Show Review: Gil Scott-Heron Today

I tried to curb my anticipation for Gil Scott-Heron’s performance at the recently made over Regency Ballroom last Friday. But how could I? I wanted him to amaze, to enrapture with his musical poetics, and most secretly, to redeem my nebulous view of a 70s era, politicized soulfulness unrivaled by today’s musicianship. It’s an idealistic and surely ridiculous image we children of the 80s have learned of the decade before ours. But it’s one so ingrained and endlessly reminded that we can’t seem to shake it free.

While Los Angeles revival funk band Orgone grooved (peep their solid cover of “Funky Nassau”), singer Fanny Franklin expressed an equal excitement about bearing witness to the legend. And when Scott-Heron finally stepped onto stage, strutting choppily to the microphone, the audience erupted in wailing applause and shouts. He looked older and moved with certain difficulty, his body appearing thin underneath his loose fitting clothes. His face was angular and gaunt with patches of gray hair pouring from the sides of his hat and from his chin. A lady sitting in front of me asked incredulously if that old man indeed was Gil. I nodded with certainty but really had no idea. After all, he’s hardly recognizable compared to his younger self clad with the iconic afro and psychedelic garb. Today, it’s a rare occurrence to see Gil Scott-Heron. He has been in and out of prison for the past decade on drug and parole transgression charges. Some reports imply his suffering from being HIV positive, something Scott-Heron addressed perhaps indirectly when he told the Regency that a media frenzy on the internet continues to concoct all sorts of chimeras about his life.

Ebbing our immediate impressions, Scott-Heron opened with a consciously cheesy comedy routine where he got comfortable with the crowd. It reminded me of the legend’s simple humanity -- like a venerable uncle who still tells bad jokes at a family dinner. As soon as the routine verged on the unbearable, he transitioned into a monologue and solo song in tribute to Sister Fannie Lou Hamer. And when Scott-Heron’s voice boomed forth from his brittle body, everyone immediately felt his unparalleled soulfulness and brilliance. With age, Scott-Heron’s bright voice has gained a hoarse resonance, adding even more layers to his street inspired poetics and wisdom.

Gil Scott-Heron guided his soul-jazz outfit, the Amnesia Express, through some of the strongest moments of his catalogue. The band retained a decidedly solid hold on their expressionistic 70s earthliness but bent towards a lush, jazzy psychedelia. Although technically rusty and hiccuping occasionally with offbeat rhythms, it worked. Scott-Heron bellowed “We Almost Lost Detroit” to set the mood for a conflicted era shaped as much by violence as hope and love. He lamented today’s popular understanding of jazz as a sterile and passive musical style with a charging take on “Is That Jazz?” And in waxing poetic to introduce “Winter In America”, Scott-Heron pondered whether the season’s indifferent coldness might be revenge for us cherishing the other seasons more. A fifteen minute version of “The Bottle” -- sung in a dreamy, melancholic tone -- swept the climax. The performance swayed from lyrical musings to groove laden songs and improvised solos, each song extended into a prolonged and interwoven narrative.

Despite the real possibility of coming off trite, there was a remarkable sincerity to Gil Scott-Heron. His creative expression stemmed from life experience rather than a need to perform a spectacle and preach a message before a crowd. Song reflected life and life in turn was shaped and illuminated by song. For a moment I felt that magnitude of revolutionary spirit burning distant in another hazy generation. It was aged and hardened in one man’s beautiful, gravely voice, and filled the auditorium with its sweetness.

Seattle Slewing It

Montreal-based turntablist and producer Kid Koala (born Eric San) is the type of artist you can expect to take some formidably playful risks. Known for his virtuoso skills scratching and mixing on the wheels of steel, back in 1996 he was the first musician in North America signed to the U.K.'s boundary-busting label Ninja Tunes. Arriving in the wake of a fantastic mixtape, San's debut hip-hop-jazz-funk crossover Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (Ninja Tunes, 2000), featured a video game and a surreal comic book he designed himself. For San, the creative impulse is dedicated to telling a compelling and unlikely story. Free for download at www.nufonia.com, The Slew's 100% — San's self-released fourth effort in collaboration with long time friend Dynomite D — continues this tradition.

San and Dynomite (born Dylan Frombach) had discussed collaborating on a full-length project ever since vibing together on a couple spacey jazz singles about a decade ago (peep their "Third World Lover"). Thus, when Frombach was enlisted by his cousin Jay Rowlands to produce the score for a feature documentary on elusive Seattle psych-rock recluse Jack Slew, he brought San along. That was four and a half years ago. The documentary has since fallen through, but the score evolved independently into a masterfully abrasive and chest-rumbling soundscape. "We wanted to do some Black Sabbath meets the Bomb Squad," San tells me, laughing.

Initially the loosely-defined "Black Squad" duo gathered concrete inspiration from Jack Slew's unreleased material — an ample body of work, thick with ferocious dusty breaks, bluesy vocals, and fuzzed-out riffs. Slew has a gravelly yet piercing voice that cuts right through the drums. He sings knowingly of freedom lost and the fragile sentiments of an ape trying to become a man. It's rich material that just begs for sampling. San and Frombach reassemble the parts to produce a fresh perspective on the dangerously free spirit of the outlaw. "We needed a car chase scene, and a jail break scene, and then we ran with it," says San. Indeed, the album roves widely and digs deep, concluding with the epic moral struggle of "A Battle of Heaven & Hell."

