Diggin Deeper 4

We're tracing the history of crate digging in the UK by analysing bootleg lps that were sold from independent record shops and market stalls throughout the 90s.

 

In 1995 the Brit Pop obssessed UK music media were hyping Blur vs. Oasis but away from the charts a mellower groove was kicking in.

 

Three songs from Diggin' Deeper 4 epitomise the laid back vibes crate diggers were pursuing and an appetite for sourcing tunes beyond funk, soul, jazz and Latin was evolving.

Diggin Deeper 4

Diggin Deeper 4

Assaulted by Brit Pop and post-Grunge guitar bands from inside the charts and deep bass and hi-hat club tunes of post-House Drum n' Bass from outside it, the ears of a select band of club goers were already favouring more esoteric flavours. For them a fresh canon was evolving from easy listening, exotica, Italian movie soundtracks, novelty electronica, folk and library music lps.

 

forumusic presents...

 

The 90s Boot Boom: Part 3

1995: The Gentle Reign of Nuggets

Heat! Volume 1: Premium funk, jazz and breakbeats

 

A bold graphic in montone and cerise declares this to be 'Heat!' and it's not lying. Sweetback Recordings serves up a fine mixed platter of funk, jazz and soul breakbeats.

 

To swiftly dispense with nerding over minor details; the runout groove on Side A says Pure Music and both side A and B are etched with the name Orlake. Our best guess at this time is that this is unrelated to the Pure series of compilations which were released out of France in the early 90s. A quick search on Discogs reveals a band called Pitch released a white label called J in 1995 etched with the same words. Maybe they did this?

 

Regardless of that many names on this boot will be more than familiar to any self-respecting funk fan from the 90s or Funk 45 forum regular from the noughties. The mid-tempo horn funk instrumental of Mickey & The Soul Generation - Chocolate opens Side 1in fine style followed by the classic soulful funk of Harlem River Drive - Idle Hands Pt 1 from their 1971 S/T lp. The lp recently came 94 in the Soul Strut Top 100 chart as voted for by Soul Strut members.

 

Attitudes - If We Want To introduces a dash of instrumental jazz funk into the equation before the magnificently yearning stunner that is Melvin Bliss - Synthetic Substitution. There's a sliver of breakbeat

Heat!

Heat!

goodness at the start before Melvin delivers in a vocal style very reminiscent of Donny Hathaway. Great stuff.

 

Soul Toronadoes - Go For Yourself is a well-known funk track now but how well known was it back in 1995? Magog - Lock ends Side One with some welcome free-form jazz trumpet over a solid bass-driven groove.

 

On Side 2 Frieda Nichols & Homer Brown - Sweet Peter is head-nodding funk with some slinky Hammond riffing whilst The Whole Darn Family - Seven Minutes Of Funk is a proto-Disco boogie replete with a burbling bass line Chic woould be proud of.

 

Plenty to please funk heads on this and mint copies are both easy and cheap to get hold of.

Heat!

Gots Ta Chill

You've Gots Ta Chill

 

The sequel to Chill Pill which we reveiwed in Part One.. The minimal sleeve notes acknowledge Hip Hop tracks which sample the songs included on this lp.

 

We're firmly embedded in 'these are the breaks' territory which delighted many a young Hip Hop fan at a point in time when the genre was having a massive resurgence. This approach often made for great individual tracks but a lousy compilation but this is the first of many that steers clear of that potential pitfall by being superbly segued in tempo, texture and drama.

 

Les Demerle - A Day In The Life is a very cool jazz version of the Beatles song which the sleeve notes tell us was used for OC's - Times Up. Picking up the laid back tempo of this but slamming the listener into another place entirely it's followed by Ray, Goodman and Brown - Another Day. Slow funk or soul funk? Any label is irrelevant to the fact that with Philly-like strings, beautiful harmonising and a gritty lovelorn lead vocal it's an absolute killer.

 

And here's where superb seguing kicks in. Instead of the whole thing getting too heavily melancholic with more call-and-response dramatics an ultra-light version of Get Out Of My Life Woman is deftly inserted to take the edge off things. It works a treat too.

Gots Ta Chill

Pleasure - Thoughts Of Old Flames is the only non-sampled track here. Though lesser-known it radiates a mid-70s bleached beachwear and orange sunshine vibe similar to songs like Nights Over Egypt or Why I Came To California.

 

Reuben Wilson - We're In Love on Side B is drop dead gorgeous. This lp cuts a fantastic balance between dramatic and atmospheric instrumentals and sweeter, mood-leavening vocal tracks.

