Quite a lot of people. 

I’ve been busy. 

I’m going to upload some more RIDICULOUSLY HEAVY FUNK MUSIC.

Tommorw. Also spelled ‘tomorrow’.

The Nation Funktasia Writes!

“THANKS FOR SPREADING OUR GROOVENALITY ONLINE!

WISHING U RESPECT PEACE LOVE HAPPINESS BLESSINGS UNITY AND FUNKY FUNKINESS!

oNe

THE NATION FUNKTASIA”

 

 

Oh yeah. Now I all need are Edwin Birdsong, Bennie…

Viva heavy funk music with big snare drums! Viva!

 

Slapbak: Fast Food Funkateers

Coldblooded Slapbak. In your face.

OK. THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT PROPERLY.

Production by Jara Harris for the new school, Bootsy Collins and Larry Blackmon representing recondite dress sense, the whole thing mixed by Susan ‘Paisley Park’ Rogers in 1992. George Clinton just before… his ‘retirement’ and the line “Your face is stuck in neutral and you can’t get it started”. 

Slapbak. Sexay. In a fist fight between this album and the Cloverfield monster my money’s on the heavy funk album. And deleted. This stank and still stinks. Every single track a monster. Syncopation, gated snares and an UNGH or too. UNGH! Also ballads. Melody. And I like a minor key choir.

Whole album. ‘She Never Comes’, ‘If We Were Lovers’, ‘Don’t Order My Heart to Go’. ‘Too Cool’. Worth downloading for that one track alone. ‘Love Story’. Jara Harris sings. 

Please buy their records. Link in the comments. La de dah.

 

 

The Nation Funktasia: In Search of the Last Trump of Funk

“They say I am American. Why won’t they make me President?”

I said I would. And here it is. And playing it again, lord have mercy. Fantastically good (the first seven tunes at any rate…)

Neo-P-Funk from 1991 complete with list of invented slang and a comic in which Prince and George Clinton are deified as intergalactic ambassadors of funk. And this is sensible. And for this album, somewhat fitting. Denzil Foster and Thomas McElroy produced it. What happened to Denzil and Thomas? The world is not very good without them.

Curiously melancholic on occasion. Just heavy on others. But singing! Choirs! Bass guitars! Sad songs! Good songs! This turned into a classic while no-one was watching. And it even looks like they’re about to sort out the President thing at last.

THIS BLOG IS VERY GOOD.

• Intro
• Anti Funky World
• Move Me
• Political Feet
• Planet Earth Thang
• Fuzzy Sunshine
• Coool-Aid Express Card
• I Got Soul
• On a Mission
• Peace, Love, Happiness
• Who’s Making Love (Token Bad Song)
• Pheebie Not Confession

Link in the comments . . . .

Lorenzo Heard of Bomb Squad Writes!

Check the comments below.

The Family Stand: Moon in Scorpio

The rules are I don’t post anything you can buy or download from a Real Shop. And this is as deleted as a mofo.

‘Ghetto Heaven’ this ain’t. When I first heard this I was expecting ‘Ghetto Heaven’ or ‘Twisted’ and instead got heavy metal gospel with a horn section.

OK, that’s not accurate. But as difficult to categorise as ‘Moon in Scorpio’ is, the following remarks are perfectly true:

• On most of the tracks, the guitars are very, very fucking loud.
• The other tracks are preposterously heavy funk.
• Or heartbreaking epic ballads with weird lyrics.
• Sandra St Victor’s voice should have an oil tanker named after it.
• This is probably not for everyone.
• And is therefore recommended very heartily.

Also. This is often political, occasionally in a rather ungenerous fashion. Sometimes the truth’s just uncomfortable and sometimes it’s OK to defend your urge to the critical, especially when the argument’s put with the kind of articulacy and force on display here. Whatever: the honesty and the anger are honest, and expressed absolutely deliberately, and for as long as you’re listening to ‘Never Be’ and ‘Education of Jamie’, for example, you’re drawing diagrams of molotov cocktails. The prospect of revolution’s exciting. This was 1989/1990, and Bush Sr. was in charge. Yes. He was a shit head.

Check ‘Chackra Love’ and ‘Quiet Desperation’. Genius.

