Audio Blue Collection

In the UK The Prodigy were Fire Starting, The Spice Girls Wannabe-ing and The Fugees were both Killing Me Softly and Ready or Not. Holidaying in Europe with Three Lions on your shirt? If the Macarena wasn't driving you mad then Robert Miles and his Children were.

 

Impending doom flicks with CGI tricks like Independence Day and Twister were competing in the cinema. Thank God for Fargo.

 

Hip Hop at least was in rude health. DJ Shadow Entroducing, Jay-Z Reasonable Doubt and big-hitters from ATCQ, Outkast, Makaveli, 2Pac, Mobb Deep, Ghostface Killah, Nas, De La Soul and The Roots.

Strange Beats

Twelve Grooves

The demand for boots with breaks, beats and loops was as high as ever and so was the marketing. It was like mind-expanding drugs had been invented all over again.

 

Boots were laced and sold with words like spacey, mystic, groovy or heavenly. Even a straighforward compilation of funk tunes metamorphosised into being Twelve Grooves for the Cosmic Conscious. Inspecting runout grooves, reading sleevenotes, listening very carefully and Imbibing no drugs stronger than tea we examine the evidence.

 

forumusic presents...

 

The 90s Boot Boom: Part 4

'96: Exotic Beats & Strange Directions

Mystic Moments

 

Helpfully dated by a cover illustration signed 'Ian 96,' our copy has the snake-like 'S' at the end of Moments mysteriously stickered over on the front but not on the back.

 

Oliver Nelson - Sound Machine is subtitled here as irresistable pure 70s film chic at its finest. Quite right too. With subtle echoes of the Bond theme in the bass and a liquid trumpet melody line it's reminiscent of the sound of hundreds of orange and brown-hued US B-movies from the early 70s. Hughey Stone - Natural Elements has a big drum break intro and is indeed a loping mid-tempo groovy head-nodder.

 

The trickle of library tracks onto boots in 1995 turned into a steady stream in 1996. The heavily syncopated jazz funk of Keith Mansfield - Blockbuster is from the Bruton library lp Light My Fire, whilst the much comped heavy synth funk of Brian Bennett - Name Of The Game is from a KPM lp.

 

Discussing the roots of the popularity of library music in the 90s on both the Waxidermy and VG+ music forums revealed that some crate-diggers were already sourcing library lps in the early 90s as radio stations and media companies begun to clear out their vinyl collections to replace them with Cds. Stories of extremely large 'hauls' abound and it's an area we're researching for a new series on the 90s Easy Listening Scene.

Mystic Moments

Mystic Moments

The discovery of library music as a source of beats, breaks and listening pleasure gathered pace throughout the 90s and dove-tailed with the rediscovery of all things EZ

 

Ronald Stein - Pigs Go Home, from the soundtrack of the 70s film Getting Straight appeared first on this boot and was sampled three years later by Dr Dre and Eminem for Guilty Conscience. Mstic Moments closes with the heavy blues-flavoured break beats of Count Yates & The Rhythm Crusaders - Soul In and The Triumphs - Turn Out The Light.

 

Containing as it does a couple of stone-cold classic library cuts, some highly sought after funk 45s and a soon to be sampled soundrack, Mystic Moments is a perfect example of how illegal boot lps reflected the zeitgeist of various underground 90s club scenes better than any official releases ever could.

Mystic Moments

The Audio Blue Collection

The Audio Blue Collection Vol. 1: 15 Fat Spacey Jams

 

Crisply mastered and chockful of head-nodding funky library tracks but there are artist names on here that don't feature on any other lps.

 

At first we suspected the Dexter responsible for this compilation had hired session musicians, played them library tracks and paid them to create something similar. Morgan Khan fleshed out the content on early volumes of the Street Sounds UK Electro series in this way using 80s pop stars who were 'resting.'

 

Our initial suspicion was misplaced though. Tracks by Low Drivers, the Lee Arnold Trio, the Rick Walter Revue, D. Mensah, King Ant, Wolfgang Mottman and The Feelings are all significantly different with high production values and Forumusic forum member Einekleine was quick to identify King Ant as Anthony King whose track Filigree Funk appears on a Peer International library lp.

 

Sourcerer, another forum member correctly pointed out the smooth vibes track called Funky Chimes by The Lee Arnold Trio appears on a KPM library called Viberations by Francis Coppetiers and also on the 1997 KPM compilation called Setting The Scene. This practice of changing names and song titles on boots was not uncommon. It also provided irrefutable evidence later on of boots being booted.

Audio Blue Collection

As we shall see in Part 6, fake names and titles identified above all reappeared on an Italian boot lp from 1998 in exactly the same order. Naughty.

 

Positive IDs are much easier for Nino Nardini and Ian Langley; both tracks are from Peer International Library classic Reggae For Real, and all three Sound Prospect tracks are from another Peer International Library lp called Hit Man.

 

The Audio Blue Collection is the first boot to scream porn in both title and imagery. The rear sleeve displays four washed-out pics from a 70s jazz mag. Design inspired by the 1996 furore about the fast -growing internet porn industry perhaps?

