Funk & Disco Pops Of 1977: ‘Bridges’ by Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson

Gil Scott-Heron released this album at a very key time for his particular creative bent. This came out during the beginning of the disco era and for many, outside the influence of the Philly sound, there just didn’t seem to be too much room for complex sociological dialog in the music. There were songs with MESSAGES, yes. But in terms of the deep poetic insights you’d find from someone such as Gil Scott? It all seemed to be getting away from us at a time when it was needed most.

Heron was intensely aware of these changes in music. And had every intention of maintaining his vision and style. Even in the face of so many uncertain changes in the music industry. This album was recorded using TONTO, the massive synthesizer complex that had worked miracles for Stevie Wonder and the Isley Brothers during their early/mid 70’s height. Even at this point,  it was all too easy for this huge instrumental complex to create a sound that was both very much in the now and futuristic.

And musically, Bridges is indeed futuristic sounding funk for the people . Aside from Brian Jackson’s multi instrumental talents, the Fender Rhodes as well as the sound of the massive TONTO weaves it’s electronic, bubbling chords and bass lines into the musical tapestry to create unique sounds. Just as much as what Stevie and the Isley’s had done with the same instrument. The mood it sets goes right along with the emotional accompaniment of Gil Scott’s vocal style. The bass oriented sounds in the production is pushed up front. And the improvised jazz-funk element gets the same effect.

Song wise the album ranges from uptempo, positive spirited melodic funk such as “Hello Sunday! Hello Road”, the amazing “Racetrack In France” and “Under The Hammer” to slower and richly varied in texture and melody type tunes such as “Vildgolia (Deaf,Dumb & Blind,”We Almost Lost Detroit” and “Delta Man”. The range of subject matter of these songs (as usual with Gil Scott) is densely layered-ranging from enlightening muses both the concept of prejudice itself to the escape from it. Along with the usual historical contexts.

Songs such as the acapella “Tuskegee #626” tackle a well known historical atrocity (in this case the Tuskegee Experiments) but does so with a very bright and almost sunny melody. This showcases Heron’s understand of the very sharp contrasts in the lifestyles of not only the African American culture. But how it also extends those contrasts into other aspects of life for Americans of other nationalities. This welcoming, humanistic album would be followed the more darkly reflective Secrets- also using TONTO for that as well.

Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson had certainly proved their meddle in terms of how they were able to continue adapting their art their own way during an era. An era when artists were losing more and more control of what they did. And when you listen to this, and realize the influence it’s had on so much musical poetry and the hip-hop world today, (and Gil Scott is for all intents and purposes a hip-hop artist anyway) than you know your in for something very special and meaningful.

If You Don’t Vote,You Don’t Count-A Message From Andre’ Cymone.

America is,as if today,about to come upon the most critical presidential election I’ve personally lived through. The frightening presence of Donald Trump as a candidate as raised many uncomfortable questions about what sort of people Americans are. 2016 is also a year that saw the death of Prince. His close childhood friend and lyrical inspiration Andre’ Cymone wrote this rockabilly style number a few years ago encouraging people to vote. For today,I’ll just post this video above with its lyrics printed below. All in hopes you,the reader,will be encouraged to exercise your most important American right tomorrow.

Vote to make a difference…If you don’t vote, you don’t count…
lyrics

VOTE

I come from a neighborhood
They won’t spend
No money to make it shine
The rich
With all the power
Buy off politicians
And leave the common folk behind
That’s why you gotta

Vote, make a difference
You don’t vote, you don’t count
Vote, make a difference
You don’t vote
Then you can’t complain

I, I need an answer
Why is it so hard
To treat the people right
The populations changin
All across our nation
And we don’t need no guns
To be the winner in this fight
That’s why you got to

Vote, make a difference
You don’t vote, you don’t count
Vote, make a difference
You don’t vote
Then you can’t complain

Let me ask you a question
Which party started a 12 year war
Here’s another question
Who always opens the window
While the other one closes the door

