Tuesday, December 22 2009

Breakbeat Tuesday – Harder Than A Rock

Whattup, fine folk out there? Here’s the latest breakbeat heater that I’m messing with this week. I just recently put it on my latest Scion Radio mix so you should hear that coming soon-sish, but here’s the raw. Aaight I’m definitely staying in my “rock breaks” crate for the first couple of these installments but I figured that I would lace this one cause I’ve learned to love this song in its entirety lately, not just the drums. It’s really got a great schmaltzy sounding whiteboy blues thing happening, that I used to hate but now find kind of endearing in its corniness and it’s heart. But you just have to love these drums, they smack so incredibly hard, courtesy of  Surprize and their drummer Fred Kieffer. I don’t know much else about this group except I know that it’s a relatively Philly local private press (although I think these cats were out of Cherry Hill maybe…) That local connection was preserved when Kelo used these drums as the basis of their The Roots’ “Clones” (one of my favorite Roots tunes to this day.) It was actually my homie Tony Larson AKA TripleDouble that put me up on this record about 10 years ago, around the time when him and Diplo first got around to recording the first AEIOU tape. Diplo is out there doing his thing and Tony is still holding it down strong for the West Philly massive. Peace to both you dudes hahah. Good times…

Surprize “Sweet Love” (East Coast, 1971)