the doors – live in hollywood 1969

So, the other week I got my best friend a thank you gift for inviting my fiance and me to Hawaii.  It was the early 90′s vinyl release of Yard Boy Ten’s – Play It Fire 12.”  It is super rare (only 500 were pressed) and no one to my knowledge has ever digitized it, and Drew has been searching for a cpoy for ten years.  So I snagged a copy off some kid in Germany.

So the German kid mails if off to me, but sends it Deutch Post…which would be fine except for the fact that the whole website is in German and I can’t figure out how to track the package. No biggie, I figure.  It’ll get here when it gets here.

A week and a half later, I get a note in my mailbox.  “Dear Resident…blah blah blah, Sorry we missed you…blah blah.  Please pick up your package at the Post Office.

Sounds good, right?  So I head to the Post Office, receipt in hand, to pick it up,  I hand the guy behind the counter the slip and he disappears in back to find it.  Ten minutes later he reappears.

“I can’t find it.”

“What do you mean you can’t find it?”

He shrugs and tells me it’s not there, and suggests I call the central Postal annex.  I do, and I talk to the supervisor who says “Why are you calling us?  We don’t hold packages.”

I leave my name and phone number with the guy and wait. After three days , I check again and he still can’t find it.  Now I’m really pissed.  Not only have they lost the gift, but they lost a RARE gift that took me ten years to find!!!  I call the post master and leave a message, but she never calls me back.

Finally, in desperation, I leave a note for my mail carrier. While she doesn’t know where it is, she suggests I try the Marina Del  Rey Post Office.

I head over there the next day. The lady there listens to my story, but insists that the package isn’t there. She repeats over and over in broken English that anything that shows up there for another city gets sent back.  I beg her to check anyways.  She sighs and trundles off into the back.  Lo and behold, she returns two minutes later with my package.

“Here it is. I saw this the other day and set it aside…and then I forgot about it…ha ha!”

Very funny motherfucker.  So the moral is fuck the post office.  If they lose your shit, you got to find it your self.

Speaking of great  finds, you gotta go grab this recording of The Doors – Live in Hollywood, 1969. (Note: This is the Aquarius Theater recordings and not the Live at the Hollywood Bowl show)

Now, I have a few live Doors shows and most of them are okay…so when I saw this I wasn’t exactly jumping up and down.  That is until I heard it.  Culled from the legendary July 69 performances that gave us many recognizable live recordings of the Doors like “Universal Mind” and “You Make Me Real.”

This was only a month after Jim’s famous Miami incident where he supposedly exposed himself to an out of control audience…so at the time you never knew if you’d get one of the best shows of your life or a massive riot.  This show was not one of the riots though, and the band is so ON, it’s amazing.  Opening with a searing rendition of “Back Door Man” and finishing with a twelve minute rendition of “Light My Fire” this is THE live Doors album to own.

Hell, this is The Doors album to own period.

It’s only $11 on Amazon (on import) which isn’t bad…

The J.B.’s – Funky Good Time Anthology

These days you’d think business’s would be falling over them selves to take your money, especially with the American economy in the shitter.  Alas my experiences with another home improvement store have proven me wrong yet again.

So my girlfriend and I head down to Irvine at the end of May to finally purchase the new vanity set I wanted from The Great Indoors.  I tell the sales guy I have cash and I’m ready to buy,  which I figure will be music to his ears.  He takes down a list of my products and disappears in back.  A half an hour later he’s looking at the computer and telling me he can’t find any of the pieces I want and asks if I can just come back later in the week.

Irvine is no where near close to my house, so he agrees to call me a few days later.  He doesn’t.  I call his worthless ass and he tells me they don’t have any of the pieces I want.

“Anywhere???” I ask.

“Nope” he says.

So now I figure this pathetic excuse for a salesman probably hates his job and doesn’t care about anyone or anything.  So I decide to go online.  Order from the website and let the central warehouse take care of things, but apparently this was problematic for the company as well.

It’s been just about a month now since I placed that order, and still no product.  From what I can tell, no one at the company has any idea what they have or where they have it…and if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m obsessively compulsive about getting what I want, I haven’t canceled the order yet.

Yet.

(UPDATE: I canceled it.  Go Lowes!)

Speaking of getting everything you want, do you want some James Brown?

Of course you do…you’re only human.

But the Godfather has so many albums and collections, it’s hard to know where to start.  Thankfully the folks at Polygram Records realized this was a problem back in 1995 and decided that instead of focusing on James (too easy) they should focus on what was undeniably his funkiest and most badass backing band of all time.  I give you The J.B.’s – Funky Good Time Anthology.

