Author: Mark Montgomery French

Funkadelic: The Electric Spanking of War Babies (1981)

funkadelic_spanking

The funk stops here.

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: While Parliament rode high in the charts singing about motherships and star children, Funkadelic dealt with more underground concepts like America eating its young, maggots and slop. At least they did before they moved to Warner Brothers Records, when they jettisoned their guitar-heavy Black-nationalistic raunch’n’roll for synth-happy radio-friendly tunes from George Clinton’s Assembly-Line-O’-Funk.

Their turning point came in 1981 when the band realized Warner Brothers no longer had any interest in them, so they recorded an album solely to please their die-hard fans, the ultra-wacky The Electric Spanking of War Babies.

A shiny but spiny dance treat with a surprising world music edge, War Babies brought back lovely layers of nasty fuzztones and angry coded politics. The title track refers to the media’s eager participation in promoting our governments’ pro-war propaganda machine. A weighty topic for a weighty song, it bounces from a sprightly march to a raging metal singalong.

Along the way Funkadelic performs their take on reggae (the goofy “Shockwaves”) and African polyrhythms (the all-drum tour de force “Brettino’s Bounce”), while adding a major dose of giggles to the major league curse-off “Icka Prick”:

…If you think that’s nasty
Follow me to the men’s room
Watch me write on the wall
Graffilthy!…

(This excerpt is the only clean part of “Icka Prick”. I was going to add more lyrics but the printed page misses how gleefully filthy the song is in context).

“Hmm” said the label. “That’s CLEARLY not single material.”

THE FALLOUT: Warner Brothers rejected the album cover, eventually printing it with a censored flap. Warner Brothers also rejected the length, refusing to release it as a double album. They dumped it in the marketplace, pressing only 90,000 copies even though the previous album, Uncle Jam Wants You, moved half a million units.

The only P-Funk product they did like was the soon-to-be-released debut album from Roger Troutman, who had recorded it for George Clinton’s label Uncle Jam Records. Warner Brothers did the unthinkable and secretly purchased the master tapes from Roger, releasing The Many Facets of Roger in 1981. Clinton promptly sued Warner, rightly claiming that he was the original owner of the tapes since he’d paid for the entire recording.

The courts agreed and George Clinton was awarded a chunk of cash, all the master tapes from the four albums Funkadelic recorded for Warner Brothers and the immediate termination of Funkadelic’s contract. Although this made them free agents the P-Funk army imploded under label stress and financial woes, and neither Funkadelic nor Parliament released another album again.

Well, not under those names anyway. The very next year George Clinton released his first solo album which was chock full of P-Funk alumni and featured a song Warner Brothers deemed unfit to include on War Babies: “Atomic Dog”.

Wow, what visionaries.

The Electric Spanking of War Babies is available from Amazon and you can sample tracks here:

A kiss to their fans and a kiss-off to their label, The Electric Spanking of War Babies is the best P-Funk album you’ve never heard.

NEXT WEEK: The first birthday of Uppity Music. Who’s bringing the cake?

Los Lobos: Kiko (1992)

loslobos_kiko

A Cinco De Mayo special: unsung Latino uppity music.

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: As we last read in the Bobby McFerrin entry, a number one record can get a musician a temporary “autonomy pass “. After scoring a fluke number one single in 1987 with a rock-by-numbers cover of Richie Valens “La Bamba”, Los Angeles roots-rockers Los Lobos essentially refused to record anything that generic ever again. Each album became slightly more eccentric than the last, culminating in 1992’s dreamy experimental Kiko.

Every song calmly shares space with the ghosts of Los Angeles, back when it was known as Mexico. Draped with touches of traditional Mexican instruments the band solidly locks into gritty gray introspection (“Wake up Delores”) and weary pink dirges (“When The Circus Comes”).

Drums shock and rattle like hollow skulls of ancestors in the hypnotic “Angels With Dirty Faces” and transmit secret messages in “Wicked Rain”. The surreal lullaby “Kiko And The Lavender Moon” charmingly mirrors the quixotic aloofness of housecats:

Kiko and the lavender moon
Out dancing making faces at
A big black cat
And then he flies
Up to the wall
Stands on one foot
Doesn’t even fall
Dance and dance
Still dancing till
He goes off to sleep

He always sleeps
Till the sun goes down
He never wakes
Till no one’s around
He never stops
Can’t catch his breath
It’s always there
Scares him to death

This curious waltz became the centerpiece of their greatest work…

THE FALLOUT: …and their poorest seller. Expensively recorded and indifferently promoted Kiko flatlined at retail. Los Lobos recorded only one additional album for their label before being dropped. The album did become a fan favorite, and in 2005 the band responded by playing concerts featuring Kiko in its entirety.

