things and time will tell.

I mentioned this 1981 On-U Sound classic in the last post, so we'll go with it as the next record to share. Low hanging fruit seems like a good idea while I try to get back into the swing of this... New Age Steppers - Action Battlefield Beat Records ‎– BRC-96 CD, Album, Reissue, Remastered, Paper Sleeve Japan, 2004 (Originally released in 1981 on Statik Records in the UK) More info Tracklist 1 My Whole World 2 Observe Life 3 Got To Get Away 4 My Love 5 Problems 6 Nuclear Zulu 7 Guiding Star "Bonus Tracks For Japan" 8 Wide World Version 9 Unclear New Age Steppers, like many On-U Sound "bands" from the early years of the label, featured a rolling roster of the musicians and vocalists working with producer Adrian Sherwood at the time. The center of the group's orbit though was Ari Up, fresh from her years singing for the Slits as they dove from the punk platform at the end of the 1970s into the noisy dub, reggae, and funk experiments that chri...

Again, I didn't intend to drop this project for so long. Work got hard, houses flooded, and sending out music felt a little trivial as the world was bursting open with racial justice struggle, exposed violence, pain and inspiring actions. The pandemic and quarantines had already left me feeling disoriented and that many of the yardsticks I used to measure progress and possibility had changed. The past month -George Floyd's murder, the uprising and movements sparked, the reevaluations of our needs and strategies, etc.- confirmed that times 100. I'm not the world's deepest thinker and I don't know how to write, so no real contributions to those discussions are likely to be found here... But maybe, as I dip my toes back into this, a few of the songs that soundtrack my processing, panic and occasional progress will do something for you too. Bim Sherman ‎– My Whole World Pressure Sounds ‎– PSS 017 Vinyl, 7", 45 RPM, UK, Released: 2007 info A My Whole World B D...

Short and sweet today... A D'Angelo cover of what might be my favorite Prince song. Is there another artist in the last 25 years that you'd trust more to do justice to a Prince cover? Capitol Records ‎– SPRO 7087 6 12813 1 6 Vinyl, 12", Promo, US, 1997 info A She's Always In My Hair B She's Always In My Hair D'Angelo + Raphael Saadiq + Questlove + Prince. Do you really need to know more? I missed this back in the day, when it first came out buried in a late 90s horror movie soundtrack. A promo single was also released, on crackly vinyl in the US and CD for Europe and Japan. I eventually grabbed a copy of the 12", washed, recorded and the worst of the pops removed this week. Same track on both sides, so hopefully you'll forgive me for only putting one of them on here. (From side 2, if you're curious...)  I put some work into it but just don't have the hours that someone could spend trying to clean up the recording of this terribly noisy reco...

One more visit to an off beat corner of Tony Allen's music before we move on from the legendary Nigerian drummer. In one of the previous posts I mentioned the diverse recordings he made later in life, before passing just a few weeks ago on April 30 at age 79. Long after his days with Fela Kuti, Allen was still bringing us new Afrobeat and stretching himself into electronic music, dub experiments, a return to jazz, and some surprising collaborations. Here are a couple of those collaborations that should make a good introduction if you haven't heard these groups before. (And they include a few rare tracks you may not have heard even if you're already a fan.) I didn't mean to take such a long break between posts, but life has been busy and I bit off more than I realized with these two records! I enjoyed getting reacquainted with them though, the second one in particular. It took some serious work to clean up the recording, but what a great song! It's perfect for, say, ...

From one of Tony Allen's final recordings to one of his earliest (coincidentally from another 10"). Fela Ransome-Kuti And His Africa '70 ‎– Fela Fela Fela Knitting Factory Records, Kalakuta Sunrise ‎– KFR-4007 Vinyl, 10", 33 ⅓ RPM, US, 2010 (Original LP released Nigeria, 1970)  info In their earliest days working together, Fela Kuti and Tony Allen played both the American-styled jazz that Allen would revisit in his later days (and in my previous post ) and their take on highlife, the jazzy Western African music originating in Ghana. By the late 60s, they were making the break through in new rhythms and styles that they would call "afrobeat," a change that was brought to a head during their 1969 trip to America. A ten month stay in Los Angeles, a deeper exposure to the latest funk styles, and (just as important to their new music, politics and attitude) exposure to Black power politics (partly through Fela's relationship with Black Panther Party member a...

One of the world's greatest drummers passed away Thursday. Tony Allen ‎– A Tribute To Art Blakey And The Jazz Messengers Blue Note ‎– 574439 4 Vinyl, 10", 45 RPM, Europe, 2017 Tributes to Tony Allen  will understandably focus on his years leading Fela Kuti's Afrika 70 band, where the two Nigerian legends led the creation of afrobeat. They broke new ground in the 1970's and their influence has continued to grow far beyond Africa, funk and jazz, the last few decades bringing them deeply into hip hop, dub, electronic and more . Allen was 79 years old and remained active until the end. A  new album was released  just a month before he died this week. He avoided becoming a nostalgia act in his later years. His career revitalized in his highly visible 60s and 70s, he released a slew of new albums (both as a solo artist and in various bands), was signed to Blue Note, put out some important dance records and joined a band with a member of the Clash. If you're no...

Michael Jackson ‎– Original Demos From 1978 Vinyl, 7", 45 RPM, Unofficial Release, US A Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough B Working Day And Night Here we have two 1978 "Off The Wall" demos that surfaced on this bootleg 7" sometime in the early 2000s. (Discogs claims 2009?) Not much has to be said. Sure, it's a shady bootleg that was probably mastered from a third generation cassette tape someone had been selling out of their trunk. But does that get in the way of my pure joy at hearing these stripped down, up tempo, percussion heavy versions of songs I've loved my whole life? Not a bit. Actually, the sound isn't terrible and the bits of studio banter ("Michael, turn down my earphones, man!" "He's trying, Randy!") are priceless. Not a lot of info to glean from the record itself. No labels (just a pic of young Michael on one side) and only these notes are offered on the back cover: Original demos from nineteen se...