I was lucky enough to get the chance to interview Don Was a couple of years ago for Mojo magazine. Although Mojo wasn't really interested in his back-story of the early days hanging out with Ken Collier, Electrifyin' Mojo et al, I was fairly obsessed with it, so took the opportunity to ask him about those times in Detroit, going to parties with Ken Collier and making Flamethrower Rap. He was blown away that anyone had even heard of any of the stuff I was asking him about and gave me a brilliant interview.
We now alight upon Volume Five and we are almost at journey's end. Tracklist below.
KAY GEE THE ALL FEATURING DJ DREW - My Record Is Hot
L.T.D. - Your Love Is The Answer
ANTHONY MALVO - Give Me Your Loving
THE ALMIGHTY MC - School's Out
MUDDY WATERS - Mannish Boy
PRIVATE PARTY - Puppet Capers
FIVE RED CAPS - Boogie Till You Drop
FRESH GORDON - Feeling James
THE HOUSEMARTINS - Me & The Farmer
BILL BLACK'S COMBO - Smoke Pt 2
3 MUSTAPHAS 3 - Shouffi Rhirou
MACKENZIES - Mealy Nouths
We are now officially at Volume Four of this not particularly epic series. There are a few more to go before I run out of crap old 80s cassette to foist on you and get back to watching England lose on penalties.
JOHN LEE HOOKER - Boom Boom
DOLLY COOPER - Heyla Ba
FIVE BLIND BOYS OF ALABAMA - Honey In The Rock
THE JUNKYARD BAND - The Word
THE DAVIE SISTERS - I've Forgotten More Than You'll Ever Know
THE SMITHS - Girl Afraid
BILLIE HOLIDAY - When A woman Loves A Man
MAROON TOWN - City Riots
BOBBY BYRD - I Know You Got Soul
CARL HALL - I Just Love Making Love
M/A/R/R/S - Pump Up The Volume
CALLA PRIIS - Ni Imano Amohoa
3 MUSTAPHAS 3 - Ugga
BARRENCE WHITFIELD & THE SAVAGES - Stop Twisting My Arms
MAHOTELLA QUEENS - Asambe Matawane
RANDY NEWMAN - Birmingham
STANLEY WINSTON - No More Ghettos
ROXANNE SHANTE - Have A Nice Day
EDWYN COLLINS - Don't Shilly Shally
BEYOYO BROS. - Maraba Start 500
DAN PICKETT 991/2 Won't Do
FINEST INGREDIENTS - DJ Megamix
IAN TURPIE - The Decimal Point
HANK WILLIAMS - No No Joe
CRIMINAL ELEMENT ORCHESTRA - Put The Needle On The Record
PERCY SLEDGE - Dark End of The Street
STEVE LAWRENCE & EDIE GORME - I Just Want To Love You
BERNICE JOHNSON-REAGAN - Come With Me To The Land
Beautiful day, today, innit, the hay fever notwithstanding (atchoo). Seems a shame to be cooped in my lair but come three o'clock I shall be out there, collecting small children, maybe tickling them for a bit (life's small pleasures etc) and then hanging in the garden with a beer, a paddling pool and a Spaniel panting in the shade. In the meantime, check this out, there are some corkers.
TEELOO - Habitant (No 19 Music)
ZEV - Don't Break It (Wolf + Lamb)
WALTER JONES - Hot Contact (UTT)
DISKJOKKE - 1987 (Richard Sen Mix) (Smalltown Supersound)
ZERO 7 - Futures (Carl Craig Mix) (Atlantic)
KM EDITION - Feelings of Ecstasy (KM Editions)
MARCUS MARR - Well Alright (??)
GATTO FRITTO - Right Thought
HATCHBACK - Jetlag (Faze Action Remix) (TINAE)
OK, so we've reached the heady heights of episode three of what Bill's found in his attic and transferred to MP3. More gear from the mid-to-late 80s. This is two sides of one C90 cassette. I should've separated them for ease of play and everything, but England were playing Slovenia at the time and I forgot. So shoot me. Tracklisting below. Download link here >>
LL COOL J - Get Down
ADMIRAL TIBET - Don't Hide
LEE PERRY & THE FLYING VICARS - Scratch On The Wire
GREAT LEAP FORWARD - Hope's Not Enough Son, Ask Your Parents
ERIC B & RAKIM - Move The Crowd
BERT HOWELL & HIS SHOW BAND - The Aussies And The Yanks Are Here
NEW ORDER - True Faith
MICHAEL COLEMAN - Woman Loves A Woman
TAJ MAHAL - Paint My Mailbox Blue
ERIC B & RAKIM - Paid In Full
LIGHTNING HOPKINS - Vietnam Blues
EXPLAINER - Is Horse
PALENQUE - El Guabo Dea Yea (can't read my writing, could be anything!)
Continuing the series, here we have Volume Two which, as convention dictates, comes swiftly in the slipstream of Volume One and should hopefully be followed by Volume Three, depending on whether I actually do any work today.
C.I.A. - Ill-Legal
RICHARD THOMPSON - New St. George
MARTIN MOLE - Straight Talk About The Blues
SUGAR MINOTT - Bubbly
HOT COLD SWEAT - Move Like That
ADMIRAL BAILEY - Big Belly Man
WITCH DOCTOR & THE 3 DOMINATING MCs - Kicking It Live
HAZEL DICKENS - Coal Mining Woman
THE CYNICS - No Way
SCHOOLLY D - Dedication To All B-Boys
ROSCOE ROBINSON - Let Me Know
LORD BEGINNER - Election
Back in the 1980s, when I was very poor, I used to sit at home recording loads of stuff off the radio, and make pause button tapes of the best music. Now, thanks to the miracles of modern technology, this can be enjoyed at home by anyone, made plausible and even possible via the generosity of the internet. Much of this was originally taped from the John Peel show, which was for me, like many who were trapped in shit towns in the UK, a window into a world of fantastic music, music that I couldn't really afford, save for the occasional splash on a Streetsounds compilation.