That isn’t to say James doesn’t appear on this collection, because his voice and his fingerprints are all over this collection which covers mostly the band’s early 1970′s sounds.  But it also goes beyond that to include a lot of rarities (James TV show theme song ‘Future Shock!’) and material from band members side outfits like Maceo and The Macks or The Last Word.

This is funk in it’s purest form.  Although vocals appear on a great many of these tracks, the majority is instrumental and what a collection of instrumentals it is.  I dug deep into the vaults of youtube to try and give you the best idea of what you’ll find in Funky Good Time, but nothing can really do it justice.

Go get it people!!!

And keep an eye out!

Kutiman – ThruYOU

I was walking down second street with my lady the other week when we spotted this nutterholding a sign that said something along the lines of “REPENT!  GOD KILLS!”  Then there was some sort of website you could visit for more insanity I guess.

While I admired his guts to just stand on the street corner and let his freak flag fly, I was also amused with the flip side of the sign that read “Little Wayne is the Antichrist!”  Now, I can’t say I like Little Wayne’s musical stylings that much…but the antichrist?

Really?

You’ve probably heard me deride the current state of hip hop, and I think Little Wayne may be a part of said problem.  But as I’ve always said…DJ’s invented hip hop, and it’s the DJ’s who will save it.  And my newest DJ savior comes to us in the form of Israeli DJ Kutiman.  Yeah I know taht for most of the Internets, this is not new news, but for me this is what this site is all about.

See, original hip hop was all about taking something old and making something completely new from it.  That’s the essence of hip hop.  Now, I’ve been waiting for something like this to come along since I first heard of the advent of DVD turntables…and more recently the new video functionality on Serato.  But Kutiman gets the proverbial X-Prize for reaching the mountaintop first…with his groundbreaking work ThruYou.

Kutiman, real name Ophir Kutiel,  has been making electronic  music for some time now.  He grew up playing music …mostly classical jazz until college radio and a friend introduced him to AfrobBeat and Funk…I have his earlier work and it’s pretty funky. So anyhow he was hanging out…putting together some tracks, just chillin when he realized he needed a bass line.  Not wanting the prepackaged sounds of the music programs on hand, he decided to take a look on YouTube.

If you’ve spent an obscene amount of time on YouTube, you may have seen some of these videos.  Just some guy and a camera giving a music lesson, jamming solo or something of the like.  The site is lousy with em. So anyways, he finds his bass clip..and he’s pretty stoked on it.  Then he realizes he needs a drum track and heads back to YouTube when it struck him…

Why go anywhere else?  Here it all was.  Videos of people from all over playing, jamming, singing…and he had the editing software that could tie it all together into a cohesive whole!

Compiled and produced over the course of two months, it was Ophir’s secret project.  He planned on having a big debut, sending out links to only twenty of his friends.  But his friends were not good at keeping a secret…and once something is on the web…it’s pretty much there to stay.  Through Twitter, Facebook and email it spread.

For me, ThruYOU is more than an album, but in experiment in almost global collaboration.  He gave credit to every single artist he used…and so far none have complained about the attention. This album simply couldn’t have existed fifteen years ago…it couldn’t exist without YouTube and it couldn’t exist without the Internet. Even  as I sit here writing about it, I’m adding a little bit more to the project.

What’s more is that it’s an album that isn’t meant to be owned…it simply exists on the Internet.  It belongs to everyone.

ThruYOU is one of those things that arrives incidentally one day and shows you just how far we’ve come…and how much farther we have to go.  I hope it sets off a brush fire of new music and collaboration.  It can only mean good things for us all.

Young Holt Unlimited – On Stage

Welcome everyone to the 100th post here at Albums Everyone Should Own, I’m so glad you could make it! Did you remember to bring beer?

No?  Well, there’s still time to run to AM/PM.

You know, it was only seven months ago that I started this blog with a hope to not only fill the dead space during our off season, but to inform the general public of fucking awesome music that they need.  Along they way, I’ve tried to give props to the great albums out there that most people know about, but also to some albums that not everyone knows…records that may have slipped through the cracks.

So far, I think it’s going pretty well.

I’d like to take the time to thank those bloggers who have supported my cause, so shouts out to CorrinaCorrina, What The Deuce, And Ya Don’t Stop and The Musics Over for all the great linkage.  Come on down to my bar sometime and the drinks are on me.

But, I’d also like to take the time to thank you, the anonymous Internet reader for allowing me an audience.  If it weren’t for all the hits, I probably would have lost interest long ago and gone back to my other job…drinking until I can’t feel feelings.

So keep on visiting, and I’ll keep throwing up the bomb for all who care enough to dig for it. And speaking of digging, I dug up some dusty soul jazz grooves for you today by the name of Young-Holt Unlimited with their 1967 live release “On Stage.”