Mico Wave: Star Searching

This is a red alert!

I always thought Mico Wave was Prince’s Lovesexy-period guitarist Mico Weaver. Probably not. Funky as a sardine trawler dropped into a tropical rainforest, anyway.

Bootsy-produced Minneapolis joint. Shlamming.

 

The Bomb Squad: Beam Me Up

Link went dead. Re-upped by request.

No. Not that Bomb Squad. 

A bunch of people from… America-land, a.k.a ‘Some far off cosmos’, led by one Lorenzo Heard. The crew of a spacecraft travelling intergalactic-wise with a payload of impossible music (sound familiar?) disembark in Howard Beach, NY, about the time of the race murders. It’s 1988. They’re in the wrong ‘hood. Earth’s not ready for these kind of aliens.

Beam me up. The people of earth are kind of… nuts.

“To sleep, perchance to dream of a day when funk is no longer considered an acquired taste” go the notes on the 12″. I ripped this from the vinyl about six years ago and it’s on AAC at 192, but it uses old school Star Trek samples as percussion sounds so you are not allowed to have a problem.

Slurp. Link in the comments.

Ta Mara and the Seen: Thinking About You

Yes yes yes. I know. If I’m not careful, this is going to be the Jesse Johnson blog. Yes yes. Some more left-field shißer on the way. Promise. Some albums. People seem to prefer albums.

Anyway. The 12″. Produced by Jesse Johnson in 1985. 

If you don’t already know how this is going to sound, you probably won’t download this. If you do, then UNGH GOOD GOD HORNS.

Menace: Doghouse

 

I remember once seeing Menace running around a club in central London with a scarf covering his entire head, asking strangers about the funk. He had a camera. I don’t know what happened to Menace. There’s a story there.

This is in Bootsy’s comeback period. Bootsy’s all over this. So are Maceo Parker, Bernie Worrell, Michael Hampton, Mudbone Cooper… So’s everyone else. Menace was one of the P-Funk Allstars ever-revolving roster of guitar players. The album was produced by Bill Laswell and wasn’t really happening (for everything that is good about Bill Laswell, and there is much that is good about Bill Laswell, he cannot, is not capable, does not know how, has not the faintest rumour of a clue about recording drums) but this is really worth some ears.

Just the one track. The one really, really good track. Boom. This is the mix. 

The Reddings: In My Pants

“I’ve got something for you if want it. It’s right here… IN! MY! PANTS!”

And who are The Reddings?

Why, they’re Otis’ sons. They really are. Although the guy on the left looks like my friend Wale. That’s neither here nor there of course.

Deep Lynn drum machine, P-Funk horns and analaogue synths with evil slapping out of mid-period Cameo. It’s a really good album, actually… some nice ballads and some slick syncopated soul. But this is my favourite. It’s a real monster.

Sue Ann: Fiction

 

Anyone seen my copy of Ta Mara and the Seen’s Blueberry Gossip 12″? It’s in my box somewhere.

Meantime, here’s Sue Anne Carwell. 1988. A bumper year. Jesse Johnson production (Mtume and Robert Brookins did one or two of the other ones.)

But this? Sick, evil and wrong. She does a proper Jesse Johnson impression, complete with singing ‘z’ for ’s’ and going UH! GOOD GOD!

Kevin Bruce Harris and Militia: Self Deception

One bass guitar (Kevin Bruce Harris) and one voice (DK Dyson.)

This went on my ‘Drugs Are Bad!’ playlist, along with ‘Crack Killed Applejack’ and ‘Rocks’ (see below.)

Kevin was an M-BASE acolyte, playing bass on a host of Steve Coleman and Five Elements albums. Played with Cassandra Wilson, too, before she became a diva. When she had some funk.

This is weird on the sly. Blues changes, one man slapping, DK Dyson sounding beautiful, poetic lyrics. Left field.

If you haven’t heard DK Dyson, do the google. If you haven’t heard Steve Coleman… er… go here

He’s got his entire back catalogue up for free download. ‘Sine Die’ is my favourite. Go. Go crazy. Download like a crazy mofo.

Jimmy G and the Tackheads: Federation of Tackheads

“And when they ask you why you don’t go pop say you ain’t a weasel.”

