Moldy Peaches' Dawson rides 'Juno' success & other: August 2008

Saturday 30 August 2008

Various Artists, Spirit Of Joy - Tales From The Polydor Underground 1967-1974

As every label attempts to crush that duplicate mileage out of back catalogues that have long lain inactive. In the 60ss and 70s to the highest degree majors, in bid to avoid looking like 'the man' put out the left field chancers and genuine avant garde rock on subsidiary imprints with cooler name calling and logos. In recent years there have been a some great attempts to represent such labels like Vertigo, Decca's collection of freakery from Deram and EMI's Harvest label amongst others.

Which brings us to Spirit of Joy: Polydor's prime underground mark was Chris Stamp and Kit Lambert's Track Records, and much of this box plant comes from there. As so often happens with such collections the auditor not only comes out with a head-spinningly diverse collection of tunes in their ears, but likewise a grand sense of how broad-minded the so-called 'corporations' of the 60s and early 70s were. For every sure-fire dispatch such as This Wheel's On Fire - Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity or Thunderclap Newman's Something In The Air (penned by Pete Townshend, so maybe not such a gamble after all) you get the crazed sounds of Aphrodite's Child or Second Hand.

Spirit Of joy journeys from the nascent psych of Arthur Brown's still-brilliant Fire! (here appropriately prefaced by its manic spoken word of honor prologue) fillet en route for some genuine rarities such as Soft Machine's first individual, Feelin' Reelin' Squealin', the early work of Fairport Convention on It's Alright Ma, It's Only Witchcraft , recorded when they were still the UK's answer to Jefferson Airplane, along with large hitters like Cream and Eric Burdon and The Animals. Notable points are Caravan's start forays, Van Der Graaf Generator - when they still sounded like a normal pop band - and a truly genius inclusion of The Who's lovely upbeat Dogs; the best strain about greyhounds, ever.

By saucer two you've moved into blues rock with Rory Gallagher's Taste and Jethro Tull stomping around, as well as the agit prop rock of Ladbroke Grove's Pink Fairies. Highlights include a post-Cream Jack Bruce, former Tangerine Dream and an out-there electric John Mclaughlin. And on disc trey it's about time for prog, with Barclay James Harvest and the not-so-tasty Golden Earring. However there's still elbow room for some challenging krautrock with faust and more great jazz rock from Jack Bruce again.

It's a heady rush of that sits on the cusp of failure, simply by dint of the fact that too many bands hither actually 'made it' and escaped the titular underground. But as with today's redundant 'indie' label, it's just a word. What's on declare oneself is wide-ranging, intriguing and still pretty damn far out. That's joyous enough for near music lovers.

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Wednesday 20 August 2008

Download Curtis Mayfield mp3

Artist: Curtis Mayfield: mp3 download

   Genre(s):

R&B: Soul

Discography:

Mayfield: Remixed

Year: 2005

Tracks: 10

New World Order

Year: 1996

Tracks: 13

There's No Place Like America Today

Year: 1975

Tracks: 7

Curtis-Live (Remastered)

Year: 1971

Tracks: 18

Curtis (Deluxe Edition)

Year: 1971

Tracks: 17

Perhaps because he didn't queer o'er to the pop audience as to a great extent as Motown's stars, it may be that the background of Curtis Mayfield's talents and contributions assume in clock time to be in broad accepted. Judged just by his records lone, the man's legacy is tremendous. As the leader of the Impressions, he recorded some of the finest mortal vocal mathematical group euphony of the sixties. As a solo creative person in the seventies, he helped pioneer funk and helped innovate hard-hitting urban commentary into mortal music. "Gypsy Woman," "It's All Right," "Citizenry Get Ready," "Freddie's Dead," and "Superfly" are only the to the highest grade noted of his many hit records.