Last vote
We got Obama
But he can’t pass
These laws all by himself
He needs a team
Who understands all our needs
And won’t let corporations
Put our dreams up on a shelf
That’s why you got to

Vote, make a difference
You don’t vote, baby you don’t count
Vote, make a difference
You don’t vote
Then you can’t complain

Man what you mean
You ain’t gon vote… man
Don’t you realize that’s how they win….Who’s they?
They’s the corporations, The rich, the ones that don’t wanna
See the average person make the same kinda money so they can quit workin for them.
You seen what happened in Ferguson, they didn’t vote, five per cent turn out, no you gotta do better than that, you wanna see representation that looks like you , feels like you, does the things that you wanna see done in your future… You gotta get out there and vote.
If you don’t vote, you don’t count.

The time is now
To take control of your life
Too many people died
For us to win that right

Ain’t nothin cool
About sittin elections out
You wanna save this world
Sign up and join the fight

Vote, make a difference
You don’t vote, baby you don’t count
Vote, make a difference
You don’t vote
Then you can’t complain

 

Anatomy of THE Groove: “Future Shock” by Curtis Mayfield

Curtis Mayfield has one of the most important legacies to black American music of his era. He was probably the first to fully recognize recording contracts in his day as a form of creative slavery. And formed his own label Curtom in the 1968. He inspired artists  ranging from Stevie Wonder to Prince in terms of taking similar actions in their careers. By the time he began his solo career in 1970 with his iconic debut Curtis,he had already developed his melodic style of psychedelic funky soul into fine musical wine. And with each forthcoming album,his music just continued to develop in terms of breadth and scope.

Curtis’s choice of creative independence really paid off when he scored the 1972 Sig Shore film Superfly. It helped make Curtom an enormously successful indie label with it’s commercial success. Especially with Curtis’s songs for the album deliberately countering what he saw as the films promotion of cocaine. The next year Curtis released his fourth solo album Back To The World. It was a similar thematic concept to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On-only as a third person perspective of the post Vietnam War America. The song that really pulled it all together for me personally is “Future Shock”.

The drums kicks off into full funkiness-with Curtis duetting with himself on deep wah wah and higher sustained guitar tones. This is accompanied with a phat bass line scaling down and back up in the opposite direction. The horn charts sustain heavily on the fanfaring refrain. The bluesy chorus and refrains have a very close relationship-with Curtis guitar tones,the bass line and the drums getting all of their melodic responses from the darting horns maintaining the heavy instrumental conversation. By the final bars of the song,the flute plays the gentler elements of the melody as it fades out.

“Future Shock” is a superb example of a funk era tone poem. Curtis’s lyrics declaring “we’ve got to stop all men from messing up the land” sets the tone for the songs lyricism. On the refrains he states poverty,apathy and racism as all being a sinister triad that’s keeping humanity from taking care of the planet Earth. It’s a message that resonates up to today’s climate change problem. Curtis literally makes his guitar whimper and weep throughout the song-setting up the tone poem by the musical tracks of his tears. And throughout the groove preaching the ecological gospel to the people.

‘What’s Going On’ at 45: The Time Marvin Gaye Reminded Us That Only Love Could Conquer Hate

Marvin Gaye had to fight Berry Gordy at Motown to get this album made and released. The label was transitioning from Detroit to Los Angeles at the time. Vietnam kept raging on,President Nixon was blowing a dog whistle to bring down the sociopolitcal revolts of the 60’s and Marvin was depressed. He decided to write an album from the point of view of his brother Frankie-coming back into an unwelcoming America from Vietnam. With the help of the Four Tops’ Renaldo “Obie” Benson and Motown’s bass maestro James Jamerson, Marvin came up with a musical masterpiece whose appeal is still evolving.

What’s Going On has a basic groove-a cinematic soul jazz sort of sound on just about every song. Marvin scats and improvises many of the vocal adlibs himself. The title song begins the album on a happier note-hoping that people will come to deal with the racial,political and ecological concerns Marvin is so troubled by. By the time of the instrumentally brilliant,percussive Latin soul stomp of “Inner City Blues”,Marvin has given up. He sings “make me wanna holler/throw up both my hands”. To this day,it’s really up to the given listener whether they feel Marvin’s mixed emotions here are cathartic or enervating.

