Category Archive

by Cousin Geoff

I’m rolling out a new feature here on Cousins Vinyl.  It’s called “Guess That Sample”.

It’s really a shame that sampling is pretty much outlawed now in hip-hop; it’s killing the genre.  Sampling is what the art is based on - not only is it a tribute to the funk and jazz that came before it, but it’s how it was born in the first place.  It’s probably why I gravitate towards the old school stuff, yeah - I grew up on it - but I really have no interest in listening to most of today’s rap: some bullshit negative lyrics backed by a generic, synthetic beat made by the same two or three guys that sell ‘em to all the top rappers.  It’s garbage - give me the old stuff with heavy samples any day.

A lot of times I’ll be listening to a 70s funk or jazz album and I’ll have one of those - ”hey! that’s the sample off the so and so record!” - moments.  Justin and I just drafted a bunch of 70s jazz/funk records off a collection we bought recently.  I was listening to this Rasta Afro-funk group called Cymande tonight, their self-titled debut album, and I heard a sample I recognized right away.  It’s from their song, Dove.

Listen to it and see if you can guess who sampled it.  Then click “read the rest…” below to get the answer and hear the track that it’s featured on.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Max Conroy 

If you refer to my post about the jazz flute, you know that I’m just getting into soul/funk-jazz/fusion.  I’m crazy about the stuff.  It’s also allowed my formerly tepid interest in hip-hip to expand slightly.  It’s like punk rock for me; not the music of course but how I view it.  Some of my favorite music, proto-punk, is the music that led directly to the development of punk rock, but I really don’t like straight punk all that much.  I love the Dead Boys and the Sex Pistols, but both bands were badass rock and roll acts before they were punk.  I love all of this music that’s been sampled a ton or could be sampled if it hasn’t but can take or leave the hip-hop that’s made it famous, so far at least.  As my obsession has grown for the (I’ll call it fusion, to incorporate soul/funk-jazz) fusion over the past few weeks, I’ve purchased a shit ton of great records and thank God some of it can be found cheaply. 

I’d heard of the Ramsey Lewis Trio, but that was probably from hearing them mentioned by NPR DJs a split second, before I slammed the radio off in disgust before my appreciation of fusion.  I totally thought that they were venerated by jazzbos and that they were classic bop, but how wrong I was.  Justin hooked me up with a rough copy of the In Crowd, which is apparently an early soul-jazz classic.  After digging the album, I also noticed that reissues of it are advertized in Waxpoetics, and have noticed the record at numerous shops and online.  I thought that the record would be pricey, but since it obviously sold well for a jazz record and was on Chess’ Argo imprint, it’s insanely cheap.  Like you would pay three times what an OG copy would cost to get the reissue.  Dig the ‘In’ Crowd…

I also recently picked up Ramsey Lewis’ Sun Goddess for cheap.  The cover alone is worth the money, but the music could have been sold in a paper bag and it’d still be sweet.  It’s ten years after the In Crowd and the funk had dropped in the meantime, and it’s obvious on this record, that Lewis was hip to it.  Check out Sun Goddess, Livin’ For the City (the S. Wonder jam) and Jungle Strut…

On the Blue side of things; some Blue Note records from the periphery of their dark days can be got fairly cheaply too.  Some of these records sold very well, which makes them easy to find and cheap, but not bad at all.  For instance, Donald Byrd’s Black Byrd (the best selling record in the entire Blue Note catalogue) and Byrd’s Best are about $10 records; the cover of Black Byrd, depicting a black wedding or hoedown of some sort, ca. 1890 is worth it, and the music’s funky as can be, slightly dated, but that’s a large part of the appeal for me.  I recently acquired Grant Green’s Alive! album, which is a live gig recorded in a small club with Idris Muhammad tearing the place up on drums, for $10.  I’m not as much of a purist as the Cousins and will pick up a reissue or a comp here and there, and found a Grant Green record that was part of the Blue Note Breakbeats series for under $10.  Sometimes on these records, as with every record, there are bum tracks, but it seems more common for jazz records to me, so a comp with six of the most notable tracks by someone can be a good thing.  But I don’t necessarily think that’s true for Grant Green; I’m willing to bet that anything he did in ‘70 and ‘71 with Idris Muhammad on drums is good throughout.  Ronnie Laws‘ Pressure Sensitive must have also sold a shitload because it’s everywhere and it’s cheap.  One of my dad’s buddies gave me his record collection when I was about fifteen.  There were about fifty or so records, all early 70s stoner rock…and Pressure Sensitive.  It’s like the fusion Frampton Comes Alive, but way cooler.  Here are Grant Green’s Sookie Sookie (the Don Covay song) and Ronnie Laws’ Nothing to Lose…

by Max Conroy:

