things and time will tell.

Ghetto Priest with Skip McDonald & Adrian Sherwood – Auld Lang Syne c/w The Slave's Lament Not On Label (Graham Fagen Self-released) CD Single, UK, Feb 11, 2005 This New Year's Eve share might be too somber for a party night... but I'm hoping I'm still on good paper after the Louie Vega Xmas disco records and that you'll forgive me if this is less aimed for the holiday dancefloor. I'm no expert, but it seems that Scottish artist Graham Fagen has produced a number of works over the years exploring the history of connections between Scotland and Jamaica (especially via the slave trade). He has collaborated with musicians to produce music and sounds to accompany his installations and visuals, several times working with members of the On-U Sound family. For a 2005 exhibit called Clean Hands Pure Heart , Fagen asked that team to produce a recording that combined the New Year's standard  Auld Lang Syne with another song, The Slave's Lament , also written...

Masters At Work – Our Time Is Coming Cutting Edge – CTCR-14186/B 2xCD, Album, Japan, 2002 info I took too long to post as always, once again missing my chance to post some favorite Christmas records... Next year, I guess. I hope any of you seeing this got some peace over the holidays. It's almost the new year, so if you have an urgent need for some party music or a way to help ring it in on a positive note, this album might do it for you. Our Time Is Coming  was the second full length album by Kenny Dope and Louie Vega as Masters At Work, released in 2001. Once again, I won't pretend to be any kind of expert on house music, but I'll go out on a limb here and say that anyone who writes this record off as too "mainstream" or "predictable" is either: A. a snob; or B. not paying attention. MAW produced an album that I can put on to convince myself the sun is coming out, even at a late night party or in the Chicago winter.  On the predictable charge: Look, th...

  I have an enormous, almost obsessive, appetite for new music. Hunting for everything I can find featuring a musician, producer or style that caught my ear is a habit that probably keeps me from really giving half the attention and listening time deserved by records that come my way. Even so, there are albums, artists and songs that I always go back to, the records that have wound up holding special places (roles?) in my listening and life. Pharoah Sanders has been near the top of that list for a long time, since F first introduced me to the saxophone legend as teenager (by giving me a  Best Of Pharoah Sanders  double LP  that I still treasure).  Maybe it's really some COVID era awareness of mortality, but it feels like there been a shocking number of musicians that I've been moved and influenced by who have passed away in the last two or three years. It still felt especially tragic though when I heard the news that Pharoah Sanders had died last week. From his ...

Sade – Promise In Tokyo: Nakano Sunplaza, Tokyo, Japan - 11th May 1986 Wardour – Wardour-194 2 x CD, Limited Edition, Numbered, Unofficial Release, Japan, 2016 info Sade in Japan part 2: A Japanese bootleg double CD that I somehow ran into featuring a nice soundboard recording of the group's May, 1986 concert in Tokyo. I doubt I have to motivate this... as someone commented on the last post, could you ever really get too much? My two cents: This is the kind of bootleg that justifies the existence of bootlegs. My life is just a little bit better for having listened to it. Sade gets associated with romantic songs, but there's always been a dark, brooding side to a lot of their songs. I think part of the appeal comes from the way that voice can be so beautiful and at the same time so heavy , if that makes any sense. That said, to my ears, there's just a little more joy to some of the live performance on this album than on the studio versions I'm so familiar with. It broug...

Sade – The Remix Deluxe Epic – ESCA 5700 CD, Mini-Album, Compilation, Special Edition, Stereo Japan, Jun 2, 1993 info A CD this time, but a fairly rare one (around these parts anyway) with a couple buried treasures. A five track EP, apparently pulled together to promote a 1993 Japanese tour, Sade's The Remix Deluxe  was a Japan only release following up the previous year's  Love Deluxe album. Only one of the tracks was pulled from their then currently LP though, instead compiling together a handful of nice remixes and B sides onto a single disc. It's Sade. Do I really need to say anything else to make you want to listen? The disc opens with two remixes that had been released on vinyl singles the year before. First, Nellee Hooper adds a drum loop and ups the funk a bit on Feel No Pain . Sade's prayer for the strugglers of the Thatcher years is turned into something you could play late at night while you bring things down a little after a hop hop set in the club. (That...

Lee "Scratch" Perry – Makumba Rock (2019, 10" vinyl) Adrian Sherwood X Lee "Scratch" Perry – Time Boom X The Upsetter Dub Sessions (2019, CD) Lee Perry stayed very active in his later years, but plenty of music industry attention was always spent playing up the wild image he had built. Not making light of it at all, but at times it could leave the impression of his antics walking the line between mental health crisis and marketing scheme. In a lot of ways, many Lee Perry albums starting at some point in the 80s were selling "Scratch" the character as much as anything he necessarily contributed to the music. The result was more than a few CDs released under his name and featuring his vocal ramblings over music produced entirely by others that were far from essential (and far from the heights of Perry's most inspiring, innovative or beautiful work from earlier days). (Confession: That " Lee Perry meets Andrew W.K. " album? I admit to buyin...

Syl Johnson & Jimmy Johnson – Two Johnsons Are Better Than One Evidence – ECD 26122-2 CD, Album, USA & Canada, 2002 info A quick post, but after talking to R a couple days ago I realized I should share this one. Chicago lost two of our unsung musical treasures last week. Tragically, the losses came just a few days apart from the same family when soul singer Syl Johnson followed his big brother, blues guitarist Jimmy Johnson, in passing. Jimmy was 93 and Sylvester (who is also the father of R&B singer Syleena Johnson ) was 85. Jimmy was under appreciated, slugging away working the Chicago blues circuit for decades. He had backed other artists on guitar, but I'm pretty sure he was 50 or so before putting out an album under his own name. Syl was best known for the great soul sides he had cut in the late 60s and early 70s for Twinight here in Chicago and, later, Hi Records in Memphis. He kept recording blues and soul records for smaller labels into the 1990s, but his later ...

Grace Jones – Private Life: The Compass Point Sessions Island Records – 314 524-501-2 2 x CD, Compilation, US, Jun 16, 1998 info In my last post I said that Sly & Robbie's work with Grace Jones "sounded like the future." Seemed like that made it a fitting post for a new year... Happy New Year, everyone. Wish everyone peace, health and strength as we head into 2022. _______________________________ In 1979 and 1980, Island Records completed construction on their new Compass Point recording studios in Nassau. Label chief Chris Blackwell was worked to pull together his dream band of in-house musicians to work with the stars he'd soon begin flying to the Bahamas to record. Blackwell had lived in JA in his youth and had some success promoting the reggae artists he'd signed to Island abroad (especially some guy named Marley), so it's not completely surprising that he'd decided that he wanted a Jamaican rhythm section for the new house band. Sly Dunbar and Ro...

Junior Byles – Curly Locks (Best Of Junior Byles & The Upsetters 1970 - 1976) Heartbeat Records – CD HB208 CD, Compilation, US, 1997 info One of the most wonderful people on the planet sent me a note saying she had read my last post and was "quite partial to curly locks, you know." I know it's *possible* she was referring to her hair (or mine?), but I'm choosing to believe she was moved by that last scratched up record I had shared . So, instead of what I was planning and inspired by my aunt (as always!), the Lee Perry tribute continues with more Junior Byles... this time with good sound, like I promised. ________________________________________________ Curly Locks: Best of Junior Byles & the Upsetters 1970-1976  misses a few crucial cuts, but pretty much does what it says on the cover. This CD gives a real sense of the magic created during those years when Byles worked with producer Lee "Scratch" Perry. A revived Doctor Bird record label  recently ...