Cowdrey and Crawford deftly mix the electric with the soulful and bring you through the emotional changes that any good mix should manifest. The inclusion of classics like “I Need You Now,” by Sinnamon, “Gabrielle,” by Roy Davis Jr. Feat Peven Everett and Daniel Wang’s Sleeque sampling “Like A Dream I Can’t Stop Dreaming” will delight the trainspotters and groovers alike. Unfortunately, Electric Chair banger and boogie monster “Heat You Up (Melt You Down)” by Shirley Lites isn’t included.
Back in 2000 when this classic was reissued by Paradise Garage founder Mel Cheren’s Westend Records label, my recent magazine write up on the track was chosen for the sleeve sticker by kick ass label manager turned kick ass publicist, Andy Reynolds. In it I gave the Unabombers big love for being champions of this song, the first record I ever bought on American soil, in Vinylmania on Carmine Street, NY in ’95.
But they do close their set with the Frankie Knuckles dub of Rufus and Chaka Khan’s “Ain’t Nobody,” another fave that I’ve been firing on mix tapes since the mid ‘90s. Electric Chair Saved My Life dropped on October 6th so go get it, it’s great.
A few days ago I wondered what had happened to R&B? When I say R&B I mean commercial or commercial leaning modern soul music, it’s top 40, you can dance to or chill to it. It kinda got caught up in the materialist cluster fuck that this decade became. Whereas some artists found their soul in the cell, R&B as a whole has lost its soul in the sell, a hard sell at that. But I just had a quick listen through Robin Thicke’s new album, Something Else and it does hold some promise and maybe indicates where R&B could go next…back to the 70s to trawl for ideas and inspiration.
I’ve a feeling that the next, post-Bush, era will be harking back to the ‘90s and by default to the ‘70s because the ‘90s were another disco era — remember early ‘90s house, De La Soul, Brand New Heavies and Deee Lite. Just as Aaliyah’s “Try Again” was an indication that Timbaland was aware of the burgeoning electro/new wave revival in 2000, Thicke’s album is a shot across the prow of this era, telling us that the next will be less about some of the noisy, empty and glitchy nonsense that exemplified this era’s music (not that this era didn’t have some jams too).
Bust out your Barry White, but remember the spectre of Kraftwerk looms, bringing in a soft machine music to ease the bumpy ride of the end of this bust, broke and bruised decade. We do like some soul in the machine don’t we? It’s the spirit of electro funk (boogie), Chicago, NY and New Jersey house/garage, when the beats and the vocals were on, and when you’d pick up that Ice Cube joint with the phat Evelyn Champane King sample.
So if Three 6 Mafia sample Zombie Nation’s “Kernkraft 400,” T.I. uses Crystal Waters and Mary J Blige can cover Salsoul classics, then what is next, who will — as PM Dawn said back in ’91 — thank Todd Terry? Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock already did it with their “Get On The Dancefloor” smash, will the Neptunes sample Gypsymen’s “Hear The Music?” Robin Thicke’s album is a subtle indication that the next disco era is on the way and if the white house is painted black, George Clinton’s visionary funk will be in there too, the perfect fusion of butt and machine. Whoever stole the soul, can you just hand it back, we need it for a paradigm shift we’re having. Thanks!
ct> People often ask me, “Will you please leave me alone,” no seriously, people ask me how I can justify writing about Steve Albini one week and then the next write about top 40 r&b, punk one day and disco the next. Simple answer, step into your kitchen and take a common or garden spoon and a pot. Now turn the pot over with the bottom facing up (minds out of the sewer please) hit the bottom of the pot with the spoon. What just happened? A noise. Right, music is all just sounds and noise. There you go, now put the pot on the cooker and give me a call when dinner’s ready and I’ll be over with a cheeky bottle of wine. Ho ho, hyuh, hyuh, chortle.
“But It’s not as easy as that there buster,” I hear you plaintively say, “because Steve Albini has a certain attitude towards the music industry and you’re betraying that stance by covering goddamn Brandy.” Firstly do not use profane language around Brandy’s name, beg for forgiveness and listen to “The Boy Is Mine” twice, and secondly I am talking about Steve Albini not through him, nor have I really conveyed how he feels about the music industry because I haven’t, as yet. talked about that at all, and Steve Albini would be the best person to do that, not me.
