Library of Vinyl Experience

When you have thousands of records, moving day is time of reckoning. Its the day when all those Sunday thrift store purchases come home to roost. Its the day when you wonder whether all those doubles are really necessary. Its the day when mp3s start to make sense. Its the day when you wish you had hired the cast of Ben Hur instead of the three skinny movers who just arrived from the former Soviet Union only to find themselves trapped in a different kind of gulag.

But when you are moving into a 2000 sq. foot chicken loft,  its all worth it in the end. And that’s just what we did.

Last weekend, we moved our base of operations to the legendary Chicken Loft in Cambridge. More on that soon. But we are already off to a good start. On the very first day, as we sat and sipped a bottle of Wayne’s home made wine, he looked down at his tweetyphone and exclaimed with shock and honor, “holy shit guys, MIT just saved my life”. He learned he had been selected as an MIT Mellon Fellow. Congrats Wayne. Auspicious beginnings.

Control+Alt+Delete. Talk to you again as soon as I unpack!

As many of you know, I’ve been workin’ on an article about the history of Boston’s early rap scene for better than a year now. Its finally off to the press and I’ll certainly post it as soon as it hits the streets (if not sooner). A big part of the project was locating (and visiting!) the legendary Lecco’s Lemma tapes.

Back in the fall of 1985, DJ/painter and local music legend Magnus started a rap and electronic music show on Saturday afternoons at WMBR in Cambridge, MA. In addition to being one of the earliest rap shows in the country (which puts him in the company of folks like Mr. Magic and Red Alert), it was the first in the Bean to feature local artists regularly. As a result, it was the hub of the Hub’s earliest rap scene. Shows like Beat Street were soon to follow, but Magnus was a critical pioneer and superfan who helped to launch the careers of artists like Gangstarr, The Almighty RSO, Edo G, Big Chuck, etc. To this day, he refers to the regular attendees as “the kids” and he loved them like an older brother. Based on the interviews I did, the love and respect still flows back to Magnus from everyone who remembers the show.

According to folks like Rusty Pendleton (whose legendary Funky Fresh Records is in danger of closing - so go by a cd y’all!!!), the Lecco’s Lemma show was THE SPOT to be back in the day. He should know. After all, he was rocking the decks with his TOES back at the Talent Nights while the New Kids took notes in the background!

Still don’t believe a PhDJ/professor of management? (I don’t blame you really). Check out D. Scribe’s words on the matter from back in 2005. Or how ’bout a post from my very own early bloggy days with critical history from Type 4 and Magnus himself chiming in. For that matter, head on over to the Lecco’s Lemma page Matt put up with streamin audio and all!

The amazing thing about Magnus is that he saves everything (everything good that is). Over the years, whispered words of a lost Lecco’s Lemma tape archive were passed around among Boston hip hop junkies but no one had ever seen them or knew whether they existed for sure…until now.

Last year I was honored to visit my old friend Magnus in his lab in rural Maine and see the Lecco’s Lemma tapes. (More on the visit soon as its a story in itself). Sitting above his equally legendary collection of reggae 45’s, the three wooden wine boxes contained a litteral treasure trove of early Boston rap tapes! The first one I opened knocked me off my chair.

That hand written tape on the top says “This one’s called she’s a mutt by Edo Rock of the FTI crew”. OMG! There was Guru’s “For Magnus” tape when he was just back from college and appearing as MC Kiethy E. Right up front was Malden’s Top Choice, there was TDS Mob’s whole TAPE (!?!) on Race Records, a hand made demo tape of Boston Goes Def…and on…and on…until the break of dawn. I spent a sleepless night surrounded by Magnus’s psychedelic bio-mechanical paintings taping everything I could in 12 hours. (If you look below, you might notice that my portable protools rig is connected to…what’s that? No, no, not the cool ass reel to reel. Try the 1/8″ jack of the ca. 1989 “all in one” stereo Magnus pulled out for the purpose! More on that later)

I’ll be sharing some of the gems in all their hiss and glory this Monday night at Beat Research at the Enormous Room in Cambridge, MA.(567 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA)

The Lecco’s Lemma listening party goes from 9:30-10:00 at which point, Flack, Wayne and I will trade sets. You can be sure mine’s gonna have plenty of classic Beantown tracks in it (along with a healthy dose of the random dancefloor killers I have collected over the years).