 

Releases like this mark the start of a golden period for crate-digger boots when the overall audio experience became just as important as providing beat fodder for home sampling enthusiasts.

 

The sampled by references are just one clue suggesting this release was from the same studio producer who delivered the Nuggets of Funk series.

Gots Ta Chill

Nuggets of Funk...! Vol. 2

 

'Game-changer.' It raised the bar.' 'When I first heard Nuggets of Funk I knew we'd have to work harder on our next boot....'

 

Words spoken by various Dexters themselves; the Nuggets of Funk series from this one onwards became the yardstick by which any new boot compilation was measured.

 

Whilst You've Gots Ta Chill works on a similar level in terms of seguing, this release stretched the genre boundaries of what was acceptable on crate-digging boots, particularly with the inclusion of psychier tracks like Fifty Foot Hose - Rose and The Silhouettes - Fonky First. It's true that the outer space Moog grooves of The Silhouettes had been comped before but here they're back-to-back with the experimental electronics of Fifty Foot Hose and immediately followed by the latin funk of Certain Lions and Tigers.

 

Mixing things up further Side Two closes with the atmospheric synth jazz of Moody - Lonely Jelly from the sought after Gentle Rain lp and the mellow Moog funk of Ronnie Foster - Mystic Brew from his Jazz In The City lp which had already been rediscovered by the Acid Jazz fraternity and sampled by A Tribe Called Quest. If younger crate diggers hadn't dipped their toes in psychedelic music before, they certainly had now.

Nuggets of Funk

Nuggets of Funk

Jean Jaques Perrey - E.V.A had a history of being used in advertisements throughout the 70s in the US before London clubs like Smashing adopted it as a playlist staple in the early 90s.

 

The Easy Listening scene in London sharply followed suit and the Mood Indigo lp it had been sourced from was already a hipster essential in 1995 when this lp was released.

 

Nuggets Of Funk Vol. 2 continued the 90s boot tradition of providing break beats for cash-strapped samplers right down to including short Bonus Nuggets at the end of each side.

 

What sets this Nuggets apart from other boots though is that it also provided a seamlessly calming audio experience to enjoy from the comfort of a sofa. Cheap, easy to get and utterly essential.

Nuggets of Funk

Nuggets 3

Nuggets 3: Diggin Deeper...

 

AKA: Nuggets Of Funk Vol. 3. The man who raised the boot bar high with Vol. 2 ensures it stays there with another beautifully mastered selection of extraordinary tracks.

 

All the musical ingredients are the same but the tracks are different and instead of two Bonus Nuggets there are three Bonus Breaks and to make it absolutely clear this is all about digging the crates the sides are labelled Crate One and Crate Two.

 

Once again, ad hoc track sequencing that just throws together sought after break beats is eschewed in favour of different genres placed back-to-back to create an atmosphere.

 

Nuggets 3 reprises the informative notes of You've Gots Ta Chill by stating which tracks have been sampled before hence Grootna - I'm Funky is followed by A psychedelic trip into the world of House Of Pain's Come and Get Some Of This and Monty Alexander - Love and Happiness A rare version of this Al Green classic as sampled by The Beatnuts on Let Off A Couple, Hit Me With That and Apaches - Gangsta Bitch.

 

Wall of 95 favourite Galt MacDermott's First Natural Hair Band - Ripped Open By Metal Explosions closes Crate One in a haze of loping bass accompanied by something that sounds like a very stoned mariachi band.

 

 

Nuggets 3

Crate Two kicks off reaching out to jazz funk fans everywhere with a little known version of Ronnie Laws' evergreen classic Always There. Keeping it unpredictable and esoteric it's followed by the folk funk of Nancy Priddy - You've Come This Way Before. It's a crate-digging classic now but was little known back in 1995.

 

Switching genres whilst staying seamless once again the Nuggets Dexter adds the brilliant social conscience soul of Whatnauts - Why Can't People Be Colors Too. Boots played a significant role in creating a buzz around David Axelrod's break-laden orchestral mood pieces and it began here with the inclusion of Holy Thursday to close Crate Two.

 

This is another essential 90s boot but is mysteriously much harder to find than both Nuggets Volumes 2 & 4.

Nuggets 3

Diggin' Deeper 4: "The Weird & Wonderful"

 

One of the best boot lps ever released arrived smartly dressed in a subtly Photoshopped version of the Multiplication Rock OST lp which contained Three Is The Magic Number.

