LATE SEPTEMBER HEADPHONE MUSIC

Haven’t done one of these in awhile (and looking at my blog stats it seems that the Headphone Music posts were some of the most viewed, I guess because the artists and / or songs featured in the content came up in more Google searches than your typical obscure THAT REAL SCHITT post). Anyway, let’s get to it as I let y’all know what I’ve been rockin’ on my iPhone and iPad recently (the stuff I don’t mind mentioning, anyway… yeah, I’m still on my Secret Squirrel / Morocco Mole for real)-

Soundsci – Soundsational lp – fantastic concept featuring only samples from obscure soul man Mike James Kirkland‘s “Don’t Sell Your Soul” anthology (music from back when he was doin’ it as the frontman for Mike And The Censations) and certified real-schitt bars courtesy of super rappers Soundsci. Really good rhyming and production on pretty much every single song- no fast forwarding necessary.
FIrst Words – All Day Breakfast lp – another great project from the producer who must never sleep Jorun Bombay. Feel-good rap schitt, like eating bacon for every meal. Another one where every song is nice but my joints would be “Bamtronix” and especially “Norma Loves Her Gin”.
Seeds Of Fulfillment – self titled lp – One of those little obscure albums in my collection that’s damn good but doesn’t get mentioned by many people. 70’s jazz with a smooth sound (as opposed to “smooth jazz” – there’s a difference), I just put it in digital form before I sold it and gave it a good listen probably for the first time in all the fifteen years or so that I had it. Might not be everybody’s thing, but this is the kind of stuff I play while I’m cleaning the house on a Saturday.
Total Experience – Contradiction
Superior Elevation – Don’t Let Go Babe
Diddy’s featuring Paige Douglas -My Special Love
Rabbits & Carrots – Soul Latino lp
Peter Wolf – A Change In My Life lp
Ghettosocks – Everyday Apocalypse featuring Timbuktu – Two of my favorite emcees ripping an insane track by The Process (Jonny Cuba and Ollie Teeba 2/5’s of the aforementioned Soundsci) totally to shreds. And thanks for the instro Ollie!
Kanye West – Yeezus lp – Yeah, I’m sayin’ it. I know a lot of people, be they mainstream or underground rap fans, are NOT feelin’ Ye’s latest experiment. For various reasons. I’m gonna tell you, I really believe history is gonna look at this album differently than people are seeing it / hearing it right now. Maybe I just like it when people make music that screams “I don’t give a F*** what y’all think about it!”, which Kanye clearly did NOT when he put out an album like “Yeezus”. And I respect when people have the courage to take music to new uncharted territories, and I ABSOLUTELY feel that Ye, with the very important help of the legendary Rick Rubin, did that here. Is the result something that you really want to listen to? I don’t know, maybe not. But I like where this record is coming from- time will only tell where it ends up going as far as history is concerned.
DJ Format & Phill Most Chill – The Foremost lp – oops, probably not supposed to mention this yet. Yikes! Oh well, y’all better get ready for it because it’s gonna be caving your whole world in very soon. VERY soon. Get ready. And in case you didn’t know already- DJ Format is a BEAST.
Kendrick Lamar’s verse that everybody was talking about on whatever that song was – Actually, no, this wasn’t in my headphones in mid- September or any other time. Just thought I’d mention it since everybody else had something to say about it- I didn’t want to be left out of the party. No dis to Kendrick, he’s a very talented dude (no old man hate here).    

BABY YOU LUV ME YEAH / BUT I BE WOH SO WHY YEAH YEAH YEAH

“Can’t you take it, honey / bot watching dah sky, now / woh right”… or something like that.
Trio Galleta was a soul / rock band formed in 1969 in Mar del Pla… oh, the hell with it, I’m not typing all that sh*t out. Read it for yourself at this Wikipedia page. 
I used to do a lot of collecting breaks, as you may or may not know, and one of my specialties for a minute was catching covers of songs with breaks, primarily covers from countries other than the US of A. One of them was this version of the Syl Johnson sureshot “Different Strokes” by Argentinian band Trio Galleta. More than the break, though, what I love about this record is how lead singer Carlos Iturbide obviously doesn’t speak a lick of English but he does his best to phonetically sound out the lyrics, sometimes with pretty laughable results. Stuff like “do the shinga-lay and the forky foreplay” beats a drumbreak any day for me (but please don’t misunderstand, I still loves me some drumbreaks). 
Like I said above, please feel free to read more about Trio Galetta at that Wiki page (which kinda butchers the English language a little bit too, but it’s all good) and after you’re done over there go on and find their albums somewhere online and download them all illegally! That’s what I did. 

