DJ's Old-Time Granny and Dyn-O-Mite spin old school soul, funk, and disco jams! The show airs on special occasions on WCOM radio, 103.5 FM in Carrboro, NC, and streams online worldwide. www.resoul.org
Today I've been reflecting on the passage of time, life's ups and downs, and how some things always seem to cycle back around. Part of it is that last night I watched a documentary on Hugh Hefner that David Lynch co-produced back in the early 90s titled Hugh Hefner: Once Upon A Time (not be be confused with the recent doc Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel, directed by Brigette Berman). And I was struck by a dark episode involving the suicide of Hefner's executive secretary in early 1975, a woman named Bobbie Arnstein, who was also one of his closest friends. She was targeted by the feds in a vicious attempt by Republican prosecutors (including future Illinois governor "Big" Jim Thompson) to nail Hefner by entangling him in a drug investigation, in the hopes of destroying his publishing empire.
A grieving Hefner reacts to the suicide of Bobbie Arnstein.
Hefner was an early financial supporter of NORML, and funded a bevy of other very liberal causes through the Playboy Foundation. Between his progressive, pro-legalization political agenda and very public role as pied piper of the sexual revolution (no less a cultural authority than Roger Ebert called Playboy "the most influential magazine of its time"), he made a lot of enemies in the conservative, puritan, law-and-order establishment of the 1960s and early 70s, and they seized their chance to try to bring him down.
But the tragedy was that Arnstein, a fragile, gentle, brilliant soul, got caught in the crossfire, sentenced to an excessive fifteen-year jail term on trumped-up charges, all in the hopes that she would implicate her boss for something he didn't do. Even right-wing columnist William Safire denounced the prosecutors' tactics in the New York Times, editorializing "It is one thing to give a cooperative witness a break, entirely another to threaten to let a defendant rot in the slammer until he or she tells the story the prosecution wants." Well, she killed herself instead. What a shame.
Bobbie's story struck me, and I kept thinking about her today, so it's fitting that I would discover this track, which is a fairly unknown Nancy Wilson gem. From her 1976 Capitol LP This Mother's Daughter, it was written by Eugene McDaniels, who also penned the album's title track. McDaniels is a soul genius singer and songwriter currently living as a self-described "hermit" in Maine and an artist who, like Nancy Wilson, I also had never heard of before today. But his Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse LP from '71 apparently provided samples for classic tracks from hip hop outifts like Tribe, the Beatnuts, and the Beastie Boys.
(Note from 2018 - apparently, less than six months after this post was originally written, Gene McDaniels died peacefully at his home in Kittery, Maine on July 29, 2011. Love, peace, and mad props to an amazing musician and songwriter.)
This was an Elliott Road thrift store find. By the time it dropped in '76, "Sweet Nancy" had already released an amazing 40 other albums in her career as a jazz vocalist stretching back to 1959.
Although this record was not among either of the two huge thrift sto' scores I stumbled onto within the past month, it surfaced today thanx to another track that was. That other track being Double Cross by First Choice, and I found the original 12" at the Elliott Road PTA, released in 1981 on Gold Mind Records (headed by producer Norman Harris). Featuring a remix on one side by Bobby DJ Guttadaro of Ice Palace fame (he spun at both the original Fire Island disco and its New York City sister club on West 57th Street). Bobby DJ was also notable for having supervised the production of the soundtrack to the Soul'ed Out, UnLtd. crew's all-time favorite disco flick, Thank God It's Friday. Old-Time Granny sez she's seen this, like, five times, which is more than I have!
Anyway, I already had a sealed copy of a Salsoul reissue of Double Cross, with Let's Celebrate by Skyy on the flip. Which was written by Skyy member Tommy McConnell, and not the group's superstar producer, Randy Muller, who was also the force behind Brass Construction and arranger for B.T. Express. And as I was checking out my copy of Skyy's Skyy Line LP, to compare the album version with the extended 12" mix, I happened across today’s JOTD – Get Into The Beat. Which was the LP's closing cut, and has got a smooth, silky, roller disco funk sound going on all over the place.
And judging from the minimal action it's gotten on YouTube, this remains a relatively unknown deep cut from Skyy. But it WAS written by Randy Muller, and it shows, ranking right up there with their other upbeat, slammin' mega-hits that he penned, like First Time Around, (a track that spawned an amazing remix by Larry Levan, featured on the 1979 LP Larry Levan's Greatest Mixes Volume Two, which also included Larry's classic remix of Double Cross), Here's To You, and Call Me.
Tonite I was digitizing a mixtape that a friend dubbed for me back in the day. His name was Tedd O'Neil, and later this month will mark five years since his senselessly premature death at the age of thirty-five.