As promised, MUM ripped a hole in the funkiverse last Saturday night. My favorite moment? A toss up between Todd showing up in a space suit with a can of Tang (?) and the bikers showing up late night with a chopper rigged up with a disco ball on a rotating 10″ high pole.

There is a short video here.

Keeping in the video domain, there is a Scion-sponsored screening of the new documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad this Tues Sep 2 from 9pm-12am at the Coolidge Corner Cinema in Brookline. A documentary on an Iraqi heavy metal band complete with a DJ (the ever ill Jayceeoh), drinks and free admission with just an RSVP to Scion. Can you beat it?

With the 1980’s in full comeback mode people seem to be feelin’ the vocoder, synth bass and double claps again. What they may not remember is that back in the early 1980’s Boston was a hotbed of synth-driven funk with groups like the Jonzun Crew, Dwayne Omarr and Starr’s Computer Band pumping out heavy electro grooves. (That’s not even mentioning Planet Patrol and Boston native Arthur Baker’s collaboration with Afrika Bambaataa on the seminal b-boy anthem Planet Rock). In honor of all the Beantown funk originators, I give you the Beantown Boogie Mix - a collection of (mostly) 1980’s Boston electrofunk, boogie and breaks that is sure to get the party movin’. All the labels are up at my flickr site if you want to see what’s in there. Of course, if you want to do an 1980’s mix, you are gonna get some cheeze in there. All I can tell you is that this is a funkalicious dish of historical Boston synth-funk that’s loaded with plenty of the vocoder, synth bass and hand claps that made the 80’s so special. The mix ends with a little something special from my man Mc Spice from WAY back in the day! Yes TOUCH fans, Spice was rockin the mic back in the Bean in 1986. Stay tuned for more Boston rap history…but for now, Let’s Boogie!

I’ll be dropping some of these tracks at the upcoming Project MUM party in Somerville, MA on August 23 along with a bunch of dirty disco, electroclash and whatever other space age funk I dig out of the crates. Get your shiny track suit out of the closet and come pop and lock your way back to the future with myself, DJ Flack, Yamin and Axel Foley. That’s just outside Union Square under the McGrath O’Brien bridge in Somerville, MA.

Last week I brought Chalfen some 78s that washed up in a Quincy yard sale (thanks for the tip Franc). His first e-mail after the fact concluded “thanx for the wild-ass stash of wax obscuranta; i hope you realize you’ve revolutionized the field of Boston proto-jass”. Wha?
His latest continues…
“dr. so far no mention of The Ormsby Disc or Boston Talking Machine Exchange,
but both songs are dated 1904 and by known ragtime era composers:
Make A Fuss Over Me
Music: Theodore f. Morse
Words: Edw. Madden
Madden was later busted for a ’song-poem’ scam where submitted ‘lyrics’ were added to music, for a price - there’s a whole website dedicated to the form
“What’s the Matter With the Mail?”
Music: Percy Wenrich
Words: Fred J. Hamill (also the publisher)
Wenrich was known as ‘the Ragtime Kid’ and wrote Put On Your Old Grey Bonnet and other hits. so far no boston connection to either tune or composer.”

Mysterious. Boston. Ragtime??

He’s referring to this rather mysterious pair of 78’s that turned up at a garage sale in Quincy. The elderly gentleman having it was some kind of collector finally ridding himself of the detritus of his career. Of course, I asked if he had any records. After producing a smattering of random rock 45″s, I asked if he had any older records. “You mean 78’s? Someone took a hundred yesterday.” Not expecting to find anything left, I had to give one look and found an apparently untouched stash in the garage, well out of reach. These (apparently) rare discs contain Ragtime from Boston in the (last) oughts. More on this one as it emerges. For now, check the audio (click the records above) and the pics from the night we first heard them.

