Iowahawk February 2007 Short Film

Thrill to the latest installment of Iowahawk!!! Ice racing muscle cars in WI. AND... Deuces at the Petersen Museum. I especially dug the shots of the Watts Towers. And also the shots of the Big Daddy ephemera.

Maceo US People Records

I came across this LP at Dusty Groove, and while being a bit scared off a bit by the cover, I took a flyer. (Hard to say that buying any early 70s JB related disc is a risk, but still.)

I dig on the spring tremolo tone that starts out side 1. But of course, the track dives right into a Maceo solo. The track is Soul Power 74 and has a little baby crying sound in the background and features a most percolating bassline.

Then Paarty makes its first appearance, as it becomes a refrain between the tracks on this long player. This is another monster with seemingly improv riffs over a tight groove. I think to myself, this reissue sounds great!

Show and Tell takes it down quite a few notches a sensitive sound. This one doesn't do it for me with its female backing vocals.

Then Maceo in the ghetto brother, JB led raps between the grooves before Drowning in the Seas starts. This is another slow track, but it is growing on me with repeated listens. Some nice percussion touches are put in the mix- building to some oddball strings and Moogish wanks underneath Maceo's horn.

Side 2 starts out with a Maceo lead but this one is a bit sappy for my taste. It may be the strings underneath everything else in the mix. A minute or so in, things take off with weird o panning effects and sound effects thus redeeming the song by bathing the music in a sea of wah wah.

Maceo, we want to go to the ghetto brother, where you were born...

Nothing need be said about Doing It To Death, although the flute line and lead over the guitar licks and bedrock bassline gives a choice layered effect. Higher, yes indeed.

The centerpiece and the final track on the record is the 10.37 Soul Of A Black Man, featuring vocals by JB- The Minister of New New Super Heavy Funk. Excellent use of a woodblock under Mr. Brown's spoken intro. This track is like a conversation between JB and Maceo. "Maceo, you're my Brother, play us a little bit more. That's the soul of a black man.

Beatboxing flute inspector gadget remix

This is wrong on a few levels.
I just found this posted on the front page of youtube.

Mixing both the Inspector Gadget theme and a tune that is on the tip o me brain. Is it Beverly Hills Cop Theme...

Man has chops on the flute.

Ofege Lp

I know very little about this group, other than the fact that they rock. The twist is that they are from the early 70s and were located in Nigeria. I found a needle drop of their early 70s lp on the internets and have been cranking it quite frequently on the reference system.

A simple stroke of the almighty GOOG returns the following"

The Ofege Phenomenon The 1970s school boy musical band from St. Gregory's College, Obalende, Ikoyi, Lagos. Nigeria's most outstanding school boy band of all time ! The Ofege music was largely influenced by the guitar solos of Carlos Santana, Jeff Beck, Robert Plant, Francis Rossi and the criss-cross rhythms of Osibisa. At home they were influenced by the music of ‘BLO’ (Berkley Jones, Laolu Akins and Mike Odumosu), ‘Monomono’ (led by Joni Haastrup), The funkees and Ofo the Black Company. Just before Ofege, there were a few boy bands in existence. ‘Grotto’ a senior Gregorian band featured Skid Ikemefuna on guitar alongside Martin Amenechi and Soga Benson. At Igbobi College was ‘IC Rockets’ in which Cornelius Tay (CEO of CT & A) played bass guitar. Other popular Gregorians who were accomplished ‘session men’ and could back any fledging band at the time included Sultan Anibaba, a practising architect and project director with the National Health Service (NHS) in England and Koku Konu (also a UK trained architect, but is somewhere in Nigeria). ‘Sultie & Koku’ were like the legendary hard funk duo ‘George & Louis Johnson of Brothers Johnson’ – both graduates of Bill Preston’s School of Rhythm and Lead Guitar. Other bands on the circuit were ‘Tirogo’ in which Funmi Onabolu (CEO Bates Cosse) played the keyboards and bass guitar. ‘BAC Foundation’ was a fusion of boys from Gregs, Igbobi College and Methodist Boys High School, Lagos. It had Wale Gomez (Gomie States) on drums, Laku Coker on keyboards, Tunde May on lead guitar and Debo Ajayi on rhythm guitar. Ofege was about Afro-funk. At their gigs...it was funk, funk and more funk! Read all about the oustanding group Ofege in the latest edition of Island News. Culled from NIGERIA TODAY ONLINE MONDAY, MAY 23, 2004 Tel: 01 791 4196-7 E-mail: info@the-islandnews.com

The fuzz that they utlize on the electric guitar is straight from the garage. The polrythmic jams that they work are straight from Africa. It is a great mix of influences.

Soul-sides has the full skinny on Ofege here.

The vocal delivery is a bit weak, but the bass and tones of everything makes up for it. Since they were kids, this may explain a bit of it.

