Earth, Wind & Fire - Spirit

Whenever people have asked me what band I would have most liked to have been in, I have always said Earth, Wind & Fire. I've always considered the reasons to be obvious.

If you'd have asked me before today where this album falls in the EWF chronology, I would have said second. It's actually their SEVENTH album. Blimey, what a div. I'm ashamed of my lack of EWF knowledge. They'll never let me in the band now. It already bears all the hallmarks of their later massive hits, with only maybe Saturday Nite being in their top ten big tunes.

During the recording of this album, Maurice White told co-producer Charles Stepney about his new song, Spirit. Stepney proceeded to drop dead of a heart attack later that day. The album is dedicated to Stepney.

The sticker on the front of the sleeve says I paid 99p for this from the Children's Hospice Shop in Kings Heath. Mid-90s probably.

#NowPlaying #Vinyl #Music #EWF #EarthWindAndFire #Spirit #CharlesStepney.

Miles Davis - Agartha

Davis and septet, recorded live in Osaka, in 1975. The same group who made Dark Magus.

Years ahead of it's time.

Breathtaking.

#Nowplaying #Music #Vinyl #Agartha #MilesDavis #Jazz #JazzFusion

Ripple Effect Band - Mayawa

An all woman band from Arnhem Land, the the NT, doing Indigenous rock/reggae.

It kind of ends up sounding a bit like The Bodysnatchers meets Dengue Fever. Nothing wrong with that.

It's an LP so niche that I had to add it to Discogs myself.

#NowPlaying #Music #Vinyl #RippleEffectBand #Mayawa #NorthernTerritory #AboriginalRock

Paulinho Da Costa - Sunrise

A distinctly average album by the eighties' favourite percussionist.

The cover of Jorge Ben's Taj Mahal just makes you realise how Reform Rod ruined that song.

I'm Going To Rio is the best track, and makes it to jazz night warm up DJ level vibes.

#paulinhodacosta #Sunrise #brazilianjazz #Vinyl #NowPlaying #Music

Jill Scott - To Whom This May Concern

I had this on pre-order and it never materialised, so I had to cancel my order. Managed to get a copy off Discogs this week.

Jill Scott is fucking great.

#JillScott #ToWhomThisMayConcern #NowPlaying #Soul #Vinyl #Music

Shakatak - Night Birds

Shakatak were well ahead of the game. This, their second album, came out in 1982, and is choc-full of every influence they could absorb from the burgeoning jazz-funk scene. So on the button were they that they had a handful of smash hit singles (three of them from this album) and so popular were they that everyone got sick of hearing them and moved on to other things and you'd never hear these tunes anywhere, apart from on the BBC radio station for old cunts, Radio 2.

The Japanese fucking loved them though, and they've made a decent living there ever since.

This album's really good. I particularly love Keith Winter's guitar sound.

I picked this up for something silly like 20c in the old Fishermans Warf Market in Port Adelaide - now the site of a brand new shiny and largely empty car park. UK pressing. Mint.

Also, the Wikipedia page has a photo of them live at the Capital Jazz Festival in 1982. I was there.

#Jazz-funk #Shakatak #NIghtBirds #Jazz #NowPlaying #Vinyl #Music #PortAdelaide

RAMP -Come Into Knowledge

This is a bootleg copy of this very rare LP by the Roy Ayers Music Project in 1977.

Big old rare groove classics abound albeit on a really shit pressing.

#funk #jazzfunk #nowplaying #ramp #Vinyl #Music #RoyAyers #Bootleg

Robert Johnson - King Of The Delta Blues Singers Vol. II

I dug this out to give it a spin because I've just started reading Brother Robert - Growing Up With Robert Johnson by Annye C. Anderson. Apparently this is the book which dispels all the (Eric) Claptrap which has been spoken about Johnson over the years.

This record has no sleeve. The paper inner sleeve in which it is stored has a 1 pound sticker from Low Price Records in Barking. This was a proper old shabby record shop round the back of the shopping centre, that used to have a big poster of Billy Bragg behind the counter, signed with 'If music be the food of love, eat at Low Price Records.' I bought a few blues LPs sans sleeves there.

#Music #NowPlaying #Blues #RobertJohnson #Vinyl

Blyth Power - The Guns Of Castle Carey

My favourite Blyth Power line-up. With some of the most enduring BP tunes.

#BlythPower #FolkPunk #TheGunsOfCastleCarey #NowPlaying #Music #Vinyl

The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Countdown—Time in Outer Space

I didn't even realise I owned this record until today. The only inkling I have as to how I acquired it is that it came as part of a load of LPs from an auction a decade or so ago. I don't think I've ever played it.

It's proper end of the 50's jazz, from Brubeck's peak line-up. With polyrhythms galore and fancy time signatures that I have no hope of understanding, and a Franz Kline painting on the front cover - just listening to this makes you feel cleverer...like the dude on the front of the Mastermind game, or something.