Yup. You read it right. Another incredible find from Rob Chalfen (local archivist and itinerant Jazz historian). This one is so amazing, I could not sleep on it.

James Resse Europe was one of the first African American musicians on record and was a critical link in the transition from Ragtime to Jazz in the early part of the last century. A less well known fact is how two ragtime dancers, Irene and Vernon Castle, contributed to the development of Jazz by broadly exposing Europe’s music to white society audiences.

Reading Eileen Southern’s foundational The Music of Black Americans, it becomes clear that African American bands were the performers of choice for dance parties starting at the very beginning of the republic. Nothing much had changed by the time the Castles got back from Europe where they had been performing their diluted, African American derived Ragtime dances to society audiences in 1911-12. Upon returning to the states and hearing James Reese Europe’s unique brand of stompin’ and swerving ragtime (aka proto Jazz) in 1913, they decided to team up. This combination of high society dancers performing “cleaned up” African American derived dances to the stomp and swerve of Europe’s Society Orcestra was to become an irresistable combination. It led to national tours and the first recording of an African American Orchestra by a major record label among other important firsts.

It also led to a film reel made in 1914 called Social and Theatrical Dancing and the publication of a dance instruction book called Modern Dancing later that year. As ever, Europe’s Society Orchestra provided the music. Just a little while ago, Chalfen found the book. In it are plates of the Castles doing some of their famous dances, including the Castle Walk. In the background is Europe’s Society Orchestra.

Ever the Ragtime Quasi-Experimentalists, we realized that if we animated these plates, we could create a short film of Europe’s Society Orchestra performing in 1914. And that’s just what we did friends! While its kind of badly registered, the animation below gives you some feel for the vibe in the room. Amazingly, you can even see the fiddle player bowing. If you listen to this Europe’s Society Orchestra Castle Twofer.mp3 which contains two songs Europe wrote for the Castles around that time (”Castle House Rag - The Castle’s in Europe” and “Castle Walk”), you get an even better sense.

I hope to do more with these plates soon (like scan them properly rather than photograph them with my little digital camera). But for now, enjoy this rare look at one of the most important musical/dance combos in history.

Being a data junkie, I decided to do a little more research on what appears to be a national trend in record store closings. No big surprise, but the news is not good.

Here’s a chart I made from some data I dug up in Plunkett’s Entertainment and Media Industry Almanac (Jan 17, 2002).

The chart looks at the changes in where people purchased music over the last decade of the 20th century. Notice that the trend line for record stores is dramatically down. I find it particularly interesting that the trend began well before the internet crept in in the late 1990’s. Looking at the growth of the “other stores” category, it makes me think that there are actually two intersecting trends going on. One is the general trend toward buying everything at big megastores and the other is the gradual decline of record sales generally. While much more data is required to draw any conclusions about causality, the basic trend looks pretty undeniable to me.

Luckily, none of this will affect the hardcore diggers who seem to find piles where none should exist.

Sorry I have been so sour of late. Let me lighten the mood with a little thing I have been thinkin about for a while. Of course, it has a Mojo connection too. So let me start there.

Bhind the counter on the wall, Mojo used to have a great collection of Whipped Cream and Other Delights knockoff records. The original Herb Albert album has become iconic among record people, partly because of its omnipresence and partly because, well, it has the super sexy picture of Dolores Erikson covered in whipped cream on the front. This is the record that is virtually guaranteed to appear in every pile of records that you ever encounter. From the sheer frequency of its appearance, it seems that everyone in the 1960’s must have had a copy (if not two). According to this chronology, not everyone bought it, but a whole lot did. In 1966, “Herb Alpert sold 13.7 million albums in a 12-month period, an unprecedented achievement.”

Perhaps as a result of its iconic status, but certainly reiforcing it, there have been innumerable delicious tags for some of the ones I found.

Mojo had all of them it seemed. All but this one. I had always wanted to give it to them, but frankly, I just couldn’t part with it. Can you blame me? Maybe you will after you hear the first track on this SourCreamControlCommitteeTwofer.mp3. It’s the signature, Alpert tune “A Taste of Honey”, but tortured and Klezmerized in a way that seems almost too perfectly terrible to be accidental. Come on, listen to that modulation again, Peter.