Despite a cinematic narrative akin to a rogue spaghetti western, The Slew nearly succumbs to the usual pitfalls faced by turntablist albums. In the aesthetic sphere of turntablism, the scratching and abrupt pattern changes can sound gluttonous and overtly technical, warping the sonic landscape into a show of narcissism. "On the one hand [100%] is super-psychedelic, loud, and banging," San explains. "On the other hand" — he laughs — "it's the most masochistic, purist turntable record I've ever made."

However, what saves the effort from sadism as well is that the Slew's hip-hop inspired pastiche takes cues from authentic recording techniques of early '70s rock. San and Frombach dove into their history books to study the methods for producing the screeching drums and sandblasted guitar riffs of that era. To really polish the coarsely hypnotic sound, they asked Mario Caldato Jr. — the engineering innovator behind the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique (Capitol, 1989) among others — to master the effort. The result is an interweaving of pummeling breaks and wa-wa guitar nastiness fractured by effects modulations and the emboldened seams of mixing and scratching. And it hits loud.

Koala and Dynomite originally entertained the idea of performing 100% live with 14 turntables. Fortunately, they scrapped that idea in favor of working with Chris Ross and Myles Heskett, the former rhythm section of Australia's the Wolfmothers. Ross and Heskett play bass guitars, drums, and organ while Kid Koala and mad scientist partner P-Love (Paolo Kapunan) handle six turntables. San had to build "bass-proof, shock-proof turntables" to face the monster loudness that will ensue on the Slew's two-and-a-half-week North American tour. "We bought spring-loaded tone arms and made custom vinyl to cue faster, so we can just drop the needle and go," he says. "We are going to just cut loose."

also published in SFBG

Intoxicated Rhythms

I wrote a couple drug related music lists for the Guardian. Despite the possible implications of my finding drug use as particularly inspirational, I'd prefer to side with Ice T in his Curtis Mayfield "Pusherman" flip. Music can get you high! Oh the cliche, but what can you do when it's true?

I'm looking to expand these two lists, the first regarding albums made by musicians while under the influence and the second, songs about love interests that are really about drugs. So give me your suggestions!




Albums Recorded By Intoxicated Musicians

I had considerable difficulty in compiling a top ten list of albums recorded by musicians while under the influence. An almost mythological speculation inundates the many so-assumed drug inspired recordings, especially those of the psychedelic 60’s. But most artists do not care to divulge their less than sober stories, or do not quite seem to remember them. For these reasons, I admit my own suspicion of the following list’s indelible accuracy despite my late nights of fuzzy research. I thus advise the reader to measure these drugged-out recordings with the highest dose of skepticism.

Ash Ra Tempel and Timothy Leary — Seven Up (Kosmiche Kuriere, 1973)

While recording, members drink a 7-Up can laced with LSD.

Dr. Dre — The Chronic (Priority, 1992)

The much-imitated and never duplicated source of blunted funk rap.

David Bowie — Station to Station (RCA, 1976)

On a cocaine trip to new-wave space.

Sly and the Family Stone — There's A Riot Goin' On (Epic, 1971)

Famously recorded in Sly's Bel Air drug mansion.

Leak Bro's — Waterworlds (Eastern Conference, 2004)

Get wet with these rhymers on a PCP holiday.

Quasimoto — The Unseen (Stones Throw, 2000)

Madlib gets wicked with psilocybin mushrooms and a voice modulator.

DJ Screw — 3 N' The Mornin' Pt. 1 (Bigtyme, 1995)

The originator of purple drank (codeine, promethazine, alcohol).

The Cure — Pornography (A&M, 1982)

A dark journey into LSD, cocaine, and alcohol.

Pink Floyd — The Piper at The Gates of Dawn (EMI Columbia, 1967)

This Syd Barrett acid trip will keep you away from drugs forever.


Songs About Love Interests That Are Really About Drugs

I noticed a revealing trend in songs about love interests that are really about drugs. Men enjoy personifying their drug of choice as alluring or mischievous women. Female artists tend to just sing about the drug -- or sometimes mind melting, clouded narratives about white rabbits a la Grace Slick. Despite this disappointing limitation I tried to create a well balanced list by defining love interest in the broadest sense possible. I mean, this is all the many layers of interpretation anyway.

Rick James — "Mary Jane" (Motown, 1985)

Marijuana's classic cut just to get your feet wet.

The Beatles — "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Capitol, 1967)

Heavily debated, but really, is this not about LSD?

Laid Back — "White Horse" (Sire, 1967)

Don't ride heroin, but get up on that white pony!

E-40 — "White Gurl" (My Ghetto Report Card, Reprise, 2006)

Another Yay Area cocaine anthem.

Paper Route Gangstaz — "Keyshia Cole" (Fear and Loathing in Hunts Vegas, Mad Decent, 2008)

Tribute to the Oakland-based singer -- and potent brand of herb.

Don Cherry — "Brown Rice" (Don Cherry, Horizon, 1975)

Oh, seductive golden brown of heroin!