Download this album. If you haven’t heard this album then download it.

‘Clockwork’ reprises the spiritual force of the first Funkadelic albums. ‘All Or Nothing’ is one of the best ballads the Funk Mob ever recorded, right from the days of ‘Poor Willie’ or ‘Ice Melting’. There’s ‘underrated’ and there’s ‘underrated’. This is ‘[insert your own joke here]‘.

A beautiful record, and one of my first vinyl rips. I did it for my five gig iPod. (”What the fuck? You can get FIVE GIGABYTES on THAT?”) That’s how ahead of the curve I was. La de da. Somehow on the way I lost ‘I Want Your Daughter’, which is a shame, because it’s heavy.

George Clinton and Steve Washington do the producing. Garry Shider slams. Blackbyrd McKnight plays guitar. The second album was the Incorporated Thang Band album, which is good too. But not as good as this.

P-Funk in the 1980s was really good. Don’t believe the snypes.

Clockwork
Break My Heart
All Or Nothin'
Lies
Slingshot
I Want Yo Daughter
Family Funk

Axiom Funk: Sacred to the Pain

Before I get back to the vinyl rips next week (I’m in Denmark, a long way from a stylus), here’s a classic. 

I drop a name. Bill Laswell (who was kinda rude to me, but who cares) told me that when this was recorded Eddie Hazel had been sleeping on the floor of Greenpoint Studios in Brooklyn off and on (Laswell also told me he had an entire album of music aggregated to be a new Funkadelic album, but this was nearly ten years ago so I think we can exhale now).

Anyway. During this time Eddie Hazel and Umar bin Hassan of The Last Poets had got quite tight. The latter wrote the poem recorded here as a tribute to Eddie on his death.

Originally a guitar/organ duet with Bernie Worrell, the guitar here is one of the very last things that Eddie Hazel put to tape, certainly from the last sessions of his life. The poem went on top of the solo.

A spectacularly dignified, moving elegy to Eddie H. From the ‘Axiom Funk’ album. Which you ought to buy if you like this.

Normal service to be resumed with a sooness.

Link in the comments.

I’m not making a habit of this. But this is Jak.

I Go Wild. 

Yes I do.

Check the outro. Slamming. Like a large bus driven by a drunk.

I didn’t rip this. I’m going to be in Denmark for a couple of weeks so it’s going to be selected digital posts for short while, worth checking nonetheless. But whoever did rip this is a very good man. 

Voyceboxing: Two Tunes

Potential dork alert.

Before she was officially Meshell Ndegeocello, she was Meshell Lynn Johnson. And before there was a tune called ‘Outside Your Door’ on the ‘Plantation Lullabies’ LP,  ’Meshell Lynn Johnson’ wrote a tune called ‘Talk to Me’ on the only album by Voyceboxing. It’s basically the same song, only with a weird ‘English’ accent on it. Archeologists, twitch your mice and click. This was 1990.

I loved this album before I even knew who Meshell was, though; a really interesting Lenny White production. At the time it sounded like it was recorded in the future. I’ve put in the tune ‘Same Café’ to demonstrate. Still sounds fresh. Bing! I’ve counted three different snare drums on this one track alone.

Comments for the link.

Edwin Birdsong: What It Is

It’s OK. Don’t spend £70 on a copy of ‘What It Is’. Download this vinyl rip instead. The entire LP in two full-fat lossless parts for you to squish.

So I got sick of bad haircuts (see below.) Edwin Birdsong: righteous funkified rhythm and blues from 1971. Rock the fuck out. A classic, weirdly hard to find.

• The Uncle Tom Game
• The Spirit of Do… Do
• My Feather Preaches That God is the Father
• It Ain’t No Fun Being a Welfare Recipient
• When a Newborn Baby is Born The World Gets One More Chance
• Mr Money Man
• Mongoose
• The Old Messiah
• Pretty Brown Skin
• It’s Hard To Move When It’s Your Move
• God’s Home

Da Krash: Trapped In Phases

There are those who haven’t heard Trapped In Phases. This shouldn’t make us angry. Rather, it should make us sad. Jesse Johnson production, unhinged.