 

Photoshop 1.0 was launched in 1990 and got cheaper and easier to use very quickly so boot sleeves began to look a whole lot sharper. Nuggets of Funk Vol.2 and Nuggets 3 Diggin' Deeper, excellent as they are, proved to be the tasters for this superlative fourth volume. It ticks all the boxes of 2 and 3 but there's something in the flow of music that elevates it to another level.

 

Kicking off with Alan Tew - The Fence from the UK crate digger favourite The Hanged Man OST, the Nuggets Dexter maintains the lysergic mood through the whole of side one as surely as a violin maestro sustains one long note. It's never dull, bears repeated listens and sounds as if it could have been made by just one band. Or put another way, it doesn't sound like a compilation of different tracks at all.

 

The inclusion of David Axelrod - Holy Are You, Bob Dorough - Three Is The Magic Number, Sound Of Sunforest - Magician In The Mountain and Allen Toussaint - Get Out Of My Life Woman nail it in time and space as 1995 . A languid air pervades even though every selection is from a different place and time.

Diggin Deeper 4

Diggin Deeper 4

Forumusic may be wrong and will stand corrected but we think Diggin' Deeper 4 was the first boot to include a library track. And what a cracking track it is.

 

The Seven Shadows - The Watchful Eye is a synth heavy sleeper of a track that crawls under the skin by degrees. The high key synth melody line sings out over a bed of deep fat synth chords and jazz funk trumpet. It's a brilliant track that seeps in and gets better with repeated plays,

 

Jack Wilkins - Red Clay is succintly reviewed by the sample credit. A superb cover version of this Freddie Hubbard classic that a Tribe Called Quest sample on Sucka Nigga.

 

Nuggets 4 is like a fully realised version Nuggets 2 and it beggars belief that people would ever want to sell this beautifully put together lp.

Diggin Deeper 4

Funk International

Funk International: 70s Funk Songs From Around The World

 

'James Brown and The Meters were the epicenter of the late 60s / early 70s US funk earthquake. The aftershocks were felt around the world from Caracas to Cameroon.

 

Young musicians of the world wanted to get hip with the new breed thing. They infused their musical traditions with the super heavy funk sounds from America.

 

The Vinyl Dogs have searched the world over to bring you nine of the rarest international funk gems... The Vinyl Dogs have truly brought you the United Nations of Funk. So rock, rock to the Planet Rock. Don't stop!'

 

These notes by the Vinyl Dogs are on the reverse of the Funk International sleeve, presumably written with some difficulty owing to the lack of an opposoble thumb. From 1995 these notes reflect stirrings of an appetite for funk beyond the confines of major US labels, an appetite shared with many other Dexters around this time.

 

From a 2012 perspective the Vinyl Dogs1995 view of the world over appears very Western but in pre-internet days the opportunities for funk fans to hear funk from the East was limited to say the least. There's no doubt

Funk International

some adventurous diggers were already trawling Thailand, Turkey, Pakistan, Russia and beyond for top secret funk breaks but the fruits of their trekking labours were not appearing on boot comps just yet.

 

Forumusic is presently piecing together the history of crate-digging beyond Africa, America and Europe in the noughties for a new series to be premiered at the end of this year.

 

Around the turn of the century the World Wide Web became a major player in the hunt for fresh sounds and serious crate diggers were among the fastest users to fully exploit it.

 

In 1995 though the Vinyl Dogs padded as far as they could for this third release. It's not essential and most tracks can be found on other boots but it's a neat signpost to the routes crate diggers were taking.

 

Funk International

Jazz Kajmak: Jazz-Fusion Selection From The Yugoslavian Vaults

 

Whilst Funk Dexters were fanning out across African and American continents in their search for funk, UK-based Jazz Dexters were already at home in Eastern Europe and finding fresh sounds for jazz dancefloors.

 

The thriving UK-centred Jazz Dance and Acid Jazz scenes which had grown steadily throughout the 80s and 90s had already secured hearts, minds and dancing feet across the cities of continental Europe and beyond.

 

Many top UK jazz dealers had already found an excellent range of European jazz from trading with mainland Europe and touring DJs from the UK jazz scene wasted no time securing fresh sounds and inspiration from their European counterparts. The sleevnotes here read:

...dedicated to MG caffe and SOUL FOOD club in Belgrade, AKICILE DJs and the rest of the posse. Big thanks to MOST Records for understanding and support and London Jazz happenings for inspiration.

These reflect sleeve notes from earlier boot Behind Kungsträdgården (1993) : The current jazz explosion in London, Tokyo and many other places has now developed to a state where music from other places than the US and Britain is finding an interest with the DJs and the jazz audience....