 

Retro-porn imagery certainly snowballed on boots from 1997 onwards. Yet another example of media outrage making something very hip, very fast.

Audio Blue Collection

Natural Funky

 

Any coverage of 90s boots would be incomplete without mention of Nicolas Magneron's Paris-based Soul Patrol label. His messianic crusade to spread Funk and Deep Funk sounds to the masses worked for cash-strapped punters but upset more than a few of the original crate-diggers despite giving them shout-outs on the dreadful lp covers.

 

Despite the appalling covers there's no denying Soul Patrol releases played a major part in spreading the sound of fresh funk oldies throughout the 90s. Their relentless enthusiasm for Funk and Deep Funk to the exclusion of all other genres was second to none but upset a number of the Deep Funk scene originators.

 

There was this bastard in France called Nicolas Magneron. He was watching closely all the records that we were bustin' and the next thing there were all these compilations coming out with all the tracks on them. To be fair, one or two guys in our scene were lending him the records and getting very well paid for it so in a way they were letting the side down in my mind but Magneron was kind of using us, because it was some of the records that we had only just established...

The annoying thing was turning up to clubs with The Majestics or The Latin Breed to find some kind of spotty seventeen-year old DJ-ing before you was playing all these records off the bootleg.

Natural Funky

Natural Funky

I can't say they were my discoveries as they came from Soul Bowl but John Anderson would say 'It's the only copy I have of this, I've never seen it before.'

 

Credit: Snowboy interviewed by Felix Steinbold and Johnny Hitman for soulkombinat.org/funkyberlin/

 

Soul Patrol releases are never full of ultra-rare funk and many 45s from them were relatively plentiful and cheap in the 90s and still are. But lurking on them are tunes that are still nigh-on impossible to find.

 

Much of the heat for finding some of these releases has abated since the late 90s / early 00s. Now is as good a time as ever to set Ebay searches for some of the rarer ones before a major Deep Funk resurgence around 2017 or thereabouts.

Naural Funky

Rare Funk Psyche

Rare Funk Vol 8: Psyche

 

With an 'e' carefully attached to psych Cobalt Records returned with a mind-expanding selection of funky tunes that fully captured the spirit of where crate-diggers heads were at in 1996. It's a head-nodding acid trip a full fifteen years ahead of the money-spinning Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In Your Mind series.

 

Burbling and bubbling phased synths abound over shifting break beats throughout this entire lp. The selections are not unique and there are several tracks on here such as Keef Hartley - Imatations, Moody - Lonely Jelly, Klaus Doldinger - Sitar Beat and Murtaugh - Slinky from earlier boots. Moody are once again mis-titled as The Gentle Rain.

 

That quibble aside it still stands as an excellent listen now and must have been truly mind-blowing back in 1996 to young heads just discovering the wealth of tunes available outside of radio playlists.

 

Like many other 90s boots from this point onwards there is an overt desire to be geographically sweeping. Selections from Claudia Vita, Klaus Doldinger, Ananda Shankar and Assagai ensure American and UK contributions are interspersed by selections from Italy, Germany, India and Africa.

 

 

Rare Funk 8 Psyche

By 1996 the World Wide Web was five years old and beginning to grow in leaps and bounds as more enlightened businesses invested in computers and finally realised the internet and international communication by email was here to stay.

 

For music-loving males aged between 24 and 36 working hours in the office decreased incrementally as music websites and mailing lists gradually began to appear.

 

The role of the World Wide Web in melting geographical and musical borders cannot be understated.

 

Boots reflected vinyl finds from broader horizons by vinyl collectors trading internationally without buying a plane ticket well before the advent of MP3s, Ebay, GEMM, Discogs and YouTube.

Rare Funk 8 Psyche

Teen Tonic

 

A very potent teen tonic at that. This compilation is bursting with spaced-out funky tunes that are well worth donning a mini-skirt and frugging along to. Or something like that.

 

With Jean Jacque Perrey - E.V.A established as a regular spin on playlists at forward-thinking London clubs like Smashing and Blow-Up it was only a matter of time before crate-diggers discovered that Pierre Henry did a lot more than pour musique concrete as a day job. Psyche Rock, well-known for inspiring the theme tune to Futurama, was rapidly unearthed by crate-diggers as was the down-tempo bleeping and squelching Teen Tonic from the same lp. Hard to believe both tracks are from 1967. Up next but sticking with the psychedelic theme , Don Sebesky kept his trombone in his case for the cool sitar swirl of Guru Vin from1968.

 

Out of sync a little with the first two tracks comes the speed lounge blast of Syd Dale masquerading as the Chico Lopez All Stars - Trouble Spot. Many a UK charity shop digger has had their ears blown clean away inadvertently discovering it lurking inside the incredibly dull looking lp South Of The Border lp.

 

Ellen McIlwane already loomed large on the radar of vinyl fiends seeking folk with a funk twist having had been featured on a few earlier boots. It's predictable perhaps to state once again the eclecticism here but these first

Teen Tonic

Teen Tonic

four tracks alone introduced separate galaxies for young vinyl heads to explore. From early synthesized electronics through jazz psychedelia and lounge to folk funk in just over fifteen minutes. That's a trip.