The Go’s latest album Howl On the Haunted Beat You Ride is a fantastic record that doesn’t seem to get much credit, and I live in the land where it was made.  Shamefully, until I moved to back to Michigan this past August I’d never heard of them and the way that I heard of them was from a magazine published in the UK, Mojo.  Mojo gave the record a four star review and the write up was good; garage, overlooked band, Detroit, etc.  There was also a picture of the record’s cover accompanying the review that pretty much guaranteed that I’d look for it.  It’s perfectly psychedelic: two huge hipster faces with lifeless hipster expressions, flanking the jacket; the entire band arranged vertically in the center of it, all wearing black or stripes; their far out logo in the upper left; a brown and orange, early mid 60s to early 70s, color motif; all of this on a hazy blanket of stars.  I know being interested in a record because of its packaging might be a bit careless, but this record is so cool looking and feeling that I’d be happy to own it even if the music sucked, which it most certainly doesn’t.  It’s on Cass records (Cass is a street/area in Detroit for all you non-local readers), which I’ve never heard of, but they totally knocked the ball out of the park on this one.  It’s a gatefold with super heavy boards, it feels like it’s a record made in the 50s, and has great graphics pasted inside along with the lyrics. 

The Go formed in Detroit in 1998.  Jack White was an early member of the band and is featured on their debut Whatcha Doin’, playing lead guitar and singing back up.  I had read somewhere that they kicked Jack White out of the band, which would be one to tell the grandchildren: Yeah, I was in a band back in the day…and we kicked Jack White out of the group…We could have been rich!  I’m pretty sure that he just left the band because he didn’t want to be a sideman.  I have no idea if there is any bad blood as a result of the split, but the Go wasn’t on the White compiled fantastic comp. Sympathetic Sounds of Detroit.  There is footage the Go out there playing live during the JW era on an obscure movie called the Detroit Rock Movie, which also has footage of JW jamming Stop Breakin’ Down in his tiny Detroit apartment.  If any of you out there have a copy of this movie, I’d be happy to receive one; please respond to this post.  Anyway, Whatcha Doin’ was released on Sub Pop and is a great debut record on the noisy side of the garage.  They made a follow up for Sub Pop called Free Electricity that was never released because it was allegedly too heavy, which has to be bull shit…too heavy for Sub Pop?  I found a copy of it on Soulseek and it’s definitely worth finding.  I think there were other reasons Sub Pop shelved it though; one song starts with the lyric, “Big cock angel”.  They were ultimately dropped from Sub Pop and put out a more focused rehashing of 60s garage and 70s glam on Lizard King, called The Go.  The group then waited four years to put out another record, the brilliant Howl on the Haunted On the Haunted Beat You Ride, which AMG has listed as coming out in April of 2007, but I’m pretty sure it was more like late summer and they still haven’t reviewed it.

Howl On the Haunted Beat You Ride represents the Go fully coming into their own.  The music is derivative of 60s psych and 70s glam to be sure, but they certainly make it theirs.  The production on this record is simply amazing and it was produced by Bobby Harlow, their front man, in Detroit.  The album utilizes clean tones, trippy imagery, and classic CSN-like harmonies with great effect (and I really dislike CSN).  The bizarro-poetic title comes from the song Yer Stoned Italian Cowboy, a romp about an irresitible character that “shoots directly from the Id”.  Fucking brilliant!  In my opinion, there’s only one bum track on this record and that’s the lead off song called You Go Bangin’ On, which was released as a single, so I might be missing something.  But don’t listen to the first thirty seconds of this record and file it away.  I bought this record seven months ago and the Go haven’t played around here since to my knowledge, until this past Saturday where they played at Gold: a fund raiser for the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.

Read the rest of this entry »

 by Max Conroy:

Until very recently I’ve not really paid much attention to jazz.  As a matter of fact, jazz has almost bothered me for about the past decade.  I used to listen to it back in the day, from about sixteen to nineteen.  Man, reading the Beats and playing the Bird and Diz, that was it.  Also, throwing on 102.1 FM to hear Bob Parlocha, after dropping off my last friend that needed a ride home, for the hazy drive back to the nest was also pretty great.  But I got into rock and roll heavy.  And my girl can’t stand jazz and I am ashamed to say that I kind of didn’t want to hear it if I were to get into it.  NPR also ruined jazz for me for a little while there too.  I know every NPR station is different and some have very well rounded programming, but not the ones that I’ve listened to in the past, 90.5 FM WKAR in East Lansing and 91.5 WBEZ in Chicago.  Both of these stations when not playing classical or the typical syndicated shows like Car Talk, Fresh Air, and All Things Considered, play jazz exclusively.  WBEZ would play like six hours of jazz on a Sunday afternoon, starting at 11 AM, right when I’d want to hear some talk radio or a comedy show.  And they wouldn’t play any of the shit that I’ve been getting into lately at all.