Jazz Kajmak

Jazz Kajmak

All new to our ears, this one kicks off with the superb orchestral jazz of RTB Big Band - Balkan Ekspres which melds a blaxploitation flick vibe together with a huge sounding horn section and jazz solos. Side One closes with September - Domovino, a fast paced jazz-fusion scorcher sounding suspiciously like mid-70s orchestral disco.

 

Side B opens with crisp horn funk from Tihomir Asanovic - Slakavao before more orchestra with moog muscle from the RTB Big Band - Atlantis.

 

Mastered crisply and with great punchy bass, it says jazz-fusion on the sleeve but funk and disco tracks have hidden their heads under a blanket to avoid being photographed sneaking into this Serbo-Croat party.

 

Well worth getting for the two RTB tracks.

Jazz Kajmak

Groove Is Dawing Slowly

Groove Master Records presents: Groove Is Dawing Slowly

 

A page containing just multi-coloured, highly designed sleeves would look great for this 1995 chapter but would not tell the full story. Plain white sleeve with sticker tracklistings of the 'old school' were still being released and guess what? Some of them are excellent.

 

Dawing? A spilling mistake shurely? A quick Google reveals that Dawing is a perfectly acceptable word for dawning originating from Scotland. This may or may not give some clue as to this boots place of birth. Another key search result for dawing brings up a Judd Sisters song but we're not implicating them for this lp.

 

This is the first release from Groove Master Records and we'll be checking on some of their later releases in future chapters. This is the first of three plain sleeve with sticker releases from them before they suddenly turned designer-savvy and in step a few years later by creating sleeve designs which mimicked library lp covers. Check out Volume 7 - A Groove For All Reasons on Discogs to see GMR's light blue version of a very well-known dark green UK library sleeve.

 

This compilation captures the mood of 95 perfectly starting off with the slow and almost meditative funk of 24 Carat Black - Synopsis Two: Mother's Day which drifts hazily into the fluting diaspora of Catalyst - Uzuri.

Groove Is Dawing Slowly

Like Johnny Lytle, Cal Tjader's gentle melodies and vibing sounded uncannily of the moment in 1995 and his name has since been permanently etched into the canon of Wall Of 95 artists alongside that of Roy Ayers, Dorothy Ashby and David Axelrod.

 

Dizzy Gillespie's less frenetic back catalogue away from his pioneering Bebop work also reached a new audience. His strolling-paced Matrix swims sedately along in the current of Cal Tjader - Morning without waking up any life guards.

 

The other side offers up moodily magnificent tracks like the Portishead-sampled Danube Incident from the Mission Impossible OST.

 

This lp is another timely reminder that, like the early Vinyl Dogs releases, some top quality boots landed on market stalls minus any fancy packaging.

Groove Is Dawing

Celestial Soul

 

The title immediately conjures up an auditory sense of sublime, other-worldly soul sounds. In 2012 the internet has spoiled everyone, ourselves included, by sharing free downloads of deep, mesmerising and occasionally impossibly rare soul tracks.

 

In 2012 our ears would expect Celestial Soul to sound something like Jeanette Baker, Gloria Tayloror Eunice Collins but unsurprisingly for 1995, none of them are here.

 

That's not to say this is bad. No-one could successfully argue for very long that the classic sinuous groove of Sylvia Stiplin - You Can't Turn Me Away isn't spacey, floating, soulful and therefore a little bit celestial. It's a great record but very well known. Funk Factory - Rein Ne Va Plus touches the same base but unfortunately, beyond the inclusion of these two tracks the celestial vibes here are mighty slim.

 

The majority of the tracks are fairly straightforward mid-tempo funk. Violins drifting in and out of the mix here and there do not necessarily raise it to the heavens. Don Julian and the Larks - Shorty The Pimp is straight OST fare, Al Hirt - Harlem Hendoo is mellow jazz, Chocolate Milk - Actions speak Louder Than Words is slow funk and so on. . They are all good songs but they definitely don't hit any celestial heights.

Celestial Soul

Celestial Soul

One mid-90s mantra for finding all things soulful and funky passed on by knowledgeable dealers was the term Afros and Flares. A young Craig Sayers was one of many youthful crate diggers who was advised that the presence of Afros and flares on a cover was a useful indicator for finding good funk.

 

Compilers were also crate diggers and record collectors themselves so this carefully Photoshopped version of the sleeve of the Lafayette Afro Rock Band lp called Malik was perfect material and indicates the boot compilers awareness of the demographic they were selling to.