 

Side 2 kicks off with a 1970 stretched out psychedelic rock jam from psych favourites Blues Magoos complete with vibe and saxophone jams which segues well into the bluesier funky rock of Sod - I Don't Want Ya.

 

Flute jazz funk from Jeremy Steig, funky rock from Kent Meade, Mod hammond from Jackie Mitoo?

 

The range of genres on Teen Tonic reflects the remarkable open-mindedness the breakbeat generation inadvertently assumed in their quest for fresh sounds to cut, paste, loop and reassemble.

Teen Tonic

Dealers Choice 2

DC2: Definitive Breaks: Dealers Choice Vol.2

 

We're delighted. A proper Dexter tuned in and now drops by to share some reminisces about the 90s boot world. ('Dexter' is shorthand for a 'Serial Boot Compiler')

 

"It's all a bit hazy but the Dealers Choice series were put together with a friend and from pulling favors from others for tracks, cover design etc. Tracks were a mix of breaks sources and as things progressed, other tracks we thought were worthy of sampling. The series was 100% influenced by what was happening in Hip Hop, or more accurately what had already happened in Hip Hop - like a secondary industry within the Hip Hop ecosystem if you will.

 

The Vinyl Dogs and Nuggets series definitely fell into this vein. For example, one Nuggets release has the Johnny Pate version of Look of Love but that's got nothing to do with any 90s Easy Listening Scene, it's because Showbiz & AG used it for an unreleased remix and what's interesting is that it was often the person who supplied the producer with the break who was behind the boot of breaks that followed it.

 

The first Dealers Choice we did (1995) was a simple sticker affair because we barely had enough money to get it pressed. We did it for fun as we were fans of other boots of Hip Hop breaks that were happening.

Dealers Choice 3

Sometimes it was like a race to be the first to find out what a break was or we would hear someone else already found and booted the break, forcing us to rethink our track list and vice versa.

 

We had a lot of respect for Nuggets as they not only made the best sounding boots by mastering on Pro Tools, but Nuggets Two had E.V.A on it and no one knew that Gangstarr break at the time - that release sold loads and inspired a lot of new breaks series.

 

For Dealers Choice 2 we were able to afford a proper cover, albeit only a two color one. But we strived to provide the best product we could: cover design, mastering, track choice. We hated boots that just put the same stuff out or copied others, we took a little pride and tried to get creative whenever we could."

 

: --- Reminisces continue at Dealers Choice 3 ---

Dealers Choice 2

The Melting Pot: Volume Two

 

A second excellent compilation following on from the original Melting Pot boot in 1995. Intent once again to take a listener on a funky trip around the globe, compilers Good Groove Musik were less than keen to take the listener home with them. Their address at Box 2058, 16121 Solna in Stockholm never existed.

 

Lacking Cosmic Agogo's less-than-subtle 'this is an international compilation' fanfare via their lp graphics, (see review and cover below) Melting Pot Volume Two nevertheless plays the same hand with a deliberately broad geographic selection of tracks from Argentina, Germany, United Kingdom, United States and beyond.

 

Lalo Schifrin - Ape Shuffle is described as Schifrin's 45 - only funk soundtrack masterpiece by the ever reliable blaxploitation.com, one of the earliest and still one of the best soundtrack websites on the internet. The ape sounds may be human scat from Lalo but the growling horns are 100% raw animal.

 

Soul jazz legend Richard Groove Holmes - Aint No Trouble On The Mountain delivers a sweet and sinuous slice of 70s soul more in keeping with the kind of tunes selected for soul boots in the early 90s. The UK are represented by charity shop classic Big Jim H and his Men Of Rhythm's version of Jungle Fever.

The Melting Pot Volume Two

The Melting Pot Volume Two

The stand out tracks on this compilation appear back to back in the middle of Side Two.

 

The synth-driven latin of Bamba - Dimenzio rips along the surface of some bubbling Jaco Pastorius style fretless bass style playing.

 

Percy Faith - First Light from his Corazon lp is a magical slice of instrumental groove which is hard to categorise but is probably best described as Jazz Funk Only Better. Powerfully driven, yet breezy at the same time, the strings cascade over shimmering flutes and rippling Fender Rhodes riffs.

 

Percy Faith's arrangements evolved continually throughout his career and he was genuinely at the top of his game when he arranged this Freddie Hubbard composition for his own orchestra just three years before his death in 1976.

The Melting Pot

Cosmic Agogo Volume Three

Cosmic Agogo 3: Volume Three

Another superb instalment from the Save The Vinyl crew and once again the emphasis is on a selection of less predictable latin and jazz-tinged dance sounds. This was 1996 though and in the post Nuggets Of Funk / Folk Funk Experience period a straightforward compilation of jazz, soul, funk and latin would be a hard sell.

 

Looking at the tracklisting in order, it almost seems as though they went with their gut feeling for fresh sounds for the first seven tracks before capitulating to 1996 tastes and adding tracks from Orchester Gustav Brom, Pierre Henry and Les Baxter that had already been compiled elsewhere. All credit to Save The Vinyl then for seeking out less obvious tracks for 7/10ths of this. There are some cracking selections here that have never appeared on any other compilations.