Justin turned me onto Waxpoetics around Christmas time and I’ve devoured the last few issues.  I’ve, as a result, come to the realization that there is more jazz out there than bebop and free jazz.  Soul-jazz and funk-jazz are legitimate categories that I’ve been blind to as a result of my prejudice.  That’s where all the badass samples came from in the heyday of hip-hop.  I had no idea what Blue Note turned into in the late 60s: a jazz label that put out soul and funk records.  I also had no idea that there were people like Eddie Harris out there: check out the article about him in the latest Waxpoetics and also check out Swiss Movement and Silver Cycles, two of his albums.  I read about Blue Note’s Droppin’ Science record somewhere in Waxpoetics, a double record best of Blue Note’s records sampled by hip-hop artists, and ordered a copy.  I’m obsessive when it comes to learning about music, so I’ve been taking some stabs in the dark based on the list of guys on Droppin’ Science in the time that it’s taken to get here.  I found Grant Green’s Alive! at Encore and got a reissue of Lou Donaldson’s Alligator Boogaloo, which the Sugarman Three’s Sugar’s Boogaloo (one of the records that launched Daptone, the first one featuring Gabriel Roth) pays homage to.  Both kick ass to be sure. 

I’m not sure if any of you have seen the Anchorman with Will Farrell, but it illustrates what my thoughts are regarding the flute perfectly.  I tense up whenever I hear a flute on a jazz, soul or funk record no matter how appropriate to the song it seems.  One of the guys on Droppin’ Science that I looked for around town in the past week was Jeremy Steig.  I found a couple of his records at Encore, pulled one up out of the bin and quickly dropped it and piled the records on it hoping no one had seen me even looking at it.  First off, he’s a flautist (I feel strange typing that word); second he looks like a weasely, mustachioed, Yoga instructor.  I’d have to wait to get the comp in the mail to hear this guy.  When I got the record today, I was shocked to hear the hook from the Beastie Boys’ Get It Together and how raw and primal the actual song was, how rock and roll.  Based on the intensity of his playing, he sounds like he could go ten rounds with Hemmingway.

Jeremy Steig’s Howling for Judy from Droppin’ Science, originally off of Wayfaring Stranger/Legwork

Eddie Harris’ I’m Gonna Leave You By Yourself off of Silver Cycle

by Max Conroy: 

It doesn’t sound like it’d be all that great, hanging out at an Elks lodge on a Friday night, but it’s not at all what you’d expect.  This place is sweet, positively the coolest bar, club, venue, night spot I’ve been to since I’ve moved to Ann Arbor.  There may be better places to go in this area, but I can’t imagine it.

My friend rents a huge house from the Elks.  It’s on a hill overlooking the city; it’s large, seemingly affordable, and right next to the lodge.  We ate dinner at her place and had a few beers, we’d already been at the Old Town for a good number of rounds, and she proposed that we should go the Elks for a beer.  I was down.  I mean shooting the shit with a bunch of older dudes in funny hats sounds like a good time to me, but I was not prepared for this place.

It’s an old school black Elks lodge, patronized by a bunch of real nice fun loving, soulful dudes.  The bar is downstairs and the rules for the guests are posted on a huge sign on the ceiling of the stairway as you enter, gents must remove their hats upon entering.  I guess it’s a three dollar cover, but we got by because we know their tenant.  The ambiance of the place is enough to make it a cool spot: salmon colored walls, orange vinyl booths, a dark cavernous feel, a vintage bar, and a cozy dance floor packed with hipsters.  Heinekens are three bucks and the DJ spins old and new soul, funk and hip hop; it was great to hear Sharon Jones’ What Have You Done for Me Lately blaring through the place followed by James Brown’s Sex Machine.  It’s a shame that I don’t dance or if I do I have to be in a state where I can’t possibly remember it.  I held down the booth and sipped my Heineken while my people hit the dance floor, digging the scene, choking on smoke, loving watching the Elks get down, hanging out and serving drinks.  As we left, they were closing the doors presumably because the place was to capacity, so get there before one AM.  I’ll definitely be coming back to this place.

The Elk’s lodge also has live jazz on Mondays and Tuesdays and is open to the public on Fridays and Saturdays to swing from the rafters.  I also believe that they host barbecues, which I’d love to check out.

Cousin Justin posted a nice selection of old school rap LPs and 12″s.

