tenminusone

“On this day, the day he was assassinated, what I remember is the night we both cracked up drinking tea.” – Yoko Ono

Touching op-ed contribution by Yoko Ono on the day that would have marked John Lennon’s 70th birthday.

The formula is simple, Daryl Hall invites various artists over to his house in upstate New York, they jam together along with his house band (pun intended), record it and put in on the web. I was just listening to Boz Scagg’s “Lowdown” (one of my favorite tracks) and was reminded of the episode of Live From Daryl’s House where he performs this song with his musical guest, Chromeo. Fast forward to 2:06 to go straight to the beginning of the song.

Working Chains

Listening to Isaac Hayes and Barry White and rediscovering how well composed and complex the arrangements are on many of their songs. It’s no surprise that the Love Unlimited Orchestra’s recording of White’s composition “Love’s Theme” reached #1 in Pop in 1974, making it one of only a handful of instrumental recordings ever to do so.

Amongst a few other albums (Broken Bells – Self Tiled, Crazy Heart Soundtrack, Soldier of Love – Sade, Have One on Me – Joanna Newsom, Dark Night of the Soul – Dangermouse and Sparklehorse) that have been on rotation on my iPhone the past couple weeks, “The Essential Collection – Daryl Hall and John Oates” has been keeping me particularly nostalgic. I’m always impressed by how many era defining pop hits they had in the 80s.

The incessant researcher in me likes to read up on artists I’m listening to (especially the older ones), so  I’ll consult Wikipedia, NME, and take a look at YouTube (not exactly reading) every once in a while. Knowing that “She’s Gone” was Hall & Oates’ first recorded hit¹, I figured it would be worth it to see how they were rocking in the ’70s. Below I share with you what I found.

This video is either a testimony to the strangeness of the 70s or an example of how a group survived a close call with infamy. It’s almost as if they blew their entire music video budget on drugs and hair spray and hired the local public access station crew to produce their music video. What ever the cost of the video, the result is priceless.

¹It’s technically their second top ten, but it was covered twice by other artists and originally recorded about 5 years before it was re-released.

Matarsak from Miguel Alvarez on Vimeo.

The video above was the fourth place winner in the Farhang Foundation’s 2nd Annual Short Film Festival. The main requirement for the festival was as follows: “The video and the music need to compliment each other in telling a visual story about an aspect of Iranian Heritage such as arts, history, culture, crafts, geography, cuisine or lifestyle.”

Of the top 4 videos, the one above was by far my favorite; It also helped me to discover the paradoxical, modern Persian classical music of Fared Shafinury and Tehranosaurus, which I have been enjoying.

Classic.

Another example of ’80s funk care of Hungarian super band Neoton Familia. Listening to this track will cause you to conjure up images of legwarmers, Jazzercise and strangely dressed people in the 80s dancing to disco/funk. In other words, this track is a winner.

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For all the lovers out there and those wanting to be inspired by some love grooves, I present to you my Valentine’s Day 2010 Mix made especially for my Valentine and shared with you (for a limited time). It’s a few miscellaneous love songs sandwiched between acoustic ballads and 80′s Funk with a touch of  freakyness at the end care of Leon Haywood. Enjoy.

Link to Mix

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You may know Aaron Neville from the three recordings he made with Linda Ronstadt (which never seemed to stop playing on the radio) back in 1989. What you may not know is that he also created one of my favorite (chill) funk songs. Although the track blurs the line between Funk, R&B, and Soul, I’ve seen it included on some New Orleans Funk compilations so I’m calling it Funk. Whatever you call it, it has a chill groove and a slick dose of Soul/Funk accented by Neville’s unique voice. Enjoy.

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This is real.

Over the past 6 months I’ve been exploring Funk music, getting to better understand the genre and enjoying the many ways it was interpreted across the globe over the span of about three decades. It seems funk made its way to nearly every country and had a fairly decent presence starting from the late ’60s all the way through the early ’80s. The funk bass line, guitar riffs and vocals have the magical ability to get people (at least this person) moving and jerking around to the beat–in almost any language. » Read the rest of this entry «