"I don't give record -- I sell record!" So says Joe Gibbs in the movie Rockers. But today I give record in the form of a fresh mix of roots reggae, dub, lover's rock and general homegrown Jamaican rockers goodness. Lucky number 13. Hard to believe this is my first mix in eleven months, but it's true. So here's my resolution for 2012: post mixes more often!
The photo on this post is by Theodoros Bafaloukos, the director who brought us Rockers. It comes from a great interview with him over at Vice.
If you'd prefer, you can also download it over at Mediafire.
That instrument he's shredding away on is the tres, originally a Cuban instrument, though his is the Puerto Rican version.
Looks like a guitar. The Cuban tres has six strings, but they are arranged in three pairs (or "courses") where the two strings in each pair are tuned to be complementary to one another. You can play it like a normal guitar but each plucked "note" is actually a chord, made up of two notes. The Puerto Rican variation is the same deal, just with three strings to a course instead of two.
I've wanted a tres cubano for a while, ever since I saw Marc Ribot play his fake tres -- just a regular guitar set up like a tres -- in his fake Cuban band, Los Cubanos Postizos. It seems like they were pretty easy to find a decade ago when Cuban son music hit big, but now they're more scarce. I've encountered a few, but the quality isn't there. Now, seeing him play this beast, I'm lusting after the PR tres.
Anyway, enough of my yapping. Take it away Don Mario!
Some amazing funeral parade footage shot in New Orleans in the 1980s. This comes from the Alan Lomax archive, which has been posting stuff to YouTube for a while now. Here's hoping they keep it up.
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band doing "Feet Don't Fail Me Now"
And them doing "Voodoo." That's grand marshall Gloria Irving in the funky hat at the beginning.
Also part of the archive's video collection on YouTube, a really intimate video of the White Eagles indians doing "My Big Chief's Got the Golden Crown." Keep an eye out for the dude in the Oakland A's batting helmet -- priceless!
I've been on a serious Sly Stone kick lately. The man just wrote so many great songs and produced so many hits, it's not hard to find a crack somewhere in his music where you can fall in and get lost. Also, something I've really come to appreciate these last few weeks: his songs are usually just barely there. Most of them rely on a simple vamp or riff or bass line. They get their weight from elsewhere, like the lyrics or the execution.
This video is primo Sly, on form and just slaying. This is from his middle period after he burned his band to the ground and before he went AWOL and faded away. Get this message over to you now...
The next time you're driving around and some hippie's bumper sticker instructs you to "Think Globally," follow them to the Rainbow Grocery Co-op parking lot and give them a copy of this mix. It's an intercontinental trip through the global subconscious, the four rivers of the title being the Nile, Tigris, Ganges and Chao Phraya. If you stayed awake during 10th grade geography (or if you know how Google works), that will give you an idea of what you'll find inside.
Prepare your magic carpet for a bit of astral dip-and-dive. I also made some appropriately stupid art to look at while you listen.
My favorite album of 2010 is the debut by Lower Dens, "Twin Hand Movement"
Here's a song:
Other favorites: Quantic Presenta Flowering Inferno "Dog With a Rope" Weekend "Sports" Surfer Blood "Astrocoast" Deerhunter "Halcyon Digest" Seu Jorge & Almaz Walkmen "Lisbon" Erykah Badu "New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh)" Marc Ribot "Silent Movies" Kelley Stotlz "To Dreamers" Whitefield Brothers "Earthology" Dungen "Skit I Allt" No Joy "Ghost Blonde"
Fave 2010 late-night trip-outs: Ulaan Khol "III" Flying Lotus "Cosmogramma" Benoît Pioulard "Lasted" Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and John Frusciante s/t
Best single: Sleigh Bells "rill rill"
Others: Spoon "Nobody Gets Me But You" Squarepusher "Megazine" Erykah Badu "Window Seat" The Roots "Right On"
Best live albums: Medeski Martin & Wood "Stone Issue Four: Live in Japan" UA "Haruto live"
Best comps/reissues: Wooden Shjips "Vol. 2" Mulatu Astatke "Steps Ahead" Tumbélé! Biguine, Afro & Latin Sounds - French Caribbean 1963-73 Syd Barrett remasters Nigeria Afrobeat Special
Best live show: Frisco Freakout @ Thee Parkside
Honorable mention, cause it's really a movie and a live show and it's old, but I saw it this year and it really touched me: Califone doing "All my friends are funeral singers" @ SXSW
2 much HYPE: shoegaze/chillwave, SF garage rock demigods, Kanye, OK GO, reverb pedals on vocal mics, Reagan-era production values, the Phil Spector vibe, iPad DJs, beards
Working on another crop of mixes, I'll post something here soon. Ciao!