I follow the Sour Cream with another of my favorite Alpert mashups. This one by the Evolution Control Committee was originally released on the 1994 Gunderphonics casette and then came out on a 1996 7″ as “The Whipped Cream Mixes”. Widely regarded as one of the first A+B mashups, this bastard pop classic set the standard for genre the blending hillarity of the mashup craze to come. According to info available at ECC site, Rebel Wihtout A Pause mashes Public Enemy, “The Rhythm, The Rebel”, Prophets Of Rage EP with Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, “Bittersweet Samba”, Whipped Cream and Other Delights. My favorite thing about this track is how the juxtapositon recontextualizes the “break” in Bittersweet Samba with Flav’s introduction somehow making its squareness seem super hip.

I have always wondered how they actually constructed the track. I sat with a guitar and plunked along to see if the pitch changes, and it doesn’t. That means it was not done live on two decks. They must have used some kind of editing system. Was it digital? I’d love any more info anyone finds on the method behind this madness.

Either way. I think these two tracks belong together somehow. Enjoy.

As it turned out, I was a week early. Mojo survived well into the week of March 20, 2006. After lumbering along like a wounded analog Kong valiantly battling the digital biplanes, Mojo finally closed its doors on Friday, March 24, 2006. I had planned to document the moment of its official demise. But as one day bled into the next, it became clear that there was not going to be “a moment”. There were a whole series of them. Some were more hillarious than poignant, but they were all tinged with sadness and the kind of frenzy you get when there are too many records to take but the prices are too great to pass up. Here’s my haul from Day 1. Those crates are all dancehall 45’s.

I was there more often than not that last week. Luckily, I took to bringing my camera and wound up getting some great footage, along with all the wax. I also met some local dudes who had already documented two closings and are working on a movie. I’d love to see that footage, so get in touch if you read this.

Amazingly, there were still gems turning up late into that week. Several boxes of 45s from some 1980’s wedding DJ appeared. As I flipped through, I noticed Blondie’s “Rapture” because of the picture sleve. What do you think came next? Yup. Queen, “Another one bites the dust”. Having just spent a week putting together a lecture/demo on The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steels, I knew I had to look at every 45 in there. (Not to mention the double coincidence of finding “Another one bites the dust” at the Mojo sale). Even though I have both tracks, it seemed wrong to separate these old friends after so many years together. I took them both. Now they can hang together in my 45 box for another few decades.

I guess the absence of heavy diggin surprised me more than anything else. I mean, I was pulling James Brown records on King out of that pile on Tues and Wed. And new stuff seemd to titrate out all week as the final solution settled. With all that, it felt like there was less interest overall than you might expect. Even on the last day, there were Sly and Robbie picture discs on the wall. (Where did those wind up Mike?)

I was able to hang out long enough to get priceless footage of the last days of Mojo. There was the race between Billy and the Goodwill dudes cleaning out the dollar bins. There was the ubiquitous (and mysterious) Folk Man. There was the soundtrack to “How to succeed in business without really trying” in the window, right under the “going out of business” signs. There were the demolition dudes cutting up the bins themselves. I got it all on my mini DV. Witness.

it made me a little sad to see the records at Goodwill, by the time I got to the one in Davis Sq. only a few days later, 5 bins (like the ones above) had disappeared. Amazing, that with DJ culture goin strong and enough people willing to buy THREE BINS of records in as many days, its hard to make a go of it as a storefront. Yet with pressures from E-bay and other online outlets, it is inevitable. Everyone is feeling the pressure to go online. But as we do, local ecologies suffer in strange ways.

I get the sense from my travels that used record stores are closing everywhere. Either that, or becoming Amoebas. I’d be curious how the trend looks to others, but to me, it seems that the days of diggin in the new arrivals bins are limited. At least around here. Keep the faith Loony Tunes, Mystery Train, Nuggets, Cheapo and all you other wax preservationists out there.

Most of all, thanks to David, Mike and all the Mojo patrons who put up with me that last week. I am gonna miss the Mojo. Not to mention the records.