Author: Jeff

Track of the week 4/12/16

These boys were – and still are – the coolest dudes out there. They have the clothes, the moves, the look.

This track wasn’t such a big hit for them back in the day – “Riding on a Train” and “Tribute” were there big hits, and it is well worth checking out those videos, if only for the dance routines. Although we probably wouldn’t have aired the thought at the time, I suspect that me and my crew in the late eighties really wanted to be these cats.

I’m doing fine now is a (Mowtown?) cover, a great song that still gets me on to my feet today, to indulge in a bit of dad dancing.

Track of the week 27/11/16

A comfy sofa and an episode of “Narcos” beckons to end the weekend, so not much time to wax lyrical about this track, so I shan’t. Worthy of track of the week … or should I have picked the original, you decide …

 

bonus track of the week

Track of the week

When I was at school, every October half term we would go to Mansfield to visit relatives, staying with Granma & Granpa Waite at (55?) Beck Crescent.

One year – I think, probably when I was in the lower sixth, so Jane & Rog were not there as they had gone off to uni – I made an important, and life changing, discovery.

A year or two earlier, Granpa had been made redundant – he didn’t seem to perturbed, he was due to retire within a year – and with some of his redundancy money he bought a music centre: turntable, cassette deck and radio all fashioned into one long unit.

But that wasn’t my discovery. No, my discovery was piece of black plastic – “Stax Soul Explosion” LP. I guess that it was originally (uncle) Tony’s or Rick’s, but had been left at home. And boy, what a discovery it was – some of the greatest tracks I’ve ever heard were on that album. The next day I went out and bought myself a C90 tape cassette and recorded the whole album and for years to come I played that tape. I don’t know what ultimately happened to it, but its music is now ingrained in my soul.

And on it, I discovered The Staple Sisters belting out this brilliant track (which, I’ve since learned, was a cover of the original by the band The Band) and another – A Long Walk to DC.

Play it, enjoy it, take a load off Annie, and put the load on me.

Track of the week 13/11/16

Struggling for inspiration for track of the week this week I did a bit of YouTube hopping, and then I remembered the best band in the world, ever, The Jam.

Sound Affects was the first Jam album I owned (thirteenth birthday, I think?) and I always loved this track – fancied myself as the boy about town (and still do!)

See me walking around I’m the boy about town that you heard of
See me walking the streets I’m on top of the world that you heard

Oh like paper caught in wind
I glide upstreet, I glide downstreet

And, as ever, Paul Weller nails it with the lyric:

There’s more than you can hope for in this world

Track of the week 6/11/16

As a child of the late ’70s and ’80s, I grew up with the credence that “disco” was inherently uncool, manufactured and rubbish.

Today, at the tender age of 47, I finally feel I can come out of the closet and declare my love for the genre. The sheer joy, glamour and dancibility of the music makes them irresistible. I was hard pushed to make a choice as to which track would be “the one”, but More More More is it.

Although I think I had realised it myself many years ago, it was only when watching the (brilliant) “Get Down” on Netflix that it crystalised in my mind that the reason I liked so much hip hop, house & garage etc. was for the snippets of sampled tracks rather than the new hip version. On the Get Down, Grandsmaster Flash explained how you needed to find a bit of a track that you love – with no singing on it – and that is the bit that becomes the basis of your track. For me, that snippet occurs after about 2.19mins in my track of the week. Must have a go at sampling & mixing one day.

And because I’m coming out in this post, it demands an extra track of the week:

(bonus) Track of the week 6/11/16