SOUL BOULDERS 2

Since I don’t do much posting on this blog any longer I’m very late with this, but listening to my man Matthew Africa and his man DJ B.Cause‘s Soul Boulders 2 mix the other day reminded me to post this. If you heard the first Soul Boulders joint a few years back (2005 to be exact) you can rest assured that this is more of the same- “slow, funky soul burners” indeed. Read more about the mix and get info on how to  purchase it (yes, purchase it… support the music if you like the music so maybe you might get more of the music, nahmean?) by going to Matthew’s blog I Wish You Would and until you actually order it and receive it you can listen to a sample right down below. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

SANTA CLAUS IS A SOULMAN

Glad to see there are still some people out there checking this blog from time to time, even though it’s basically dead due to inactivity on my part. Well, just look at me like your favorite uncle- you don’t see him all year because he’s too busy getting boozed up and chasing women, but damned if he doesn’t come around every year right about Christmas time to drop some toys and goodies on you before he disappears back into the night, not to be seen again for another 365 (that’s if he makes it through another 365… might take a Christmas miracle for that to happen).
Well, I’m droppin’ by with my big ol’ sack in my hand here to bless you with a new Soulman mix, one that I actually completed in only a couple of days instead of the usual six months to a year- and they say that miracles never cease. This joint consists of pretty much every funky Xmas record and holiday drumbreak I could think of (although I did forget a few or couldn’t get my hands on a couple… I have this DOPE latin record with a nice loop on it, but I have no idea where it’s at). Hopefully this will do the job for y’all… feel free to share this with everybody you know that may take a liking to it. Happy holidays and if this is my last post of 2011 (of course it is) have a safe and enjoyable New Year.


Soulman – Santa Claus Is A Soulman by Phill Most Chill SOULMAN

UPDATE: I guess the downloads from Soundcloud got used up real quick, so if you need it I think you can download from the Divshare link below. Best bet is to just use the Firefox browser, get the Download Helper add on and start downloading almost every damn thing you see or hear on the internets. Anyway, here it is again… get your download on (and let me know if there are any problems- I barely know what I’m doing with this technologicable schitt).
 

THERE’S MUSIC ALL AROUND ME, CRAZY MUSIC

This one is for my girl NativeSoul, who was looking online for the right version of King Pleasure‘s “I’m In The Mood For Love” but wasn’t getting lucky. Well, finding your way to THAT REAL SCHITT was the thing to do- as DMC might say, your dreams have been fulfilled. For those who don’t know, this particular version of the song was the late WBLS radio personality “Chief Rocker” Frankie Crocker‘s theme song which he ended his show with every day. So if you were a person of color who grew up in the NYC area back in the 70’s and 80’s like me then you pretty much HAD to know this schitt. It’s an example of an old musical genre known as vocalese, which is very interesting- I’m not going to go into detail about the history of vocalese here, but I suggest that you hit up Google for more info on it. Anyway, like NativeSoul I needed to have this in in my catalog and looked around online a couple of years ago, at first having no luck just like her but after applying my super digger skills to the cyber world I found that schitt. F**kin’ viola! So NativeSoul, I hope you check back to THAT REAL SCHITT since you neglected to give me your email addy. James Moody, you can come on in, man, and you can blow now if you want to- we’re through.

KING PLEASURE – I’m In The Mood For Love (The Frankie Crocker Version)

SOULMAN – LOVERS AND FRIENDS

Although my PC is down, I refuse to let my computer woes stop THAT REAL SCHITT from marching forward… had to pull out the Macbook (which I rarely use due to the fact that I don’t know jack about Macs) and get busy as best I can. I planned on dropping another one of my many belated mixes this Valentines weekend and here it is. Didn’t have many of my usual tools to hook up the music and visuals, so I improvised. No Photoshop? I downloaded the GIMP schitt for Mac and did what I could do for the graphics (not much different than what I normally do- I’m no pro at any of this schitt, believe me). Had to do a LOT of schitt differently, but it got done.

This is just a collection of some sweet soul-ish stuff that I like and have been listening to for awhile now. Some I got from my vinyl collection, some I got from around the internets (like the Top Shelf “Let Them Keep On Talking” from Matthew Africa‘s blog… thanks, Matt!). I’d like to say this is perfect since this is Valentines Day, but some of the songs are more on some “I lost you and we’re not together any more” steez rather than some “I love you and you love me and we’ll be together FOREVER” schitt. There’s plenty of that too, but I’m just giving y’all that disclaimer before you play this mix for your sweetie tonight and she gets depressed and leaves your ass. Regardless, it’s a lot of great music so enjoy.