In reality the issue isn’t really music, the issue is an unwillingness to cave to niche marketing and internalize it as a sense of taste and then worship at its golden calf. I like music and a lot of it, a lot of soulful stuff, a lot of noisy angry stuff, a lot of bleepity, bloopity stuff that’s fun to dance to, and a lot more. It might be Gina X at 1:00PM but by 4;30 it might be The Whatnauts and by 8:00PM Dinosaur Jr. and then I’ll go to a club at 9:00PM to dj top 40 rap and R&B and some classic jams for four hours, and then come home at 3;00AM and listen to Dexter Wansel on my mp3 playing device that I shall not use the brand name of.
Am I writing about this because I think I’m special, nope, I’m writing because I know I’m not and because I’m bored senseless and listening to Dee Dee Bridgewater to give me some motivation to go out, and anyway you’ve read it, haven’t ya? And please do keep reading.
I've spent the whole morning listening to Public Image Limited's Metal Box/Second Edition album, and there's more soul in that record, regardless of its bleakness, than in the entire top40 and dance charts. John Lydon and Jah Wobble are both reggae nuts, and by sounds of Wobble's basslines, there was a taste for funk too. I remember reading an old Face magazine and there was an interview with Wobble while he was in hospital and the interviewer asked him what he was listening to while he was sick and he said disco, because he found it very life affirming. Isn't that poetic? It reminds me of the spirit of the '80s, the real spirit of it, not this generic taste for the "unremembered '80s," to quote Mr. Murphy again.
That spirit meant that you were checking out P.I.L. (you wore the button badge on yer school blazer), the Clash and Killing Joke, but you still shimmied about to Shalamar, Chic and "Cockney Translation." Eclectic is the term that's bandied around now, a generic term in a way, but it just meant you were open to a lot of stuff and a lot of people. Four hours of '60s soul,or disco, or reggae djed by earnest young men with beards is not my idea of a good time, but it seems to be the norm in San Fran. Will the coming decade bring any respite?
Even house music has been gutted of its soul content — though the diva driven stuff at the end of the ‘90s was getting kinda ridiculous and a lot of it was embarrassing when compared to the work of classic vocalists like Gwen Guthrie, Loleatta Holloway, Shawn Christopher and Shay Jones. Now house — US garage seems to be a dead form at this point — is being replaced by minimal techno, it ain’t techno, it’s house with all the fun bits taken out, a stiffer beat, made by dudes withs high hairlines, intelligent eye wear, stellar educations and impressive bank accounts. To me techno always had a bit of rawness to it, and when it was melodic, it was galactic in the vein of the soulful techno of Underground Resistance and Sterac.
Some questions: when will these fucking planes stop buzzing the city, it’s Fleet Week, or sheet — duck — week as I like to call it, when will someone just put on a decent night of tunes, with some able guests, and residents, who not only have the good records, but can put them together too? Preferably an eclectic night too. And if some of the the records have black girls singing on them and the lyrics can’t be construed ironically, or the records aren’t so old as your granny would be into them (too many nights listening to messy ‘60s soul sets played through tinny sound systems) that’s ok with me.
And finally, back to R&B related matters, why does a black music form have to be dead for twenty years before white, middle and upper middle class intellectuals can embrace it in its country of origin, when the same music was embraced in the UK at its time of release by people who never even finished high school? Is intellect on a twenty-year timer and does that mean people who pick up on shit later are smarter? How does this notion affect discussions on Special Ed students and slow learners? Anyone, anyone?
Put the soul back in the mix people, please! Listen to Rahsaan Patterson’s last album, Wines and Spirits and start from there. And go easy on the irony, it’s getting tired as this conservative and obvious era ramps down, finally. Soul ain’t just a genre, it’s a feeling, and it’s kinda missing at the moment. I can’t find it in Justice or in Rihanna. Where could it be?
In the ‘70s you had The O”Jays, Harold Melvin And The Blue Notes, James Brown at the height of his powers and a slew of other mainstream and more obscure soul artists, the ‘80s gave us D-Train, SOS Band, Soul II Soul and countless others, the ‘90s saw r&b being more integrated into rap, with artists like SWV, 112 and Mary J Blige being prolific. The early part of this decade showed some promise, but now what do we get? “Lip Gloss” by Lil Mama, well that’s rap, and it’s crap, though the video is cute I have to say, Ne-Yo (quite saccharine), Fergie (slightly r&b but very annoying) and Rihanna (not really r&b, more trying to be everything all at once, like Black Eyed Peas, thus v. annoying).
It seems that soul is gone from the mainstream for the moment, and anyway punters in top 40 joints want to hear Journey, so that they can break away from the stand/shuffle around/talk about your job/S.O./Ex ring and dance for two and a half minutes. Rap tracks like “Lollipop “ and r&b tunes like “Do It To It” by Cherish (which I like btw) also serve this purpose, and the fact that they clock in at galloping tempos like 72 and 73 beats per minute means you don’t have to exert yourself. When did pothead music become club fare?