 

This boot has the only outing of the soulful funk of Bombey/Horn - Subway Baby, from the 1978 Swedish lp of the same name. It's as bright and uplifting as the track which follows it; Nolen & Crossley - Salsa Boogie from 1982.

 

Even later date-wise is Fred Johnson - A Child Runs Free recorded live at B.B Joe's in 1984 for the lp Offshore, a jazz dancer in the vein of Mark Murphy . It was reissued on 45 by Jazzman Records in 2000.

Cosmic Agogo

Staying in the jazz dance lane two more tracks that don't appear on any other boots are The Col Nolan Soul Syndicate - What's The Use and the Brazilian jazz of Leny Andrade - Nao Adianta.

 

Leny Andrade is considered by many musicians and performers as the greatest female singer of Brazilian jazz . She still has a huge fan base in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands hence her inclusion on this Swedish compilation.

 

The tracklist graphics with the country of origin shadowed beneath the titles underlines again how important it was for the booters to inform potential purchasers they were buying a compilation with very broad horizons. It was hip to be international in 1996.

 

An excellent lp for lovers of latin flavoured jazz dance.

Cosmic Agogo

Groovy Grooves

 

A one-off release from Groove Records Inc so technically it's a 'Harry'; a one-off boot lp from a compiler who never produced any further boots. One major problem for Forumusic reviewing boots without dates on is determining exactly when they were released. We've positioned this around 1996 based solely on the tracks appearing on it but as ever... we'll stand corrected if were wrong.

 

In stark contrast to the likes of Cosmic Agogo Volume Three and The Melting Pot Volume Two which contain a number of original tracks that had not been booted before this looks and sounds like a rushed cash-in job. Most of the tracks on it have been compiled elsewhere but the question is, did this boot actually appear in 1996 or was it earlier or later than that date?

 

f it was earlier than 1996 it was definitely ahead of its time. If not then we'll stick with our original assumption that this is a prime example of a boot built from other boots. A little evidence suggesting it's earlier are the words Funk Jazz Latin Soul being emblazoned across the cover. It's clear from many of the other boots featured from 1996 onwards that those words were disappearing fast as they fell from favour due to over-use. Funk, Soul, Jazz and Latin were terms no longer hip to where the cats cut after the early 90s.

Groovy Grooves

Groovy Grooves

There's good soul tunes here with the old Robbie Vincent favourite Raw Soul Express - The Way We Live alongside Tony Sherman - Slippin' into Darkness and Jimmy McGriff's ultra- sweet It Feels So Nice (Do It Again). The latter is an instrumental at the crossroads of Soul, Disco and 70s TV soundtrack. Perfect for anyone who likes full strings, a rippling piano and Fender Rhodes.

 

Side One closes with a heavier and rawer-sounding version of Lalo Schifrin's Ape Shuffle performed by The Jeff Wayne Space Shuttle and retitled Ape's Shuffle. Very nice if you like eerie flute, heavy bass and rough synth stabs.

 

Groovy Grooves is one of the easiest boots to find and therefore one of the cheapest. Unfortunately the sound quality is not very groovy compared to many other boots coming out at this time.

Groovy Grooves

Dealers Choice 3

Dealers Choice 3: Breaks Collector

 

The Dealers Choice Dexter continues reminiscing about booting lps in the 90s...

 

"One thing that led to the end of the Dealers Choice series was David Holmes sampling Melody Nelson which we compiled on Dealers Choice 2. Apparently Dealers Choice got a shout out from him on the cover art one of his releases. This lead to the BPI looking around after the Philips record label lodged a complaint against the Holmes track as it had not cleared or paid for the Gainsbourg sample.

 

BPI never found us personally but they were able to track the releases to the pressing plant we used, and that complaint plus a few others caused the plant to crack down on all the after hours pressing jobs for boots. No one really cared too much about shutting boots down as no one ever sold enough for it to be an issue, but bigger selling artists like Holmes and others did sell enough - and when the BPI receives a complaint they're obliged to follow them up. That was the end of our contact with that particular pressing plant.

 

It was OK with us as we were bored of the samples boot scene at that point although we had already compiled one further boot called Beat Actione. I compiled it with two other people aiming to make a boot with a different, more creative vision. It was inspired by all the crazy whack job releases from the 70s.

Dealers Choice 3

We were interested in making edgier sounding comps from unusual sources in the vein of what Finders Keepers Records does so well legally today.

 

On the back of the lp you'll see us in wigs and glasses. If you take the first three letters of our psuedonames Com-Delgado-Sanches, Pil-Ramon -Vasquez and Ers-Van-Dango it spells 'compilers.'

 

We strived to get the spirit of crazy shit like Projecto A into all elements of the product, not just the choice of tracks. That's why we did Portuguese/Esperanto translations of pigeon English descriptions for each track and suggested a dance for the album. We tried to find a laminate that could rival those MFP charity shop covers but unfortunately no one uses the same chemicals anymore!"

