This week’s tune might seem a bit obvious, but don’t be a Grinch! Vince Guaraldi’s buoyant writing and playing style is exemplified on this one. If you like his stuff he did for this show, you should definitely check out his other works. His discography is as varied as it is wonderful. A healthy dose of Brasilian influence as well as pseudo choral works all sit beside some of that laid back bay area style. Not a jazz-head favorite, but his first full-length with his trio is worth a spin. Happy holidays!
We’ve got another intense live performance this week. This time it’s the Talking Heads from their masterpiece concert film “Stop Making Sense”. Part of the brilliance of this film is the structure of it. Everything builds from the beginning: the staging, the band, the lighting, the performance. This song is the apex of the structure’s arc. The dramatic lighting and vocal swells give this a haunting, almost religious, feel while the driving rhythm helps propel you towards the second half of the film. Apologies for the closed caption clip, but this seems to be the finest sound and video quality available for now. Feel free to sing along! If you dig it and haven’t seen the whole film, DO IT NOW!
Creative sampling is definitely a cornerstone of the Spacey King sound and here is a perfect example. In the late 80s De La Soul and producer Prince Paul came out of the Long Island suburbs and disrupted hip hop culture. Throwing away the tough guy antics of gun posturing and boasting De La embraced flowers, doves, inclusivity and creativity. On their debut album they sampled Hall and Oates and Steely Dan while rhyming about relationships and being oneself. They were labeled as “hippies” and “punks” by the media and Hiphop World. This pidgeon-holing did not sit well with the group and they subsequently released their second, and angriest, album “De La Soul is Dead”. Here we take a listen to the first proper track off that release. It features a dizzying array of samples, including an expertly flipped Tom Waits bassline. If you like this kind of production definitely check the rest of their discography as well as Prince Paul’s!
We’ll pick up the energy here with The Who really going off in a television studio setting. Here they do their first rock and roll opera, “A Quick One (While He’s Away), a predecessor to their classic “Tommy” long player. It would seem this is before excess became much of an issue for their members. Energy positively seethes through Townsend and Moon. I think they were perhaps trying to make an impression amongst the amazing group of musicians in the studio: Brian Jones-era Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Taj Mahal, Mitch Mitchell and John Lennon with Yoko to name a few! You may recognize the end of the song from a particularly memorable scene from the film “Rushmore”, or maybe you saw this back in the day in the Who clip film, “The Kids are Alright”. If you didn’t YOU ARE FORGIVEN.
The holidays are coming up fast and everyone needs a little break from the family and social obligations at times. Give yourself 40 minutes to take in this remix, the longest one we’ve ever heard. This is straight from The Orb’s heyday with a proper mix of ambient, dance and reggae music. Guaranteed to refresh and rejuvenate the mind, body and spirit!
This week we’ll take another classic band and showcase a different shade of tune from them. “Faith In This Colour” was the B side to “Is There Something I Should Know?”, which was a very intentional (and successful) attempt to have a #1 hit in the UK. Duran keyboardist Nick Rhodes had just produced the #1 “Too Shy” by his initial band signing, Kajagoogoo. Well, Nick must’ve been on some high octane fuel at this time, because this B side is almost exclusively his production. While drums and guitar are present, it’s not obvious whether or not they or played or sampled. Nick went on to become a master of the computerized samplers and synths of the era. It is very likely he formulated this song all on his own with such technology. This song also presents lots of signposts for future singles off the third Duran Duran LP, “Seven and The Ragged Tiger” (“Union of the Snake” and “New Moon on Monday”, namely). Compared to other Duran Duran instrumental numbers, this is the most upbeat and groovy, so dig in!
Hello and welcome to a new weekly feature on the site: the Tune of the Week. Here we will be focusing on some influences on the Spacey King sound as well as some good, clean fun.
This week we shine a light on a bit of an oddity from the Depeche Mode catalog. By the time “Master and Servant” came out in May of 1984 Depeche had racked up seven top 20 singles in the UK. With this success came more product, including bonus 12”s for singles. In this case they decided to take a chance and recruited UK reggae pioneer and studio wizard Adrian Sherwood to not only provide a hardcore remix for “Master and Servant”, but also this demented take on their previous smash “People Are People”.
“People Are People” is an incredibly dense production, with over two dozen layers of samples and sounds. Sherwood takes a few of these a intersperses them with sound experiments he had been conjuring for contemporary African Head Charge productions. Not only does this predict his subsequent industrial productions for the likes of Ministry and Nine Inch Nails, but also predates the 90s remix culture wherein artists such as Aphex Twin and Brian Eno would almost completely ignore the original material and provide a much more abstract interpretation of a song.
BOP BOP BOP!