Cab Calloway — "Minnie The Moocher" (Brunswick, 1931)

Save your wallet and stay away from Minnie, that drug fiend inside you!

Steely Dan — "Doctor Wu" (Katy Lied, ABC, 1975)

A tad colonial, but still an insightful meditation on the opiate trade.

Vacations and Gaslamp Killer

Hey blog world! I've been on vacation up through Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver and then back down the coast to San Francisco. I have some great Vancouver graffiti pics and also a few little timber towns I'd like to write on. But until then, I'll try to satiate my five readers with a piece I wrote on The Gaslamp Killer for the Guardian. It's been my most thought out article yet on music, and I'm quite proud of it, even though somehow along the copy editing way someone got rid of one of my periods and two sentences train wreck! But really, who the hell cares?

I wrote about Gaslamp the first time I saw him DJ at Minna in SF. And I've come to associate Foucault's writing on limit experiences with Gaslamp's turntable performances. A limit experience is the pushing of the self to the limits of its familiar understanding so that the experience itself deforms, mutates, and transforms the self as a result. Foucault reads the notion in the works of Nietzsche and Bataille. It does not have to be quite as disruptive as Gaslamp's performances, which are charged with aggression and loudness; but the effect is always disruptive, jarring, but restorative. In fact the limit experience can be a simple daily exercise, reading a book without preconceptions, training a heightened awareness of one's surroundings so as to develop a less rigid source of knowledge. Anyway, the limit experience is a fascinating concept in Foucault, which he only briefly touches on in a few places a couple years before his death. Here's GLK.


Music can teleport you to far-off lands and spark nostalgia for distant times. It might elicit lost memories or even summon illusions. You may have never visited Istanbul or São Paulo or lived in the 1960s, but music infects the imagination with a visceral experience of the unknown. The effect is uncanny, mesmerizing, beautiful, and even therapeutic.

But what happens when music pushes its ability to displace to an extreme? When music annihilates your familiar sense of space and warp holes your usual expectations of time? Can listening to music transform you? Los Angeles-based beatsmith and DJ the Gaslamp Killer certainly thinks so. "The music I'm looking for is the stuff that will cut through your brain and just make you feel ... almost overwhelmed," Gaslamp slowly explains. Whether arranging cosmic abyss mixtapes like I Spit On Your Grave (Obey, 2008) or crafting his own twisted productions, including his just-released debut solo EP My Troubled Mind (Brainfeeder), Gaslamp displays a developing genius for charting hallucinatory odysseys into vertigo. His haunted, cinematic music unhinges the listener, approaching a surreal dissociation and restoration of the self.

William Benjamin Bensussen didn't identify as the Gaslamp Killer until some time after moving to Los Angeles three years back. He grew up in another troubled Southern California paradise cloaked in its own rusted mythology: San Diego. There, a restless Bensussen was already broadening his musical horizons in the fifth grade, listening to Too Short, Jimmy Hendrix, and Dre. A few years later he attempted to satiate his curious, nearly frantic energy by freestyle dancing at raves and in b-boy circles — to electronic and hip-hop music respectively. But it was DJ Shadow who bridged those fractured worlds for Bensussen and ignited a desire to dig into jazz, funk, and psychedelic crates. "I started on this frenzy trying to find all the originals. And then I realized that Shadow had sampled half of his stuff, and he wasn't as much of a genius as I thought he was," Gaslamp recalls, laughing. "That's when I started looking for older records and thinking, well, maybe I could do this."

Bensussen's dark nom de plume is a bittersweet tribute to his unlikely origins. As a 19-year-old college dropout, he flipped wax in San Diego's glittery Gaslamp District to a sometimes hostile crowd. Bensussen remembers bitterly a particular confrontation with a vindictive listener. A strikingly beautiful woman — who intimidated the then-teenage DJ — queried him angrily why he wanted to ruin her time with his fucked up music. Why? Dumbfounded, wounded, and angry, Bensussen drew sadistic nourishment from the provocation. It helped inspire his first mixtape project, the circa-2000 Gaslamp Killers, a lo-fi guzzling of psychotic drums and horror sonic bits. Recently, Bensussen decided to rename himself in light of this original labor of love.

Gaslamp has yet to settle down. He helped found L.A.'s monolithic weekly showcase for uncut beat-driven tracks, the Low End Theory, in the fall of 2006. And he's secured a close affiliation with Flying Lotus' bubbling imprint, Brainfeeder. But Bensussen's troubled mind still wanders, like his music and his words, in perpetual hunger for the rawness of life. "[My music] comes from more of a vicious area," Gaslamp explains, searching for the right words. "Not angry, just passion — but a passion that can't be sugar-coated."

This unmediated passion takes Gaslamp into many dangerous and strangely ethereal caverns. It also jettisons him to the homes of foreign musicians marked by the same shattered pathos. My Troubled Mind gathers its influences from all over the globe — Turkey, India, Russia, Mexico, Germany, and Italy. But the way Gaslamp employs samples from these regions defies their idiosyncratic place of origin. He has a rare skill for extracting universal otherworldliness from regional sounds. And he implements their fiercely destructive yet uplifting spirituality into his mind-melting compositions. His music and DJ sets become performances, elusive experiences leaving you charred and fiending for more of their ineffable allure. "I'm glad people can't describe it," Gaslamp says, nearly yelling into the speakerphone. "Once they are able to describe it, that's when they chew it up, spit it out, and leave it behind. The more indescribable and amazing it is, the more you'll hold on to your people, your listeners."

