the past was nice but i wouldn't want to live there

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i am workin this mornin on a loll4rds 2.0 upgrade proposal and it fell into my mind that i needed to listen to a MIXTAPE that is 25 years old! made for me at college by m4tt bl4ck of c0ldcvt as he then was not yet -- so here IT IS

[Poll #1019980]

the text Qs are quite long (100 characters i hope) so be expansive if u like

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

(obv in a sense i have "known" these songs for longer than some of you have been alive BUT i haven't played this tape for a v.v.v.long time so my "have u ever heard of" = "do you remember anything much about", bein quite strict re eg p.hardcastle who i know more about but not this song AT ALL)

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

thing is i may have heard more of these songs than i know the name and artist of. songs i know really well from a certain era, i don't know what they are.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

ok but you can still answer the texty questions -- they are the best bit!

(sadly this a CASSETTE TAPE so i can't upload but others can if they wish and this helps)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Aha. Well obv I know p-p-p-paul hardcastle too but the rest of them I would have to hear to recognise (if at all).

[raw-patrick.livejournal.com]

I think that Hardcastle track might be a Balearic classic. But then just about everything is innit.

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

as i recall there were a whole string of 'roxanne' records - i remember hearing them from school days when i used to cheat my classmates at 'penny poker' - ah the glories of being a smart 10 y.o. surrounded by unambitious 9 and 8 year olds (okay maybe i was 13 and they were 11, who can remember now)

[mippy.livejournal.com]

Also, What's Goin' On Mekon from a few years back.

I once really fancied someone at a party when he mentioned 'the Roxanne wars'. It was an impressive reference-drop.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I have never heard any of this music!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

given that i have owned this tape as long as i have and did play it quite a bit once upon a time, the number of "do you know it" ticks I made give an idea of how well-known this stuff is! it's a territory of pop that got entirely vanished by history i think

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

wd it be true to say this is "rare groove"?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

good question! i would say NO i think -- i mean yes in the abstract (= this is GROOVE and RARE) but not i think the terrain that actually existin Rare Groove mined

i would check by googlin but i am already behind on the lollards of poppage edit >:(

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I tend to think of rare groove as a ref to 70s soul or earlier, or at least something the 80s soulsters were going back to / belatedly discovering. Whereas I think most of this stuff is contemporary to when the tape was made.

And here's wiki's take:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_groove

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

yes it was all totally now and happnin, hence the slightly wonky levels of relative "importance", esp. on side two: too soon to know (and adjust for same)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

alex yes of course you can have a copy!

:D

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what kind of music it even IS.

Also for some reason I misread "what is yr favourite title" as "which is yr least favourite song". my fave title is COOL OUT/WHITE HORSE because it puts me in mind of 'White Girl' by USDA which I now have in my head, and v pleasing it is too. "CHRISTINA AGGA-LERRA!"

Re: :D

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I'd be surprised if you didn't know "White Horse" when you hear it Lex (truth be told I haven't heard this particular 'blend') - it had a kind of Optimo-inspired revival a few years ago - very dry 80s electrofunk, European I think: "Do you wanna ride...ride the white horse?" Paging Dr Druqs.

deeper c0ldcut from before the dawn of time

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i think this 'blend" wz probably m4tt's one and own! i actually can't remember if we'd moved to london yet wen he did this -- in which case the j4zz ins3cts were defunkt -- but mere routine mixtapes were the start of his actual real continuin sleb job (he wz breakin into DJin and still had a dayjob, at L0gica) (do they still exist?)

Re: :D

[cis.livejournal.com]

I think it's 'if you wanna ride, don't ride the white horse', so more of a 'WHITE LINES: Do not do them' feel. It was sampled in that hot chip 'over and over' song (or at least in the j koehnke remix of same), which features the line "laid back, i'll give you laid back" DYS.

Re: :D

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

That rings a bell actually!

Re: :D

[raw-patrick.livejournal.com]

Message of "White Horse" = don't ride the white horse (ie hreoin) instead ride the white pony (ie coke)!

A huge ever growing brain that rules from the centre of the orgaworld

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This "RATE MY MIXTAPE" is a great feature btw.