 

In a few instances major labels put out releases mimicking the monotone appearance of early and mid- 90s boots. This particular lp is not as celestial as it could be but it's smart packaging must have helped sales.

Tiger Grooves

Tiger Grooves: A Rougher Selection of Funky, Jazzy, Soulful Rare Grooves

 

The term Rare Groove was almost extinct by 1995 but resurfaces here to describe a great selection of tunes that are well segued for a very satisfying listen.

 

Listening to the opening track called Milton Wright - Keep Them Down with your eyes closed you could be forgiven for thinking you are hearing the whole of Jamiroquoi's career rolled into one song. The vocal stylings and groove are pure Jay Kay. It's not Milton Wright though, it's Labi Siffre - The Vulture but it is most definitely the killer club track it's sub-titled as. It also opens with some killer break beats.

 

Rimona Francis - Colors Of Excitement is an extended jazz-fusion groove which starts as a feather light female vocal before stretching out into an extended flute workout. This is followed by a superbly melancholy vibes masterclass from the ever cool sticks of Johnny Lytle on his One For Carter.

 

Elsewhere a sensitivity to break and sample collectors is evident , nowhere more than in the surprising inclusion of a rock track from Edgar Broughton called There's No Vibrations But Wait and subtitled as rare UK funky rock, hip-hop style groove.

Tiger Grooves

This doesn't appear on any other boots but is perfectly placed between the bright disco of Patsy Gallant - It'll Come Around and the slow-burning soul jazz of Charles Greenley - He's Gone featuring an imploring vocal from Jean Carne.

 

Compared to the variety of selections on the Diggin Deeper compilations Tiger Grooves sounds a little like a retrospective boot of sounds that were more popular in the early 90s.

 

It's still a well-segued mix of genres though with a 1995 breadth and adventurousness thrown into the mix with the inclusion of that Edgar Broughton track.

Sleeve notes: A big-up to the artists, sellers and enjoyers of this music. the hungry must eat. compiled by the tigerman.

 

A neat rare groove safari from Tony the Tigerman.

Tiger Grooves

Rare Funk Vol.6: Mod Funk Edition

 

Having sharpened their hunter-gatherer arrows to strike more specific targets the Rare Funk crew hit paydirt with a terrific edition rounding up Mod club tracks with a funky edge. Their definition of Mod Funk may be a little hazy but there's no denying this compliation has some brilliant selections

 

After a shaky start the Rare Funk crew got their ducks in a row by creating editions and this is a goodie. Lyman Woodward left the planet far too young in 2009 and we can only guess how much he must've enjoyed the belated respect he received from jazz and funk fans the world over for his Strata lp Saturday Night Special and as the man whose trio backed Detroit guitar hero Dennis Coffey . Lyman's Hammond skill powers It's Your Thang along which opens Side One here.

 

Mod classic Toussaint McaCall - Shimmy is next before two bootleg favourites John Cameron - Troublemaker and Sam Most - Jungle Fantasy which was reissued by Jazzman several years ago on its origianl 45 format. Forumusic can't confirm for sure if this boot was the first to include booglaoo classic Moon People - Hippy, Skippy Moon Strut but it's now known to millions as the beat which fired Christina Aguilera's Aint No Other Man into space in 2006 and hopefully bought the Moon People some new Moon Boots.

Rare Funk Vol.6 Mod Funk

Rare Funk Vol.6 Mod Funk

Fortunately for solo violin haterz like us Elliot Fisher - For The Love Of Money is far more about the chunky funky drumming and special fx.

 

Recently the subject of a thread on the excellent VG+ forum Stretch - Why Did You Do It? is an unusual addition to a boot lp, having been a major UK chart hit. As Bill Brewster, author of Last Night A DJ Saved My Life stated in the aforementioned thread, 'It's one of the great British funk records, for sure.'

 

Gus Giordano - Do Whatever Sets You Free is a loose but fantastic drum, bass guitar and piano workout. Were Mods really getting down to this full-on jazz dance workout produced by one of America's top jazz dancers?

 

A cool and varied selection from the Rare Funk team on an lp that's getting harder to source these days.

Rare Funk Vol.6 Mod Funk

Phat Jazz

Phat Jazz: A Collection of Funky Jazz Grooves

 

Discogs places the Phat Grooves series of three releases around 97 but is way off the mark as the price stickers on Tom B's copies of Phat Funk and Phat Funky Soul are dated May 1995.

 

From this point onwards an increasing number of boots have very informative sleevenotes and the ones on all the Phat series are great.

