by Cousin Geoff

 

I picked up the latest issue of Waxpoetics today, came home and read it pretty much cover to cover, so I was in a different sort of frame of mind tonight.  Reading that makes you want to reach a little further.  Suddenly, the common stuff doesn’t sound appealing at all.  Not really even James Brown, which seems to always satisfy something.  You read about a boogie-funk DJ from California and get a glimpse of his collection and the mind behind assembling a collection like that, and you realize how far you can take record collecting.

The problem for me and Justin is we have to make money.  That’s why the majority of stuff that we come across that is super rare tends to end up being sold, landing in collections that I read about and envy.  But, you know, every now and then we take a few good ones home for our own personal collections.  But like Max alluded to in a previous post, there’s just so much music that most records I take home I give a quick one-sided listen to and file away. 

So tonight, after reading WP, I really wanted to dig deep.  I went through my rows and crates and pulled out about a dozen or so fairly obscure records that I hadn’t listened to in a while and lined them up next to the turntable, laptop ready to record.  I had such a strong craving for exactly the sound I wanted that most of them didn’t get very far.  I came close to writing about Tower of Power’s first record on the tiny San Francisco record label, but the one record that beat them all was The Spirit of Atlanta’s LP “The Burning of Atlanta”, released in 1973 on the Buddah label.

Produced by legendary composer/producer/arranger Thomas Stewart and backed by a ton of Atlanta session players, “Burning” is just an all-out assualt of the funk senses.  It’s a grand orchestra of high energy soul.

listen to Freddie’s Alive and Well: