Living To Music December 2012

Join in if you can, alone or with friends, this Sunday at 9pm with Greg Wilson's Living To Music worldwide communal listening experience. This month's selected album is Rufusized by Rufus and Chaka Khan (1974).

http://www.gregwilson.co.uk/2012/11/living-to-music-rufus-featuring-chaka-khan-rufusized/

Ants in my pants and I need to dance

I managed to hobble round last Sunday's boot sale on my crutches and picked up a couple of good records.  I haven't actually got round to cleaning them yet, let alone listening to them, so here's one from a few weeks ago, bought for £3:

Funkadelic - Uncle Jam Wants You (1979)

Released in 1979, Uncle Jam Wants You was Funkadelic's follow-up to their bestselling album One Nation Under A Groove from the year before, and their 11th release overall.

Subtitled Rescue Dance Music from the Blahs, Uncle Jam Wants You is a concept album whose loose theme is just that - Thrill Sergeant Dr. Funkenstein aka George Clinton's mission to revitalise dancefloors worldwide with his patented P-Funk.

The first two-thirds of the album is a mixture of funk, diso and rock.  Best is Freak of the Week; the story of a "disco lovin' mama" with some really funky guitar from "The Funkadelic Rescue Dance Band: Axe Force".  The 15-minute (not just) Knee Deep, famously sampled by De La Soul on Me Myself & I reprises Freak of the Week at the end.

Inner gatefold

Later comes Holly Wants to go to California; a forgettable gospel-ish ballad with background party chatter, then final track Foot Soldiers; a pseudo-militaristic dance drill (the main instruction being "move it") with a nursery-rhyme synth line.

Rear cover

Uncle Jam Wants You reached no.2 on the US R&B chart.  Here's Freak of the Week:

Pardon My Heart

Now in possession of the family crutches (we're a clumsy lot) I was able to get out yesterday and have a look round a car boot sale.  I got this album for £2, which funnily enough I'd recently bought on CD:

Neil Young - Zuma (1975)

This was Neil Young's seventh album overall and the second to be credited with Crazy Horse.  It contains just two acoustic songs; the gentle, harmonic country of Pardon My Heart (albeit with electric solo) and the brief Through My Sails taken from aborted sessions with C.S.N.

Rear cover

The rest is a variety of electric rockers, from the leaden beauty of Danger Bird through mid-paced numbers like Barstool Blues to the seven-minute epic that is the glorious Cortez The Killer.  It's on this loose description of the Spanish defeat of Mexico by conquistador Hernan Cortez in the 16th century that Young is able to stretch out, with an exquisite long intro before the vocal only coming in during the 4th minute.

This track would have gone on longer if the tape hadn't run out before the last verse could be recorded; instead it fades out rather abruptly.  Neil claims to have never much liked this final verse anyway, and doesn't include it when playing live.

Zuma reached no. 25 on the U.S. Billboard chart.  It's one of the few Young albums not to feature on Spotify, which is a shame as I really rate it.  Anyway, here's Cortez The Killer:

Don't Touch Me There!

Due to a combination of bad weather and a broken toe I've not been car-booting for the last two Sundays, so here's an album I picked up at a boot sale a few weeks ago for  £3:

The Tubes - What Do You Want From Live (1978)

Inner gatefold

This is a double live album recorded at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1978 by San Francisco new wave-punk-rock-caberet group The Tubes.

The Tubes in '78

Their dynamic live shows combined their music with a full-on theatrical experience complete with costumes, props, dancers, audience interaction and S&M imagery. They were the cause of some hysterical newspaper headlines on both sides of the Atlantic at the time, despite their rather tongue-in-cheek attitude.

They never became huge, but their success can be measured in longevity; they formed in 1969 and four of the original members still tour to this day.

My top track, rather befitting my current status is Don't Touch Me There, a duet between lead singer Fee Waybill and Re Styles.




Full album here:  The Tubes – What Do You Want From Live

Out Of Time

On holiday from work this week, I paid a visit to Out Of Time Records, an independent shop in Ipswich that deals in secondhand music; the only such place for miles around.

To my shame I hadn't been in here for about ten years, and in the intervening time had assumed it had closed, what with the recession badly affecting the high street and also the plight of record shops in particular.  I happened to stumble across its website a couple of weeks ago and was delighted to see it still going after 25-odd years of serving music fans.

Out Of Time Records, 46 Fore Street, Ipswich, Suffolk

It's packed tight with racks of CDs and vinyl from tons of genres and decades, with rows of DVDs and cassettes on shelves.  Music posters and album sleeves cover up any remaining wall space and piles of yet-to-be filed vinyl perch on the floor by the counter.  It was in one of these piles that I found a copy of Patti Smith's 1975 debut Horses.

Patti Smith - Horses (1975)

Plus I got a few CDs that had been on my to-get list for a while:

Out Of Time Records (also known as Out Of Town Records, as it's away from the main drag) seems to be surviving due to excellent, varied stock, sensible prices and that fact that it's a rare oasis in a desert of soulless internet shopping and now almost CD-less HMVs.  The above purchases came to £22.84 (all in spanking condition) and the friendly, helpful proprietor rounded this down to a flat £20.  I could have spent hours in there, and certainly more money, but due to a sofa/foot interface last Saturday evening I am now rocking a walking stick and my toe was ready to go well before I was!

If you're ever in the Ipswich area please have a look in, so it stands a chance of another 25 years.  Info. here:  http://www.outoftimerecords.com/  and  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Out-Of-Time-Records/170012253018951?ref=stream