Dollar bin diving #1
As a great man once said, "This is not something new!!! This is something ollllllldddd .... and dir-tayyyyyyyyyyyy." I don't hit the thrift stores and cheap-o bins as much as I used to when I lived in Virginia (better pickins than NYC), but every so often I wade into the land of the discounted and discarded. Here's the results of recent expeditions -- some well-known, some obscure, some kinda cheesy, but all of 'em cheap.
Late-eighties industrial on the Front 242 tip, with bizarre "scary" vocals delivering a Big Apple public relations message. ("Be a part of it! Feel the heart of it! New York, New York, New York!")
My friend Brian first played me "Soul Experience" after he heard it on a Peanut Butter Wolf mix, so I swiped a copy from my dad's old records (he had doubles - ?!?). Later I heard Rob Swift start a DJ set with it. Finally I found another one at the thrift store and picked it up so I could mess with that opening breakbeat .... too bad I suck at juggling.
Yikes, how can I not have heard this before? Loved the Happy Mondays version and didn't even realize it was a cover (hey, I was just a young'n at the time). The original from 1971 sounds like the Madchester "Step On" played by T. Rex, i.e., really fucking good. To top it all off, the drums are a loop of African tribal percussion -- the Guinness Book lists it as the first record to ever use a sample.
I grabbed this strictly because the title of the B side ("Party Freaks") looked promising, but it's too slow-tempoed and '80s-cheesy even for me. Luckily the A side turned out to be a groovy R&B disco jam.
Most know these guys for "Roxanne, Roxanne" and "The Real Roxanne" (source of 90% of Missy Elliott's rhyme style), but this track from the same album strikes me as surprisingly next level for its time. Check out the crunching apple, those rising organ notes, and Kangol's freaky flow.
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