Kiko is available from Amazon, and you can sample tracks here:

A landmark of American music, Kiko seeps into your pores like smoke from fine incense and lingers with distinct pleasure.

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: Funkadelic goes out with an electric bang.

Blackalicious: Blazing Arrow (2002)

blackalicious_blazingarrow

Fire at will.

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: Ever had really awesome French toast? Crunchy yet supple slabs of thick golden brown with steam rising between its buttery layers? So yummy you even bragged to your friends about your unexpected good fortune? French toast is so simple to make yet difficult to make great.

Bay Area natives Blackalicious are the musical equivalent of great French toast. After turning heads in 2000 with their independently released Nia they vaulted to a major label for their next album, the tasty Blazing Arrow.

Filled to the brim with hard hipster soul, producer Chief Xcel tastefully laced the tracks with the shocking sounds of real instruments. Emcee Gift of Gab’s flow is thick like maple syrup yet speedy like a NASCAR driver, easily twice as fast as the usual rapper with four times the internal rhymes.

He bobs and weaves like a sub-atomic helicopter in “Paragraph President” and rides the waves of the lazy seafaring “Blazing Arrow”. Consistently focused on spirituality and community he gets all Armageddoned-out on the mock-classical “Sky is Falling” and promotes the power of positive thinking in the soothing, organ-sprinkled “Green Light: Now Begin” (Hell of intelligent diligent heaven-sent benevolent relevant medicine/Poetry pedestrian peddelin’ mad adrenaline to lyrical gentlemen).

Blackalicious also share quality time with ghostly remains of Gil-Scott Heron in the luminous “First in Flight”, and rock with some of Jurassic 5 over the beef-jerky dry piano of “4000 Miles” as well as the “I can’t believe he rapped the periodic table of elements” stunt rap of “Chemical Calisthenics”:

C-A-O-H-2 wine water solution of calcium hydroxide
Slobbin it, C-A-O lime will make bleach powder
Galvanic metal beats stomp out louder
Dried ice, C-0 squared refrigerant
N-O-2 makes you laugh, it’s laughing gas used by the dentists
I nearly added acid glue, I’m like oil of a toil, the king of chemicals
And the G heat gas waved all your mats
Chemical change, ice point, melt all your raps
Atomic weight, hold shocks, when you call
Refillable gas keep going way beyond
Biotch I’m only ill with buzzin, feel the ambiance
A diabetic process outta calm your ass
After I warm your ass, I’ll give sodium, silicate N-O-2-S-1-O-3, a water glass
Borax flexure full of brimstone sulfur
Boraxic acid, hip-hop preserver
C-O-2 could never put away the fire
Style aroma is scientific; the lyrical fuse would be connected
To teach you chemical calisthenics

Kids, don’t try this rap without adult supervision. You could hurt yourself. Ever had a tongue cramp? Ouch.

THE FALLOUT: With a fistful of glowing reviews but a handful of sales, Blazing Arrow also suffered from the shuttering of its record label, a move which also doomed Common’s Electric Circus. Four years later Blackalicious released their follow-up The Craft. And once again, on an independent label. And so it goes.

Blazing Arrow is available from Amazon and you can sample tracks here:

Tasty and comforting, Blazing Arrow makes for essential nourishment.

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: In honor of Cinco De Mayo, listen to an unsung Latino departure album from Los Lobos.

Bobby McFerrin: Circlesongs (1997)

bobbymcferrin_circlesongs

Say what?

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: A “number one” record must feel like the first delirious puff off a crack pipe cause nearly every musician who’s tasted it fiends for another hit, turning an endless number of dignity-lowering tricks that result in an ever-thinning body of quality work.

But once in a while a number one artist uses their new powers to assert their integrity, like reclaiming their birthname (John Cougar Mellencamp), refusing to prance around in music videos (Pearl Jam), or making increasingly challenging music. After scoring big in 1988 with the pop anthem “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”, Bobby McFerrin majorly shifted gears and began to conduct orchestras. Yes, with a baton and everything.

Freed from having to produce a hit record his albums became increasing experimental, reaching a watershed with the release of 1997’s miraculous Circlesongs. You know when vocalists sing little nonsense words before or after the real lyrics, sometimes scatting or repeating the ends of words along with the beat? McFerrin concocted an entire album around this concept. He used twelve vocalists but not a single real word is ever uttered.