Drummer Isaac ‘Red” Holt and Bassist Eldee Young were a part of the famous Ramsey Lewis Trio in the early sixties where they had a hand in creating two of Lewis’s biggest hits of the day ‘The In Crowd’ and ‘Hang On Sloopy.’ In 1966, though, they left the group to pursue their own direction and hooked up with pianist Hysear Don Walker in 1966 to form The Young-Holt Trio.

Said trio only made one album, titled after their only hit ‘Wack Wack,’ after which Hysear left the group.  After a period with Ken Chaney on Piano, he was replaced by Floyd Morris and the group became Young-Holt Unlimited.  There seems to be some confusion as to when this happened, as all the information I’ve found says the name change didn’t happen until 1968, but our album “On Stage” was released in 1967 and clearly names the group as Young-Holt Unlimited…but then again does it really fucking matter?

No, but I’m a little hung over from celebrating, and it makes me testy.

(If you’ve heard of Young-Holt, it’s probably because of their famous backing track to the Barbara Acklin hit ‘Am I The Same Girl?’ Their arrangement was so hot that the group also released it as an instrumental called ‘Soulful Strut’ with Floyd’s piano replacing the vocals.)

I’ve always loved the soul jazz genre because it had a much smoother sound than the jazz funk era that was to come, and while it had a good run, I’ve always felt they could have dome more.  This is pretty self evident considering the raw energy captured in “On Stage.”  The recording captures more than the music, but also the feel of the famous Bohemian Cavern in which it was recorded …right down to the band’s banter with the audience and the screams of delight from the crowd. No track displays this better than the medley of ‘Wade In The Water/ Ain’t There Something That Money Can’t Buy,’ part of which you’ll hear above.

Truth be told, I’m not that thrilled with their version of Mellow Yellow, but the monster ‘Yon Gimme Thum’ that closes the set pretty much seals the deal for me anyways.

I got introduced to these guys in college and their Greatest Hits album was a staple of our pool room/bar/garage hangout for the three years that we had it.  This album is highly recommended to people who have hangouts and the folks that like to hang out in them.  Grab it HERE!

And next time bring beer.

Curtis Mayfield – Curtis/Live!

You know what sucks about Curtis Mayfield…aside from the fact that he’s dead?

What sucks is that a man with such talent and skill is only known for one album.  Really, most act as if he simply appeared, made “Superfly,” and promptly disappeared from the face of the earth.

This isn’t to imply that “Superfly” isn’t a superior album, because it is.  What bothers me is that it’s a poor representation of a much larger and more expansive career.  I find it reminiscent of the people who claim to be Bob Marley fans, but only own “Legend.”

Most people are unaware that Curtis’s career started in 1956, when he dropped out of High School to join The Roosters with the Brooks brothers, Richard and Arthur, and Jerry Butler.  It was two years later that they would become The Impressions when they added Sam Gooden to their line up.  When Butler left the group, Curtis suddenly found himself the lead singer and began composing for the band, a talent that would become his vocation for the rest of his career since he ended up being extremely good at it.

Mayfield also became known for his falsetto singing style and unique guitar tuning.  Word has it that he tuned his guitar to the open F-sharp of the black piano keys, giving him a sound that set him apart from th rest of the pack.  Why?  Because he was a bad ass!

As the sixties moved on, The Impressions gained in popularity due to Mayfield’s ability to infuse his work with social commentary. He also began to extend his songwriting career, penning hits for Jerry Butler and The 5 Stairsteps to name a few.  And to top it all off, he was now the owner of the Mayfield and Windy C labels.

Curtis Mayfield was a one man music industry.

In 1970 Mayfield left The Impressions and started yet another label, called Curtom, that would become home to such soul luminaries as The Staple Singers, Leroy Hutson and Baby Huey as well as releasing Mayfield’s solo works…like “Superfly.”

But before all that happened, Curtis played at New York’s Bitter End Club in 1971 and released his first live recording from the tapes.  Accompanied by a stripped down band and playing in such an intimate setting allows Mayfield’s work to shine in a way that nearly eclipses the work he would continue to do in the years leading up to that tragic accident that would leave him paralyzed for the rest of his life.

Consisting of songs written both for his years with The Impressions and material from his first solo work “Curtis” (released a year earlier,) “Curtis/Live” brims with a warmth and intimacy that most acoustic sets can only hope to achieve. Songs like ‘Stare and Stare,’ ‘Gypsy Woman’ and ‘Mighty Mighty’ find new life outside of their original orchestral arrangements and draw you into the experience like you were there at The Bitter End yourself.

Originally released as a double LP set with 12 tracks, the 2000 re-release on Rhino felt it necessary to add bonus tracks that included ‘Superfly’ as if to remind people who they were listening to.

But after listening to this album, you’ll never need reminding again.