Sanguine Soul: Transformations

I'm happy to announce that our radio program is no longer limited to the signifier of a day of the week. Sanguine Sunday has transformed into Sanguine Soul. We got a new web page in the works, and Honey Knucks has been working on a logo for 9 months now, so we'll see where that's going. Until then, enjoy our slightly confusing wordpress, we still got some mad decent content. We push the "transformations" episode in a time of political upheavel (Iran, Honduras), en memorium of the king of pop, and in the midst of all that, a more exacted conceptual orientation for our show, and a conversation with Khingz's about his debut solo LP, quite of the transformative variety, "From Spaceships to Slaveships."

Fresh Artistry: Karriem Riggins Expands Jazz, Informs Hip-hop

On Wednesday I dropped by the historic Oakland Yoshi's venue for the first time to peep Karriem Riggins introduce his new quintet and blend some mad decent jazzified hiphop with Pete Rock. A veritable young lion in the jazz world and a much sought after beat conductor on the rise in the hiphop world, Riggins is displaying some impressive talent and unique skill for crossing the two monstrous genres.

If you want to get some background, I wrote a brief article on Riggins for the SFBG. Rachel Swan at the East Bay Express layed down some more details about his life and work.

I recommend peeping his Hella International mix. Madlib, J-Rocc, and seemingly Riggins as well have been pushing a style of looping jazz beats, cutting them in and out in a fragmented blunted funk aesthetic.

Listen: Karriem Riggins Live at Hella International - Stones Throw

You can also cop his fresh, and ridiculously impressive mix-tape, featuring original production, remixes, and jazz loops, Kaleidoscope. Expect a debut CD soon, whether it will be the Karriem Riggins Quintet or a full length of the Jahari Massamba Unit, we'll have to wait and see.

Album Review: Nickodemus' Sun People

My editor at the Guardian just passed me the new Nickodemus record, Sun People, for a review. I'm usually hesitant of world music despite my absolute love for all sorts of outernational sounds, from Mulatu Atstatke to Turkish psych and Brazillian bossa nova. You just never know whether the producer will pull off a uniquely multiculturally inspired sound, or just reap the benefits of marketing to the crassly cultured NPR audience who fiend for the next opportunity to bust stagnant salsa moves on the next fundraiser galla dance floor. Nickodemus is far beyond this cheese. Dude makes an excellent brand of uplifting, groove heavy music.

Live Review: Erykah Badu Gets Out of Her Mind

In anticipation of releasing her brilliant sound odyssey, New Amerykah Pt. 1: 4th World War (Universal Motown, 2008), Erykah Badu, a.k.a. “Analogue Girl in A Digital World,” a.k.a. “Fat Belly Bella,” a.k.a. “Low Down Loretta Brown,” clarified her artistic objectives on an Okayplayer form. Posting as analoguegirl, Badu affirmed, “As much as I would love to be just a recording artist, I am not. There’s a difference. I am a performance artist first; there’s a difference.” Having the chance to see Badu perform live at the Warfield June 6, I could not agree more with her distinction.

Erykah Badu performs at L.A.'s Club Nokia June 5, 2009, the night before her San Francisco gig. Photo by Beth Stirnaman via LA Record.

Dressed in a mystical mauve kimono, golden skull cap, and gem encrusted space goggles, Badu strutted onstage in profile, tracing her steps forward like a celestial, hieroglyph narrative. A cinematic whirling rainstorm of bleeps and lasers and synth bubbling keys reverberated in the background, aspiring to transport the audience to the far reaches. This intergalactic resonance would remain the most consistent frequency throughout the performance; each transition of song and style marked by its cosmic joy of noise. Badu’s enigmatic presence recalled Sun Ra’s theatrical myth making, framed by an open ended aesthetic in Egyptology and a surreal space age, radicalized belief in the power of music to free the soul from its rusty, earthly shackles.

But this outlandish and historically rooted ethos did not restrain Badu’s emphasis on the contemporary. The high priestess of hip-hop soul incorporated the gods of our musical past into the urgency of the now. The tensions of old and new styles and sounds continuously pressed against each other throughout the remarkable performance.

Sometimes the antagonisms felt dramatically sharp. To introduce the set before Badu entered stage, her solid boogie funk outfit played a couple of the original tracks sampled in the production of 4th World War. The tribute to these musical foundations was contrasted by the DJ dropping Lil Wayne’s gutter poetry banger, “A Milli,” a wild song that encapsulates the sonic zeitgeist of the youngest generation of hip-hop heads. At other times Badu chose -- in a smoother fashion -- to synthesize contrasting musical elements with her own highly original, personal touch. Armed with a vigorous back catalog, Badu redefined some of classic soul grooves like “On and On” and “Didn’t Cha’ Know” in accordance to 4th World War’s coarsely textured and somewhat dissonant sonic landscape. While crooning her smoked-out throwback joint, “Back in the Day”, Badu cut in and out of the song to channel her muses, tracing the aggressive and playful soundscapes of Ice Cube and Slick Rick to feel good soul jams and real old school bluesy ballads. At one moment Badu reinvigorated her moniker, jazz scatting to sing the cosmic electronic keys in Afrika Bambaata’s “Looking For The Perfect Beat” all while reproducing the unforgettable bass line on the drum machine. To arrange such a complex performance -- seamlessly referencing and remixing musical history in a compellingly contemporary style -- Badu succeeded in translating and expanding the formal aesthetic of the hip-hop DJ into the art of the composer-singer. I’m not even overstating it.

