Last Friday I had the opportunity to guest host Rita Houston’s Whole Wide World free form radio show on WFUV. As is my habit when I fill in on the WWW, I cooked up a theme that would be enjoyable to explore. Last fall, it was my pleasure to interview Steven Van Zandt and host a session in which he played a pair of songs from his new album Soulfire. Of course THAT

was super cool. One of the songs that he played was Down in Out in New York City originally recorded by James Brown for the Black Caesar soundtrack.

What a dynamite song and a testament to Little Steven’s great taste and eclectic knowledge that he would cover it. In our conversation, he spoke about his love of Blaxploitation film soundtracks and he got me thinking that they may constitute a subgenre unto themselves. Arguably this is true as the artists charged with scoring these films achieved the desired cinematic quality by incorporating more elements associated with jazz, like the vibraphone, than in the R&B that was their bread and butter. The results were sometimes fantastic and I had big fun doing this show. As my knowledge of Blaxploitation is not encyclopedic and as the number of great tunes from them is clearly finite in any case, I mixed in some tunes generally regarded as psychedelic soul and funk that called out across the decades as being worthy companions for the ones from soundtracks.

Here’s the playlist:

Little Steven – Down and Out in New York City

James Brown – People Get Up and Drive Your Funky Soul

Curtis Mayfield – Superfly

Roy Ayers – Coffy is the Color

Bobby Womack – Across 110^th Street

Dennis Coffey – Theme from Black Belt Jones

Lyn Collins – Mama Feelgood

Earth Wind & Fire – Sweet Sweetback’s Theme

Marvin Gaye – Trouble Man

The Undisputed Truth – Smiling Faces Sometimes

Shuggie Otis – Aht Uh Mi Hed

The Isley Brothers – Get Into Something

Isaac Hayes – Theme From Shaft

Swamp Dogg – Total Destruction of Your Mind

Willie Hutch – Theme from Foxy Brown

Funkadelic – One Nation Under a Groove

Jimi Hendrix (Band of Gypsys) – Who Knows

Stevie Wonder – Maybe Your Baby

Sly & The Family Stone – Sing a Simple Song

The Impressions – Three the Hard Way

The Temptations – Ball of Confusion

The Chambers Brothers – Time Has Come Today

Joe Simon – Theme from Cleopatra Jones

The Four Tops – Are You Man Enough?

Herbie Hancock – Actual Proof

Curtis Mayfield – Freddie’s Dead

Musical Holiday Gift Ideas for 2015

So you need some musical holiday gift ideas for 2015 – no problemo!  I have donned Santa’s hat and sprawled many tasties on a table for your amusement and to make suggestions on what to buy for yourself or the music lover on your list.  From the king of Afrobeat Fela Kuti to Rage Against The Machine, we’ve got wax and discs of audio and video to inspire and delight.

The Bob Dylan Bootleg Series Volume 12: The Cutting Edge certainly yields some treasures for Zimmy enthusiasts.  This set offers alternate takes and other bric-a-brac from the Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde sessions.  If you’re writing a book on Dylan focusing on that period, maybe you’d want every note available on 18 CD’s!  If you’re hardcore, you’d likely go for the version on half a dozen CD’s.  I’m satisfied getting the best bits which are available on 2 CD’s and/or what I got – the 3 LP set which is packaged with the utmost affection.  I could say the same about the Spoon 10th anniversary re-issue of Gimme Fiction. 

The Sly and The Family Stone set offers both early and late shows recorded at Fillmore East, the storied joint on 2nd Avenue around 6th Street, in 1968.  The Who box set offers a DVD along with 2 CD’s in what could be their final live album, but I think I said that about Who’s Last in 1984.  Same format for Eric Clapton with a DVD/2 CD’s captured at Royal Albert Hall for his 70th birthday celebration.  I was lucky enough to catch one of the two Madison Square Garden shows that he played two weeks before the Royal Albert ones so I was especially pleased that it was recorded and released as Slowhand was in such sparkling form.  The Queen DVD is worth a peek and as far as Jazz goes, I can’t speak highly enough about the Miles Davis set covering 20 years of performances at Newport Jazz Festival.  It’s phenomenal.  The Weather Report and Jaco Pastorius soundtrack I’m just scratching the surface on, but these promise many hours of rewarding listening.

The Big Band Holidays disc by Wynton Marsalis and the fellas hits the spot, as does the Johnny Mathis box which has a few Christmas songs among the singles released between 1956 and 1981.  It’s a worthy collection on Johnny’s 80th birthday.  The Them compilation includes all the tracks on Angry Young Them (1965) and Them Again (1966) along with demos and what have you and it sounds great in remastered form.  Happy holidays!