And also, BTW- Soulman BEAUTIFUL PT. 2 tomorrow.

SOULMAN – LOVERS AND FRIENDS

EDIT: if you need this in MP3 form instead of the M4a or whatever that schitt is above, here it is again-

SOULMAN – LOVERS AND FRIENDS (MP3)

SOULMAN – BEAUTIFUL

I was at the Old Country Buffet (one of my favorite eating spots- I’m cheap) awhile back and I noticed one of the employees, a barely legal if even legal at all young dude, hitting on a customer, a cute late 30-ish older woman. She rebuffed his advances, claiming that she was too old for him. Young dude, undeterred, stared her in the eye and calmly replied “I know what I like.” Gotta give it to the youngin’- swag for days.
That’s kinda how I feel about psych rock, which is my current favorite genre of music to listen to. I probably don’t really know a damn thing about psych- every time I look up info on a psych album online, the reviews rarely sing the praises of the songs on the album that I like the most. They’ll talk about the genius of some song on the lp that I’m not familiar with, then I’ll go back to the record to listen to this song and be like WTF is this? Obviously I’m not hearing it from a true psych enthusiasts’ perspective. Which I guess makes sense, since I’m a black first generation Hip Hop dude… I didn’t grow up on Zep or Sabbath or the Beach Boys or Zappa or even Hendrix. I grew up on James Brown and Earth Wind & Fire and Stevie Wonder and the Furious 5.
Yet and still, I know what I like. Music with soul, music that touches you somewhere deeper than the epidermis. And any real music head knows that soul isn’t just found on albums that have pics of dudes with afros on the jacket. I hear the soul in Aretha Franklin but I also hear it in Rachmaninoff‘s 2nd. In fact, “hear it” isn’t the best way to put it- I feel it. That’s what music is all about, man… people can tell you all day that this is the hot schitt, this is what’s banging now, whateva whateva, but it doesn’t matter. Music isn’t a popularity contest, it’s not about soundscan numbers, it’s only about what you feel or don’t feel. No matter what I say about something being THATREALSCHITT, if you can’t feel what I’m feeling then it’s a waste of time even trying to explain it.
So anyway, enough of my yadda-yadda-ing. Yes, it’s true- I’m dropping another new Soulman mix a mere three days after the last new Soulman mix. Guess the hiatus is officially over, eh? This one, entitled Beautiful, basically picks up where The Truth Is Forever left off. Just playing a bunch of soft, mellow psych songs that I really love. Familiar folky stuff that the Vashti Bunyan and Linda Perhacs fans out there may already know and love but also some other very nice tunes that only the most hardcore psych dudes are gonna be hip to. This joint may be too light for the more gnarly real schitters, and my Hip Hop real schitters can probably just fuggetaboutit, but I’m hoping folks will dig this (Beautiful Pt. 2 and maybe even Pt. 3 are on deck already, so if y’all are feelin’ it more will be dropped ASAP). Thanks for listening.

SOULMAN – BEAUTIFUL

SOULMAN – COME TO ME SOFTLY

Told you I’d be back… and here I is with another Soulman mix. This is really more of a Best Of Archaeologists compilation type joint… I’m just putting my name on all of ’em from now on (why not?). No cutting and scratching, just playing some music I like.
This is another one of those mixes that’s been sitting around unfinished for a long azz time- probably a couple of these songs I wouldn’t have put on the mix if I did it yesterday just because I’ve heard them on too many other people’s mixes. But who cares… I like all the selections regardless if I heard them a hundred times before or if they’re still new to my ears. Like a wise dude once said, the truth is forever. Besides, I think it’s a pretty decent mosaic of uncommon and commonplace, rarefied and somewhat routine. Soul, psych, jazzy, modern, whatever’s clever.
The working title on this was “Spring Mix” because most of the stuff is light and breezy and soulful… unfortunately I’m like a couple of season changes late on the release date and I didn’t feel like waiting until next March to drop it, so here it is. F— it, autumn is pretty breezy too, right? I can see the leaves falling in the background while sipping a mug of hot apple cider and vibing out to this schitt. Hope y’all like it, and if not I got another one in the chamber that may be ready by this weekend as well. Happy turkey day to whoever’s celebrating it and peace to everybody else too.