#Music #NowPlaying #Vinyl #Jazz #TheDaveBrubeckQuartet #CountdonwTimeInOuterSpace #FranzKline

Rick James - Bustin' Out Of L7

Everything is big on this album.

The whopping High On Your Love/One Mo Hit (Of Your Love) is one of his career highlights.

#Music #NowPlaying #Vinyl #RickJames #BustinOutOfL7 #Funk

Anita Baker - Rapture

Recorded amid the legal wranglings between her record labels, this was Baker's second solo album, where she emerges from the primordial indie soul soup and drags herself up onto the beach of superstardom to bask in the bright, life-giving sunshine of major label production.

Listening back with a few years under my belt, this sounds like a Chapter 8 album which has been polished until you can see your pores in it. (Her old bandmate, MIchael J. Powell, twiddled the knobs on this.) The songs - and Baker's performances - are so good, though - Mystery is fucking breathtaking! I'd just love to hear this album if it had been made by Beverly Glen.

#NowPlaying #Vinyl #Music #anitabaker #Rapture #Soul #MichaelJPowell #Chapter8

Erykah Badu - Mama's Gun

The good news is, there's a new Erykah Badu album coming out in December. I pre-ordered it yesterday.

Thought I'd play this today to get me in the mood. This is such a strong album. That whole Soulquarian vibe is so strong. Don't know why I don't play this as much as some of her other work.

Roll on December.

#ErykahBadu @MamasGun #Vinyl #NowPlaying #Music #Soul #NeoSoul #Soulquarians #Motown #Questlove #jdilla

Nubya Garcia - Source

I bought this as soon as it came out (6 years ago, already) having been caught in the British Jazz rip, which swept me along for a bit before washing me up on the shore, leaving me feeling it was all a bit of an anti-climax.

As a result, I haven't played this much. It's not bad. It's just...not bad.

#NubyaGarcia
#Source
#Vinyl
#NowPlaying
#Music
#jazz

Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan - Ask Rufus

This album took a long time to record. Part of the reason for this was fighting between the band members. Actual fighting. (Chaka Khan and drummer, Andre Fischer being particular sparring partners.)

Despite this, erm, creative tension, this is a really good album. Lead track At Midnight (My Love Will lift You Up) is one of their best tunes. Hollywood is another career highlight.

You can almost taste the post-nasal drip, so cocaine-infused is this music.

Love it.

#RufusFeaturingChakaKhan
#AskRufus
#Vinyl
#NowPlaying
#Music

Quincy Jones - Sounds...And Stuff Like That!!

Quincy Jones is one of those people whose reputation remains untarnished, despite spending his whole career neck deep in the entertainment cess pit, and, what's more, making his best-known work alongside a massive nonce. It looks like the only person who ever had a bad word to say about him was Tupac, who had a go about him only marrying white women. Fucking idiot.

Stuff Like That was the big hit off this album. It was such a big hit that it becomes diminished by its familiarity. It's only when you listen to it nearly 50 years later that you realise how good it is.

This album also contains modern-soul-dancer-deep-cut, Love, I Never Had It So Good, which is outstanding.

The list of players on this album is huge, but includes, Ashford & Simpson, Chaka Khan, Gwen Guthrie, Ralph MacDonald, Patti Austin, Michael Brecker, Hubert Laws, Herbie Hancock, Eric Gale, Tom Scott, Steve Gadd, Richard Tee, Melvin "Wah Wah" Watson, and a pre-fame Luther Vandross. Plus the whole cast of Ben Hur.

#quincyjones
#Sounds...andStuffLikeThat!!!
#NowPlaying
#Vinyl

Planxty - After The Break

Planxty's 1979 get-back-together album.

Full of confidence, competence and big ideas, not to mention impeccable production.

I've somehow got two of these.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#IrishFolk
#Trad
#Planxty
#AfterTheBreak

McCoy Tyner - Focal Point

Tyner's 1976 album, where he applies his modal piano style to an album of tunes heavily influenced by Weather Report and Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Needless to say, it's fucking great.

I got this for 50c as part of my best ever op shop haul.

#Jazz
#NowPlaying
#Music
#McoyTyner
#FocalPoint
#Vinyl

Plastikman - Spastik 12"

....well apart from the name, obviously.

A classic slice of minimalist techno.

#RichieHawtin
#Plastikman
#Spastik
#Techo
#NowPlaying
#Vinyl

Art Ensemble of Chicago - People In Sorrow

I haven't played this much. However it was just what I fancied this morning and I really enjoyed it.

A Japanese pressing with a proper Tesco Value sleeve.