Each song is structured around single cyclical riff while other voices improvise on top of it. Through this simple recipe he rolls out endless melodic variations and fascinating textures. Breaths become percussion, high voices dive and soar like seagulls. Deep monk-like drones share space with showtune chirps and African chants. Sometimes one syllable is passed back and forth like a hacky-sack then devolves into a gentle choral gibberish. All the rhythms are clean and precise which magnify the joyful and oddball tonal smears that bounce off each other.

It’s a celebration of community, of spiritual awakening, and it’s a lot of fun.

THE FALLOUT: The album and resulting tour was well received by the tiny few who knew the album was even released. Honestly, did you know this album existed?

Circlesongs is available from Amazon and you can sample tracks here:

Radical as a tandem unicycle and way easier to ride, Circlesongs gives hope that major labels can embrace Black departure albums, just as long as they come from someone uncommonly famous. Well, it’s a start.

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: Blackalicious fires a warning shot.

Derrick May: Innovator (1998)

derrickmay_innovator

There’s Something About Detroit.

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: Detroit native Bob Seger once commented that early in his career he’d play to a packed stadium in his hometown, then drive to New York where he could only command a tiny audience in a funky dive. To be famous at home but invisible elsewhere is also the curse of Derrick May, one of the co-inventors of techno music. His groundbreaking singles have been collected into his only full-length album, 1998’s Innovator.

What is it about Detroit that inspires such extremism in its musical acts? From wild funk (Parliament-Funkadelic) to aggressive punk (Iggy Pop), from sleaze rock (Ted Nugent) to ill hip-hop (Eminem), the Detroit music scene seems to have a lock on the brilliant and bizarre. Into a city haunted by the ghosts of the modern automobile industry came DJ and musician Derrick May who created soundscapes that fused ambience with hard beats; instrumentals designed for dance floor spiritual awakenings.

Under the name Rhythim is Rhythim he released the influential 12” “Nude Photo”. Its murky shifting pulses burrow through the beat like a tapeworm, devouring and expelling all melodies in its wake. His big international break came with the romantically dark “Strings of Life”, which quickly became the template for this new musical genre, the “Johnny B. Goode” of techno. It’s the sound of isolation, of cold steel, of urban excitement, of rain bouncing off the roof of a bus shelter.

May’s tracks like create tension by ignoring all rules of dance music accept one: keep the beat slamming. “Kaotic Harmony” spreads out like a jazz song, with robotic variations on a theme. “Drama” aims for your solar plexus, blanketing you in an avalanche of molten pinpricks.

If the urban dance clubs of the world was a unified tribe, this was their music.

THE FALLOUT: Congratulations! You’re a Black person who makes music that’s not considered “Black”! Even though you’ve helped create a new internationally successful genre of music, the music industry at large doesn’t know how to promote you!

To be fair, the faceless nature of DJing has been a deterrent to major success in many areas but the fact remains that techno in America has one face and it’s Moby’s. It also didn’t help Derrick May that his last recordings were released over a decade ago, and most of his output is out of print. He still DJs around the globe and is given much respect by the club world but like his idols Kraftwerk, his lack of product has clouded any rightful ascendance to a musical throne.

Innovator is available at Amazon and you can sample tracks here:

I feel like Derrick May gave his soul to techno and all he got was a lousy T-shirt. Techno has the patina of “Goofy Caucasians on Ecstasy”, which inevitably diminishes and dismisses his accomplishments, blurring them into the passage of memory.

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: Voices without words.

Seu Jorge: Cru (2005)

seujorge_cru

Baby, he likes it raw.

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: In 2004 Brazilian singer and guitarist Seu Jorge enigmatically appeared in the movie The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, softly strumming Portuguese versions of David Bowie songs. This unexpected profile boost raised expectations for his second studio album, the sparse and haunting Cru.

Cru means “raw” in Portuguese, and Jorge created an album of raw emotions and stark ornamentation. Centered around sharp acoustic strums, samba beats and his oaken voice Cru creates a stunning force through willful under-production.

Bem Querer (My Dear) is a sunny swim in a pool of liquid guitar, while the romantic Una Mujer floats upon a bed of near inaudible beats and electronica. Tive Razão {TV Reloaded} (Voltair Mix) mixes wordless breaths and church organ, sounding like a man pleading for his soul at a funeral march.

Lyrically Jorge is concerned with the urban extremism of Brazilian culture. He shakes a jungle-like fist in the anti-fake boob rant Mania de Peitão (Large Chested Mania), and he reps his childhood home from the musical-filled slums with Eu Sou Favela (I Am Favela).

