One for the late night crew-Surface

R Kelly used this but the original is the one!

One for the late night crew! Zapp and Roger

Another of the big bricks upon which hip-hop was built the West Coast in particular were all over Zapp what a tune still rocks!

Living legends-Prince

My "Living Legends" series continues this week with Prince. Where do you start with an artist such as Prince!? He is a one man musical machine who is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, singer, musician, collaborator and artist in his own right. He is a sexually ambiguous eccentric and incredible performer who has always been innovative with everything from his name to his attitude to the internet and the music industry. He is quite simply a music phenomenon and one of the most important music artists of all time.
For many his best days are long gone, but even his later era music has often impressed me and his jazzy "Rainbow Children" album from 2001 remains for me one of his most amazing and exciting works. Even back when he was writing hits such as "Manic Monday" for the Bangles, Prince was often using other names and he is rumoured to have literally thousands of unreleased songs in his vaults, aside from the many hundreds of bootlegs that are out there already.



Prince was also one of the first of a new wave of black artists who gained substantial playing time on a fledging MTV back in the 1980's, an era where the music television channel actually played music. The success of Prince and Michael Jackson opened the floodgates for the later-day commercial domination of hip-hop and r&b in many respects, and they gained the exposure that Rick James, Parliament/Funkadelic and the like never enjoyed. Like many of these artists, Prince was never one to be tightly pigeon-holed musically and it is ironic that even to this day Prince and one of his great heroes Jimmy Hendrix, are seen as black men operating in a white mans domain. The music of r&b and the blues and Little Richard and Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters had been streamlined into something more homogenized by the media, but make no mistake about it, this was always black music as much if not more than anything else.



Prince was never gonna leave racial divisions or anything else get in the way of his own music career. Like another of heroes Sly Stone, he assembled a multi-gendered and multi-racial band together on many occasions, and through all of his many name changes and ups and downs, there remains a rare sense of optimism in most of his music. He was always willing to tackle dark subject matter too, but even at a low ebb he produced stunning pop music. "The most beautiful girl in the world" was remarkable in that it was his first UK number one as a performer, even though two of his classics had been at the top of the pile already as covered by Sinead O'Connor and Chaka Khan. Prince was still the middle of a long running dispute with Warner Brothers at the time, but the music transcended everything and even the dogs in the street were singing it back in 1994.
Long running disputes with powerhouses such as E-Bay and Youtube have meant that Prince is sometimes in the news more for other things than his music these days (he is also being sued by Irish music promoter MCD for cancelling shows) but through every different crisis Prince has remained an enigmatic star who has done it his way. Albums such as "Sign of the times" are quite simply some of the greatest music ever recorded. Back even before then on the strangely prophetic "Controversy" Prince sung "People call me rude / I wish we all were nude / I wish there was no black and white / I wish there were no rules." He has done a brilliant job of ripping up those rules all through his music career, and he is a living legend who continues to fascinate us in 2010.

One for the late night crew! Paris

One for the late night crew--80's soul at it's best this is for the heads--Spikey Tee if you are reading this i know you are gonna like it!

The Disco era that lives on!

The word disco music brings all sorts of different images to our minds. For some it is simply a nightclub or a huge hall, for many more it is the music movement that became fashionable in the late 70's and which ended up dominating pop music for a time in conjunction with movies such as "Saturday Night Fever" and it's massive selling soundtrack. Disco became a dirty word in the early 80's and suffered a backlash that still taints some of it's coverage today, but for more people again it's spirit stayed alive through the creation of a new type of music which took the disco groove; house music, which is more popular than ever these days.
Disco also evokes the cliched images of retro 70's nights and platform shoes with open top shirts and thoughts of the days where everyone from mod singer Rod Stewart to jazz legend Idris Muhammad got on the disco train and made music for the dance-floors. Disco saw the rise of the 12 inch single and a DJ Culture which is also bigger than ever today, but it remains one of the most misunderstood music genres and often one in which commentators can be totally ignorant! For me, it is a special music genre for many reasons, not least because of the fact that it's rise went hand in hand with the birth of hip-hop, which sprung out of many of the same communities and which first reached the mainstream through re-workings of the disco anthems of the day being replayed by live musicians added to rappers on the top.
I was lucky enough to always appreciate that a million miles away from "Y.M.C.A" and the wedding anthems that everyone knows, there was an underground music culture that developed out of this era that still carries an amazing relevance today. Just take a look at the best modern music producers and dj's; Danny Krivit, Theo Parrish, Moodyman and many more are all children of the disco era and slaves to the grooves which dominated nearly every big club track of that era.
Disco is far from dead. Despite record company and media fuelled revivals instigated by music from the likes of Cassius, Basement Jaxx and Daft Punk in the 90's, the disco era was always held in great esteem by the true aficionados of dance music, and DJ's, producers and record collectors have for a long time kept the spirit of the music alive. Even in the pop charts we can see this clearly. Madonna came out of the disco era, Lady Gaga and most hit-makers these days are in thrall of the 70's and 80's while Timbaland and a thousand other producers keep nodding towards it's later electro stylings.
As a DJ it is without doubt one of my favourite types of music to spin at parties or in clubs. Back in the day myself and Angi used spin at a night called Mor Disco in Zoes and every Tuesday night became an incredible party where loads of different people dressed up and got down to the funkiest of tunes! By the time we packed it in the music was becoming really ubiquitous again through the efforts of many of the aforementioned acts but in the intervening years i've always enjoyed dusting off the 12 inch disco gems for special occasions. Last Saturday on Black on Red on RedFM I spun a disco mix with some of my personal favourite selections. Some will be familiar, many more obscure and one or two will be edits of old tunes. The re-edit culture surrounding many disco records is quite interesting actually and when done tastefully it can be really good, fortunately there are many DJ's and producers out there with respect for the genre which brought us some of the greatest music of all time!
Here is the link for the Mix



Disco Special Volume 3

http://djstevieg.podomatic.com

I Wish You Would [edit] Jocelyn Brown
The Sound Of Music Dayton
Mr. Groove One Way
Don't Stop K.I.D.
Spaghettidisco (Extended) Cave Bear Cult
High Skyy
Sweet To Me Logg
Keep On Movin' Deodato
Feel Up Grace Jones
Seventh Heaven Gwen Guthrie
Loving You Donald Byrd
Don't Give Up [12" Version] Linda Clifford
This Beat Is Mine Vicky D
Don't Cost You Nothin' Ashford & Simpson
Hit And Run [7"Mix] Loleatta Holloway
Runaway Salsoul Orchestra
Once I've Been There Norman Connors
Mainline Black Ivory
I'm Every Woman Chaka Khan
I'm In Love (Original 12_ Mix) Evelyn King
Touch Me (All Night Long) Wish Feat. Fonda Rae
Falling In Love (DK Edit Of Shep Pettibone Remix) Surface
Jump to It (Original 12" Mix) Aretha Franklin
Sure Shot (Larry Levan Mix) Tracy Weber
Here Comes That Sound (Social Disco Club Re-Edit) Love De-Luxe
There Was a Time ESG
I Need You (Unreleased Mix) Sylvester
Bad Luck Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes
We're Getting Stronger Loleatta Holloway
Armed And Extremely Dangerous First Choice