Even by Jesse Johnson standards, the snare drum on this enormous.

 

They looked like this. 

But they went on to be Kool Skool. 

This is… sick.

Marc Anthony Thompson: Monkeytime

I was Paul Simon in my dream
Woke up
I was only Bruce Springsteen
My lips were gone, my weenie shrunk
I tried to dance, but I moved like a drunk

Am I jealous?
Oh no no!
Am I infatuated?
Am I a negro?
No, no, no!
I’m doing business in monkeytime.

I looked in my closet at all of my clothes
I thought I saw a shirt with pinstripes
(Oh no, no, no!)
Oh my God, where goes my nose?
And my radio playing some stereotypes

Am I yellow? I don’t know
Oh my sah key lah ke lay
What a fellow, I can grow
Where is my Garfunkel?

I tape the black man, so let me be
South Africa been so good to me
I smile with you on the BTV
But don’t you ever touch my Grammy

Hey!

Mah seh kah yay lie key oh!
What I fellow, I can’t even grow
I got you down but you won’t cry uncle
We don’t need no more Garfunkel

Kick me down, I won’t cry uncle
‘Cos we don’t need no more Garfunkel
You kick me down, I won’t cry uncle
‘Cos we don’t need no more Garfunkel

 
A hilarious, stirring Labi Siffre-esque Cry Freedom!-style peroration from 1989 about… oh, Paul Simon, turning into Bruce Springsteen… but not really. Serious without being serious. A pastiche to rip Paul Simon a new one. And OK, you can’t dance to this, but it’s music from a true maverick. Marc Anthony Thompson went on to be Chocolate Genius. His first two albums are pretty out there.

Link in the comments.

 

Bennie: Let’s Get Married

To celebrate the fact that this blog is now becoming comparatively popular (the comparison being last week) I’m posting the full-fat rip of the entire ‘Let’s Get Married’ EP by Bennie from 1987. As requested. Big old lossless files. Yum. You can squish them yourself.

A man in tights howling over huge snare drums. Speeded-up voices. More libidinous than a lorry load of gibbons unleashed in a Viagra lab.

There’s a fuller description downstairs, along with a cheap AAC rip of the track ‘Let’s Get Married’ if you want to have a little sample first. Suffice to say that this man is so funky it sounds like it actually causes him anguish.

Like Prince, if someone removed the part of your brain that deals with inhibition. 

Lia: Tell Me It’s Not Too Late

For a little while back there, we were actually winning. And we were winning thanks to the likes of Denzil Foster and Thomas McElroy.

Those two helped to jumpstart The New R’n'B (now boring old R’n'B) with En Vogue. They also did The Nation Funktasia album, a neo-P-Funk record infused with a Minneapaloid thing, which was good, and which I have all the 12″s off, and golly they slam, and they might be next on this blog.

They also did loads of other productions that no-one’s heard of, because no-one bought them.

Like Lia’s album. I loved Lia. She had a funny nose, I think, but she was so beautiful my heart jumped a bit when I saw her picture. But mostly my heart jumped because of this monster jam, sort of comparable to one of Jesse Johnson’s less unhinged productions. Heh. Although it’s not the heaviest or weirdest thing on this blog, but… look, if you get a chance, download it. And think how it would have been if Denzil Foster and Thomas McElroy had won. 

Tease: The Note

The hilarious thing about this song is that it’s about suicide HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA (etc.)

Well, yes, it is. But it’s also funny. Look, you’ll just have to hear it.

Kipper Jones was in Tease. Tease were good. There’s a very rare track by Kipper Jones below. That’s ’90s-vintage future funk, with weird synthesisers by Chuckii Booker on it. This is 1986-vintage MInimalist Funk with weird synthesisers by Chuckii Booker on it. Aha! And a minimalist-but-slamming bass line courtesy of some guy in a HORRIBLE suit whose music career finished when Tease broke up. Probably.

Link in the comments.

 

Mr Fiddler: With Respect

Harmonies! Kazoos! Recorded at Paisley Park! 

