Continuing with the music that made me. Here is another selection of the stuff that powered my soul.
Carmel - Joe Sample. There were three distinct moments in my life when I decided to really understand jazz. The very first time was when I was about 19, and I must have asked around, because my first album was Joe Sample's Carmel. This was one of those albums I always liked playing end to end rather than picking a track and then lifting the needle again. It always put me in a good mood to listen to Joe Sample whereas other jazz I listened to at the time (not much) tried to prove its cool. I listened to Billy Cobham, Seawind and Tom Scott, and of course there was Spyro Gyra's Morning Dance and Hiroshima. But Joe Sample was the coolest of them all.
Even looking at the cover mellowed me out and reminded me of the peaceful camping trips I had taken up in Big Sur - a romance with that area of California I have never shaken.
Modern Man - Stanley Clarke. Not long after I took in Joe Sample, I ran into a cat named Ronald Stephens. He knew things about music that put me to shame, especially on the jazz side. And I wondered how anybody who had any hair growing out of them could possibly be excited by the mellowness of jazz. He looked at me and said, you obviously don't know Stanley Clarke or Jeff Beck do you? Who? He said Stanley Clarke is the greatest bass guitar player on the planet. I'm like, you can't be serious - don't you know about Louis Johnson? He yawns. He says, I play bass guitar and I can play every Brother's Johnson song, but I can't even come close to that. This I got to hear. It turns out that right around the way in the high end stereo department, the guy with a rack of Soundcraftsmens and the biggest speakers that JBL makes is cranking up Rock & Roll Jelly and Closing Statement. So now I've heard it, and I realize that I will never be the same. People are asking me if I've never heard of Stanley Clarke - I see the School Days album and realize that I have heard him before, but only in that odd way. If you've ever hung out with record store geeks, something we all used to do but never do any longer, then you know what it's like to be in the store when they play something that only the guys behind the counter can get into, and people in the store are like... you took off the Commodores to play this? There used to be a record store between Rocket Cleaners and Boys Market on Crenshaw in the hood, and I can still remember the day they did that for what was then Stanley Clarke's newest album, School Days. I stayed to listen to the whole thing, liked Desert Song, walked out and forgot all about it. What I really wanted to hear was 'Running Away' by Roy Ayers - that was about as jazzy as my teenaged sensibilities allowed me to be. It had to be funky. Still Stanley Clarke was a great revelation to me and expanded my musical world with themes that I still find fascinating.
Sequencer - Synergy. If it's not obvious to you, then here's a clue about me. Ever since Space Race by Billy Preston, I have been absolutely addicted to electronic music. In high school, I thought that the world's greatest musician was Walter Orange. That had something to do with some confusion on my part, because I saw a picture of him and we bore each other some resemblance. What I recalled was that there was a man seated in the middle of five keyboards and Moog electronics. Every funk band that used synthesizers became associated with Orange in my young mind, and he was me. That association stayed in my mind until George Duke broke through with Reach For It, and then was completely obliterated by Larry Fast and W. Carlos. Still, I didn't own any of that music until I was 19, and on the same Soundcraftsmen / JBL setup at Fedco La Cienega's Coastron concession was the introduction of several new albums that fundamentally rearranged my musical tastes. One was the Alan Parsons Project - specifically Pyramid. The second was Mannheim Steamroller's Fresh Aire III. I dug the big Doobie Brothers album that was hot that year and Supertramp's Logical Song was often on my mind. For the first time, I really listened to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon - the problem being that anytime I inquired into the matter, people who knew looked at me like I was crazy. So, not willing to pay up for the super duper quality remastered version, I could only get a little piece of that music at a time up until that point. The second biggest favorite of that time period would have to be the debut album by the Yellow Magic Orchestra, which did the right things with electronic music that was perfectly original and not part of a disco tune. Still, the granddady of them all was Larry Fast's Synergy. At times when I get nostalgic, like right now, I think of how I used to daydream over the sci-fi illustrations of an artist whose name I need to recover to the strains of the New World Synphony. This remains one of the albums of which I never tire, and that period of music was signature in my life.
Duck Rock - Malcolm McLaren. Duck Rock was for me very likely the thing it was for everyone else. A glimpse into the future, the success of a shotgun method without any rhyme or reason that nonetheless struck more than a chord but established an orchestra hit. I have only now discovered the fact that my other idols, The Art of Noise, collaborated on this LP. But in fact it was Hobo Scratch, the 12 inch remix that just wore out the needles on my turntables.
Go ahead, say it. We're on a world tour with Mr. Malcolm McLaren. We're goin each and every place including Spain, Asia, Africa, Tokyo, Mexico. A hiphop bite that's been bitten all over for decades.
You've got half the aesthetic that would dominate for the next decade in the album cover with Keith Haring and the iconic ghetto blaster, and the hard beats with scratches and electronics and signature voices, accents never heard, outtakes. Insane. Brilliant. Addictive.
Daft - The Art of Noise. AON became for me something of an obsession. Beyond the crystalline beauty of the synthesized note put to funky use by the brilliant Thomas Dolby whose Blinded Me With Science, like no other song beside Morris Day's Tricky, put me into uncontrollable break dance spasms it was Close (To Ehe Edit) that was the song that gets the Michael Bowen Lifetime Achievement as the 'Something about the music gets into my pants award'. And what's even more crazy is that Beat Box was on the same album. Astounding! I would have to say that without question {Rockit, Beat Box, Close, Tricky} are the all time greatest break dancing songs ever. The answer to your question is yes, I could break. I never managed a head spin or the signature windmill or flare. I would have needed a crew to practice with, something I wouldn't find on campus. I satisfied myself that I was the best breaker at State and famously won the campus Nerd Contest for breakdancing with taped glasses, flood pants and a pocket protector. Props must go to Charles Walker however, I did have red black and green pens in that pocket. As well I spun on my back after winning a scholarship at an awards ceremony dance. Of course I dug Scritti Politti, ABC and Yes' Owner of a Lonely Heart was a smash, but the Art of Noise was king and remained champion. There was something of an underground art to them and ZTT; I loved that they were texty. It was from them I expected codes from the underground.
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