Mandrill - Fencewalk (1973) (from Super Bad Is Back!)

Today's Cinco De Mayo, latin-funk flavored JOTD is going out to a pal of mine from back home in RI who just gave our blog props on her FB page. Way back in the 2nd grade day, I moved to a new neighborhood in my hometown and started going to a new school. My new classmates included a sweet girl named Kim Patton (Descoteaux), who lived right down the road from this school, close enough to have supposedly invited a homeless dude who may or may not have lived at the playground to follow her home for Christmas.

At the time, I was rockin' out to the killer heavy metal sounds of Kiss. My ideal radio station would have been KISS-FM, as long as that meant a station playing all-Kiss, all the time. 'Cuz I was a young dude, and that's what we did circa 1978. Kiss were our Gods of Thunder. But unbeknownst to me, Kim was already tuned into the funk! She was throwing blue light parties at her place listening to the K-Tel classic, Super Bad Is Back. "This was my FAVORITE record in 2nd grade," says Kim, "me and Tracy Perron used to roller skate to it in my basement." It was probably the coolest record K-Tel ever put out, originally released in 1973, and packed with 20 tracks of super funky soul and disco. Don't take my word, watch Joe Simon hosting the original (Canadian TV) ad:



So here's what I think Kim told me was her fave track, Fencewalk by Mandrill. From their biggest-ever LP, Composite Truth, which also dropped in '73. It was the funkiest cut on all of Super Bad Is Back, beating out stompers by James Brown, Fred Wesley, Kool & The Gang, Curtis Mayfield, EWF, the O'Jays, and even the Chakachas' infamous sex funk hit Jungle Fever, which ended up on the Boogie Nights soundtrack.



YouTube has also got a short clip of Mandrill performing this track LIVE when it first came out.

Whenever the SOUL crew gets our shit together enuf to throw a blue-light basement roller-skating party, we'll be spinning this track as a shout-out to Kim!

- Dyn-O-Mite