While unraveling the many historical layers behind her sound, Badu slowly unburdened herself of wardrobe layers. Each shedding of an item enabled one of the many schizophrenic characters which make up the complicated being of Erykah Badu to manifest. The initial, arkestral space creature transformed into a golden headed free flowing being, and for the second act, Badu changed garb completely into a simple red summer dress. She whisked around the stage like a funkified ballerina, singing from her younger-aged repertoire of intimate coming-of-age joints. Shining the spotlight on her own personal struggles, Badu showed us the conflicted trajectory which led her to the apotheosis of her new mythological project articulated most transparently in “Healer,” the cyphered song marking the opening and closure of the first act. In “Healer,” Badu refines her musical vision, declaring a mysteriously therapeutic and transcendental power of hip-hop as more expansive than religious or governmental entities. The meaning behind this notion of spiritualized hip-hop is left vague, but there might be a clue in Badu’s closing actions. The sorceress sips her tea and implores the crowd, “Get out of your mind!” Badu is certainly out of her own.

This article was co-published on SFBG.

Sanguine Sunday - Global Rhythms

Last Fall I traveled through Eastern Europe and made it to the frontier of the Occidental world in the great city of Istanbul. The city is actually built partially on the European continent and partially on Asia; the Bosporous bridges actually bridge the two continents. Istanbul once was Constantinople, the seat of the Byzantine / Eastern Roman empire, and before that served as cross sectioned portal between the eastern and western worlds.

What very few people over here in California know is that Istanbul has an extremely rich musical history, informed by a global sensibility just as much as the people and city are. What emerges from this heritage is a uniquely provocative and cosmopolitan sound, blending many soulful and bass heavy styles from around the world with a backbone in Sufi mysticism and Turkish percussion. I found a great record label during my stay by the name of Doublemoon Records. They do an excellent job detailing their musical objectives.

Over the past 10 years, in synergy with three sister companies, Doublemoon has succeeded in nurturing a roster of promising talent into internationally recognized artists. Ranging from Sufi-electronica to groove alla turca, from jazz to gypsy funk, from oriental hip hop to Anatolian blues the musical gems that emerge from recording sessions are documented and recorded by Doublemoon. As such, Doublemoon Records is the sole platform for musicians with an amorphous ethnic identity to come together to create, collaborate, and communicate through the universal language of music.

Listen to a taste of this sound in our Sanguine Sunday Radio "Global Rhythms" set. Also, we're putting up a poll to vote for a new name on Wednesday, so please give us your input!

Sanguine Sunday - Electric Soul

We experimented with the conceptual orientation of "Electric Soul" for yesterday's edition of Sanguine Sunday Radio. Our sets are inspired by the music of the minimal synthesized grooves of Swedish outfit, Little Dragon, who are about to release their follow up to last year's brilliant eponymous debut. And lucky for us, we got a chance to catch up with lead singer, Yukimi, for a Q&A in the middle of the show. This episode is sure to sooth the somnolent and the perpetual anxious. Spasmodic therapy straight to the ribs, god. Enjoy!

Sanguine Sunday - The Sample Edition

In store for you this episode on Sanguine Radio we dropped a full fledged show dedicated to the sample. What many don't realize outside the fairly insular Hiphop community is that the layering of samples cut from previously recorded tracks is a highly refined aesthetic formula. Taking bits and pieces from old grooves, the Hiphop beatsmith arranges and manipulates a montage of sounds to cast an entirely fresh composition. The art of sampling is no simple theft.

The emcee flows over these beats, letting their ink spill over the multi-tiered archeology. In a sense, the lyricist spits over history, rejuvenating the past with a new horizon of meaning, and informing the present with the soul sonic flavor of the ancestors. In fact, we could call this craftwork musical montage in line with Eisenstein's montage theories on film. I like to think that this sample episode is a continuation of the Sound Lesson series, just a lot of back and forth dialogue between the originals and the new songs which reference them.

For the past couple decades legal battles have entangled the sample aesthetic intrinsic to this unique craft of beat production. And in recent years, the laws become stricter and more intensified, casting a hazy gloom over the future of this musical style. We turn to our legal expert, Danielle Furman from Art Venture Law, to drop into the studio and shed some light on the copyright issues relevant to the recording industry. What she tells us is certainly alarming yet at the same time hopeful for the future of sample production. Tune in and tell us what you think about the current state of sampling laws--whether they restrict the proliferation of new forms of art or protect the recording industry and the artists it represents!

Live Cuts: Soulive Get Down

Soulive pt. 1 - Live Independent SF 05-15-09


Soulive pt. 2 - Live Independent SF 05-15-09


Recording my live cuts series at San Francisco's Independent couldn't get better. No searches, no accusatory glares at my hand held recording device which might just look explosive, and an amazing sound system. You know, I really need to research the legality behind what I'm doing.