Tedd circa 1990
Hailing from small town Rhode Island, I was considered a pretty unusual character during high school. Appearance-wise, I was a unrepentant punk rocker, sporting spiked or shaved hair, combat boots, and lots of wild outfits whether I was going to a punk show or heading to class. In my yearbook I was voted "most outrageous."
But Tedd, who lived one town over from me, half the size of where I grew up and a place even more suspicious of nonconformists, had me beat by far. That dude had mad style, charisma, and attitude, and everyone else could kiss off if they didn't like it. I first encountered him riding the Newport-to-Providence bus line that linked our little towns to the outside world. It must have been like '85 or '86, we were both 14, 15 years old, and Tedd was already an underground fashion icon. With all his jewelry and bracelets, jet black nail polish, eyeliner, black trench coat, boots, and an expertly coiffed (self-cut and styled) spiky hairdo with a bleached blond sort-of devilock in front and a braided rattail halfway down his back, he looked like a cross between Madonna, Glenn Danzig, and Siouxsie Sioux. It was goth meets punk meets gay, and it looked fantastic on Tedd.
We later worked together at a crazy job and became pals right after high school, hanging out in Rhode Island from '89-'91. After that, I spent more and more time in NC and went home less and less, and after Tedd graduated from Hampshire College in '93, he moved to San Fran. I never saw him again, although we talked on the phone a little. But he was one of those people I always expected to pop up again, and the news of his death came totally out of left field.
Peach Robidoux, his closest friend from high school and college, set up a Facebook group called Remembering Tedd O'Neil where his friends from both coasts still share memories and post photos, video and audio clips. Check it out for more info on Tedd's life and times.
Anyway, this mixtape was titled "Tedd's Amazing Goth Mix 1990," and I seem to remember him dubbing me a copy one day while he cut my hair in his upstairs bedroom at his parents' house. I used to love to visit him there because he had a huge Irish family, they were all super cool, and there was always some kind of drama going on.
On one side, there is in fact a mix of classic goth tracks. On the other, there's a slammin' house mix. And I'm pretty the whole tape was Tedd's production. From the house side comes today's JOTD, S'Express – The Theme from S'Express.
I first heard this track at the job where Tedd and I became friends. We worked at a boatyard where a company built giant cruiseships and then ran booze cruises on them all over Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island. I started out as a maintenance worker in the late winter, low man on the totem pole in a skeleton crew of three. I was 18 years old and my two co-workers were 50-something and 80-something, respectively. No shit, one of the cats was 80+ and still coming to work five days a week at this crappy boatyard, so I had to respect that. I'm not even going to get into all the bullshit stuff these dudes had me doing when I first showed up. Needless to say, I was thrilled when the spring arrived and I got promoted to working in the boatyard, helping build the cruiseships. Or at least painting them. And then by the summer, I got to be a deckhand aboard the boats. Which was actually a lot of fun.
The whole time I was working my way up through the ranks of this small town boatyard empire, Tedd had the game all figured out. Probably because he lived right around the corner and had worked at the place before, he had a super cushy position. He was in charge of parking all the boozehounds' cars who showed up for the cruises, then staffing the office while the cruises were out and keeping watch over the parking lot. Yeah, right! Tedd would invite his friends over to hang out, blast music, and party in the office almost every night while the boats were gone. He was king of the wharf.
There were DJ's on board the boats, and after I heard one of them spin this S'Express acid house stomper, I would pester them to play it as often as possible. 'Cuz it was the bomb. And checking out the '88 promo video for the first ever time tonite, I'm even more impressed with the whole S'Express vibe. This video rocks! Clearly reaching back to the 70s with retro fashions, psychedelic effects, live horns, and strong diva vocals, but with a cutting edge, pulsating acid house beat. Plus stock newsreel footage that contains subliminal anti-war messages and makes the whole production a work of video art. (Note from 2013: the video now featured here is a different mix, the original promo video was removed from YouTube courtesy of the copyright police). And the main sample is from a Norman Whitfield-produced classic by Rose Royce, Is It Love You're After from 1979's Rose Royce IV: Rainbow Connection LP. Also something I never knew until right now. My jaw dropped when I saw video footage of them performing that joint and heard the original sample, see what I mean.
And apparently, The Theme From S’Express had a big impact. A whole year before Deee-Lite’s breakthrough LP announced to the world that house music was here to stay, this topped both the UK singles charts and the US Hot Dance Club Play chart.
So here's a Joint Of The Day resurrected from his old school mixtape and dedicated to my friend Tedd, who as another of his friends put it, is hopefully "in that heavenly looking hair salon in the sky, that Frankie Avalon sings about in Grease, doing all the dead celebrities' hair and makeup."
Still working through my recent stack from the Carrboro PTA. I knew this Raydio record (A Woman Needs Love, from 1981) was going to yield some previously unknown eargasms, and it didn't disappoint. Still In the Groove reminds me of this other Raydio track from '78 that I only have on 45 – Get Down.