Bowie and Adler squeak and squawk over a very low-key background. However, out of that emerges some beautiful melody. Makes me promise myself to sit down and properly listen to this album and reveal its hidden depths. One day.

This album was recorded in Boulogne. This was where British schools used to go to for our French day trip. I remember discussing Holiday In Cambodia with my mate on the coach because John Peel had played it the night before. This means it was 1980 when I went. Like some Willie Russell play, we'd be let loose in the town to buy flick knives and bangers, fill up on Orangina (Mmmmm) and get in fights (boys) or cop off with (girls) the local youth whilst the teachers got half-cut. Happy days.

#jazz
#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#Music
#artensembleofchicago
#LesterBowie
#AlbertAdler
#Peopleinsorrow
#Boulogne

Squarepusher - Kammerkonzert

When I was a little kid, we used to drive up the A12 to see my cousins in Chelmsford. I have three abiding memories of this. We used to drive past the big onion. Now this wasn't a Big Onion like you'd get in Australia, but part of - I think - a cigarette factory. We then went past the Marconi factory (the world's first radio factory, don't you know). My cousins had a big old mangle down the back of their garden, which I found fascinating.

Who could have known that such a dowdy place would spawn Squarepusher?

I've been in the musical doldrums again recently, but this LP has managed to penetrate enough for me to both buy it immediately and play it a fair bit.

It's so good - kind of jazzy, classical-y, sometimes beautifully melodic, but often sitting on the very edge of irritating, loads of frantic clavinet-sounds. All mangled in that classic Squarepusher way.

#Squarepusher
#TomJenkinson
#Kammerkonzert
#Chelmsford
#NowPlaying
#Music
#Vinyl
#Marconi

Christy Moore - Prosperous

I found a really decent - and reasonably priced - copy of this on Discogs. Irish pressing.

It's famously the first Planxty album in all but name. They were clearly trying a few things out here - some of it works and was taken forward onto the Planxty black album; some of it doesn't and was left to wither on the vine.

In my search for information on Prosperous House in County Kildare, where the cover was shot, I ended up falling down the rabbit hole of looking at houses for sale in the Curryhills area in general.

#NowPlaying
#Music
#Vinyl
#ChristyMoore
#prosperous
#Planxty
#CountyKildare

Neil Young - Tonight's The Night

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been two months since my last confession.
The tl;dr of the whole thing is that I’ve been playing tunes that I’ve already written about and haven’t really felt like buying more. I’ve particularly been digging Mingus.

I’ve also been reading Shakey the Neil Young biography, which is pretty good.

This made me pick up a copy of Tonight’s The Night, which is the only pre-Trans Neil Young album I haven’t got.

It’s very good.

#Vinyl
#NowPlaying
#NeilYoung
#TonightsTheNight
#Rock

Mulatu Astatke – Mulatu Plays Mulatu

An album in which Mulatu, now in his eighties, re-records some of his earlier music.

If you like Ethiopian jazz, occasionally on the funky side of things, you’ll like this.

#MuatuAstatke
#MulatuPlaysMulatu
#Vinyl
#EthiopianJazz
#NowPlaying
#Music

Alice Coltrane - Journey in Satchidananda

Just getting round to posting my Christmas presents.

This was the album Alice Coltrane made whilst grieving the death of her husband. The definitive spiritual, meditative fusion of modal jazz and Indian classical music.

Pharaoh Sanders to boot.

It should be an entirely gloomy affair, but it manages to be uplifting.

#alicecoltrane
#JourneyinSatchidananda
#jazz
#Vinyl
#pharoahsanders
#nowplaying
#music

clipping. - Dead Channel Sky

This arrived in the post whilst I was at work over the weekend.

I popped it on the turntable when I got up this morning and my wife says to me, “That was supposed to be your Christmas present, you [redacted slur].”

Oh well.

Incidentally, the Welsh have the best name for Father Christmas. I'm not Welsh. Would it be cultural appropriation to start using it as my default? Hmm.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#clipping.
#HipHop
#DeadChannelSky
#Music

Slave - Slave

This is the only album I’ve ever had a fight over, I think.

In my defense, this was the eighties in Essex - a time and place where a young man could easily get into a fight over anything at any time.

To cut a long story short, me and my mate were listening to a tape of this album in a gym and a bloke had a bit of an overly-confontational whinge about it. The track You And Me was playing and he said it sounded like The Muppets. They had to pull me off of him.

Funny thing is, I can kind of see what he was getting at.

This, Slave’s 1977 debut, is a super-funky album. Electric trumpet player, Steve Washington is credited as The Fearless Leader on the sleeve here. God-Funk-Colossus Steve Arrington had yet to join the band and take power in a coup d'etat. It's what Jesus would've done.

Slide is fucking brilliant – that bassline, man! And it has that Chic Cheer hi-hat lick a whole year before Chic used it.