Anyway, Soulive brought the heat! Three hours of the heat. They jumped off on the pure funk tip fresh from their new album, Up Here, piecing together a revitalized arrangement of Michael Viner's breakdance anthem, Apache. Peep the Soulive pt. 1 live cut right above. Listen to the brass section, the Shady Horns, just carry that groove to the funkified oblivion of the mothership! Singer songwriter Nigel Hall impressed everyone with the diversity of his flow, covering the works of James Brown and Curtis Mayfield with a soulful crooning completely idionsyncratic to his own style. Yet, Soulive went far beyond rejuvenating the classic grooves; they funkified their way into new space rock territory and funky soul outer reaches and uplifting call and response jams.

They arranged the nearly three hour set into a coherent meditation on the funk. The band streamlined their meandering styles with an expert subtlety, giving credence to their efforts as a tightly nit band. Yet, each personality had its time to shine. Each composition opened up endless solo improvisation on the drums, the horns, the keyboards and the organs, the guitars. . . the unstoppable grooves. At one point in the show, guitarist Eric Krasno and keyboardist Neal Evans calmly left the stage to imbibe in some drink while drummer Alan Evans blew up the spot on the solo percussion until they returned to continue the jam minutes later. The funk just keeps going on and on and on.

Singing a Song for My Mother

Hamilton Bohannon - Singing a Song for my Mother


This Mother's Day inspired me to sort through my knowledge of songs dedicated to the joyful force of motherhood. Nothing, and I really mean nothing comes close, to Hamilton Bohannon's wonderful tribute, "Singing a Song for My Mother." The jam is cushioned by other extraordinary grooves off Bohannon's first album, Stop & Go, a monster funky soul soundscape released on Brunswick Records in 1973.

Bohannon's composition for Singing a Song rides a delicate tension between melancholic estrangement and effusive love. He makes this feeling of distance from the comfortable security of one's mother a mood of intimate warmth rather than of hopeless alienation. And the song sways with an endless joy, just charged with a vulnerable yet affirmative solidity. It truly encapsulates the sensual resonance of a grown child's relation to his mother in sonic form. So what do you think, does anyone have Hamilton Bohannon beat on the ode to the mother tip?

Sanguine Sunday - Food

Enjoy the beat buffet we cooked up for your listening pleasure on Sanguine Sunday Radio. These tantalizing audible treats are sure wet your appetite, or your libido, perhaps both. I want to know from my six loyal readers, what's your favorite food jam? What did we miss?

Sound Lesson: Soupy Jenifa

De La Soul - Jenifa Taught Me (Derwin's Revenge)


Maggie Thrett - Soupy


Wow, it's been nearly a year since my last sound lesson. I need some crate digger out there in the internet waves to help me out with this feat. Let's kick it off again.

The idea behind these sound lessons is to dig out the dusty history sampled by classic Hiphop tracks. It is always fascinating to hear an old drum break or vocal cut completely reworked into a new sonic landscape. The montage made out of old pieces not only rejuvenates the energy of those aged works, but it also constructs a fresh and new perspective on the musical resonance.

Although accomplishing such innovation with production skills is not an easy task. And many beat conductas have failed along the way to actually construct something blazing new out of the old. But then you got the geniuses like Prince Paul of De La Soul acclaim, an innovator and true taste maker of stylized sound and theatrical Hiphop (the originator of the album skit). Their highly original and brilliant 1989 album, 3 Feet High and Rising, bumps 24 fresh joints patch worked together by literally hundreds of songs from America's pastime. You can even get a taste of the breadth of the samples at sample lesson grandmaster, Kevin Nottingham's, archive.

There are a couple glaring oversights, but for me the most important one gives the life to "Jenifa Taught Me". What happened to stunner Maggie Thrett's anthem, Soupy, released in 1965 off DynoVoice Records? Soupy is a brilliant jam, just that raw uncut funky soul for yo ear. Not to mention that Thrett was also an actress, crooning that futuristic spirit on the mothership.

It makes me understand all the more clearly why De La got their minds all worked up for this girl named Jenifa, oh Jenny. But who the hell is Derwin? Just a virgin? There's got to be more.

Also, Maggie Thrett was an actress who elegantly displayed her futuristic beauty on Star Trek among other cult hits. That's her on the left up her. A sparkly mothership crooner.

SangSun Radio: "Rollerspace Boogie" ft. Shred One

A handsome load of the late 70's and 80's funk phenomenon known as "boogie" has been attributed to the stylizing libido of the roller skate rink. Bad movies aside, this feel good, sexy music expands far beyond the boundaries of the skate rink and camera lens, stretching even to the distant realms of outer space. With that in mind, the Sanguine Sunday crew pushed our eleventh episode in the theme of "Rollerspace Boogie".

Imagine rollerskating on the polar ice caps of Mars, with hologram powered skates, and well Mars is really just a psychosomatic dream. That's the kind of paradox we work with. All antagonisms are harmoniously joined in this scandalously lovely brand of funk music. From the thumping bass line to the high tonal keys, the seductively hoarse vocals to enchanting harmonies, and to the hot blooded, bass guitar riffs highlighted by rapid fire lasers, rollerspace boogie will take you there.