As a dj friend of mine says, the reason why slow ass rap and r&b cuts get requested in clubs is because they are played in endless rotation on the radio and listened to in the car by people who make out on the sofa at home to Dave Matthews Band and Dido (an all round gross picture you might concur). You can’t even play a shagging album cut in the mainstream clubs now without getting looks of bewilderment.
I remember playing the Paul Oakenfold mix of Justin Timberlake’s “Rock Your Body” — it’s a mid-tempo discoish mix with a great bassline — one night only to have some dude in a stripey man blouse ask me to, and I quote, “play something more accessible.” I told him if he could find something more accessible than Justin Timberlake that I would start a weekly petition to have him (the dude not Justin) awarded a Nobel Prize. He kinda grunted at me, he probably thought Nobel Prize was a new rapper on P Duddly’s Bad Boy Entertainment imprint.
So though I rant, all these processes, and more, have contributed to the soulless state of r&b, and then you notice underground parties playing top 40 rap — ironically of course — and you think what could be next? The ironic moustache being replaced by an ironic Kid 'n Play type flat top (don’t make me say I told you so when it happens). Even the undergound has ditched the soul and embraced the cheese.
I’ve been asking myself that question for quite a few years now, but I seem to be asking it more and more, each time I go to a record store, look at the top 40 charts or listen to the radio. What the fuck indeed did happen to R&B? Because regardless of all the bubblegum gangster stuff that’s been plastered over it since the ‘90s and the level of technological advancement that’s evident in its production it has really become a strange type of pre-fabricated, doo-wopesque music form.
Like a lot of rap, it seems to be controlled from above, no longer really coming from the streets, and like rap has become easy prey for irony hungry sub-cultures that embrace any form of club music that seems corny, while shunning decent club tracks of the past or present. At the top of this decade from ’99 up til about 2003 there were some storming mainstream club tracks coming out, branded by superstar producers like The Neptunes, Timbaland and Rodney Jerkins. A few come to mind, and in my opinion Brandy’s Full Moon album will be a future classic, revered in the same way as electro funk tunes from ’82 or ’83 are now. Supposedly the album’s sonic palette was derived from producer Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins’s six month sojourn in 2 Step garage dominated London while producing the Spice Girls’ last album. The whole record was very accessible yet forward looking and texturally involving. The same can be said for the late, great Aaliyah’s self-titled final album, the one that contained “Rock The Boat,” “More Than a Woman” and “Loose Rap,”
Timbaland’s work on that album and on her other material showed that he, and Missy Elliot, were not hemmed in by the imagined parameters of hip-hop/urban music, but were crafting club music, in the classic sense of the word, much as he is to this day on tracks like “Sexy Back” and “The Way I Are.” Though Aaliyah and Brandy’s songs were not as uptempo as these tunes, they were imbued with the same textural qualities. But after almost ten years of wack electro, too much cocaine, irony and black music as an antique item (the never ending nostalgia for Paradise Garage music and Boogie/electro-funk) or as a source or irony, it seems to have rubbed off on the industry and the music.
Mo Wax founder, trip hop innovator and legendary dj James Lavelle graces the decks at SF’s best club, Mighty, tonight. Lavelle is known for his role in UNKLE, bringing DJ Shadow to the world’s attention and for playing banging ass, eclectic sets that get crowds hyped and the parties rocking.
The UK label, Tirk has just released a banging mix by Manchester’s Unabombers, the resident djs at the infamous, but sadly defunct Electric Chair party. The CD is called Electric Chair Saved My Life and it celebrates the club’s thirteen year run from 1995 til January of this year and includes some of the biggest tunes played by the Unabomber djs, Luke Cowdrey and Justin Crawford. The boys plough through eighteen of the tracks that defined the Electric Chair’s long history. These include, “Beau Mot Plage” by Isolée. “Let’s Be Young’ by Quentin Harris and NY Gospel/dance classic “Stand On The Word,” by Joubert Singers.
I’ve been asking myself that question for quite a few years now, but I seem to be asking it more and more, each time I go to a record store, look at the top 40 charts or listen to the radio. What the fuck indeed did happen to R&B? Because regardless of all the bubblegum gangster stuff that’s been plastered over it since the ‘90s and the level of technological advancement that’s evident in its production it has really become a strange type of pre-fabricated, doo-wopesque music form.
