So looks like my second career as burgeoning bloggeur is taking off! My dear friends over at the legendary Ego Trip Magazine have just launched their amazing new website –www.egotripland.com – firmly planting both feet in the 21st Century! Now understand how humbling that is. Ego Trip is basically the greatest magazine to have ever graced the news stand racks in and around Union Square. No but for real, the magazine was a game changer, and the whole gang (lead by the enigmatic Ted Bawno) really succeeded in creating a type of magazine that was aped and duplicated by so many after the fact. But they all fell short, cause this was the original! I’m not going to even go into how GAME CHANGING – GAME CHANGING SON – the White Rapper Show was…
So anyway, I’m on the roster of mighty-fine bloggers now for the site. Whereas my Fool’s Gold column will be more about music rediscovery, my Ego Trip series will probably be more of a stream of consciousness, dadaist steez that is more akin to shit that pops off on my Twitter feed. I told Chairman Mao yesterday that I will be working out the tone of it all (much like the site will be working things out as well) but, much like this career of mine, I think we’ll just be making shit up as I go along. But I assured him that my first post wouldn’t be about me playing Stevie Nicks and Labelle Youtube clips on repeat and sitting here crying here at my desk… So I wrote a quick nod in reverence to the 25th anniversary of the passing of one of the greatest and baddest motherfuckers to ever grace this planet, the one and only Phil Lynott.
Understand that this is a family thing, but when my good friends over at Fool’s Gold Records asked me to do a reoccurring column for their brand new (and fresh to death) site I couldn’t say no. You all should know I love running my mouth by now… But for real, today is the jumpoff for the new jawn, “Cosmos’s Crates” which is gonna be a weekly thing over there. I’ll be doing the knowledge on joints that you SHOULD know, but may have slipped through the cracks. Probably be a healthy amount of oldies cause, as my homie and Fool’s Gold family member P-Thugg has said to me, “I’m a true funkateer.” Apparently a raconteur as well… But it will definitely be a lot of other cool shit too. Big shout to Nick Catchdini, A-Trak and the rest of my brothers over there.
Thursday, January 6th, 2011 More, More, More
Featuring Cosmo Baker
Playing nothing but the finest in
Sex-Disco dance classics
Whimsy-boogie
Proto Grit-House & more
@ SubMercer – 147 1/2 Mercer St. – New York, NY
Last January the earth opened up and swallowed part of Port-au-Prince, Haiti and leaving a country and a people in dire straits. The good people over at Soulstrutdecided to hold a “Heatrocks For Haiti” campaign, where the members of the site would donate some of their most prized pieces of vinyl for auction, with all the proceeds going towards several different charitable foundations. We had done the same thing for our folks in New Orleans when Katrina hit, and both times we raised a massive amount of money, helped people, and shared our love of music and vinyl in the process.
We all went on a furious bidding war to grab records but there was one in particular that basically smacked me over the head and that I was determined to grab. I WANT IT NOW. And so I bid and I upped my bid and I upped it a little more. Once it got into the 3 figures price range I was pretty sure that I was coasting towards victory, but at the very last moment (as too often is the case) someone snuck by me and came out on the other side, victorious. Thwarted, I vowed that one day I would own that record. That record is the Karen Records version of Betty (Bettye) Lavette’s “Let Me Down Easy” B/W “Ticket To The Moon” – and to use some of the most apt (yet absurd) vernacular to describe this record, “shit is hard body as a motherfucker.” Especially the flipside, “Ticket…” just reeks of nastiness.
The Bettye Lavette story is quite interesting. Basically a detroit girl, she started her singing career very young, performing with a variety of artists including the James Brown review as well as a young up and coming soul singer from Georgie, Otis Redding. Having enjoyed a relatively healthy career touring and recording all throughout the 60s, it was during this time she recorded what many soul music aficionados refer to as “one of the greatest soul recordings of all time,” the original 1965 Calla Records version of “Let Me Down Easy.” I know at least one hip-hop producer agreed with how ill the song is, but I can’t remember who that was at the moment (feel free to chime in, folks.)
In the early 70s she signed with Atlantic / Atco and went down to Alabama to record an album (“Child Of The Seventies”) at the legendary Muscle Shoals. For reasons still unexplained, the project was cancelled and, other than 1 single, the album was shelved. Disillusioned, she continued on with her career releasing a few disco records and even singing on Broadway until 1999 when a French record collector found the master tapes for “Child Of The Seventies” and released it on his own imprint (under the new title “Souvenirs.”) This began an upsurge in her popularity and, coupled with a gang of newly recorded material over the past decade, Bettye is as popular than ever, having won awards and selling records like crazy. Don’t call it a comeback!
A couple months after I lost that bid for the record, I found another copy on eBay and was determined to get this one. Don’t ask me how much it cost but for sure it was a pretty penny. You know I was psyched when I got the 7″ package in my mailbox and opened it up, finally having this banger. One of the first things that I noticed when I looked at the label was the words “Arranged By Dale Warren.” Now I honestly do not know the back story on how all of this went down, as I’m not really as deep in the digging game as a lot of other dudes, but I figured it had to be the only other Dale Warren that I had heard about in the soul music scene at that time. Dale Warren was a musician and arranger for Motown in the 60s, and he’s the man behind the original arrangement of “Let Me Down Easy.” Being the classically trained violinist it makes sense, as the OG version’s pizzicato is so powerful. In the early 70s Warren moved over to the Stax label to join up with Isaac Hayes as the label’s in-house arranger. In 1973 he released a concept album dealing with the effects of American poverty. That album is “Ghetto: Misfortune’s Wealth” by 24 Carat Black, a magnum opus that, while it didn’t sell well at the time, is considered a masterpiece and touchstone in soul and funk music.
That album is dark and gritty and brooding… and booming. There’s really nothing quite like it. And listening to the 45 I had just got, one can hear that it was the direction that he was moving towards. Desperation funk. Combined with the unmatched intensity of Bettye’s voice and the longing and pain in it, it’s rawer than almost anything. That’s HARD BODY. For my money, when it comes to describing something as “hardcore” I will put this A and B side doubleshot up against any record by Slayer or M.O.P. It sounded like it was recorded somewhere in a cave in Hades. Unbelievably powerful and moving. And YES, both sides have drums, hence this record being a no-brainer for Breakbeat Tuesdays. I hope you enjoy it, as I have the A-Side as a Youtube clip so you can hear it, and the B-Side as the WMD. Peace!
Dante’s Hifi – Miami – April 20 