Re: A huge ever growing brain that rules from the centre of the orgaworld

[mippy.livejournal.com]

I reckon each 'mist should do one. I loved the mixtape feature on FreakyTrigger. Although the best ones I ever made were for people I'm not in touch with now, so it would be weird to listen back.

Re: rate my mixtape

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I did one a while back but it was just in the form of a list not an POLL (I am 1x Basic Account Luddite and can't make polls). I think only koganbot commented. All the songs were even older than the stuff on this mixtape, mind you.

"dubdobdee needs to convert said tape to mp3s and SHARE!"

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i wd love to but am entirely not able to currently -- maybe stevem can help

Re: "dubdobdee needs to convert said tape to mp3s and SHARE!"

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

I don't have any of this but spend much of my free time s!sking. happy to revert if it seems i can find stuff, and no one else volunteers

Re: "dubdobdee needs to convert said tape to mp3s and SHARE!"

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

as i said before i have no tape playing device in my house :/

you should try and befriend that dalston oxfam blogger!

[giddyoldgoat.livejournal.com]

IIRC Chuck Brown was part of the 'Go-Go' scene/sound that got heavy hyped by the NME's early 80s dance music faction (along w/ ppl like Bobby Womack, Maze+Frankie Beverley etc.) This music was semi-huge, at the time - Maze could always sell out Hammy Odeon, for instance - but seems to be rarely remembered now.

Ashford and Simpson had been around for yonks, of course, even before Solid - Valerie Simpson cut some great solo albs for Motown, and she sings backing vocals on various Steely Dan recs

Chuck Brown / Go-Go

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

yes, that was what I remembered too, but I don't think I ever heard the song. in turns out that this is actually a Go-Go mix, largely. more info here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-go

Re: Chuck Brown / Go-Go

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i think i have -- but can't now find as it is dark -- an ALL GOGO mixtape by m4tt: i will hunt again in the mornin

[spittake.livejournal.com]

"Solid' is the only one I am certain that I know.

[mippy.livejournal.com]

Solid was a top playground insult around my part of the world. Delivered in a sarcastic tone to jumped-up miscreants, 'Solid as a rock...' would diffuse any potentially threatening situation with the wire-cutters of SHAME.

[mcarratala.livejournal.com]

"seems to be rarely remembered now" – you're clearly not listening to Heart FM at the weekends – or in deep SE territory: Louffa/SOS Band/Fatback/Gwen Guthrie/Alex O'Neal/Frankie Beverley & Maze will always be the sound of South London (& probably the suburban north London and the Essex borders, but I didn't grow up around there).

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

yes this is all stuff the guys* played all the time -- actually not o'neal so much but yay gwen guthrie -- and i have a fair amount on tape, maze, fatback, alicia myers, patrice rushen, a ton of semi-out-of-the-way reggae (pablo moses, the congoes, the wailing souls)

they all read ECHOES formerly BLACK ECHOES, and so did i -- tho i got hinky about how dull the writing was, given how great the music was, and how well the writers knew the territory (in fact this fact is kind of the root of one of my "deep embed" theories of music and writing-about-music, which wd probably tremendously amuse the guys who wrote for echoes)

*i used to think of the j4zz ins3cts as half pere ubu fans (me and rob), half ohio players fans (matt and dunc), and a singer whose tastes i don't (or daren't) recall -- this isn't very historical (rob and dunc weren't in the band at same time) or fair (dave the singer was totally a sweetheart and i donlt mean to diss him, but his opinions and his singing were pretty terrible; and there were other members also, who put lots of stuff in which makes my tidy split a nonsense

[mooxyjoo.livejournal.com]

i just downloaded 'roxanne' the other day, as well as trying to find as many roxanne songs as possible (disappointingly few showed up immediately - #$%#$% police).

also, in a record store i tried to convince a friend who wanted rap by women to get roxanne shante's greatest hits, on the authority of frank kogan. it didn't work.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

shoutout to agincourtgirl: no, not an nme tape, just a mixtape m4tt oif the j4zz ins3cts made me -- i think a lot of it IS worth hearing, esp.side one (i actually think "solid" isd one of the more ordinary things here)