Cultivating our booogie taste buds, we feature a mad ill, soul inspired funk set by the illustrious DJ Shred One. Afterwards, we chop it up with Shred One about her beginnings on the clocks, the much needed warmth of boogie music, and the open ended future of djing. Listen to that Rollerpsace Boogie.

Fiending for more boogie love? You can peep Shred cuttin' it up at LiPo Lounge in Chinatown with the rest of the Sweaterfunk Crew every Sunday night. Enjoy a potent brew of special whiskey, play a game or two of pac man, and get your groove on to strictly vinyl jams in the finest underground basement San Francisco has to offer. LiPo also happens to be home of the most stunning facades--a sort of cave portal to a Chinese-American 50's noir film-- in the entire Bay Area.


You can also listen to Shred One spinning her own boogie-down vision of funky soul at Le Circque, Thursday nights at Yoshi's. Read up at Get Sync'd (where I yanked the photo, big ups internet community!).

Live Cuts: James Got Ants in his Pants

Live Cuts: James Pants SF 2009


Little did I expect to sneak into the Great American Hall to see the Stonesthrow Records DJ tour. After all, I already bought tickets to peep the label originator, Peanut Butter Wolf's, on the video spinning tip and a couple live shows by the likes of James Pants and the newly signed old skool soul stunna, Mayer Hawthorne. But damn. Handheld recorders are not allowed in elite venues like the GAMH. I would hope for a little more openness from a historic venue of counter-culture San Francisco, tucked neatly in the Tenderloin quarter's strip club turned early bird special prostitute haven.

For the sake of steady bloggin', you know I got to break the rules. For this edition of "Live Cuts" James Pants freaks out a fresh monster jam, "Let Me Brush", with his band, Royal Zodiac. While not much is known on the blogosphere about the newly formed outfit, they certainly can rip some unadulterated funk. While the band holds down a heavy backbeat, flooded with high tonal keys and bass guitar riffs, Mr. Pants flops around like a wild salmon on stage maneuvering between a cowbell, percussion, keyboards, and the microphone all while trying to keep his cool. Although staying debonair might be too much to ask for anyone trying to fill the role of three other band members, Pants puts in an exceptionally entertaining and sonically pleasing effort.

The live sound from Pants and Royal Zodiac feels more new wave funk than the electro-boogie overtones of last year's refreshingly original debut album, Welcome. The leaning towards improvising on the keys and manipulating synth laden atmospherics experiments with the vibrance of the lush arrangements but without too much finesse, interrupts the steady groove. Adorned with a poof-ball beanie, Pant's exercises the most astutely ironic, pop antics, as he bounces sporadically and thrashes his hips in diamond like angles akin to a slightly confused and feverish David Bowie gyrating with ants in his pants. The show certainly adds much needed cohesion to the multi-flavorded music, he just doesn't look all that comfortable playing the role.

Live Cuts: The Windy Budos

Caught the Budos Band blast out their latest afro-soul powered set last night at the Independent. I wanted to experiment with some in crowd live recording on that mad clandestine level with my handheld. Fuck pictures, I got the imagery of sound baby.

Budos Band live 04-15-09 Ind. SF 1

Once "Los Barbudos", the bearded black haired members of all possible styles shortened their name to Budos after someone decided to shave off the face scruff. Well, now they thrive fully bearded again, funkifying the spectrum of afro rhythms and psychedelic melodies off the highly successful soul revival label, Daptone Records.

The eleven piece outfit (short on some brass this time) played a range of songs from their discography and new joints off the up and coming album. The sound journeyed through adrenaline charged dance numbers, springing horns and funky backbeat, to far out meditative jams serrated with electric keys laced upon an endless, hypnotizing bongo percussion.

While Budos enthusiastically thrives in pumping the dance floor full of sweaty grinding bodies, I found them strongest in their spacey experiment with psychedelified afro-funk. These tracks are definitely in debt to the original arrangements of Mulatu Astatke', Ehiophia's premiere jazz / funk virtuoso. They sway with the wind of the Mediterranean, soaking up the African sun, and finally washed over the dirty Summer waters of their home place, Staten Island New York.

Sun Ra: Calling Planet Earth

The cosmic jazz legend, Sun Ra (born Herman Poole Blount), is an enigmatic force embedded in technicolor myth. He has said himself to have descended to these lands from Saturn. Aliens from a distant rock disclosed to Sun Ra the power of music and soulful vibration. In other dimensions, music can wash clothes, heal diseases, free enslaved peoples. Galactic myth builds, saturates, transforms, and unravels before us.

In a series of interviews, films, and live events Sun Ra called without a touch of irony for the isotope teleportation of black people to another planet where self-affirmation, love, and community may reign. For Sun Ra, "Black" is no simple color term, but designates all persons oppressed or systematically frustrated, all living beings seeking spiritual rejuvenation and emphatic liberation.

In 1971, Sun Ra was given the chance to call planet earth through the role of an academic. He expounded his afro-arkestra philosophy to a UC Berkeley classroom in the African American studies department. My dear friend Edgar from World with Words has graciously researched the syllabus and found the list of books required for the class study. One might not have better luck actually finding these luminous scrolls on earthly soil. Nonetheless, thanks to Edgar, the music syllabus still circulates.