I found this quaint interview with Peter Tosh today. It was in an issue of Head magazine from 1977 that I bought at a warehouse sale. The place was Oddball Film, a film archive and licensing house on the third floor of this unassuming San Francisco warehouse. Check them out. The owner, Stephen, hosts screenings of old bizarre movies on Friday and Saturday nights.
He was having a sale and he had put out these boxes of old magazines -- art and architecture journals, old pornos, strange counterculture mags -- and I found a few choice items. This Tosh interview isn't very deep, and I'm still not sure whether it's really an interview or just a carefully transcribed record of what Peter was saying on stage at the concert the reporter attended. Peter was known to go on these long, two or three minute diatribes about music, Jah, the government, the "shitstem," the political situation, obeah -- whatever topics the lyrics in the next song dealt with, or whatever he had read in the paper that afternoon.
The image above is the centerfold from the magazine, and here's the interview in its entirety. Click through on all of these for the larger versions:
The particular issue of Head magazine is advertised as "The Cocaine Issue," and the interview is nestled in between an article about DMT and a primer on how to tell how much Clorox has been cut into your cocaine. The ads are amusing, too -- everything from "the passer," a 24-inch-long roach clip, to "The Bug Alert," a device that detects DEA phone taps. There's a small picture of Peter on the cover, which is dominated by a close up shot of a giant blob of cocaine. I'm curious how Peter, a devout Rasta, would have felt about seeing his photo dwarfed by a big hunk of Peruvian Marching Powder.
He probably would have been a little more into the back cover, a full-page ad for X-rated rolling papers from the fine folks at Hustler magazine.
I put up these scans because this article is probably next to impossible to find anywhere. If you hold the rights to Head magazine and you want me to take it down, just ask.
This video is just amazing: two masters of musica Cubano playing a duet in Stockholm, Sweden. It's impossible to watch this without feeling the decades these guys have put in along the way. Everything about the performance is beautiful and perfect. Such timing!
Cachao especially has such an effortless technique. At the beginning, he's barely bowing the bass when he plays. Then for his final solo, he's almost using the bow as a drumstick against the neck, slapping away and digging in.
But the best part is the very end, when they finish and look at each other. Bebo points at his buddy and gives him this "You're the man" smirk that's totally priceless.
I received a box full of 45s in the mail last week, all from tiny and obscure or medium-sized and established labels. I decided to mix through them this weekend to sample them, and I let the recorder roll as I did so. The result is this 40-minute slab of funk and soul, with a little bit of reggae and afrobeat. You know, my usual thing.
Some fresh gems here, and some forgotten oldies that have recently been reissued. Labels represented include Truth & Soul, Now and Again, Daptone, Lion's Bread (the Lions own label), Mocambo, Ricky Tick (from Finland!) and a little Stones Throw (a mix of a couple of Madlib's Yesterday's New Quintet tunes) at the end.
So enjoy, either streaming here or as a download you can carry with you. Long live the mighty seven inch vinyl 45!
a music site featuring podcasts, links, musings, reviews and interviews. san francisco is the home base. we use only the kindest ingredients. we always wash our hands first. Follow the author on Twitter @snackfight
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