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.

Gotted some nice bits of vinyl recently. A couple of nice moody soundtracks from two of the masters. Everyone needs the UN Resolution on Racism on vinyl right? Bottom right is a UK HMV copy of an Impulse comp that has a bunch of tracks unreleased elsewhere on vinyl. Gooduns.

Some Impulse purchases am I rite?? My orange spine hunt continues. That Jackie Paris is actually pretty cool for some cornball Sinatra stan. That Mel Brown record has a hefty bit of drums on it. The other two are just nice original copies of classic albums.

The top two have Okay Temiz on drums. He is definitely one of the best drummers ever, from anywhere in the world and if you see a record with him on, grab it. The Indian record has Jnan Prakash Ghosh of “Drums of India” fame(!) on it. The Malaysian record is pretty cheesy as per usual but it’s got The Stylers backing the singer and they are always good for a song or two per album.

This Roy Meriwether album is mental. It starts out as kind of a Gospel album and ends up as crazy spiritual Jazz. François Rabbath’s “The Sound Of A Bass” is a fascinatingly original and musically jaw-dropping solo bass album from 1969. I also grabbed two great Elvin Jones LPs on Blue Note.

Some nice 12″s have been coming through recently. The first is a great track I’ve been after on vinyl for a while now, by Sylvia Robinson of Sugarhill Records fame. “PSK/Gucci Time” has got to be one of the greatest double-sided Rap 12″s of all time, seen here in it’s original Sound Makers Distribution pressing. “Do The James” and “Egypt, Egypt” are the kind of records that I would never have imagined finding original copies of ten years ago. I know you can find anything online, if you want to pay the price, but I like finding them in the wild most of the time. Like Pokemon.

How sleazy is this fucking porpoise? What a wrongun. Is he pimping an underage mermaid? This record must be good cos it’s bloody trashed.

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.

Cloud 9 (aka Nookie) – Gonna Be Alright 1992

As a kid of 11 or 12, I used to have a radio just above my head where I slept. It seems funny now as I’ve barely listened to the radio for more than ten years but back then I used to be lulled to sleep by the relaxing sounds of HARDCORE PIRATES.

I used to put a tape in the box, turn the dial to 92.3 FM and listen to The Weekend Rush, broadcasting from Hackney’s Nightingale Estate. When I was getting tired, and assuming the signal was decent that night, I’d press play and record and fall asleep. On a monday morning I’d have three or four sides of C90 to keep my walkman warm for the week. At the end of the week, I’d probably tape over them again, unless they were particularly good, in which case they’d get a numbered label in my best 12 year old’s handwriting.

The above tune is the original white label version of the Nookie track “Gonna Be Alright” which is often known as “Sound Of Music”. In my great love for cheesy chords, no keyboard line means as much to me as this one. Utterly sentimental. Simplistic. Played on a cheap piano synth. It couldn’t be tackier but it hit me as a kid and has stayed with me. I still have the tape that recorded the first time I heard it. I sellotaped it back together a couple of times but it still plays.
Years later, I now own this original mix, the famous mix, the Foul Play remix (very good) and maybe a couple more mixes, and find it doesn’t really matter what goes on around the keys, as long as they’re there in all their simple glory. You could probably sell me a Robbie Williams song with that piano line.

Thelonius Monk it is not but it is as important to me as anything else put to wax and I’m very grateful that those pirates weighed anchor in my neck of the woods when I was growing up. They could have been at sea, hijacking oil tankers but they chose to share the music with London. Ta.

Arena Pirate Radio Documentary Part 1 & Part 2.

Poet – All Hell Breakin’ Loose 1987

Feeling my raps at the moment. Today.
Actually I’m always listening to Hiphop, just sometimes it feels like I’m not. I get into more music of more kinds all the time, but Hiphop is skin on me and all that other music is clothes. Like right now, for instance, “Put Ya Filas On” by Schoolly D just came on random and my volume control wasn’t quite ready for it. I’m sat right between my speakers and I’d wager Mr. Weaver just took a couple of years off my earlife, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t the best thing I’ve heard all day. Listening to music at a reasonable volume is the cousin of death anyway.

I don’t normally put raps up here. Kind of because there are a million Hiphop blogs out there and I don’t have particularly rare shit that no one else is posting. I’m gonna put a few lesser known favourites up this week regardless because, you know, it’s what I’m feeling.

This record came out a couple of years after the aforementioned Schoolly D had kicked the (then) polite world of recorded Hiphop in it’s stomach and paved the way for uncompromising hardcore rap.

Poet went on to work extensively with production legend Molly Moll and form the groups PHd and Screwball but in 1987 he was on the rocks. Rocks and programmed drums, and not that crossover shit that Darryl and Joe had taken up the charts with Steve Tyler. No this is about as threattening and uncommercial as Hiphop got in 87, and all the better for it.

One day I’ll convince my favourite Rock-Only pub to let me play a couple of hours of strictly Rap-that-samples-Rock. It’d be great. I’d go. This would be amongst the prime cuts and all hell would break loose.

Missing – Flex & Relax 1994

If you’re programming drums then you might as well program something that no one is gonna play on a drum kit. I’d love to hear someone sit down at the traps and knock this out but I think the robots have got us beat for now.

Absolutely M&M P-nuts.

As we rumble in the Jungle I want to point out my boy DJ Bazia who is about the same age as most of the tracks he’s spinning here. Maybe a little younger. The force is strong in him.

All this music needs is an intermission with adverts for Club Telepathy and Jungle Mania: The Lion Returns. Possibly with a short statement on how the station is “not a drug-run organisation”, otherwise it’s perfect.

Hold tight all pirates!

Sweet Talks – Osode Medley (Drum Break) 1976

A bunch of great African LPs came in the shop this week, so you know I had to take half of them home with me. Sir Shina Peters, Super 5 International, Sonora Gentil, Tony Grey and the Black Kings etc.

Many of the LPs are end-to-end listeners, top quality duelling guitar and grooving polyrhythms but the highlight of the whole pile is this two minute drum break in the middle of an eighteen minute medley. It appears on Sweet Talks‘ ‘Spiritual Ghana’ LP and its everything that is good in percussion. All at once.

The credits list the hitters as J.Y. Thorty (Drums), Yaw Samuel (Conga), Max Cozy (Percussion) and Pope Flynn (Percussion). I salute them.

The Singing Dogs – Jingle Bells 1955

Christmas Records Party tonight! Costume is ready. Records are ready. This is going to be really stupid.

On a serious level this 1955 recording has some crazy early sampling on it. Cutting up tape (or was this pre tape?) for the chorus was clearly enough work so they used a guitar on the verses but its still impressive.

On a stupid level this is a really stupid record. I think it sold tons in America. It was reissued a bunch of times (the pictured one is 70s) and the picture sleeve 50s version is worth a handful of moneys.

Odd.