 

This trend continued for a couple of years before the writing devolved into trendy lifestyle sales pitch gobblydegook about higher dimensions and psychedelic consciousness. The helpful sleevenotes on Phat Jazz for the track Horselmat - Right On read:

 

Well there's rare and there's R-A-R-E ... Horselmat (literally 'Food for your ears') were an eight-piece Swedish band who sadly only made one album which never saw commercial release. Only 100 copies of this privately pressed album are in circulation and not surprisingly it has reached Holy Grail status among collectors.

 

Popsike registers just one copy of the Horselmat lp sold for £435 in 2004. None have been seen since.

Phat Jazz

Phat Jazz also contains the gently unhinged track The Craters - Funky Mars.

 

Splitting hairs with the title of the lp maybe Funky Mars is not jazz at all but straight funk with Popcorn synth bleeps and outer space-like noises. Someone somewhere was having loads of fun in the studio with new toys.

 

This lp is a reminder that scattered over the length and breadth of the bootosphere are tracks that even a rich high-end collector would be hard-pressed to get.

 

The Dexter responsible for the Phat Grooves label was clearly not only deeply knowledgeable about rare funk but mixed in social circles with others who really knew their stuff too.

Phat Jazz

Cosmic Agogo: Vol 2

 

Forumusic missed a trick not including the hard-to-find, 300 only-pressed Cosmic Agogo Volume 1 in our 1994 selection. We'll redress this at a later date having just gratefully secured a copy. Fortunately for us, Volume 2 is easier to find.

 

There are three of the Swedish Cosmic Agogo compilations to collect in all and the first two volumes are superb. Volume 1 is a selection of tracks primarily from Swedish artists like Alice Babs, Meta Roos and The Gimmicks; all household names in Sweden before becoming respected and sought after musical currency amongst the crate digging fraternity courtesy of appearing on boots like these.

 

This volume forgoes the formality of Side A and B and is instead helpfully divided into a Swedish Side and an American Side.

 

The Swedish Side opens with killer track Stardust International - Rock Me To The Music. According to sleevenotes it's from the notoriously rare (around 200 pressed) 1973 Hendrix LP Stardust International and Tayfun. There's one of the notoriously rare 200 available on Discogs right now in June 2012 for £324.72 if anyone is interested in gripping something special to floss in the presence of fellow diggeurs.

Cosmic Agogo 2

Cosmic Agogo 2

Rock Me To The Music is a strange, rock guitar and funky bass driven thing with stabbing horns and an earnest Hair-like vocal. It's top notch crossover funk.

 

Bob Azzam - Mas Que Nada injects rich Latin groove before proceedings pitch down for the twisted funk of Doris - You Never Come Closer from her legendary 1970 EMI lp Did You Give The World Some Love Today Baby? Doris certainly gave The Cardigans a prosperous career but maybe only Forumusic is hearing that?

 

Alice Babs jazz closes the Swedish Side with Soldrum from her Alice Babs '67 lp. The American Side yields amongst other treasures funk magic from Linda Williams - Elevate Our Minds and the superbly soulful Raw Soul Express - The Way We Live.

 

Another for our growing Essential Boots shelf!

Cosmic Agogo 2

Funk Power

Funk Power Volume Two: The Original Drum & Bass Sound

 

Including the word Funk in a title was still helping to shift units and Sweetback Recordings were also wise to the brand new 90s buzz term 'Drum n' Bass' that was exciting club-going teenagers.

 

In 1995: The First Golden Year of Really Interesting Boots (© Forumusic) straightforward pure funk boots were still selling faster than wellies in a very wet winter. In 1993 Keb Darge and Snowboy had already hosted some Deep Funk nights in London which eventually evolved into the hugely successful Legendary Deep Funk nights at Madame Jo-Jo's.

 

To reach out to a younger demographic Sweetback Recordings sub-titled Funk Power with The Original Drum and Bass Sound and framed it with a bold oval. To the left of this the words Rare Funk and Jazz are written in noticeably thinner text and are unframed. Despite the healthy market for funk compilations Sweetback clearly kept one eye on selling to a few of these to a younger crowd.. From here on in there are a lot more examples of boot compilers being smarter in their sales pitch via design, logos and sleevenotes.

 

This lp reprises some top tracks that had been comped before intermingled with some new funk discoveries.

Funk Power

In the former category and great to hear anywhere are The Mongomery Movement and The Moon People.

 

In the latter category and from the there's a party going on in ths studio right now school of funk The Deacons - Sock It To Me on here is so good it was reissued on 7" by the Numero Group in 2010.