SOULMAN – COME TO ME SOFTLY

PEOPLE WHO FEEL IT’S NICE JUST TO GET HIGH WITH YOU

In between the last Headphone Music post and the next one, the main thing I’ve been listening to is a fantastic mix by my guy Jared Boxx, formerly of The Sound Library record shoppe and now reppin’ Big City Records, NYC. This mix, entitled Thanks For Waiting, features some rare and ridiculously nice soul music- I guess the kind that most people today would call modern soul or boogie or whatever.

Me, I’m from back in the days when that soul actually was modern so I don’t know nuthin’ about those particular monikers… it’s just soul or R&B to me. But you know how it goes, a rose by any other name yadda yadda.
Anyway, one of my favorite joints out of many on Jared’s mix is by an obscure group out of Cali named Spaceark. I could type out a quick bio on them, but you know I’m not going to go to the trouble to do that. But I will do something even better and link you to this site that will tell you just about everything you could ever want to know about the group.
But back to the song, “Welcome To My Door”… this might be on my list of all time favorite songs (I probably have over 10,000 tunes on said list so I don’t know how special that designation really is). It’s basically a song about hitting the pipe- I assume a pipe full of weed since this is from back in the 70’s and not the crackpipe era of the 80’s, but who really knows what the hell Spaceark was tokin’ on even back in 1978. Regardless, just as Troy Raglin sings it, this jam has me “feelin’ fine all the time”.

SPACEARK – Welcome To My Door
SPACEARK – Color World lp

LATE JULY HEADPHONE MUSIC

As I said in the previous post, haven’t been checking for much rap lately- mostly a lot of soul and R&B, both old and (gasp!) new. Anyway, this is what it is right here-
TWEET – Southern Hummingbird and It’s Me Again lps – highly underrated R&B from the mid 2000’s… Tweet is real dope IMO.
BEASTIE BOYS featuring NAS – Too Many Rappers – always like to hear the Beasties rock with other emcees that you might not expect them to collab with (see Q-Tip on “Get It Together”). Also must send a get well soon out to Adam Yauch.
MAZE FEATURING FRANKIE BEVERLY – One of those legendary groups that I heard all the time as a youth and kinda got away from as I delved into the deeper, more obscure musics of the world… sometimes you have to go back to those legends and rediscover their greatness. Songs I been rockin’ hard: “I Love You Too Much” (always one of my favorite Maze joints, for some reason I thought about this song when NFL QB Steve McNair got tragically murked by his young mistress a couple weeks ago… R.I.P.), “Ain’t It Strange”, “Woman Is A Wonder” and “While I’m Alone” (although the Raw Soul version on the Gregar 7″ outdoes the Maze version IMO).
BUDOS BAND EP – that little 30 second jawn on there is the BOMB.
MAYER HAWTHORNE – Green Eyed Love (Live) – still gotta hear the whole “A Strange Arrangement” album in it’s entirety (sounded good from what I heard), but it appears to me that this live version of “Green Eyed Love” is killing the studio version.

GEORGIA ANN MULDROW – Roses – boy, do I love me some Georgia Ann Muldrow. Sista is a star in the making IMO. A lot of people prefer her solo version of “Roses” to the one with Mos Def… I dunno, I kinda like Mos’ input on the song (maybe because I heard his version first). But with or without Dante, Georgia is the star of the story. I’m still trying to figure out what kind of pencil she says she’s drawing her roses with… if anybody knows please enlighten.
MAXWELL – BLACKsummer’s night lp – I don’t check for a lot of new music, but I’m definitely a Maxwell fan. I like almost everything on the album, especially “Bad Habits” and “Help Somebody”.
PHIL PERRY – In The Rain (Live) – okay, I just mentioned three current singers with new albums that are out or coming out. Now, let’s listen to one of the best soul sangers of our lifetimes that a lot of people probably have never even heard of (I got this clip via my step cousin Xanax Jenkins’ favorite web portal SOULSTRUT.COM). Man, whatever happened to the screamers? Just one of the many things missing in today’s music…

LONG DAY (a CD-R given to me by Dave Tompkins) – I really wish I could name some of the songs that Dave put on this homemade CD for me, but I am sworn to secrecy. I’ll just say that he hooked me up with some of the nicest soul, boogie etc. music that I have heard in a minute. Some bonafied rarities too, schitt you won’t find on Popsike (trust me on this). Thanks, Dave!

Plus, once again I have a trailerload of jawns that I will probably put on upcoming mixes, so I can’t divulge right now. Stay tuned for the mixes, though. Might do it SOULMAN RADIO stylee, we’ll see. PEACE.