Just Curtis Mayfield wasn't just a isaac Merrit Singer. He wrote most of his material at a time when that was not the norm for soul performers. He was among the number 1 -- if not the very first -- to speak openly about African-American pride and community struggle in his compositions. As a ballad maker and a producer, he was a francis Scott Key architect of Chicago soul, writing material and functional on sessions by notable Windy City soulsters like Gene Chandler, Jerry Butler, Major Lance, and Billy Butler. In this sense, he can be compared to Smokey Robinson, world Health Organization likewise managed to find metre to write and bring forth many classics for other someone stars. Mayfield was too an excellent guitar player, and his rolling, Latin-influenced lines were highlights of the Impressions' recordings in the '60s. During the side by side tenner, he would toughen up his guitar cultivate and production, incorporating some of the best features of psychedelic rock and blue funk.

Mayfield began his career as an comrade of Jerry Butler, with whom he formed the Impressions in the late '50s. After the Impressions had a openhanded hit in 1958 with "For Your Precious Love," Butler, world Health Organization had sung lede on the record, rent to start a solo calling. Mayfield, while safekeeping the Impressions together, continued to write for and tour with Butler earlier the Impressions got their showtime Top 20 attain in 1961, "Gypsy Woman."

Mayfield was heavily steeped in gospel medicine before he entered the pop arena, and gospels, as easily as doo wop, influences would form conspicuously in most of his '60s work. Mayfield wasn't a staunch traditionalist, however. He and the Impressions may have ofttimes worked the call-and-response gospel singing style, just his songs (romanticist and differently) were a great deal veiled or unveiled messages of grim superbia, reflecting the increased trust and self-determination of the African-American community. Musically he was an trailblazer as well, victimization arrangements that employed the punchy, blaring horns and Latin-influenced rhythms that came to be earmark flourishes of Chicago soul. As the staff manufacturer for the OKeh judge, Mayfield was likewise instrumental in loaning his talents to the work of other Chi-town soul singers world Health Organization went on to national success. With Mayfield singing lead and playing guitar, the Impressions had 14 Top 40 hits in the sixties (phoebe made the Top 20 in 1964 alone), and released some above-average albums during that menses as well.

Disposed Mayfield's prodigious talents, it was mayhap inevitable that he would eventually leave the Impressions to start a solo calling, as he did in 1970. His showtime few singles boasted a harder, more than funk-driven intelligent; singles care "(Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Below, We're All Gonna Go" ground him confronting ghetto life with a naive realism that had seldom been heard on record. He really didn't arrive at his artistic or commercial stride as a solo artist, though, until Superfly, his soundtrack to a 1972 blaxploitation plastic film. Drug deals, ghetto shootings, the death of cy Young blackened workforce earlier their time: all were described in keen detail. Yet Mayfield's irrepressible falsetto vocals, uplifting melodies, and mythic casimir Funk pop arrangements gave the oft-moralizing material a elegant strength that few others could receive achieved. For all the glory of his past times work, Superfly stands as his crowning accomplishment, not to credit a much-needed counterpoint to the scandalmongering portrayals of the plastic film itself.

At this percentage point Mayfield, along with Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, was the foremost proponent of a new level of compelling auteurism in soul. His nonstarter to exert the standards of Superfly qualifies as one of the majuscule disappointments in the history of black democratic music. Perhaps he'd only reached his extremum later a longsighted climb, just the remain of his '70s work didn't match the musical brilliance and lyrical subtleties of Superfly, although he had a few heavy R&B hits in a a good deal more conventional nervure, such as "Kung Fu," "So in Love," and "Only You Babe."

Mayfield had a couple of hits in the early '80s, but the decennium generally found his commercial fortunes in a firm downward spiral, despite some intermittent albums. On August 14, 1990, he became paralytic from the neck down when a lighting turnout hide on top of him at a concert in Brooklyn, NY. In the mid-'90s, a couple of tribute albums consisting of Mayfield covers appeared, with contributions by such superstars as Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen, and Gladys Knight. Though no backup man for the man himself, these tributes served as an meter reading of the tremendous regard in which Mayfield was still held by his peers. He died December 26, 1999 at the age of 57.

Download Franco De Vita mp3