Sun Ra expounds, calls, and descends. For your consideration, a triplet of videos in tribute to the Sun Ra dynasty.

Outro J Dilla: The Man Becomes His Music

I decided to revisit an old post on the late and great J Dilla. Enjoy.


The question of a supernatural afterlife remains a dubious if not outright unanswerable enigma for us beings of limited powers. If we would put aside such narratives of a divine heaven or cursed hell or even dreams of reincarnation, we might come to acknowledge an infinitely more tangible idea of the eternal afterlife here on earthly soil. The possibility of a resonating memory so essential that we cannot imagine the world without it. Paradoxically, this kind of consonant memory--human and fragile--can take on an absolutely necessary and eternal value for us.

Just consider for instance an artist gifted enough to create beautiful works and pass these animate memories onto us in the form of an aesthetic legacy. Such a legacy shapes our understanding of not only art but the sense of meaningfulness that orients our lives. A number of the more introspective artistic types--confronting their own inevitable deaths (despite whatever beliefs they might hold about a supernatural realm)--become intrigued if not obsessed by the possibility of such a legacy. Wracked by inner conflict, they grapple with the notion that the lifespan of sublime artwork outlasts that of the progenitor.

In recent memory, a young musician by the name of J Dilla (born James D. Yancey) reflected on the afterlife of his art in the 2006 release of his provocative and brilliant soundscape, Donuts (Stones Throw Records), just days before his untimely passing. Dilla's production submerges the listener deep into his idiosyncratic brand of soulful frequency and lush rhythms. His sonic universe provokes and inspires, lingering in the crevices of our imagination. As a voracious flood of tribute albums, songs and articles continue to praise the life and music of Yancey (this one included), there is no doubt that his music is transforming into just this kind of aesthetic legacy.


While struggling to survive in a hospital bed in late 2005 and the twilight months of 2006 with the debilitating immune condition, lupus, J Dilla gathered the courage to release his most captivating effort. In a story that has become almost mythical in proportion, he worked bedside with musical equipment brought by his mother, known intimately to Dilla as Ma Dukes. Each of the 31 tracks he completed do not last much longer than a minute reflecting Yancey's failing endurance yet resilient devotion to tie together his final creative vision.



Interpreting the conceptual purpose intrinsic to an instrumental hiphop album is quite different than analyzing the transparent narrative and content of a singer's lyrics. However, hiphop arrangement makes no unsolvable mystery of the multiple stratospheres that build its sampled architecture. And while listening more carefully to Donuts and unraveling some of its layered puzzles, there is no question that Yancey was trying to come to terms with his own death on the approaching horizon by way of his production. Some of the cryptic code offers itself to us listeners.



As if peacefully saying goodbye to the terrestrial and firmly implanting himself into the everlasting through his art, Donuts ironically begins with the 'outro' and ends with the 'intro'. It does not take a leap of imagination to think that Dilla, a man completely absorbed in his music, understood his own life in terms of a musical narrative. The title 'outro' on the introductory track hints to the idea that Yancey composed Donuts as a personal meditation on death. We bear witness to the outro of a human life--the conclusive chapter--in the form of a tragic yet triumphant swan song.

31 - Donuts (Intro)

The meaning of the closing 'intro' is more veiled in structure and purpose. Prefaced by two hymns of goodbye that halt and hesitate, reach out and shudder back, each song addresses a farewell to a respective audience. In “Bye.” Dilla opens a dialogue with his listeners, holding onto the Isley Brothers’ crooning, “Don't ever. . .” as we finish the words solemnly, “say goodbye”. And in crushing sincerity Dilla implores us, “I feel you”, implying that there is no reason for us to say last goodbyes despite the emphatic period at the end of the song's title. In the brooding penultimate dirge, “Last Donut of the Night”, Dilla dwells on the arresting texture of his self-realization that his life's work would soon come to an end. We feel his anticipation of a pending finale through the ghostly guise of an MC introducing the life's work of an anonymous musician about to take stage. That frozen moment of suspense comes to an abrupt interruption with an insight of clarity hurled forth in the lucid 'intro'.

motherlode - when i die

In this heart wrenching very last song Dilla manages nothing short of a musical apotheosis. He employs a sample of one-hit wonder Motherlode's 1969 single, “When I Die”, a heartfelt soul jam originally directed towards a distant lover readdressed to everyone who listens. The track is propelled by serene percussion that drives Motherlode to chant in chilling harmony during the chorus, "When I die / I hope I'll be / The kind of man / That you thought I'd be". In the concluding 'intro' Dilla strategically cuts Motherlode's chorus to elevate the self-proclaiming "be" intertwined twice with the contrasting concept "die". The acoustic quality of the words are manipulated into near incomprehension, as Dilla deconstructs the notions of being and death into their minimal sonic elements of raw feeling. 


Facing death head on, Dilla elongates Motherlode's vocals into a celestial proclamation, emphasizing not only the beauty of life but even his own oncoming second life, as he dissipates into becoming, and finally being, the music itself. As a last memory recorded in wax, Dilla aligns himself with a heritage of musicians who have passed but continue to live on in the hearts of all who hear his everlasting sonance. Maybe that is why we do not ever have to say a last goodbye.



Intro J Dilla.