Cru was a well-respected hit in Brazil…

THE FALLOUT: …but America slept on it, as it does with all non-English language albums. Unless it’s reggaeton. Cru got some critical love but seems destined to remain a cult favorite.

Cru is available worldwide from Amazon, and you can sample tracks here:

Growling and coiled like a panther, Cru commands by charm and grace.

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: The godfather of techno is a brother. Check the hidden genius of Derrick May.

Kenna: New Sacred Cow (2003)

kenna_newsacredcow

Eighties. We’re living in the eighties.

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: In 2001 Limp Bizkit mastermind Fred Durst stopped making crap music just long enough to sign singer-songwriter Kenna to his label. The Ethiopian-born Virginia transplant then handcrafted his fizzy and fun debut album New Sacred Cow.

A red neon homage to new wave music it uniquely incorporates the soaring and slightly British vocals, big melodies and plastic squiggly tones of 80s modern rock while injecting a hip-hop flavor into the concrete-tough rhythm tracks. Imagine Duran Duran and Depeche Mode produced by Dr. Dre and you’re in the ballpark.

Kenna layers his lilting, desperate voice over the songs like a warm headscarf, giving you a deep immersion into his laments. His beautiful phrasing neatly knits the dirty bouncing regret of “Freetime”. The electro-gospel “Vexed And Glorious” features a syncopated busy signal anchored by a rippling snare and zooms like a quick drive away from the club.

The danceable joyfulness of his music is tempered by its extreme introspection. He’s concerned with losing his independence (“Siren”), his happiness (“I’m Gone”) and perhaps his sanity (“New Sacred Cow”). Even when he accepts love he nervously questions it in the manic depressive “Love/Hate Sensation”:

Give me a ride on a zephyr
And rocket away from here
Give me all your affection
And teach me how to feel

I got a love hate sensation
Coursing through my veins
I got a love hate sensation
Driving me insane

This is also an eerily accurate prediction of how his album would get to the public.

THE FALLOUT: A single was released in 2001 but his label refused to release the album, citing their inability to market a black new wave musician. After two years in limbo New Sacred Cow was finally issued on a different label, but positive press and a high-profile tour did not result in significant sales or a mark change in the original marketing conundrum.

Kenna’s promotional dilemma did inspire an interesting chapter in Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Not that marketing him would be easy, but as he didn’t appear in his first two music videos, and as the only picture of him in his own CD booklet is a one inch tall, black and white portrait of him hiding his face, it seems that someone has a problem with the race issue.

New Sacred Cow is available from Amazon and you can sample tracks here:

New Sacred Cow is a refreshing sponge of synth-pop styles and self-examination, sunny and seductive, and singularly sensational. And kinda silly.

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: Seu Jorge swims out into open water.

Garland Jeffreys: Don’t Call Me Buckwheat (1991)

garland_buckwheat

The Un-tragic Mulatto.

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: Every black man I know has been hassled by a racist cop. And you know what? We have it easy. Imagine living in America before civil rights legislation, when “colored-only” water fountains were plentiful and legal. Now imagine growing up in the 1950s as the child of black, white and Puerto Rican ancestry.

That is the reality of Brooklyn singer-songwriter Garland Jeffreys, and two decades into his recording career he delivered a concept album about surviving racial intolerance, 1992’s vulnerable Don’t Call Me Buckwheat.

Remixing rock, reggae and R&B as rhythms from related recipes, he recants tales of his life and the role racism has rendered. As a boy the light-skinned blue-eyed Jeffreys occasionally passed for white (the flamenco-styled “Spanish Blood) when he wasn’t being stared at like a carnival attraction (in the cocktail jazz of “Racial Repertoire”).

He fully understands the loneliness of being a black man in a white man’s arena (the skanked-up “Color Line”) and the tools one can use to forget the injustice (the skanked-down “Bottle of Love”).

Yet he never matches hate with hate. He bravely reveals his issues with bigotry on the both the black side (in the ripping “I Was Afraid Of Malcolm”) and the white side (in the Southern gospel “Don’t Call Me Buckwheat”):

Don’t call me buckwheat
Don’t call me eightball
Don’t call me jig jig jig…Watch that word
Don’t call me Sambo
‘Cause it hurts
And that ain’t nice
And it sticks like white on rice

Sadly, this song was inspired by a trip he took to Shea Stadium. In the 1990s.

THE FALLOUT: Buckwheat sold nearly half a million copies in Europe, where he’s continually had strong success. Meanwhile back in the U.S.A. his domestic label gave him the moist handshake of indifference and abandoned the album, despite unanimous critical acclaim.

