Random Wednesday

October 7, 2020 — Leave a comment

Not my favourite song but it’s a perfect example of how, within any given album, the Beastie Boys always had different sounds; they took you on a journey. Maybe something like this doesn’t sound great by itself, certainly not within a “shuffle” of songs, but it was definitely part of the special album experience that the BB always delivered.

• Beastie Boys – Electrify

Remix Friday

October 2, 2020 — Leave a comment

This illustrates the difference between American and English “popstars” (i.e. an American popstar would usually not think to sing this, especially on television where they can market their own songs). I love America but there’s a lot to be said about the state of American music that can’t be sugar-coated …

• Bill Withers – Ain’t No Sunshine
• Ed Sheeran – Cover

Too Good Monday

September 28, 2020 — Leave a comment

“By the time we felt ready to release the album, and went back to listen to it, we all agreed that we liked it a lot, but that it came up short in the way we wanted it to sound. There was a kind of disconnect there. It did not measure up to what we wanted it to be. Initially we thought of simply remastering the album, but then we decided that we wanted someone to remix it. We thought of Philippe [Zdar], because we were familiar with some of his work, but we had never met him and did not know whether it would work …”

Must read this article:
https://www.soundonsound.com/people/inside-track-beastie-boys-make-some-noise

• Beastie Boys – Make Some Noise

Too Good Monday

September 14, 2020 — Leave a comment

The complaints of older people regarding what the kids are doing musically are often dismissed— correctly so—as nostalgia or conservatism masked as cultural commentary. The answer to those complaints is basically that older people are always complaining about new music, they complained about Blues, Jazz, Rock, Funk, et cetera, et cetera, so it doesn’t really matter if they understand the new music. We don’t expect them to understand it. Some older people—the younger older people—will usually say something like “But that was different. My parents really were too conservative and didn’t understand what Rock was doing but you can’t compare Rock to Rap, Rock took real skill, you had to learn to play an instrument, Rap is just … ”.

Old people don’t get it; duly noted.

I’m old; duly noted.

I still think that I’m objectively correct when I say that mainstream music is trash and that kids don’t know which way is up and which way is down. Despite all the possible old-guy-hating-on-new-music counter-arguments, something is different in this world we live in. Something has been breaking in these past 20 years with the acceleration of the internet; and the damage is even worse within the past 8 years …

I’ll just sum it up like this:

Up to a certain point you can trace the heritage of black music within popular music—I don’t just mean in terms of “spotting the sample”—at a certain point you can’t. And when black music is less relevant to popular music than social media, reality shows, plastic surgeries, and face tattoos, there’s a serious problem, an existential problem. I’m thinking that the reason I don’t like the kids’ music is actually because the kids have no music.

• Bill Withers – Grandma’s Hands

Future Thursday

September 10, 2020 — Leave a comment

If you know Dance music, enough said: “Ten Percent” was the first commercially available 12-inch single.

• Double Exposure – Ten Per Cent (Special Disco Mix) (i.e. the Walter Gibbons mix)

A little bit more info from the YouTube description on the “DiscoSaturdayNightTV” channel:
In 1976, Salsoul Records released their eighth release, Walter Gibbons’ remix of Double Exposure’s disco song “Ten Percent”. “Ten Percent” was the first commercially available 12-inch single.
The actual title of this record is Ten Per Cent, not Ten Percent.
The 12-inch single was reserved for DJs until the release of “Ten Percent.” Disco had already begun to exploit the 12-inch’s allowance for higher volumes, better sound quality, and longer playing time, but no record companies had previously seen commercial value in the new format.
Ken Cayre, the head of Salsoul Records, decided to sign a number of famous musicians and bands to the label, hoping to “consolidate the success of the faceless Salsoul Orchestra”, and Double Exposure was chosen as the newly signed band whose first release, “Ten Percent,” would feature the orchestra and be promoted with a 12-inch single as well as the typical seven-inch format. Walter Gibbons was a DJ, not a producer, but his innovative skills, along with his punctuality and serious nature, got Gibbons the “Ten Percent” assignment at Salsoul Records. One of his original techniques was “taking two records and working them back and forth in order to extend the drum breaks,” a technique he applied to the “Ten Percent” mix, which displeased the original songwriter, Allan Felder, but which was supported by Salsoul in the front-page story in which Billboard magazine covered the release. It was “mostly an exercise in stretching the original track out,” and Gibbons transformed it from a “four-minute song into a nine-minute-forty-five-second-cut-and-paste roller coaster.”
When Gibbons first played the “Ten Percent” 12″ remix at Gallery21, where he was a regular DJ, one witness said “it sounded so new, going backwards and forwards. It built and built like it would never stop. The dance floor just exploded.”
Double Exposure is an American, Philadelphia-based disco and soul group. They are best known for their 1976 hit, “Ten Percent”.
The group formed in 1961 with Leonard “Butch” Davis, Chuck Whittington, Jimmy Williams and Joe Harris. They were originally known as the United Image and released two singles, “Love’s Creeping Up on Me” on Stax Records in 1971 and “The African Bump” on Branding Iron Records in 1972.
They were signed to Salsoul Records in 1975 and released their debut album, Ten Percent in 1976. The album featured the title track, which was remixed by Walter Gibbons and reached No. 54 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 2 on the dance/disco charts. The tracks “Everyman (Has to Carry His Own Weight) and “My Love Is Free” were also popular club songs.
In 2001, a dance group called M&S used samples from Double Exposure’s “Everyman” in their song called “Salsoul Nugget”.
https://blog.discogs.com/en/the-history-of-the-12-inch/