 

--- A review of Beat Actione will appear in Part 7 ----

Dealers Choice 3

Vinyl Dogs: Volume 4

 

The label might have been getting mighty canine- crowded but four volumes in to the series and Vinyl Dogs once again kept it Old Skool Boot style. They resisted fancy packaging and verbose tag lines and stuck to sharing hard-to-find tracks that are still a great listen and great sampler fodder today.

 

Volume Four opens with the very sampleable non-track entitled JBL speaker test. Throughout the 60s and 70s the market for audiophile amplifier and speaker systems increased and the term hi-fi buff evolved, creating a dividing line between normal people who just wanted something to play their records on and a select group of bearded individuals who wanted their records to be a complete sound experience. Speaker and amp manufacturers began to provide hi-fi shops with records containing sounds specifically recorded to test high end systems. As on the JBL speaker test the records were full of carefully recorded drum solos perfect in the 70s for hearing how good a set-up was and equally perfect in the 90s for Hip Hop producers seeking clean drum sounds and fresh breaks.

 

On this outing the Vinyl Dogs are once again off the leash and runing off into the undergrowth. Rubber Band - Rubber Band Jam is from The Hendrix Songbook, a 1969 exploito lp featuring covers of Hendrix tunes plus

Vinyl Dogs 4

Vinyl Dogs 4

an obligatory self-penned one. A perfect break record, it opens with crisp bass, snare and conga and features clean-sounding bass and drum jams.

 

The old jazz funk classic Monty Alexander - Love and Happiness gets its first boot airing on this before an uncredited Bonus Beat track closes Side A. It doesn't say so but this must be another selection from a hi-fi speaker test lp.

 

One surprise on here is the inclusion of a Steve Halpern track. It's an ultra-mellow Fender Rhodes noodle-out as befits the work of an artist recently championed on the Waxidermy forum as a trail blazer for the Private Issue New Age genre, or PINA for short.

 

Only a 90s boot could have Ernie Hines, Atomic Rooster and Steve Halpern sharing a side.

Vinyl Dogs

Fully Loaded Two

Fully Loaded Two: Twelve Grooves For The Cosmic Conscious

 

Yellow and black is visual shorthand for danger in nature and on hazard signs. The Shaft In Africa photograph screams Blaxploitation soundtrack heat whilst the subtitle Twelve Grooves for the Cosmic Conscious is pure 1996.

 

Taking a cue from the Phat series Fully Loaded Two arrives replete with it's own sales pitch, an increasingly present feature of boots from this year onwards. Let's hear what they have to say...

 

"Orchestrated atmospherics fuel the mutant break-beat madness of The Roundtable's jazz/funk stormer from 1969, rare and long unavailable.... If you hung out around smokey coffee bars in Greenwich Village circa 1966 you possibly may have seen beat poet, musician and general groove cat Jack Hammer rappin' and recitin.' On this cut he's supported by heavyweight UK jazzers such as Kenny Clare and Kenny Wheeler. Get High.

 

George Woods (the man with the goods) fries up the soul food under the watchful eye of N.Y. funk guru Vince Montana... Big band funky theme tunes get The Chases' going cops'n'robbers style in this Mort Stevens epic. Senior Thump is another Grits 'n' organ boogalooer from the Mohawks lond-deleted Champ. Trippy African Beats, gospel chants and weird 70s synths make up Eddie Kendricks most radical recording to date...

Fully Loaded Two

Multi-racial group Crystal Mansions 1972 funk outing fuses catchy guitar with percussive break-downs and a message of love, peace and all that good psychedelic shit. Italian Puccio Roelens funks it up...

Ellen McIlwane style jazzy folk is what's on offer with the ultra-collectable Niki Aukema cut from 1973.

 

Roundtable Brit proceedings up when they drop the baroque beatz on another stormin' tune from their Spinning Wheel lp......."

 

Forumusic is grateful to Mr Joe Woolley for spotting a Fully Loaded Vol. 1 from Disques Rahsaan on Discogs. We were certain that like the Original Sounds... series Fully Loaded were playing games with their numbering. Disques Rahsaan were also busy throughout 1996 driving around the UK with a boot full of boots selling Teen Tonic and Strange Beats to any record shops that had cash.

Fully Loaded Two

Strange Beats: Volume 1

 

"Auspicious Audio - more sounds for your pounds, a slightly less obvious selection of beats, breaks and tunes."

 

Mixing space funk, lounge, soul, funky reggae, exotica and French rock, Strange Beats certainly gave young break-hunting punters hard-to-find sounds for their ten pounds.

 

Once heard, never forgotten 90s break beat space funk classic Mystic Moods - Cosmic Sea opens this selection. When Forumusic gets around to nominating the tunes that define 90s crate-digging Cosmic Sea would have to be somewhere in the Top 50 despite it's criminally short length.

 

Strange only in the context of following Cosmic Sea, Lou Rawls - For What It's Worth is well described on the sleevenotes as a tough breakbeat version from the master lounge swinger. 90s crate-diggers and DJs on the 90s Easy Listening Scene uncovered a wealth of funky, breakbeat songs by artists more usually linked to smooth lounge crooning. Barbara Striesand - Stoney End, Liza Minelli - Use Me, Shirley Bassey - Spinning Wheel all became well-known cheap funky breaks to source in charity shops or at car boot sales. The break on the funky reggae Night Train - Making Tracks is usefully pointed out for samplers on the sleeve notes,

Strange Beats

Strange Beats

presumably to assist any bedroom samplers who couldn't be arsed to listen to the whole thing. And lest the listener forgets this lp is for studio use Side A closes with Bonus Beatz 1 a medley of intro breaks from a variety of uncredited songs.