Berry Gordy turned out to be very wrong that this album had no potential. Not only was it a huge commercial success for Marvin Gaye,but he could hardly go one concert after this without inserting the title song of this album into his set. That goes to show how sometimes,the artist making the music really has more of a finger on the pulse of the people than those peddling their raw creative material. In 2001,the album was expanded into a 2 CD deluxe edition. Upon hearing it,I went to Amazon.com and reviewed this new presentation of this 1971 classic on thoroughly musical terms:

How do you make a overly reissued album classic better? Well actually this one DOES-I love all the songs on ‘What’s Going On’-it’s a great album but I always felt that it was highly overproduced.This one starts with the original followed by a different variation on the same album called ‘the original Detroit Mix’-THIS version is far more understated in the finest Donny Hathaway tradition and truly brings out the richness of Marvin’s voice and the depth of his vision-the sparer arrangement actually better expresses the music’s message of urban and environmental blight.There’s still orchestration but it isn’t mixed so high.

It’s also forcing one to acknowledge how great a pianist Gaye is.And that’s why I highly recommend that those who purchased previous issues of this CD should go out and pick this set up-that along with a bonus disk of live material and outtakes make this the definitive version of this album-to such an extent myself bought this and gave my original CD issue of this album (in this case the tepid ripoff of 1994’s so called ‘deluxe edition’) to my dad,a fellow music lover who I felt would benefit from having the album in his collection alongside his other classics like The Beatles White Album,Curtis Mayfield’s ‘Superfly’ and John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ where it belongs!For those who want to replace an old copy of this CD with a better one LOOK NO FURTHER!For those you for whatever reason haven’t been initiated-well,what more can I say-there is no better place to come!

Marvin was seeking with this album,to quote George Clinton about funk in general,not to tell people what to think but that they CAN think. It begins with a black man who’d made good in the world. And him looking through the eyes of a loved one who wasn’t so lucky in that regard. He starts out with a degree of optimism. By the end of the album,one realizes how much of a thoroughly human figure Marvin Gaye was. By the time it ends, he has almost lost  hope. Especially with Jamerson’s bass lines,the instrumentation is what tends to carry the positivity through when even Marvin can’t anymore.

This is the type of album inspired a lot of artists to make what I refer to as “people music”-a type of message music that takes the ethnocentric melodies and rhythms of the artists back-round to express important ideas. Unintentionally, this album became the “people music” for Generation X . This is an intelligent and aware generation of Americans who often lacked focus and interest. And with the election of Gen Xer Barack Obama for two presidential terms in America, this album seemingly succeeded in getting a generation who didn’t want to get involved to find that way to bring  loving here today.

 

Andre’s Amazon Archive: ‘What The Hell Is This? by Johnny Guitar Watson

Johnny Guitar Watson faced 1979 with a level of musical abandon after his previous album Giant,which blended the disco friendly dance rhythms into his by then well established jazzy funk/soul/blues framework maintained his musical momentum he had been building up in the preceding couple of years. Of course an election year was coming up,and disco had stirred a sometimes violent set of detractors based mainly on cultural and sexual anxiety.

This got millions of people to turn on a type of music production just made for dancers. Of course this interesting set of growing pains was just ripe for commentary from a blues based artist with the wit and musically expansive qualities that Watson possessed in abundance. So for his final album of the decade he faced all of this the way he always did.

The title song has one of the longest horn fan-fares in funk-nearly 1/4 of the whole song and the choruses as well as Watson expresses even more extreme irritation at the economic crisis than usual. With the beautifully orchestrated horn and strong laden ballads “In The World” and “Strung Out” finding Watson again in awe of someone of the opposite sex, “Cop & Blow” shows Watson very much in his pimping state of mind-on a very cinematic type mid-tempo groove of course.