Included is Run DMC’s first, self titled LP:

From All Music:

Prior to this, rap felt like a block party — the beats were funky and elastic, all about the groove. Run-D.M.C. hit hard. The production is tough and minimal, built on relentless drum machines and Jam Master Jay’s furious scratching, mixing in a guitar riff or a keyboard hit on occasion. It is brutal urban music, and Run and D.M.C.’s forceful, muscular rhymes match the music. Where other MCs sounded cheerful, Run and D.M.C. prowl and taunt the listener, sounding as if they were a street gang. And while much of the record is devoted to braggadocio, boasting, and block parties, Run-D.M.C. also addressed grittier realities of urban life, giving this record both context and thematic weight. All of this — the music, the attitude, the words, the themes — marked a turning point for rap, and it’s impossible to calculate Run-D.M.C.’s influence on all that came afterward. Years later, some of the production may sound a bit of its time, but the music itself does not because music this powerful and original always retains its impact and force as music.

Check out the rest of the All Music review on this LP and listen some audio clips.

There’s also Lord Finesse and DJ Smooth, Funky Technician:

Both Justin and I have heard this played a lot on Sirius on XM - it’s definitely a classic among classics.  From All Music:

It’s a simple formula: bring together one of the East Coast’s finest rappers with some of the most clever trackmasters in hip-hop, then add in a stellar DJ, and the results are bound to be exciting. Funky Technician was just that, an excellent LP of battle rap with Lord Finesse simultaneously claiming and proving his immense skills over a set of funky backing tracks that used the familiar James Brown blueprint but delivered it with unobtrusive class and innumerable displays of deft turntable wizardry.  read the rest of this review and listen to some audio clips

Michael Jackson’s Thriller, reworked by artists like Wycleff, Kanye West (I heard he does Billie Jean without the bass line) and Akon, hit the stores yesterday.  The album was put together in honor of the original’s 25 year anniversary.  Of course, you can buy that from us here.  7 out of 9 tracks on this LP hit the Billboard top ten, including my favorite Billie Jean.  What an unbelievable album.  The new one intrigues me.

Justin is getting ready to release an absolute monster batch of old school rap LPs and 12″s.  Look for them to go up today or Monday.  Some really rare stuff will be in there.

****JUST LISTED****

CRAZY CRAZY CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We’ve never had a batch of old school hip hop like this, EVER.  Included is some extremely rare Detroit old school, private pressings, test pressings, rare versions, funky, booty, soul, an absolute DJ’s treasure.  Some of these I know we’ll never come across again.

And all this came as I’ve really been into XM’s Channel 65 The Rhyme, which is classic and old school hip hop.  I was pretty much drooling over the collection, as was Justin, but we did our best to restrain ourselves as we’ve dumped a little bit of cash to aquire this.  The whole collection came from an old Detroit DJ and producer, who brought it in little by little over the past week.  Justin has been listing like crazy - I think there are close to 500 listings.

Jess and I watched a documentary the other night on the history of breakdancing, called The Freshest Kids.  I highly recommend it - they had it at the Ypsi public library.  It gives a great history on breakdancing, known as b-boying to the true old schooler, including how it started in New York City and how the dance actually shaped the entire art of hip-hop. 

The movie runs a soundtrack all the way through and has amazing footage of street breakdancing.  The art itself is fascinating; both athletically and creatively.  Many of the early pioneers are interviewed, including Crazy Legs and Ken Swift from the Rock Steady Crew.  I also found out the historical significance behind the New York City Breakers, who have a poster insert on how to breakdance inside my electric Breakdance album pictured above.

I can’t say enough about the movie.  It was very inspirational - for some reason it made me want to go outside and play basketball.  You learn all about how b-boying started with 70s funk - with the break being the climax of the getdown in the dance - hence break-dancing.  From there the disco era of the late 70s ruined the breaks with the continuous beat and groove - so hip-hop started with DJs, spinning old records and prolonging the breaks to give the dancers more time to do their thing, rapping over the beat.  The dancing was always the big thing, the main attraction, the true art form - the rapping just went along with it.  But then the record industry, unable to capatilize on an intangible thing such as dancing, pushed rap to the forefront.  Breakdancing blew up commercially in 1984 (the year my record came out), but was soon forgotten and swept under the rug as being too old school.

But b-boying went back to it’s roots - underground - and remains so today.  The Freshest Kids shows thew new up-and-comers and some unbelievable moves that they do.  Many of the old schoolers say they’re disgusted with today’s brand of hip-hop, complaining that instead of booty-dancers in videos there should be b-boys.

I remember breakdancing from when I was in elementary school and middle school - the cardboard on the cement in the playground, a boombox blaring, kids gathered ’round in a circle as the freshest kid jabbed and spun to the claps, ahhhs, did-you-see-thats, and high fives of the rest.