Title: Baggy Trousers Year:1980 Genre:Ska Comment:You may know their 1978/79 stuff, such as “One Step Beyond” and “The Prince”. You should know their 1983 international smash hit “Our House (In the Middle Of The Street).” Baggy Trousers is another one of their hits known mostly in Europe but hardly in North America.
Title: Don’t Forget That Beat Year: 1985 Genre: Electronic Funk Drumbeat Industrial Comment: Doug Wimbish is one bad-ass bassist. He collaborated with Fats Comet on this track. Both are from the UK. Their sound is like Art Of Noise meets Africa Bambaattaa meets Ministry (of 1985 sound).
Summer 1985 … 14 years old … the only thing I knew about James Brown is what Eddie said … but I still haven’t heard any of his music.
Fall 1985, Toronto, Canada … I went to see Rocky-IV movie.
Let’s go back to that night in the movie theatre … below is the scene that I’m currently watching in 1985:
What a way to expose me to James Brown music for the first time … LIVING IN AMERICA. The electric funk blew the sandals off my feet.
I didn’t hesitate to leave the movie theatre right after that scene (half-way through the movie) and ran to Starsound record store, looking for the 12-inch of that track. I was screaming out loud, “LIVING IN A AMERICAAAAAAAA, AMERICAAAAA,” like Eddie’s comic tale ice screeeeeaaaam.
Some dude understood me and pointed to the wall. And there it was … the very same one which I’m holding in my hand (pictured above).
12-inch vinyl cover of Living In America
James Brown In The Jungle Groove…
The most famous and most sampled funky track is Funky Drummer.
I am proving all you people with two original hi-rez source files (top of this page) to comprehend and pay respect to the man who brought you such killer track which spawned loop-sampling to be where it’s at today. Where would D&B and other genres be today if there was no Funky Drummer!?!
I say go out and buy this rare, full album! I shit you not, it’s the funkiest masterpiece ever. So much to sample from … especially the horn stabs and hits.
Front cover of James Brown In The Jungle Groove
Me and the vintage 1983 keytar (Yamaha KX-1 controller)
While the norm for most tracks go anywhere between 3:30 to 6:00 minutes in length, I prefer 15:00 minutes or longer, like the four seasons. Give me 4 long tracks to fill the hour, and I’ll be one very happy Iraqi. I love tracks that take me on long journeys through various movements. One of my all-time favorite synth-pop groups is PROPAGANDA from germany … who sound like twisted ABBA + Industrial + TechnoPop + Darkness. My favorite Proganda track is P:Machinery. I’ve taken two 12-inch vinyl versions of that track and conjoined them together as one … the way I want to listen to P:Machinery by:
Digitizing them into Protools; Spending two long months cleaning them up; Getting rid of every single scratch/pop/click; Restoring deteriorated sounds through various RE-SYNTHESIS processes and techniques; Splicing the tracks to separate clips; Re-arranging and layering clips to my taste; Throwing in my own synth-stabs, chops and other minor subtleties; Adding & automating series of chained top-notch effects throughout the mix, utilizing parameters some of you could not even pronounce ... thus resulting with more dynamic and reverberated DEPTH to the mix; Fattening the bottom-end; Widening overall stereo perception; and Mixing, engineering and mastering my version of P:Machinery the way I think it's supposed to be heard.
To my taste, P:Machinery sounds better than 'sick' ... more like master piece of shit which blasts sonically across the stereo-field ... not one element standing still but constantly moving all over the place.
Although he produced only a handful of tracks of renown and disappeared into obscurity almost as quickly as he had emerged from it, Manny ( Man ) Parrish is nonetheless one of the most important and influential figures in American electronic dance music. Helping to lay the foundation of electro, hip-hop, freestyle, and techno, as well as the dozens of subgenres to splinter off from those, Parrish introduced the aesthetic of European electronic pop to the American club scene by combining the plugged-in disco-funk of Giorgio Moroder and the man-machine music of Kraftwerk with the beefed-up rhythms and cut’n'mix approach of nascent hip-hop. As a result, tracks like “Hip-Hop Be Bop (Don’t Stop)” and “Boogie Down Bronx” were period-defining works that provided the basic genetic material for everyone from Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys to Autechre and Andrea Parker — and they remain undisputed classics of early hip-hop and electro to this day.