 

Other exclusives are a funk flute version of Silver Convention's Fly, Robin, Fly from the self-styled Super Flute of Ken Munson and a resurrected funk B-side from the interestingly monickered Manuel B. Holcum.

 

Side B standout to our ears is another live sounding hand-clapping party track by The Electric Express - It's The Real Thing Baby.

Funk Power

Pure Volume 4: 11 Obscure Funk Instrumentals

 

Like Cosmic Agogo the Pure series is one we should have given coverage to earlier on. Financed by a man who could well afford it this series from France began in 1990 focusing solely on rare funk. Despite Nuggets and other break-based compilations mixing genres to create something new the Pure comps stuck to funk but stretched their remit on here to embrace disco funk. We're probably splitting genre hairs here though.

 

The meaning of the word instrumental may have been lost in translation somewhere en route across the Channel though as over half the tracks are very vocal indeed. Well-segued and with an emphasis on upbeat tunes this is a cool compilation with only the two Nico Gomez tracks, Lupita and Ritual repeated from earlier boots. Selections that were groovy and funky were gradually becoming more prevalent than rare groove and funk ones. To our Forumusic ears groovy is more sinuous and lighter than rare groove, whilst funky is slower but more upbeat in feel both musically and lyrically than funk. Feel free to shoot us down on that one though.

 

There's a wealth of refreshingly funky cuts on here that have since gone on to become established club classics. Standouts include the bouncy and break beat full Billy Joe Young - The Push. From the Latin and Salsa edges of funkdom there is Sheba - singing the original version of the Alan Moorhouse charity shop

Pure Funk Instrumentals

Pure Funk Instrumentals

staple Funky Fever called here Jungle Fever.

 

The People - A Groovy Thing achieves minor greatness via taking Deep Purple's Smoke On The Water riff and making it funky.

 

More eclectic funk is included with two of the best funky Steel Band discoveries from around this time. The Dutch Rhythm and Steel Band - Funky Stuff and Original Tropicana Steel Band reworking of Yellow Bird close Side 1 and open Side 2 respectively.

 

This is a funky , light and fun boot that's closer to being a brightly -coloured summer flip-flop.

 

Pure releases ended around 1997 with the founder moving on to run the Desco, Soul Fire and Truth and Soul labels to keep the funk flame burning.

Pure Funk Instrumentals

Phat Funky Soul

Phat Funky Soul: A Collection Of Funky Soul Grooves

 

Second of three from Phat Grooves with their instantly identifiable red, black and white template and informative sleevenotes. Read for yourself the Phat Funky Soul sales pitch:

 

'Lemuria were, sadly, a one-album band - but what an album! Perhaps having seventeen members didn't help their prospects of longevity but where were the major labels when we needed them? Two years behind as usual...Anyway Hunk of Heaven shows just what they were capable of. Needless to say the album sank without a trace and is now impossible to find.

 

Perfect Circle are best known for Hands Of Time - taken from the same album For Your Funkification is equally as good. Gaston - Clock In is a club classic from a few years ago and was previously only available on a rare 45. Michael Kirkland - The Prophet is another rare 45 - only release and pre-dates his better known recordings for the Bryan label as Michael James Kirland.

 

We make no apologies for including a couple of superb tracks from Newban's super-rare second album - a class act. The Ray Alexander Technique were a popular live act around Harlem in the early 70s - Save Me is taken from their only album and features legendary soulman Chris Bartley on vocals.

Phat Funky Soul

Warren Thompson - You Can't Hinder Me features excellent funky guitar work from Robert Moore who, along with Warren went on to form Miami.

 

Charles Brinkley is better known among soul collectors for his soulful ballads but In The Pocket is a piece of swinging funky soul with the drummer working overtime. Girl You Move Me is an underground classic from legendary US ex-pats Cane & Able....'

 

In the years before websites and internet browsing really took off trainspotting sleevenotes of this quality; however brief; helped transform impressionable young record buyers into record collectors. The Phat Grooves trinity comprising this lp, Phat Funk and Phat Jazz are all essential as many track selections are still very hard to get hold of in any physical format.

Phat Funky Soul

The Melting Pot

 

'All we need is a great big melting pot' sang Blue Mink. Sounding like the lead-up to a very politically incorrect joke we have here a Frenchman, an Englishman, some Swedes, some Trinidadians, an Indian, an Argentinian, some Americans and a blind Puerto Rican. Continentally-speaking Australasia, the Arctic and the Antarctic are not represented but it's a mighty fine effort anyway.