Turns out that was the b-side to Jack and Jill, which was their first big hit, landing at #8 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts (#11 in the UK) and going gold. Jack and Jill is a classic slice of soul, no doubt, but I'll bet just as many peeps were digging Get Down on the flip, and that propelled the single's chart success.
As featured in the Mel Brooks flick Spaceballs, this joint came to me as the title track of a Pointer Sisters LP I picked up at the Carrboro PTA last weekend for $.20, and I would have thrown it back had I noticed it was from 1986. Becuz in my yet-to-be-educated mind, that was past the Pointer Sisters' prime. Now I'm psyched it ended up in my pile.
On a side note, if the foxy lady who raises hens in Graham and was shopping for a used drum kit ever reads this, e-mail me! Bona fide missed connection after our conversation got interrupted by a very inopportunely-timed incoming phone call that I should have let go to voicemail.
The whole side B of this record is pretty good (other standouts being Sexual Power and Eyes Don't Lie), as opposed to Side A, which flat out sucks. How did that happen?
Although not the original LP versions, the YouTube remixes featured (and linked to) here are all true to the originals' spirit. They come courtesy of a dude from the UK who loves the Pointer Sisters, and the high-quality videos he's put together to go with these great remixes prove it.
Straight off the Music Express K-Tel comp (ALL TOP 10 HITS!), and I bought it largely on the strength of this track, which looked like another potential personal DJ theme for my bad self. Although I wasn't sure how anything could compare to Stacy Lattisaw's similarly-titled smash from 1980. But it had me convinced to spend the ridiculous thrift store amount of $1.99 on the LP at the newly-relocated, corporate-looking Savers in East Prov, RI, before the helpful cashier hooked me up at a dollar per disc. Thanx alot, hon.
When I finally got around to checking it out back home in NC, I flipped! Bazuka was a disco one-hit wonder, they dropped one album on A&M and vanished. True to its billing, Dynomite went Top 10 in 1975, and hit #6 on the Hot Dance Club Play charts. Like the amazing footage that resulted when this hit Soul Train proves (which will undoubtedly soon be removed from YouTube - WTF, Don Cornelius!), it also inspired some truly funky dancefloor motion. There was also a Part 2, and the extended mix of both clocks in at 7:19.
From Monsieur Dimitri's De-Luxe House of Funk, disc #3 (sides E & F) of a three-record set, a random record that popped up at the Carrboro PTA on Saturday. Looking suspiciously like a vinyl artifact that was retailed long ago at a spot called the Lost City, similar to yesterday's JOTD, but unlike the Jellybean Records joint sold new in '99, this record was already used when it passed through our hands and may have been originally bargain-priced at two bones.
I don't care if it's now 15 years later from when the track dropped, or twelve+ years since we sold it to some vinyl junkie. Why anyone would have given up this record at any point, for any reason, it's beyond me, because all four cuts are dope. This one's my favorite. Disco house in the house, with a strong sample of the Young & Company classic I Like What You're Doing To Me.
Yesterday, I was unexpectedly in Carrboro during the middle of the afternoon. So I swung by the PTA on Jones Ferry for the first time in literally, several years. Back when Shaun & Leslie lived on Carr Street circa the late 90s, one of them would truck over to the spot every day like clockwork, leaving slim pickings for the rest of the unhappy crate diggers around here. Of course, they only could choose from what was left over after another infamous cat who WORKED there (who I ran into just last month when he started honking at me in the Rams Plaza parking lot) got through choosing what 12" treasures he wanted to add to his huge personal collection. So eventually, I was like, f- it, I'm never gonna find anything worthwhile under those circumstances, and quit going.
But clearly times have changed, because there was a giant wall of vinyl to dig through, and I amassed a fat stack of goodies at the extended holiday sale rate of twenny cents per. I hope they extend that sale a little longer, because that much vinyl in one place is likely to spontaneously combust at some point, maybe. A freaking dusty groove fire hazard.
The thing that initially caught my eye about (Mucho Mambo) Sway by Shaft was that it looked really familiar, like I'd seen it before. And sure enough, it turned out to be a record that we sold new at the Lost City for $10-$12 when it was first released on Jellybean Recordings in 1999. Right after we'd moved to 402 West Rosemary Street, the second and final Lost City location. I could tell by the remnants of our original price tag. So that was kinda cool, to be buying it back twelve years later for $.20 at the Carrboro PTA.
Then I listened to it, and got into the latin house groove. The 6:16 Extended Mix is the real deal, but good luck finding it YouTube amidst the hundreds of different videos out there that name-check this track. Probably a result of the Pussycat Dolls having covered it. The remix featured here (supposedly from 2009) sounds as close as I could find. But the promo video from the original '99 release is funny, especially when the mambo crew evicts the lame DJ from his booth and takes over the dancefloor. Actually, there was also a super-funny alternate video shot that had me mad laffing when I saw it, featuring a guy with a tail.