The music on here is wildly diverse, as it should be, in my view. Recorded in the first half of 1987 It's what I was digging 23 years ago. The editing is hilariously bad, but then everything was hilariously bad in the 80s (check out those haircuts baby). Hope you dig it. Tracklist below (I was a trainspotter even then, see.)
RAPPIN' REVEREND - I Ain't Into That DUANE & CO. - JB In Heat ERIC B & RAKIM - I Know You've Got Soul THE GO-BETWEENS - Don't Call Me Gone MICHELLE SHOCKED - Contest Coming WAILING SOULS - Dog Bite BOSCA - Together BUTCH HANCOCK - You've Never Seen Me Cry GEORGE JONES - Good Year For The Roses THE TIMES - David Jones Is On His Way DAVID BOWIE - Fame MIAMI - Chicken Yellow
After a bigger delay than I wanted, we've finally got the Dave Lee Desert Island Disco live. Hope it was worth the wait. Dave Lee, for those of you actually living on a desert island for the 20 years, is the man behind Joey Negro, Akabu, Raven Maize, Sunburst Band, Hed Boys and myriad other guises. As the owner of Zedd Records, he's also released several brilliant disco and boogie compilations, including the just out Back Street Britfunk >>
On a personal level, he's someone I've known for 20 years, having first met him when he moved into a room I was moving out of in a flat in Islington. We've been friends ever since and I can't think of anyone else who has turned me on to as many great records (especially disco) as he has.
Tracklisting:
THE HUMAN LEAGUE - The Sound Of The Crowd
CHICAGO - Woman Don't Want To Love Me
LOGG - You've Got That Something
STARSHIP ORCHESTRA - New York New York
TECH TRAX INC - Tech Trax Inc
I love a bit of Chicken Lips, me. And Emperor Machine for that matter. White Light Circus too. Bizarre Inc? Yeah, why not.
Anyhow, to celebrate the massive expansion of our spangly new download store (details coming soon) we're giving budding remixers the opportunity to rework a track by one of the UK's leading producers, Chicken Lips. The tune is Sweet Cow, taken from 2006's Making Faces album, and the winner of the competition will have their tune on sale in the new DJhistory download store, alongside all the other classic Lips' shizzle.
Competition ends on August 31st 2010.
Please submit your entry in MP3 320 format and email it to Bill here >>
Please put Chicken Lips Competition in the subject box.
Whoops. Meant to post this on Friday as soon as I'd done the show, but totally slipped my mind, then the weekend intervened. I was distracted slightly by the World Cup, plus I was DJing on Saturday with Ray Mang, so I spent the evening raiding the green room with Raj while getting whoozy on V&Ts. Twas good, though less so when the kids climbed into my bed at 7.30am on Sunday.... Ouch.
Tracklisting:
ANDREA TRIANA - Draw The Stars (Ninja Tune)
KM EDITION - Feelings of Ecstasy (KM)
KODE9 - You Don't Wash (Dub) (DJ-Kicks)
AZYMUTH - Os Cara La (Rabotnik Mix) (Far Out)
LAURENT GARNIER - Gnanmankoudji (Emperor Machine Mix)
PENGUIN PRISON - A Funny Thing (Gold Dust Retweak) (CD-R)
HOT LUNCH - Inside Of You (PPF)
BODI BILL - Tip Toe Walk (Siriusmo Remix) (Sinnbus)
KIRSTY ALMEIDA - Spider (Mr Scruff Mix) (Decca)
LEO GANDELMAN - Abertura (Far Out)
Wednesday 9 June 2010
Yeah kids, our new book The Record Players is now on pre-sale. It's a collection of all of our bestest interviews from the past 20 years or so with DJing's revolutionaries, similar to the ones we host on DJHistory.com but many more and most never seen before by human eyes (except me and Frank). There are also loads of charts and discographies in there, unpublished photos, memorabilia etc etc. It's ticketyboo.
If you order it now through DJH, you'll get an exclusive CD containing Frank's legendary encounter with Francis Grasso in a Brooklyn bar at 10am in the morning (the Bud's were on Frank). You will also receive this book weeks before Amazon or book stores. If you are buying in the UK it's also free P+P (only £5 overseas).
Well, it's a right proper scorcher and no mistake. And the weather's not too shabby either.
Low Life tomorrow kids, if you can make it. It's at CAMP, ya know, then there's an afterparty at Cosmobar in Clerkenwell Road.
Here's the tracklist for this week's show.
TELESPAZIO - Closer Space (Milky Disco 3) (Lo Recordings)
BEN SUN - Salty Tears (Voyeurhythm)
JAMES YUILL - On Your Own (Moshi Moshi)
SPENCER DAVIS GROUP - I'm A Man (Pilooski Dub) (Island)
STETSASONIC - 4 Ever My Beat (Beat Bongo Mix) (Strut)
KILLER WHALE - Tell You Today (Leo Zero Mix)
ILIJA RUDMAN - Time and Time (Electric Minds)
MOCK & TOOF - Lovehearts (Tiny Sticks)
AVENUE B BOOGIE BAND - Bumper To Bumper (Disco Discharge/Diggin' Deeper) (Harmless)