 

Side B runs the gamut from the sitar strewn exotica of Henry Mancini - The Party through smooth femme funk, twisted French rock, British lounge The Peddlers - On A Clear Day ( cheesy as hell but ooh, that break) and American soul until it reaches the second medley of Bonus Beatz 2.

 

Another excellent compilation for opening the ears of the generation who were raised on Hip Hop and were now looking to make their own. Being nerdy over details, we're presently pondering the Hip Hop artist or producer who first added a 'z' to the word beat.

Strange Beats

Deep Funk

Deep Funk - Natural

 

Meanwhile in between telephoning deep funk DJs and asking them to play their latest 45s down the phone and ssssh-ing them to record the tunes; the Soul Patrol Posse lead by Nicolas Magneron continued their quest to get as many of the latest funk discoveries onto vinyl as quickly as possible.

 

This is bizarrely entitled Natural on the spine only and the catalogue number is prefixed with Vipo. On the back sleeve plaudits are awarded thus; Extra Special Thanks To The Fantastic "Very-Important-Person-Originator.' The Vipo in question, Keb Darge, must have been delighted with this unprompted accolade.

 

This is another compilation of non-Northern, James Brown-style American funk 45s Keb Darge had collected whilst building his original Northern Soul collection. On selling his Northern Soul collection he started playing these records at various funk nights in London before teaming up with Greg Belson who christened the genre Deep Funk.

 

It must be said once again here that Forumusic is unsure of the exact order of release of the Soul Patrol lps but we think this and Natural Funky were among the earliest ones. It's not sufficient to trust Discogs dates

 

 

Deep Funk

on these releases as dates on price stickers of Soul Patrol lps owned by Tom Bigg (see Collectors) contradict the Discogs dates.

 

As for the music; if you dig the funk sound, you'll dig this whole lp. We love the distinctly unsophisticated squeaky saxophone on Thaddeus Crawford - Sophistcated Groove and the harp sounds punctuating the clumsy, steamhammer-like drums on Shorty Parkley - Soul People. It must be said too that Mickey and the Soul Generation - Joint Session veers significantly away fom the standard funk template and sounds much closer to being an easy listening instrumental.

 

Forumusic has been nibbling away doing some research into the current prices of a raft of these funk 45s in the last few months and there appears to be a significant drop in the prices they now command.

Deep Funk

Suck It And See

 

In 1996 the majority of serious Dexters and Harrys ('one-off' boot lp merchants) were intent on both mixing genres and sourcing content from as far afield as possible. Competition had entered the game alongside a sense of personal pride from pressing and distributing the latest and freshest sounds. Not all boots had moved on though ....

 

...and this one-off from KP Records entitled Suck It And See is old school in terms of both its content and the simple two-colour sleeve without sleevenotes. Whether it is a one-off or not is debatable. Dance-orientated Jazz / Latin boots were for the jazz dance audience and many were compiled and distributed by the DJs and club scenes themselves. They were the people with the best records in the first place. Their main priority was to recoup pressing costs and make profit for the next one without being pursued by the BPI.

 

Primarily jazz dance tunes, Suck It may lack depth in content but selections are great including tracks which don't appear on any other boots. Kitty Winter - Mato Pato is a free-wheeling jazz funk groove from her 1978 Gipsy Nova. Ronny April - Snowflake from Ronnie April's Positive Energy Volume 1 lp is in a similar vein. The lp on Ronnie's own Jude imprint label didn't sell well leading to the disappearance of all but a few copies until sealed stock copies turned up this year. £25 is a steal compared to the £300 it used to change hands for.

Suck It And See

Suck It And See

Bob Azzam debuted on boots on Cosmic Agogo Part 2 in 1995. This Lebanese singer (real name: Wadih George Azzam) began his career in the late 50s singing with his band in both Italian and English. found success in the French pop charts releasing hits heavily influenced by oriental music.

 

After initial success waned he continued touring with his orchestra. This percussive jazz dance killer Batucada Por Favor on this lp is booted from his 1967 lp recorded live At The Club Opera Stockholm.

 

Suck It And See is not completely old school in design. Taking its cue from Audio Blue Collection it's the second boot to experiment with porn imagery, albeit very subtly. You have to squint very hard at the tiny illustration on the right next to the KP Records logo. Maybe they wanted it as the cover but got cold feet before heading back to the drawing board?

Suck It And See

Dealers Choice 4

Dealer's Choice Number 4: Return Of The Breakheads

 

Fourth in the series and the Dealers formerly known as Break Collectors upgrade their subtitle to the more cinematic sounding Return Of The Breakheads. They were quick to capitalise on the first official release of The Taking Of Pelham 1 2 3 soundtrack and as keen as ever to provide informative sleevenotes.