Here is a link for their instro track off their lp:
gbe mi lo

Lost Astronaut

Here is my tribute to NASA's lost astronaut, Lisa Nowak, who was allegedly involved in a love triangle and some bizarre behavior.

Thanks to the concept of copy left, please find my sound collage entitled Lost Astronaut.

Chicago Car Show 2007

Well, back to some motor vehicle related adventures. I ventured to the 2007 Chicago Car Show to combat both the winter cabin fever as well as the lack of car related fun that I have been having the last few months.

The highlights for me were seeing the Lexus ISF, which seems to be a pretty hot ride if you are into killing m series beamers, the 2008 xB from Scion, and then my real faves were all of the FOMOCO related stuff, including Mario Andretti's Ford, the various modern Cobras and the GT40.

Pictured above, Toyota had a sleek prototype hybrid, and a ragtop line extension of the popular FJ Cruiser. I also had to get a pic of the 300 hp version of the Honda k20 motor in the new SI Coupe. Jeep had an interesting track showing off its vehicles' offroading abilities.

I can testify that at least the old Wrangler could do anything off road, and it looks like its ugly modern relatives can do so as well.

All in all a great day followed by some record purchases as well as a tasty vegan meal at the Chicago Diner.

Chicago Car Show 2007 pt 2

Chicago Car Show 2007 pt 3

Chicago Car Show 2007 pt 4

A Buddhist mix for Thursday

I came across this mix on DJ Spooky's site today.

Anything that can mix John and Alice Coltrane, chanting monks, Beastie Boys and Philip Glass is more than OK with me. Very OHHHHHHHHMMMMmmmmm.

I am very late to the party here, but it definitely put a glide in my sub zero frozen stride.

Hawkwind Motorhead

Building upon yesterday's Hawkwind post, here is another that will discuss the Hawks.
As I mentioned briefly, Lemmy was a member of Hawkwind prior to going off on his own with Motorhead. I recall that early on Lemmy and Motorheard even toured with Hawkwind.

Before he left, he wrote the song Motorhead which showcases his vocal and his bass stylings.
Below please find a link to an mp3.

Motorhead

Hawkwind Kinetic Playground

Flashback to the mid 1980s...

Mazda GLC moving at a high rate of speed, the tinny speakers in the home made speaker box are rippling with a treble filled, massive sound sending the musical wave forms out the open windows and open sunroof.

The sound is Hawkwind, a space rock band from Britain, that still exists to this day in some form or other.

Their heyday was the early to mid 70s when Lemmy was a crucial figure in the collective, providing his solid bass anchor, wild gruff vocal stylings and general charisma. Above is a picture of The Hawks in action in Chicago (at The Cubby Bear of all places) in 1997.

Coming across this cdr was quite interesting to me as it features Lemmy in the lineup as well as Twink on drums. The sound quality is OK, but it was "recorded by some guy with a tape recorder in the audience" per the tags that came with the sound files. The date of the recording is 6 December 1971.

Part of the whole allure to me of Hawkwind was their general weirdness and the fact that most people, even music geeks hated them back in the day. I am not a fan of scifi per se but I like the spoken word weirdo ramblings that Dave Brock (or whomever) that are performed between songs, add a creepy, lost falling feeling to the music. I always pictured hearing Hawkwind, if I were in space and my line to the ship got severed and I was left to drift into the void.

One of the highlights for me is the intro where they announce that we the technicians of spaceship earth and that they are out of control. The "captain" sounds like he is on something...

You Shouldn't Do That has a nice build, with Twink just rolling on the drums and then pounding out a solid beat to Lemmy's bottom end.

It is followed by The Awakening that is a spoken word weirdo thing into You Know You Are Only Dreaming, which is slow and has a boring, slow, repetitive riff that may have the potential to put you to sleep.

Master of The Universe has the Wind hitting their pocket performance wise, but the tape has distortion and perhaps some dropouts.

On Born to Go, they get downright experimental. The sound is like awkward jazz or something, atonal ramblingness, adorned with feedback.

All in all a great flash back, even thought it is a bootleg and has some sonic deficiencies.

Tribute to WSB and Jajouka

After spending many a college afternoon in the WSB archives at ASU, I have been extremely interested in the thought process developed by him. I won't bore you with more details because he has been discussed to death.

The cut up methodology has been a fave forever, especially the short WSB/Anthony Balch film of the same name.

I also discovered the "4000 year old rock band sound" of Jajouka since I took the Brian Jones record in on trade at a record store that I used to manage. Later that year the Axiom Jajouka release came out and I spun that disc incessantly for personal enjoyment and also as a way to keep the patrons of said store under control. That Adcom speaker controller was put to very good use...

So I felt that after all these years it was time to do a tribute both to WSB and the mighty Jajouka.

Here is a "remix" of Talaha.

Thank so for inspiration both to the Cabinet (and all of the revelant members) as well as my #1 Bro EJ.