Helpfully, the rear of the sleeve tells you the star signs of the band members. Phew.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#Slave
#Funk
#Music

Blackalicious - Blazing Arrow

I recently watched clipping.’s Tiny Desk Concert. Excellent stuff.

Reminded me of this album.

Chemical Calisthenics really is something.

Across the whole album, though, it's not just the complexity of the delivery that stuns me, but the quality of the lyrics.

#NowPlaying
#CD
#Blackalicious
#BlazingArrow
#clipping.
#TinyDeskConcert
#Music

Stephan Bodzin - Liebe Ist

A bit of quality, grown up techno. I honestly have no idea of the whys and wherefores of why I should say that, other than...you know...vibes. I never have never been very much arsed with the sub-categories of electronic music. Discogs has this down as ‘minimalist’, but it doesn’t sound all that minimalist to me.

I have no recollection of how I came to be buying this album in 2007, or where I’d heard it. My best guess is Radio 3’s Late Junction, where I heard a lot of new music around that time.

#NowPlaying
#CD
#StephanBodzin
#LiebeIst
#Techno
#Music

Weather Report - Black Market

This was the album that cast the die for jazz fusion. If this was released today, it would still sound modern.

Jaco Pastorius joins the band...oof!

Portishead!

I picked this CD up in an op shop in Berri. I will often have a cursory glance over the CDs in chazzas but rarely find anything I want.

#NowPlaying
#CD
#WeatherReport
#BlackMarket
#JazzFusion
#Music

Various Artists - Swingbillies CD Box Set

I’d been meaning to dig this out of the shed for a spin since reading the early chapters of Andrew Hickey’s A History Of Rock Music In 500 Songs (great book, by the way – and one of the best podcasts!)

The music here is so full of energy and excitement; both raw and containing excellent musicianship. Many of the musical and lyrical tropes used in rock music since were established in western swing. It’s a shame that it is a genre that has been largely forgotten as it was subsumed into the greater Country monolith.

This four CD set was released in Germany in 2005, and I picked it up on eBay a couple of years later, if I remember correctly. It has extensive sleeve notes in both German and English.

#NowPlaying
#CD
#VariousArtists
#Swingbillies
#WesternSwing
#BoxSet
#AndrewHickey
#500SongsPodcast
#Music

Donald Fagen - The Nightfly

I taped this off my mate I the eighties and played it so much that I know every note and word. I reckon I picked up this CD version in the mid-00s at HMV at Fort Dunlop in Brum, when they used to do, like, 5 CDs for a tenner deals.

Bear in mind, I heard this long before I’d ever been more than peripherally aware of Steely Dan – I didn’t start investigating them until a bloke I worked with put Peg on a tape for me and I recognised it from De La Soul’s sample.

It’s an odd record this: a concept album based in a 1950s American world of late-night radio and nuclear threat, played out in very highly-produced eighties jazz-rock-pop.

Listening to this is like putting on my house slippers for me. If someone had filled them with warm treacle. I’ve noticed over the years, however, that for many other people it’s like nails down a blackboard.

#NowPlaying
#CD
#DonaldFagen
#TheNightfly
#JazzRock
#Music

T.S. Monk - Too Much Too Soon 12"

Thelonious Sphere Monk III is the son of Thelonious Monk the genius jazz pianist.

He was given his first set of drums by Art Blakey and taught to play them by Max Roach.

This is a pleasant but very ordinary boogie 12”, which doesn’t display any of that rich heritage.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#TSMonk
#TooMuchTooSoon
#12inch
#Boogie
#Music

George Jones - The Essential George Jones. The Spirit Of Country

Over the weekend I listened to one of the George Jones episodes of Tyler Mahan Coe’s excellent country music podcast, Cocaine & Rhinestones.

Whilst Jones' reputation for liking a drink is well known, I hadn’t really realised how much his alcohol use pervaded his life and work.

It made me go down the shed and dig through the boxes of CDs to find this.

Fuck, George Jones’ voice was something else.

#NowPlaying
#CD
#GeorgeJones
#TheEssentialGeorgeJones
#CocaineandRhinestonesPodcast
#Country
#Music

Ornette Coleman -The Shape Of Jazz To Come

There’s really nothing to say about this album. It seems pointless to re-state the bleeding obvious: that it’s a work of staggering genius.

I realise that the rather grandiose title was not Coleman’s idea, but also, how wrong was it? The absolute state of jazz today, it would’ve been more appropriate for a Kenny Fucking G album.

I didn’t realise until today, though, that Coleman played a plastic saxophone. He's pictured with it on the sleeve. He has a rather pleased-with-himself look on his face, as well he might. Most other jazz records sound a bit shit in comparison.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#OrnetteColeman
#TheShapeOfJazzToCome
#FreeJazz
#Jazz
#Music