Today's JOTD is courtesy of Fat Larry's Band, preaching a positive message for the New Year with Here Comes The Sun.
"Now is the time for you to be somebody...be anything you want to be...this is your chance to become someone...here comes your opportunity!"
Off their Lookin' For Love LP, this track cracked the US Dance Top-40 when it charted at #39 on release. (I prefer the 6:51 Club Mix to the 5:28 Radio Mix featured here, which is the only mix available on YouTube). The band broke up when leader "Fat" Larry James died from a heart attack on December 5, 1987, way too young at the age of 38.
FLB are the bomb, pure and simple. The first time DJ Old-Time Granny and I tag-teamed together, we were both suspended in time while soaking up the vibes from their amazing cover of Fascination, co-written by Luther Vandross and David Bowie, off their debut Feel It LP (incorrectly noted on Wikipedia as released in '77 on Stax, it actually dropped on WMOT Records in '76). And who could forget Act Like You Know, especially since it was resurrected for a whole new generation of funk addicts after being included in GTA: Vice City.
So imagine my surprise when I stumbled onto this wack YouTube clip, featuring two ignorant British shock jocks named Mark and Lard dissing Fat Larry's Band! Goofing like their name alone qualifies them as the silliest band ever, and riffing on the absurd, racist notion that their mega-smash, heartfelt and beautiful ballad Zoom, which hit #2 on the UK charts in '82, was somehow a wack tune. Totally back-ass-wards and uncalled for, but not surprising from a couple of melanin-challenged boneheads who have managed to prove once again that some people just can't fake the funk.
I thought maybe 2011's first Joint Of The Day was going to be a little blue-eyed soul from No Parlez, Paul Young's 1983 debut solo LP. Because the whole album was on my rotation early this morning, and I was digging a few tracks that never charted, like the title track, Oh Women, and Sex (the latter two both written by Jack Lee, lead guitarist and songwriter for West Coast power pop trio The Nerves in the 70s. Lee also wrote Hanging On The Telephone, made famous when it was covered by Blondie).
Another contender was Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing, by Stevie Wonder, because last night PBS aired a really excellent live concert performance he gave in October '08 at London's O2 Arena, shortly before Barack Obama's election, and the vibe was strong.
But then I dug back into a couple of records that we spun on last weekend's Choice Sides, checking out some cuts I was planning to play but passed over at the last minute in favor of something else.
One of these records was Herbie Hancock's Man-Child (1975), the final album Herbie did with the Headhunters, which coincidentally featured Stevie guesting on harmonica. In the studio during the show, Obliveon was like, "Is this mine?" Back at the crib, he pulled out his own copy, passed down to him by his granddad Al, who left him an extensive jazz, soul, and funk vinyl collection that he accumulated during his many decades of life in New York City.
As soon as the needle hit the groove, the title went to Herbie in a KO blow. So all hail the lead cut, a fitting New Year's Day soundtrack, the super-funky Hang Up Your Hang Ups. With accompanying amazing video footage of 70s NYC edited from Scorsese's Taxi Driver. And let's heed Herbie's message by resolving to spread love, not hate in 2011!
Seeing as how I'm up late, and attempting to get to bed, I was not trying to anoint a new Joint Of The Day right now. But one just fell into my lap. You can always tell a great track 'round about the time you realize it's the fourth time you've had the needle on repeat, and when it's getting close to the end, all you want to do is listen to it again.
This is a thrift store record, vintage Elliott Road PTA. Letta Mbulu, the track is Buza (There's A Light At The End Of A Tunnel), off her LP Letta, released 1978 on A&M. She sings this particular cut in Xhosa, and it uses a Mbaqanga rhythm. That's what it says in the notes. Co-written with her by the legendary Motown producer/songwriter Lamont Dozier.
The album was co-produced by Herb Alpert, Stewart Levine, and Letta's husband Caiphus Semenya. Featuring a huge ensemble of horn players and percussionists, including Paulinho da Costa. Plus other standout tracks of a disco-funk-afro-jazz flavor, including Baile Baneso and I Can Depend On You. The whole package is positive, powerful, and Letta imparts some deep wisdom on the inner sleeve:
"I feel that the spirit of the music I make is universal, like the soul of man. It transcends all psychological, cultural and racial barriers. Love, Peace, and Progress - Letta Mbulu"
Buza is my fave. I'm diggin' it. And unfortunately, it's not available on YouTube, although you can get a taste of another track off Letta, Jikijela Ngamatje.
(Note from July, 2014 - It took four and a half years, until this past May, but somebody finally got wise to what a crime against humanity it was that this track was missing from the YouTube multiverse and uploaded it! Mad props to Zakhele Gumede!