 

We mentioned this lp way back in the 90s Boots introduction page as an example of how boots really began to mix things up from 1995 onwards. The range of nations present is matched only by the range of approaches to funky music, even though some of the protagonists weren't aware of the 'F' word when they were recording.

 

This lp has something for everybody. For OST fanatics not bloated from the deluge of OST releases in 1993 and 1994 there's Lalo Schifrin representing Argentina with More Mission Impossible.

 

Soul fans get an amazing slice of American femme soul with Alice Clark - Never Stop Loving You from her second lp. For Moog-loving London-based club-goers who were jaded from hearing E.V.A played at Smashing and Blow-Up there's Pierre Henry - Psyche Rock waving the flag for more Moog-madness Francais-style.

Forumusic

The Melting Pot

The range of wonderful music that was uncovered lurking in parents and grandparents dusty collections as the Easy Listening boom exploded was astounding. Still dead easy to find for cheap on original lp but never sounding like less than a million dollars of breezy fresh Puerto Rican air is Jose Feliciano - Golden Lady.

 

A lot pricier than Jose even today is the lp The Gimmicks - Slippin' into Darkness is taken from.

 

The Melting Pot Volume 1 is superb but didn't sell well so was not repeatedly re-pressed. Stiff competition was coming from a proliferation of boots that were better distributed and more attractively packaged in full colour sleeves.

 

1995 marked the point when the boot compilers began to get their serious business heads on.

The Melting Pot

The Folk Funk Experience

The Folk Funk Experience

 

We finish our round-up of 1995 with another solid gold game-changer. This was the first lp to compile a selection of folk tunes with a mellow yet funky edge. Though followed a few years later by a spate of legal comps drawing from a wider circle of artists this was the lp that lifted the rock off folk funk and inspired others to search for more.

 

This was also the first appearance of the term folk funk as a genre descriptor in an lp title though Boneyvotel confirmed it had been used earlier on dealer lists and Forumusic members Moogaloo and Peter Sundae also remembered both Patrick Forge and Gilles Peterson using the term in radio shows in the early 90s.

 

More importantly in respect to our series, DJs were beginning to include songs like this in their playlists and as stated above, the lp was instrumental in triggering wider searches for material of this kind leading directly to wider exposure and a new audience for the work of artists like Nanette Natal, Don Cooper, Bonnie Dobson, Nancy Priddy and Terry Callier, none of whom are featured here.

 

In turn, the great Folk Funk hunt primed the ears of a new audience for wyrd folk compilations in the late 90s and early noughties. Compilations such as Gather In The Mushroms and Folk Is Not A Four Letter Word

The Folk Funk Experience

were embraced enthusiastically whilst established artists such as Pentangle were seriously reappraised. The Folk Funk Experience is an essential purchase for any music lover.

 

It's faultlessly segued so that the sum of the whole transcends the parts. Add to that the high quality of the parts themselves and you have a truly great compilation. The run-out groove informs us we have a Tim D to thank for it.

 

A perfect gift for someone who thinks they don't like either folk or funk, seventeen years on a respected reissue label like Cherry Red records should license these tracks legally and issue them in the same order with the same artwork.

 

A ground breaking compilation; get an original illegal vinyl copy of this now whilst it's still relatively cheap.

The Folk Funk Experience

 

Strange Beats

September 2012: Part 4: 1996: Exotic Directions & Strange Beats

 

1995 lp titles signposted a sea change away from funk, soul, jazz and Latin comps which had pre-occupied boot compilers in the early 90s.

 

The Melting Pot, Diggin' Deeper 4 and The Folk Funk Experience signalled a move towards compilations that were a cohesive audio experience whilst still providing top quality breaks and samples for bedroom and professional producers to cut, paste and loop. 1996 was another Golden Year.

 

A new wave of Dexters from the UK, Europe and America picked up the gauntlet from 1995 and liberally seasoned their compilations with easy listening and library music tracks. Furrowing wide and deep for obscurer songs from ever more exotic directions, they competed with established Dexters to create fresher compilations with strange beats sourced from further and further afield.

Dimensions In Sound

Grateful thanks:

 

We could not be producing this series without the assistance we have received from Forum members. Suggestions, solid leads, additional information and small details are continuing to shape these articles.

 

Huge thanks to Mr Sayers, Lawrence of Euphoria, LDJB, ironheadrat, moogaloo, soylent green, left hand corner, pH!, MrJoeWoolley and several Dexters who know who they are now and remember what they were doing back then.

Objective Exotic Directions

 
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