Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Furious Fists of Funk!!












It has been awhile since I have had the motivation, energy or time to put together a mix, so I am hoping that this one is received with hungry ears. Over the past month I have had a couple of sleepless nights where I do nothing but lie in bed scrolling through my iPod and adding songs to playlists. The one thing I noticed is that in all of the playlists or mixes I have made, none of them are geared toward helping me unwind. Plenty of them are for entertaining, driving or flat out all night drinking. I decided to put something together that would come in handy for just hitting the relax button, taking some deep breaths and slipping outside of my mind. With that said, after scrolling through 14,000 songs, here is what I have come up with. Trust me, this was not an easy task. I wanted to find the perfect seamless balance and keep it at under 2 hours.
Commentary on the tracks will be slim, as a lot of them come from some of the recent Lagos, Nigeria and Jamaica compilations from various labels but here goes...

Leading off is one of my favorite Funkadelic tracks. I never got into the party vibe of Parliament that much, but when it comes to down and dirty, red-eyed funk there is none better. I had a hard time choosing between this or Maggot Brain, but there is a Cymande disc later in the mix that is similar enough in structure to the Eddie Hazel masterpiece to skip it. Along the way is a great Talking Heads track that definitely sets up the groundwork for all of David Byrne's Luaka Bop work; a version of "Whole Lotta Love" by Ike & Tina Turner that makes Adam Lambert's version look like a Lucky Pierre between Clay Aiken and Scott Stapp. Probably the oddest addition is the krautrock "Vitamin C" by the German band Can. Maybe it is just me but I think their improv merges right in. Also there is a second great track by Ike and Tina Turner called "Young and Dumb", that smokes on its own, but is included because I really like to hear Tina growl about being "young, dumb & full of cum". Call me juvenile. I can't help it.

Just about every mix I have made seems to have a Clash track on it somewhere. Usually, they lead off; but in this case I love the tribal drum pattern of "Car Jamming" and like to think as the music fades that somewhere that drum line keeps playing forever in the background.

As always, enjoy and if I can remark without sounding desperate please leave comments. I track my hits, and know that I get a fair amount of listeners, but it makes putting mixes together a lot more fun and interesting when I know what people are thinking about the tunes I am dropping.

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