Man Parrish Boogie Down Bronx (dub version) PLAY TRACK
What made Trevor Horn’s productions stand out was his unique and genius production techniques and the heavy use of state-of-the-art pro-audio gear, which made him become the torch-bearer for the kind of technology-led pop music which was hip and incredibly disciplined. Trevor Horn’s 12-inch remixes were uniquely long (anywhere from 8 to 13 minutes in duration) and told stories which took the listeners through long instrumental journeys at the begenning of tracks until the climax is reached (around the 5/6 or 7 minute mark). After the climax, the original or alternate full vocal version of the track takes over from that point on to the end, lasting additional 3.5 to 5 minutes in length.
Frankie Goes To Hollywood Relax (12 inch Sex Mix) PLAY TRACK
Trevor Horn is the guy who produced and performed “Video Killed The Radio Star” world-wide smash-hit track. I did some major digging and discovered some fascinating, forgotten facts and hidden gem tracks from The Buggles. In 1980, the Buggles’ duo Geoffrey Downes (keyboards) and Trevor Horn (vocals) — who were coming off an international success with their new-wave album The Age of Plastic – to help out on a new YES album. Downes suddenly left Buggles when Trevor learned that YES’ keyboardist Rick Wakeman was leaving the band, and therefore snatched him as well as lead-vocalist Jon Anderson to work on the next Buggles album Adventures In Modern Recording. The Buggle’s second album was completed in 1981 but was never released or charted. The album was a gem masterpiece.
The Buggles I Am A Camera (12 inch version) PLAY TRACK
Here is a strong disco tinged boogie number from the much beloved by me NelWin Records / Silver Cloud records stable, with all of the Andrew Langston production hallmarks, great, slightly tribal percussive elements and ahead of their time synth hooks. I'm not too sure what the distinction between these two New York labels were, because they have the sam […]
Sometimes we like to kick it smooth. This is a rare modern soul jam from around 1985 on Money Three Records. It has a bit of a vibe as if Janet Jackson's mom is singing it. Anyway, you are too smart to miss the epic party that Beat Electric is throwing this Friday. It is at Mezzanine and it is free if you RSVP, just follow the instructions and make sure […]
Some cuts I don't want to post for no other than the artist names and track titles are too long, don't fit in an ID3 v1 tag, are easily misspelled or are a pain to type with one finger. These selfish artists had no appreciation for the fact that I may want to post their work, for free, on the internet one day. Trigger Finger And The Space Cadets […]
Well let me start off and issue another apology for the lack of posts this summer. I have been a bit buried in the weeds as of late. This weekend I move to Los Angeles leaving all three Beat Electricians scattered across the California landscape. Not to worry, once I get settled in it will be back to business as usual. So if I can get Black Shag to come out […]
I was going through a box of sealed bankrupt stock CD's, flipping through post hair metal and euro dance summer anthem comps, when I came across a stack of funk discs. These dated from the deep funk revival of the early/mid nineties, great times, but amongst them was this Best Of Radar Records collection, claiming to be recorded from master tape, releas […]
Ron Richardson is thought of amongst diggers as a Canadian artist, but I think this is simply confusion due to the fact that his best known funk 12" grail, 1983's Ooh Wee Babe, came out on a Canadian imprint whilst he was working up there in the early eighties. A later 1987 vocal house release called Treat Me Better came out on the US based Herbert […]
I long for the dog days of summer. It feels more like early spring in Northern California and San Francisco feel like, well, it feels like it always does. I guess that's why my ideal of a matinee rooftop pool disco party does not exits here. You have to go down to LA and have Blog Haus beaten into your head to enjoy that kind of party; or to Miami for s […]
A couple of Tee Scott mixes here including Jazzy Rhythm my favorite Arthur Baker/Michelle Wallace collaboration. In lieu of writing a long winded post on this already well documented artist, Black Shag pointed me to this bio page complete with an excellent 1994 interview conducted by a young Danny Wang a year before Tee's untimely death.Michelle Wallace […]
BT Magnum
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Mp3's on this site are for sampling and promotional purposes only and will only. Most of the mp3 tracks on this blog/site are remixes, extended and limited versions which are deleted, no longer available for purchase and would not be heard otherwise. However, please support these artists. If you are one of these artists and would like your music removed from this site, please notify me, and I will endeavor to remove them as soon as possible.
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