On the funk march of “I Don’t Want To Be President”,he openly declares himself to be a commentator but,weary of the restrictive lives of politicians,not a potential leader of anyone. “Mother In Law” is fast,charged up funk as Watson bemoans the pushy title character we actually hear bemoaning him at the songs beginning. “The Funk If I Know” and “Watsonian Institute”,as the bonus numbers,both sound to have been recorded during these sessions are are two examples of the strongest,chunkiest melodic horn funk…that never made the cut on this original album.

Luckily for Johnny Guitar Watson this would not be the end of the musically winning streak he had been on since the beginning of his own funk odyssey. I personally never traced the exact history of it all down. However it would seem that from the mid 70’s up through the 80’s many a blues musician-from BB King to Etta James began recording with like minded jazz/funk players from bands such as The Crusaders.

And somehow I cannot help but think a lot of this had to do with the influence of the musically clever multi instrumentalist that was Johnny Guitar Watson. He definitely had a strong signature sound during this time that instantly identified the music as being his-filled with a lot of strong melodic horn breaks and synthesized bass lines. At the same time he was able to draw upon his talents as a veteran blues man to variate constantly on his instrumental and lyrical storytelling. And this might have a lot to do with why his music from this era continues to endure as time passes.

Originally posted o February 3rd,2014

LINK TO ORIGINAL REVIEW HERE*

Anatomy of THE Groove: “Rough Times” by Angela Bofill

Angela Tomasa Bofill was part of a group of singers and musicians whom I refer to as as the original Brooklyn funk essentials. Coming from a Hispanic back round,she studied classical music as a child-all the while absorbing the Latin and soul/funk music scene happening right around her. Jazz flutist and bassist Dave Valentin is the one who introduced her to Dave Grusin and Larry Rosen. Her first album Angie was released in late 1978. With it’s critical and commercial success, Bofill was set up for a decades worth of soulful success.

One of the earliest artists at GRP Records along with Tom Browne,Bofill is turning 61 today. About a decade ago,she suffered two strokes a year or so apart. The second of which sadly robbed her of the ability to sing. Luckily her manager Rich Engel and the NYC radio stations Kiss FM and CD 101.9 held a benefit concert to help defray her mounting medical expenses. Being a native New Yorker,Bofill seemed to have a pretty keen understanding of the dramatic ups and downs life could offer. That’s why one song off her’s that really moves me personally is one from that 1978 debut entitled “Rough Times”.

A stinging Afro-Latin percussion begins the song,written by Ashford & Simpson, accompanying the Valentin’s thick slap bass. This forms the basic refrains of the song that supports Bofill’s vocals. As the chorus rolls in,an extra snare drum along with call and response horn charts enter into the groove as her vocal sustains push this chorus forward. The opening refrain is also the source of the songs instrumental bridge,where session icon Eric Gale played a crying,bluesy rhythm guitar around the main melody. The chorus of the song repeats itself afterwards until the song’s fade-out.

Ashford & Simpson seemed to really strike musical gold twice in 1978. First with Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman” and than this. Though it’s an album cut,”Rough Times” shows the GRP instrumentalists at their very funkiest-with it’s composers writing very much in awareness of Bofill’s Latina heritage. While blending the Latin jazz and disco-funk styles expertly,the lyrics to the song stand as something of a warning to people that violence and fear were reaching a fevered pitch in urban America by the late 70’s. And it expressed the power of funky “people music” to perhaps inspire an alternative.

 

Andre’s Amazon Archive: ‘Evolution’ by Narada Michael Walden (released on October 30th,2015)

Narada Michael Walden is an artist whose influence on both music’s instrumentation and lyrical themes is still little realized. He’s one of the last jazz based musicians whose influence as a producer touched on 80’s and 90’s pop hits most American’s know by heart. Not only that,but even with some very long absences from the recording studio, he’s always come out celebrating live musicianship and strong humanitarian messages in his songs. Keeping the 60’s and 70’s “people music” era of funk and soul alive has always seemed a big priority for him. So three years after his hard rock oriented Thunder,Walden returns with an album whose music and message is right on time.