 

She may be your younger sister's best friend. He may be the man in the mail room. Today, anyone could be a breakhead, that mysterious breed of music lover. Not always detectable by those tell-tale loose garments and a pair of the latest trainers., they could be anyone....even you....

 

rAcademy and Grammy award winning David Shire's ultra funky soundtrack to the 70s film The Taking Of Pelham 1 2 3 had not been available in any format until it was officially released on CD in 1996. Moving fast, the Dealers Choice team chose the title track to kick off their fourth volume making it the first time this track had appeared on vinyl.

 

All the other tracks are fresh to boots too with the Dealers providing information on who sampled each track. Lee Michaels - Tell Me How You Feel recently sampled by the ever stranger Busta Rhymes on Abandon Ship,

 

 

Dealers Choice 4

...before that the even stranger Kool Keith's William Burrough's - inspred alter-ego Dr Octagon.

 

One more break for the A- side Clifford Brown - Yesterdays a super hard intro sampled by DJ Premier for the KRS-One classic MCs Act Like They Dont Know.

 

Side B is an altogether more obscure affair, with actual breaks held to a minimum over more hard to come by, forgotten and undiscovered tracks.

 

Return Of The Breakheads; beautifully produced and broad in range, premiered tracks unheard on other boots up to 1996, slipped short sampleable snippets between tracks and the sleevenotes were a mine of information to the 90s generation of aspiring break collectors and Hip Hop producers. Excellent stuff.

Dealers Choice 4

The Music People

 

More funk 45s compiled by Soul Patrol. We ran a quick price check on Side One. Date: February 2013: Source: Popsike. Prices: US dollars. Condition not taken into account.

 

The Other Brothers - No Class: 2007> 500 / 2008> 390 / 2009>172 (3 listed)

Johnny Morisette - I'm Hungry: 2003 - 416 / 2004 - 368 / 2008 - 213 (3 listed)

The UFO's - Too Hot To Hold: 2004- 90 / 2008 - 130 / 2010 - 100 / 2012 - 60 (13 listed / prices averaged)

The Brothers Seven - Evil Ways: 2004 - 300 / 2010 - 338 / 2011 - 373 (3 listed)

The Ebony Rhythm Band - Soul Heart Transplant: 2010 - 1025 (one listed)

Aaron Butler and the New Breed Band- Gettin' Soul: 2007 - 370 (one listed)

 

We were curious about both the rarity of these records and how prices have changed since the market for Deep Funk 45s seems to have ebbed a little since the demise of the Deep Funk forum.

 

It's only a quick snapshot. Popsike do not claim to list every transaction there has ever been on Ebay and Ebay is not the only marketplace for such a specialised area of collecting. Information from Collectorfrenzy / John Manship Auctions and a host of other sources could be used to assess shifting values.

The Music People

The Music People

A better researched list may refute the general downward trend of the figures above but does day-to-day communication, critical assessment, hype and hyperbole bandied around on music forums artificially inflate the price of newly discovered records?

 

Do any genres hold their value when the heat of fashion has passed? Some music forums have recently questioned the value of discussing record prices despite the fact that purchasing music is inseparable from the activity of collecting music.

 

We say: buy only what your ears like and your wallet can afford but never look at record collecting as an investment. That way lies madness....*

 

* Northern Soul 45s and Prog are an exception.And certain Rare Soul pieces. And Red Hot Polka. etc

The Music People

Moods & Grooves

Moods & Grooves

 

This is the third release from the French-based Groove Vibrations record label who were active on the boot scene from 1994 through until 2001. They covered a lot of bases across a dozen or so releases.

 

Groove Vibrations were no slouches when it came to selling their product. Moods and Grooves is one of the first 90s boots that was made available on Cd at the same time as it was available on vinyl. For the record (no pun intended); a number of other boots were also released on Cd but usually a few years after they had been released on vinyl.

 

Spaghetti Head - Funky Axe is a strange one. It's a one-off 45 that was released worldwide as the B-side to the old swing classic Big Noise From Winnetka. No lp or other singles followed and this particular song, a long-time break collector favourite, is like a jam session thrown together by professional musicians to fill studio time. As Funky Axe is the B-side this could well have been the case.

 

We mentioned earlier that as the decade wore on library records crept onto more boots largely due to interest from breaks collectors and also from spins they were getting on the burgeoning 90s Easy Listening Scene

Moods & Grooves

brewing in Camden, London. Janko Nilovic - Soul Impressions is from the 1975 Editions Montparnasse lp of the same name.

 

The Underground Jazz Band - Persuasive Fusions is an elongated jazz version of Watermelon Man which doesn't appear on any other lp. It will of course appear under its correct band name and title on a jazz lp somewhere in the world.

 

The Wild Man - Smooth Running is also a mystery but sounds like the kind of detective series funk which exists on any one of hundreds of mid-70s library lps. A name change again?

 

Yambu - Hippopotamus and The Silhouettes - Lunar Invasions both exist in reality and are so good they continue to appear on numerous other comps both legal and illegal.