Not the rarest rare of the rare (rare), but it’s still eighteen years-deleted and pretty hard to find. I think it was actually in print for about thirteen days. But but but. It’s hot. This is worth the download click for ‘Blackout’ alone, which refashions ‘Flashlight’ as a lurid purple slitherer. Speeded up guitars. Wrong synthesisers. You know the coup.

But the singing! Mr Fiddler of course went on to be Joseph ‘Amp’ Fiddler and do gorgeous nu-soul cleverness. Everyone knows how good his voice is. This is him in 1990 while still the P-Funk All Stars keyboard player, and features cameos from the likes of George Clinton, Eddie Hazel, Clip Payne, Blackbyrd McKnight and Michael Hampton. But it’s the harmonies, and the weird synthesisers playing curious licks, and the kazoos that do it.

 

Yes. This album has kazoos on it. That’s how funky it is.

 

So You Wanna Be A Gangster
Cool About It
Blackout
Cat In The Hat
Pay Party
Henpecked
Starvin' Like Marvin
Cutie On Duty
Me And My Girlfriend
I Wanna Hang Out With You

 

Critics: Ben Sidran

Ricky Petersen joined The Time for Ice Cream Castles when Monte Moir left to start his group Centerfold (ooh, I ought to post their album one day- or at least the good bits) preserving the Minneapolis tradition of a white person with a shit haircut on the keyboards. He then got a fractionally less tasteful but more elegant haircut and was drafted into The Family. Which I would love to post, because it’s stupendous and deleted. But Prince has lawyers, and those lawyers have Google. (Hello.) 

Anyway. Turns out that Ricky P was a multi-instrumentalist funk magnet, as his solo album ‘Rich Man’ then made clear. Which, yes, I will have to dig up one of these days. Ouch. It’s good. Or rather, ‘good in parts, specifically when the snare drums are big’ (another Minneapolis tradition.)

This is a hilarious Ricky P production for a Ben Sidran album. You’d think it an undistinguished jazz LP, not Sidran’s best, and then at the end of Side One there’s this… future funk diatribe against critics. Boom. And also OUCH. If anyone needs a superior / larger rip, drop me a line.

Link in the comments.

 

General Caine: Get Down Attack

Before I return to some straight up Minneapolis curiousness, here’s a classic P-Funk gorgon o’fonk posted because it’s in an old rip and I got my first ever comment, so I’m not giving up yet.

Mitch McDowell, RIP, we salute you. 7:47 seconds of bright, horny P-Funk. One of the first records I bought with a significant snare drum. His last albums really make explicit the P-Funk/Minneapolis continuum. Also they are a often malodorous (in a good way.)

Link in the comments.

 

Like this blog?

Leave a comment . . . I’m deciding whether or not the world needs me to rip loads of ridiculously heavy funk music.

Drac: Rocks

 

‘Rocks’ by Drac. Marc ‘Drac’ Hicks. Bass player from Slave. Solo album. 1987. Guitar solos. Snare drum like Victorian workhouse gobbling up orphans.

This, actually, has been re-issued on CD, I see. So if you like this, lovingly-ripped from vinyl, buy the CD and put some money in Marc Hick’s deserving pocket.

Craaaack House!

Gettovetts: Battle Call

Help.



In the 1980s, I swear, we thought this music was going to change the whole world. The rhythm’s a sort of go go shuffle played on dustbins. Rammellzee brings the afro-futurist stream of consciousness. Bootsy provides splankological assistance, Nicky Skopelitis provides the metal, DST’s on the cut, Shockdell brings the proto-Flava Flav incidental backing. I loved this album so, so much when it came out, and played it to death.

This will drop; people like to dance to it. The chorus is enormous. The rip is good.


This link smells.

Kipper Jones: The Enemy

 

Kipper Jones. Formerly of Tease.

Keith Crouch produced this future funk jewel. It’s syncopated to Hades, the synths are all utterly bonkers and it’s funkier than a dead horse in a swimming pool. What more do you need to know? 

This isn’t on any album. It’s on the b-side of ‘Shockwave’, which I could have uploaded happily, but I’m going to rip the CD (’Ordinary Story’) eventually and this is a monster. So here it is. 

I’m a link

The Crypt Jam

…in which the Crypt Keeper from Tales from the Crypt waxes indignant and frightening on top of a GARGANTUAN Minneapolis rhythm, all slap bass breaks, analogue synths and Revolution-era chicken scratch rhythm guitar.

