Let’s take this acid jazz discussion home… I’ve tried to communicate what I like about the genre and what the limitations are. It’s also a label that seems to have become increasingly meaningless over the last 18 years. Mind you, I’m not following this on a daily basis. Every couple years, I’ll browse the “acid [...]
Acid Jazz Week: The Downside
So, what’s not to love about acid jazz as a genre? When the music broke out in the late Eighties, it was fairly well defined. The acts were either jazzy funk or soulful R&B. Then other influences crept in, such as hip-hop. It became more of a marketing term, which diffused the genre (as happens [...]
Acid Jazz Week: An attempt at definition
What is acid jazz? No, really… The liner notes for the compilation Phials of Acid Jazz say: It embraces retro funk, straight-ahead Latin, progressive ‘trip-hop’ and house. In some instances it’s not jazz at all, except in a loose sense. …jazz-influenced, funky, modern-with-a-rare-groove-vibe and directed at the mop-heads wearing out their Adidas Sambas on the [...]
Acid Jazz Week: Two Favorites
First things first. Acid jazz is a bogus label. It’s a joke. The story goes that British DJ Gilles Peterson, sometime around 1987, was shown an acid house record by another DJ. Peterson then proclaimed that what he played (a mix of Seventies jazz, funk and Latin) was “acid jazz.” So, it’s not really “acid,” [...]
Acid Jazz Week: Gettin’ Heavy
On the occasion of the new Brand New Heavies album Get Used To It, I’ll be presenting a look at the acid jazz genre. The core of the British band is Jan Kincaid (drums/keyboards), Simon Bartholomew (guitar) and Andrew Love Levy (bass/keyboards). Beginning in the mid-Eighties, they played a brand of instrumental funk in the [...]
“I’ll go in through the mouth…”
Back when I did my beloved (by me) week of Radiohead covers, I made a passing reference to acts in the College A Capella scene, with their attempts to hip up the material. But there’s a different approach. It could be one man. A man with a vision, a USB mic and a copy of [...]
Kill All Guitar Bands
Recently, a few record labels have contacted me with music. That’s cool. I’m happy to take a look at anything: your book, movie, magazine, comic book, whatever. I’ll warn you upfront, there’s no guarantee that anything will come of it. I like a lot of different stuff, but there’s no telling what I’ll cotton to [...]
More than this
As a follow-up to last week’s Year in Review, here’s an update to a post that continues to be popular. A few months ago, I posted a couple tracks from the latest Sergio Mendes album Timeless, which is a collaboration with will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas. I thought the album was okay and I [...]
Year One: Rising Tide
Wrapping up, here’s one last memory of my first year of blogging. Hurricane Katrina sticks deeply in my mind. I posted about it quite a lot. There were several posts that quoted from the classic Rising Tide, such as this one that gave a historical view and this one that looked at New Orleans’ racial [...]
Year One: Flickering Images and I flick at them
More pointless noodling, as I cast a look back at some posts from my first blogging year. Film and TV remain my big categories, after posting MP3s. I try to diversify, but I keep being pulled back in. The first substantial thing I wrote was this analysis of The Magnificent Ambersons. In this round-up of [...]