Don’t Call Me Buckwheat is available from Amazon and you can sample tracks here:

Don’t Call Me Buckwheat dramatically draws the humane conclusion that despite the machinations of racism all people are, and will continue to be, equal. And so it shall be.

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: Society, decoded.

Cee-Lo: Cee-Lo Green… is the Soul Machine (2004)

ceelo_soulmachine

Merrie melodies from God’s cog.

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: In 2002 ex-Goodie Mob boss Cee-Lo dropped his experimental sonic salvo Cee-Lo Green and His Perfect Imperfections to majestic acclaim and miniscule sales. Soldiering forward he erupted a new volcano of tunes in 2004’s powerhouse Cee-Lo Green… is the Soul Machine.

The son of Atlanta ministers, Cee-Lo considers his many musical talents to be divinely inspired, and considers his albums to be gospel music. But he’s definitely the Lord of a new church, as he preaches, teaches, sings and blings his sermons.

Blessed with a greasy, nasal, vinyl elastic boom of a voice, he can croon with the best and battle-rap the rest, as he does in the alleyway rumble of “Glockapella”. Smoothly sliding from Cab Calloway class in “Evening News” to spoken word electronica in “I Am Selling Soul”, he’s so excited to show us the depth of his talent.

He rolls us his humble side in the crisp survival tale“Living Again”, and waxes his superego over the slamming cartoon waltz of “Childz Play”:

The young Cee, the one treats everything the sun seek
I’m hollering, can’t help, I’m hungry
I cake rap, bake rap, sack rap, trap rap
Same shoes, same shirt, the same work, the same jerk
Claim hurt, the game hurt, my name work, it ain’t work
I’m fast, time fast, I’m first, I’m last
Psychic, I knew you would like it, like this
I write this, priceless, more then my right wrist
Cock back, block track, the beat bleed, speak read
Men eat weed, bead seed, I speed read, you need me…

Yes I can sing, and I can rap
And I can act, and I can dance
And I can dress, sign of the best

And it’s not bragging if you can pull it off, right? This nearly flawless genre-hopping album even had the support of his label’s president…

THE FALLOUT: …who was fired soon after the albums’ release. Without support from the top Soul Machine fell off the charts like birdshot off an elderly hunter’s face. The next year Cee-Lo co-wrote and produced the Pussycat Dolls international hit song “Don’t Cha”, thereby proving that God works in mysterious ways.

Cee-Lo Green… is the Soul Machine is available worldwide from Amazon and you can sample tracks here:

Southern at the root but branching toward everywhere, Cee-Lo Green… is the Soul Machine is primed and powered to move your soul, your feet and your mind.

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: Garland Jeffrey’s bi-racial concept album, and why you haven’t heard it.

Burnt Sugar: Blood On The Leaf (2000) — now with podcast!

burntsugar_bloodontheleaf

Listen to an exclusive interview with Greg Tate, leader of Burnt Sugar.

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: Although best known for his wondrous music column in the Village Voice and for co-founding the Black Rock Coalition, Greg Tate is also the conductor for his genre-demolishing improvisational ensemble Burnt Sugar, whose first album is the heady and mesmerizing Blood on the Leaf. Inspired in part by Miles Davis’ freeform extravaganza Bitches Brew, Burnt Sugar births songs as living organisms, formed on the spot yet sounding uncannily like heavily practiced compositions.

This magic trick is the result of combining dozens of musicians from around the world, each bringing their unique slant to performance, and Tate’s use of Butch Morris’ Conduction System, by which one can “play” the orchestra members as one can play keys on a piano.

Which sounds downright bizarre if not next to impossible but, like hot sauce on a watermelon slice, Blood on the Leaf produces new flavors that would never otherwise exist.

Sonically Burnt Sugar reveals an endlessly inventive palette of textures, shifting from warmongering alien landings to chilled-out meditations, usually within the same song. Motifs vanish and return with new friends, sometimes dignified and dapper, sometimes troubled and frantic, and almost always funky.

Check out the interview and you can listen to Greg Tate discuss the challenges of promoting a Black orchestral improv group, their reception in Europe and their upcoming “R&B crossover album”.

Blood on the Leaf is available through Amazon and you can listen to tracks below:

Effortlessly emotional and three-dimensional, Blood on the Leaf sears into your veins like blood transfusion and charges you up with exotic quasi-legal nutrients.

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: Cee-Lo gets his freak flag dropped to half-mast.