It is basically impossible to do to justice to this rare and totally unhinged monster from 1992. It has to be downloaded to be believed.

It came out on a record label called Big Screen. It was produced by Chuckii Booker. If you listen to it you will probably go to hell.

 Come and get me.

32 Phreeze: Phreeze

Phreeze. Was he ugly?

Oh Jesus, yes. He has a concave face. And a witch’s nose. So ugly that they hid his face on the back cover by having him ‘toss his hair’.

Was this album funky?

Good heavens, yes.

This came out on SOLAR in 1989. It’s the right vintage. Ignore the shit cover: he answers the phone and says ‘What it is?’. He goes ‘LAWD!’, and ‘HUNGH!’ and I think ‘UNNGGH!’. He can’t work out if he wants to be Morris Day or Larry Blackmon. The snare drums are like ocean liners banging together. Really great, sexist, revenge-fuelled or otherwise sleazy Minneapolis-influenced electronic funk. 

• Phreeze
• Makin’ It Without U
• Flesh
• er….

I’ve edited out… er, most of the album, Prince/Time rock rip-offs and ballads that I couldn’t bear to listen to, even for the sake of ripping. You wouldn’t like them. Not even the classic rock ballad ‘U Should Have Told Me (U Liked a Girl)’ Dig these. They’re tremendous.

I am a link.

Cinema: Wrong House

Someone, somewhere, wants to French kiss me now.

Regardless of their marital status, or gender, or whether they check for guys or girls contrary to the social norm, or whether they are in the very perihelion of romantic love with their soul mate, I’m confident that someone somewhere who loves this album has just seen that I have posted ‘Wrong House’ by Cinema and now wants to give me a French kiss.

This album is a classic, of course. Weird electronic funk with lots of lovely synthesisers doing the wrong thing, messed up rhythms, slightly not-right lyrics, sometimes heartbreaking and mostly impossible to sit still too. I remember my brother playing me this when it came out. “It’s the kind of album where they take out a snare drum when the chorus drops”, he said. And the snare drums are very loud. Apart from on the ballads, which are classic minimalist electronic soul music.

It was written and produced by one Craig Holliman, who now runs a studio in Minneapolis. The group did one album; I’ve got a 12″ too with a couple of monster jams on it I’ll upload later. 

This is 1988-vintage Minneapolis on A&M Records. I like music, a lot, and this is one of my favourite albums of all time and ever.

• Put You In My Pocket
• Wrong House
• New Girl Now
• Everybody Get Restless
• Who’s Gonna Tell?
• Cinema 6
• Ribbon Street
• Don’t Scare Me
• Before This Moment Goes By

This links.

Oh. There’s Apple Lossless here.

This is not an audiophile blog. It has heavy funk in it. 

These files have to be downloaded from somewhere and they can’t be too big but they have to sound OK, maybe through a large system. Even though I need a new stylus. Also you might want to convert them to AAC or MP3 to save room. I’m not using FLAC, say, because FLAC is a pain in the arse. If you’re DJing you will use Serato and your iTunes library. If you have an iPod you will use AAC, MP3 or Apple Lossless. These aren’t audiophile rips. Everyone has iTunes. Converting FLAC files is a waste of time. So say all of us. 

Also, you will see that the cover images are not scans, but have been taken with my camera phone, and some are actually very shit. This is because this is not an audiophile’s blog, etc.

Now I just hope I don’t get bored with this blog before I’ve trawled my collection.

Bennie: Let’s Get Married

Ai, me, I wish I could find a picture of Bennie. I had one once. Trench coat, white underpants, naked chest, conked hair, smell of disgusting funk.
‘Let’s Get Married’ is off an EP with the just-as-evil tracks ‘Ho Cakes’ and ‘Liberation’. Came out in 1987. A bit like Prince without his Ritalin. Hyperactive, louche, and almost entirely sick. “Somebody… somebody call a doctor! Somebody call a PRIEST! Baby, baby PLEEEEEASE!”

[Stop press: there's a bitter rip of the whole EP above.]

Link re-upped in the comments.