The title track and “Billionaire On Soul Street” are both percussive,fast past dancefloor friendly disco/funk grooves that continues on the lower key chicken scratch guitar oriented “Song For You”,”Tear The House Down” and the pulsing “Standing Tall”. “Heaven’s In My Heart” brings the propulsive flavor of the two opening cuts back into play while Richie Haven’s “Freedom” begins as a percussive Afro pop type number and ends as a heavily processed alternative rocker. “Baby’s Got It Going On” is a thick,horn heavy funk full of the celebratory energy of Rick James’ Stone City Band,which the song itself references.

“It’s The Sixties” is an uptempo Calypso pop type number paying tribute to Walden’s musical influences while his version of the Beatles “Long And Winding Road” has a rich,elaborate rhythm and orchestration. The album ends with the booda remix of another fast disco/funk piece called “Show Me How To Love Again” and the opener “Billionaire On Soul Street”. On this album,Narada Michael Walden and his band find the hyper kinetic disco/funk sound he helped pioneer in a very powerful way.He uses his own drum/percussion based sound continually in the brittle,concise manner of a drum machine that would be heard on EDM/house tracks This in turn helped advance the lyrical messages about re-awakenings of the ideas of civil rights and social awareness. A record full of powerful, funkified grooves more people would be wise to check out!

Original review posted on April 23rd,2016

*Link to original review here. Please follow this link,rate if the review helped you or not and please comment if you can. Thank you!

Anatomy Of THE Groove Special Presentation for 5/10/2015: “Baltimore” by Prince

https://soundcloud.com/prince3eg/baltimore

Having the police related murders of Michael Brown (in Ferguson,Missouri)and most recently Freddie Gray (in Baltimore) on the public consciousness so much of late? One of the major conversations among musically minded individuals was the almost complete lack of attention paid to the issue by contemporary you musicians. Especially black American musicians such as economic powerhouses Beyonce,Nikki Minaj,Jay Z and Alicia Keys. So were civil rights related protest songs truly a dead art form in the United States?

Apparently they were not. And as it turned out? It was going to come from a source that not everyone (including myself) would’ve expected it to. Throughout his career? Prince has shown himself,at best,to be extremely fickle and unpredictable in terms of what sort of sociopolitical benefits he chooses to become musically involved in. Considering his two decade personal mission of asserting a creative end of black power on his own terms? This purple icon recorded a new song. And as typical performed the instrumental parts by himself. Later bringing in young Chicago vocalist Eryn Allen Kane to sing on this new number he called simply “Baltimore”.

Beginning with Eryn’s gospel drenched vocal cry of the title, a drum roll opens the main core of the song. This is a very basic melodic setup on that level. It’s an acoustic guitar harmony with a smooth blues lead guitar riff. On the refrain, Prince is playing a pumping bass over a steady 4/4 pop/rock beat with more rock guitar accents. This pattern repeats itself in two or three variations and building in intensity as the lyrics do. On the bridge? There’s a thick drum/percussion rhythm over which Prince declares “if there ain’t no justice, then there ain’t no peace”.

Prince comes back with another powerful bluesy lead guitar before Eryn comes in with another powerful lead. The song ends first with a repeat of the bridge-this time with 80’s Minneapolis orchestral synthesizer before ending on a gentler  version of the chorus. The two beat drum pattern is accompanied by a synthesizer and Prince’s own falsetto vocal harmonies. This leads off the song, which concludes with what sounds like a news report “interrupting your regularly scheduled program about a developing situation in Los Angeles”.

Upon my first listen to the song? It actually didn’t come off as all that moving musically. Personally? It seems a bit more instrumentally fitting to use funk as a medium for a message song. That musical genre’s strong emphasis on rhythm makes it ideal accompaniment for a song about a real life event which needs to be dealt with positively. Prince actually decided to make a very bright and acoustically tinged pop/rock number here. The sometimes elaborate and percussive drum patterns really showcases the rhythmic mastery Prince has been able to transfer from drum machines to live drums over the decades.

