Souly pickups of late. All US originals apart from the JB one which I’m not sure about.

The Impressions “This I My Country” – Quite probably my second favourite Impressions album. Includes the sublime “So Unusual”.
Earth, Wind and Fire “The Need Of Love” – A great hazy funk album with a lot of Jazz left in it. Check “Everything Is Everything”.
Otis Redding & Carla Thomas “King & Queen” – Gorgeous yellow label Stax copy. “Tramp”!
Melvin Van Peebles “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” – Tasty gatefold.

Nina Simone “Sings Ellington” – and plays amazing piano. They never talk about her piano playing. “I’ve Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good” will lay you out and iron you.
Otis Redding “The Dock Of The Bay” – The first posthumous album. Beefy beefy.
James Brown and his Famous Flames “Sing Christmas Songs” – The earlier, tamer JB xmas LP. Still pretty stunning for a Christmas album.
Booker T. & the MG’s “Hip Hug-Her” – Jackson Jr., Cropper and Dunn at their vital best. Oh and there’s some organ on top but you can ignore that if you want.

Little Richard “Here’s Little Richard” – I was gonna leave this cos 50s albums don’t really count. I kind of want the singles more but you know, if you can look at it as an album, then Richard’s first is as good as anything ever. “Tutti Frutti”, “Slippin’ and Slidin’”, “Long Tall Sally” and “Rip It Up”!?!
Ike Turner “A Black Man’s Soul” – Some of the funkiest music ever played. “Thinking Black”’s bassline, “Getting Nasty”’s piano, “Freedom Sound”’s organ and a little thing called “Funky Mule”. Oof.
Bill Cosby – Hooray for the Salvation Army Band! – His music records are better than his comedy records. Great covers on this one.
Mandrill “Is” – Ooooh “Lord of the Golden Baboon” we worship you. This record is Mandrill’s best and properly bonkers with it.

Have bought a lot of vinyl and sat it next to the record player recently. I’ve played a couple. Such is life.

I was meaning to photograph them all but have so far captured the above quartet. The rest must wait. There’s some gooduns though. Ethio-funk sevens that really need recording onto the computer. Good Jazz and Soul LPs. Real nice.

If I haven’t been doing much recently I have at least been picking up records. Here’s some bits I’ve grarpsedd in the last month or so.

Pretty much started and completed my Leon Thomas solo collection in one go. That Louis Hayes has a great “My Favourite Things” on it. The Impulse comp is a nice curio and “Bill Cosby Talks To Kids About Drugs” is just as good as you’re imagining.

ToTP theme tune & best Led Zep cover of all time. “Optimo” is probably my favourite white record of the early 80s and “Cavern”’s not to shabby either. That Fantuzzi is nuts btw. Daft.

I still buy raps. I was moaning that you never get nice US pressings of the early Def Jam albums and then that “Radio” plopped into my lap.

That Kain LP is only a reissue so it remains one of my most wanted, being as it is the source of most of the vocal samples on KMD’s “Black Bastards”.

Nice Yazz.

The Marvin, Otis and Last Poets are gorgeous american originals and look, I finally got something on Motown’s Black Forum Records. A good one at that.

That’s some of what I’ve got recently. It’s a good time for records.

Oh yeah, I’m also accumulating Christmas records at my regular pace.

The 12″ on the bottom right is the Jim Jones/Dipset christmas song which I just had to get on vinyl. The Colonel Sanders one is a bit crap but it looks great.

Sad.

Tomorrow is the final of the BBC’s The One and Only. It’s Pop Idol for tribute acts. A really long episode of Stars In Their Eyes.

It’s pretty lame as you’d imagine but for one thing… They have a ginger white dude blacked-up as Lionel Richie (!!!) and he’s great.

Watch this dude talking, normally, as him, and then watch him singing as Lionel.

OMG!?!
I think I like him better than Lionel. If he performed original songs (still with the prosthetic nose of course) I think he could be the biggest star in the world or something. He’d be like a reverse Michael Jackson but a little bit Al Jolson.