Moods & Grooves

The Chase Scene III: More fast and furious funky soundtracks

 

Like Good Vibrations who compiled Moods and Grooves, Pussy Quat Records pushed their commercial frontier by making their boots available on Cd. The barrel for compilations of 70s detective, thriller and blaxploitation TV and film themes was far from scraped and they were still selling.

 

It's not unfair to say that Pussy Quat Records made a tiny bit of digging go a very, very long way. Both sides of this lp are stretched to twenty minutes only by the inclusion of one very long track added to each side. The B Side has 12 minute Jerry Butler and Exuma - You Can Fly with an excellent and long bass and drum break.

 

What remains are classic UK breaks tracks which could be found in their original form in the charity shops of any major town of the UK throughout the 90s and into the 00s. Burt Rhodes and the London Festival Orchestra - Starsky and Hutch, Marvin Hamlisch - Bond '77 (Opening Theme), Harry Rabinowitz and the London Festival Orchestra - Quiller and Geoff Love and his Orchestra - Three Days of The Condor.

 

A Forumusic forum member thinks Pulsating Pussy Quat may have been related to the PPQ fashion house which now dresses celebrities. "PPQ is today a women's clothing line favored by the likes of Vogue but it was

The Chase Scene III

The Chase Scene

started in 1992 by Percy Parker who used to be involved in the mod scene and ran a club night in London in the early 90s called Happiness Stans.

 

PPQ in the early days was very mod-influenced and produced menswear which Burro sold. I can't remember Burro ever selling any other vinyl apart from The Chase Scene boots.

 

After buying a pale blue PPQ safari shirt and The Chase Scene lp at the same time I remember thinking : "Pulsating Pussy Quat" / PPQ?"

 

The PPQ fashion home page confirms they now run a record label called 1-2-3-4 Records which hosts the annual Shoreditch free music festival in London. Discogs states the label was started by Sean McCluskey of High Society Records and James Mullord and Percy Parker formerly of PPQ Records.

The Chase Scene

Objective Exotic Directions

Exotic Objective Directions

 

In the year when boots adopted descriptions like spacey, mystic, groovy and heavenly it's only right to finish on a high of sorts. On Objective Exotic Directions the Dexter behind the Nuggets Of Funk series nailed the zeitgeist of 1996 crate digging with a superb selection of trippy breaks tunes.

 

This compilation could best be described as pure chill-out even though widespread use of that particular term was a few years away. It would be a perfect after club smokers lp if it wasn't spread so thinly over four sides. No-one self-respecting stoner would ever want to get up and change the sides so frequently.

 

Nevertheless it's a superbly consistent and mellowed-out listen. It's beautifully produced and proudly boasts all tracks digitally re-mastered using Digidesign Pro-Tools and D.I.N.R suggesting the Dexter or Dexters responsible knew their way around a mastering suite.

 

Few of the tracks on here are hard to find in their original format and many are now cheaper to source than they were back then. As previously stated; in the days before the World Wide Web, soundclips and Ebay sellers from different countries were able to command high prices for records they knew were relatively cheap

Exotic Objective Directions

and easy to come by in their country of origin. It worked both ways too. Some UK dealers made money in the US in the 90s selling easy to find MFP and Contour records with breaks on such as Top of The Pops, Hot Hits, The Hanged Man, Playschool and Rupert the Bear lps.

 

There's a wealth of 90s UK breaks on this including the superbly eerie Klaus Wunderlich - Summertime, Harry Stoneham and Johnny Eyden - Coming Home Baby and the Sight & Sound Orchestra lp version of Johnny Harris - Fragments of Fear.

 

Another volume from the creators of Nuggets of Funk, means another one for the 90s Boot Boom Classics shelf. They released just one more called Mind Bending Nuggets before a Best Of in 1997 which is the year we're heading for next...

Exotic Objective Directions

 

Beyond The Valley Of The Beats

Coming April 2013: Part 5: 1997: Brand New Boots

 

Some enterprising Dexters had already seen the value of creating a series of lps notably Funky Soundtracks, The Chase Scene, Dealers Choice, Rare Funk and Nuggets of Funk.

 

Up to now boot vinyl had received scant attention from trading standards or any other authorities due in part perhaps to the slump in manufacturing engendered by the rise of Cds as format of choice by the general public and major record labels themselves. To many in the mid-90s vinyl lps were a dying format and the end was nigh.

 

With pressing and distribution networks established and cash rolling in the stage was set for some serious late-night scheming around kitchen tables all over Europe and the US. Dexters old and new moved towards creating completely new series of boots as recognisable brands with cohesive designs, logos and themes.

 

Dusty Fingers, The Mighty Mellow, Mood Mosaic and Beyond The Valley all made debuts in 1997, the year when boots evolved into brands and seriously got their skates on.

Dusty Fingers

Grateful thanks:

 

We could not be producing this series without assistance from Forumusic Forum members and UK-based Dexters.

 

Suggestions, solid leads, additional information and small details are continuing to shape these articles. Thanks again to Mr Sayers, Lawrence of Euphoria, LDJB, ironheadrat, moogaloo, soylent green, left hand corner and pH.

 

Extra thanks to Mr Joe Woolley for being an excellent proof reader and also the very helpful Dealers Choice Dexter.

The Mighty Mellow

 
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