Taken on it’s own terms? This is one of the more upbeat rock songs Prince has made in years. From an instrumental and compositional perspective. Lyrically there’s another kind of feeling eluded to. The man is looking at the present situation from a rather broad and historical perspective. He showcases how a day and place can make all the difference in terms of perceiving racially motivated human tragedy. He even paraphrases Albert Einstein by stating “peace is more than the absence of war”. That after asking for prayer for the murders of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray. So the song asks for heartfelt acts of kindness and social responsibility in a time where silent shock creates too much human inaction.

Anatomy of THE Groove 09/05/14 Rique’s Pick : “Give We the Pride” by Chuck D & Mavis Staples

For todays Friday Funk song, we again turn to Chuck D, aka Mista Chuck, this time alongside one of the great funky soul activist matriarch singers of the Civil Rights and Black Power era’s, Ms. Mavis Staples of the Staple Singers. “Give We the Pride” is both an evolution of the self respect messages of Public Enemy as well as a milenial take on classic Staple Singers songs such as “We the People”, “This World”, and “Respect Yourself”, uber funky cuts all that encouraged self love and respect as black people moved into the new vistas at the end of the era of Jim Crow. It represents a continuation of the growth and evolution of Chuck D and Public Enemy’s sound, as Chuck raps over a band playing a new, milenial version of the type of funky soul they grew to fame and acclaim by sampling. The circle is complete, as Chuck and co have gone from keeping the funk alive by sampling it to actually laying it down with a matriarch of the music like Ms. Mavis Staples.

The track is a funky soul, late 60s, early 70s groove. Full band sound, with rhythm section augmented by organ pads, and a horn section including the heavy horns like Baritone sax. The drum beat is very kinetic and hyperactive, and the groove is based on a syncopated riff played by the bass and guitar, the instruments hit that riff for two bars and then rest, with the organ chords then taking up the space they vacated. This creates a nice stop and start feeling to the groove. The drum fills in at various points, and they very interestingly drop the drums out of the track at certain intervals to highlight the vocals, both for Chuck’s rhymes and Mavis Staples singing.

Ms. Staples vocals are fine soul grit, and her message is one that encourages black people today, young people in particular, telling them, “we need pride to survive.” She has a line I really dig where she questions black people’s current materialistic consumption, saying we don’t need all of the expensive labels, because, “Instead of worrying bout the clothes and jewlery/that don’t do nothing for me/because we got the/best, most beautiful/brown or chocolate/cocoa butter skin/in the world.” Ms. Staples lyrics are phrased like a prayer for Pride for black people in this current time, and its much appreciated from a great artist such as her who’s led many times through her art, along with her family.

While Mama Mavis prays for the children and admonishes them, Uncle Chuck takes the adults to task for being corrupters of the young, saying “I’m seeing old folks applaud/nonsense we cannot afford.” One of Chuck’s pet peeves has been what he feels is a lack of leadership and admonishment coming from our current crop of black middle aged folks and elders.

The video itself is special as well. As Chuck D takes a trip to Chicago and records with Ms. Mavis in the Chess records studio. Chuck also shoots scenes near black cultural landmarks such as the Ebony/Jet publishing building. The use of Chicago in particular is signifigant, with the rampant kiling that has been going on in that great city recently. Chuck does his part in this song and video to address and better that situation as well by pointing out the positive aspects of black peoples history and struggle in a city like Chi-Town.

“Give We the Pride” finds Chuck D in a new format for his music and message, rhyming in front of a band as hes done for the last decade, alongside one of his inspirations. Mavis Staples and The Staple Singers are one of the main influences on Public Enemy’s music, one of the reasons those brothers couldn’t see things going in a bad direction and be silent. Chucks voice is even thicker, and he rhymes in longer, more complete thoughts and sentences as opposed to the old choppy approach. Its as if the longer phrases of the new music also inspire a longer sentence structure. Chuck ain’t trying to be cute here! And the song itself is a cool merger of two different generations of artistic activists, coming together and using their great voices to motivate the people in the new Milenium. “Let me walk with my head up high/let me know that I’m fly.”