Anyways if you don’t want to watch the show ever (fair enough) you can find all Moni Tivony’s (what a name!) performances on the BBC youtube channel.

Kind of breathtaking right?

The Emotions – What Do The Lonely Do At Christmas 1973

The Emotions were a great Stax Soul group in the early 70s (The “Untouched” LP) and a pretty good Disco group in the late 70s (“Boogie Wonderland”, “You’ve Got The Best Of My Love”). They cut this heartbreaking soul side in 73 (the picture is of my reissue copy) and it may be my favourite Soul Christmas tune of all.

The “when I have nobody?” line and accompanying melody just pull the carpet out from under you. A proper sad Christmas song.

The Christmas Records Party is tomorrow! I’m getting excited now.

My favourite Miles Davis band at Montreux in 73. Very “Get Up With It” and very good for it. Part 2 & Part 3. That band was something else.

This next clip is something else entirely. This may be my favourite Michael Jackson song, perhaps, but it’s a fucking terrible muzak cover. Outfit. Everything.

At the time of the first video Miles was panned and hated. At the time of the second he was filling concert halls around the world.

Other things:

RIP Pimp C. Great Hiphop producer/rapper. If you care to read an interview with him there’s a great one at Cocaine Blunts in three parts. 1, 2 & 3. 33 years old, dies in bed alone. Sad loss to Hiphop.

Donny Hathaway Live footage seems to at last be turning up on Youtube. Here he is doing the crowd participation version of “The Ghetto” as heard on the greatest live album evarr. Screwy VHS.

There’s no footage on Youtube from the Al Green “Live in 72″ DVD that was slated for release and then withdrawn. I have a copy of the DVD and am wondering if I can get away with putting some up on Youtube… It is very special.

Got Radiohead tickets, never seen them. June 24th is some lifetimes away though so I’ve been looking on Youtube. Hopefully the idiot that shot this video won’t make the trip from LA to Tower Hamlets.

HYess!

Learning to drive as an adult is humiliating and miserable. That is all.

Vanilla Fudge tie with Isaac Hayes for the best overblown covers. Here is them indulging in some flamboyant trippery in front of a studio audience. Appice repeatedly jumps onto his crash and Mark Stein channels Shatner. Yayz.

Marvin in his later days getting all three points from the Star Spangled Banner at the NBA All-Star game, with his stunna shades on. Outstanding 80s soul backing. He could have sung his shopping list. Thanks to ILL for the tipoff.

Biz Markie & Roxanne Shante doing what people ought to do in the BX in 1986, rocking the house. Back when Biz weighed less than I do and female rappers had hair like it was the 50s and never showed any skin. “We came here, tonight, to get started…”

The John Coltrane Quartet joined by Eric Dolphy on flute for yet another beautiful take on “My Favourite Things”. Trane has his soprano out, taking things to Africa, McCoy is banging keys like whack-a-mole, Elvin Jones is beating the shit out of his trap-set, the cameraman is making with the arty shots and Dolphy only slightly spoils it with his solo. I was born cruelly late in the century. If you were alive in the 60s and you didn’t follow this band around trying to hear every second they played then you wasted your life and that’s probably everyone. Shame on you.

TV On The Radio doing “Staring At The Sun” in Boston this March. I have watched every video of this song on youtube (because it’s the greatest rock & roll song of the century so far) and this is my favourite. The degree that Tunde looses it on stage depends on how much the crowd goes stupid and in this case everyone does the dummy. Oh yayz.

You know?

Barbara Mason – Yes, I’m Ready 1965

A beautiful record this.
Written and recorded by an eighteen year old Barbara Mason in 1965, “Yes, I’m Ready” hit number five on the US pop chart. It’s a perfect teen record. It’s achingly, painfully sincere.

Mason has had a long career since this first single though it’s probably still her best known song. If you buy a greatest hits or get it on a compilation it tends to be a later, smoother rerecording which to my ears has little of the original’s appeal.

Check out the great be-penguined Artic label! I guess nobody told them penguins only live in the southern-hemisphere…