Commercial Break

Apologies for the lack of bacon being brought home around here lately - the only new vinyl in my house is red timecode. However, this YouTube 80's tripleheader has got more bite than Cerberus:

Hold The Line

Today's movers and shakers come courtesy of everybody's favorite secretly Canadian legendary disco producer Gino Soccio. Maybe you knew he was Canadian. For that matter maybe you've heard these songs. I hadn't until a week ago, when browsing the Melrose Trading Post I found this copy of Soccio's 1979 album Outline staring me right back in the face:


Later a gentlemen selling jackets in another booth, who spotted the record and explained he had DJed back in the 80's, told me that back in the day that sort of thing only came by way of import at top dollar. The quality and style of his jackets got me anxious to get home and get it under the needle. If you like these go to Fairfax and Melrose on Sunday and get yourself some new threads:



Gino Soccio - Dance to Dance (1979) (buy)



Gino Soccio - Dancer (1979) (buy)

Queen Beats

Say hello to Samantha Leigh Dunn, the 2008 Alabama Watermelon Association Queen. Samantha shouldn't be confused with Gloria Brooks, the 70's singer, or her producers, husband and wife duo Harry and Myriam Chalkitis. Samantha Leigh Dunn was in no way responsible for the following two tracks, taken from the 1980 Celsius Records release Queen Samantha, to which she similarly contributed nothing. Finally, aside from her appearance in the above photo, Queen Samantha had no involvement in this blog post.

Queen Samantha - Funky Celebration (1980) (buy)



Queen Samantha - Get Back (Boogie Dance) (1980) (buy)

Lesson #1

According to White Pages, there are over 10,000 Lorraine Johnsons in the United States. My guess is that most of them put on their pants one leg at a time. My other guess is that most of those pants aren't shimmering gold, and my last guess is that they don't have matching shimmering gold boots to go with them:


In 1978 Saturday Night Band songwriting team Moses Dillard and Jesse Boyce got behind the decks to produce a handful of tracks for an especially talented one of the many Lo Jo's running around the country at the time. Outside of her day job as a Saturday Night Band backup singer, this Lorraine Johnson had also released her own version of a Teddy Pendergrass tune, 'The More I Get The More I Want'.

Here are my two favorite tracks from her 1978 Prelude Records release Learning To Dance All Over Again - music to contemplate the power of 10,000 golden pairs of paints to:



Lorraine Johnson - Learning To Dance All Over Again (1978) (buy)



Lorraine Johnson - Feed The Flame (1978) (buy)

Shameless Plug #3

For those in the LA CA, ROBOSoup v3.1 is this Thursday at the Downtown Independent (see the sidebar). Check out the flyer to the right for more info. I'll be spinning up on the roof throughout so come one come all. Anyway - here's a smattering of robot and robot inspired sounds I dug up from my apartment's analog and digital nooks and crannies, roughly in order:

Kid Koala - Robochacha
Boys Noize - Arcade Robot
Logic System - Automatic Collect Automatic Correct
Sureshot Symphony - Nouveau Disco
Vitalic - No Fun
Transvolta - Disco Computer
Lectric Workers - Robot Is Systematic
Q - The Voice of Q
Robo Love - The Story
Heartbreak - Robot's Got The Feeling
DatA - So Much In Love
Arling & Cameron - Dirty Robot
Dolby Anol - Your Woman (White Town cover)
Golden Bug - Disco Sensation (bonus beats)



Jung Hollywood - ROBOSoup v3.1 MiniMix

Constructicons

I mentioned a couple of posts back that Skyyman Randy Muller:


had another group known as Brass Construction. The day has come, friends, to spread a little of that wealth, so without beating around the bush I now present to you a few of the tracks that the Brass - Williamson, Billups, Price, Payton, Ward, Grudge, Parris, Cahill, Wong and last but not least Muller put their stamp of approval on back in the late 1970's. Everything below comes from the fifth Brass Construction album, 5. No time for album titles:



Brass Construction - Get Up To Get Down (1979) (buy)



Brass Construction - I Want Some Action (1979) (buy)



Brass Construction - Watch Out (1979) (buy)

'Get Up To Get Down' not only stands as at least the second track I've posted on this site to address the directional paradoxes of enjoying oneself, but also sports the kind of juicy analog synth lines modern bedroom electro producers are vying to replicate on DAWs the world over. If you can resist pressing close or stop or power off, 'I Want Some Action' blossoms into the kind of sleaze Ariel Pink has now probably trademarked and begun licensing out. 'Watch Out' is just fun. Check 'em out. Till next time.

Strung Out

How many of your favorite musicians started off as acrobats? How many of them ended up in acrobatics? I can't think of any in the latter group, but the first track today comes from Don and Dick Addrisi, a.k.a. The Addrisi Brothers, who got a leg up as kids in their family's traveling acrobatics act The Flying Addrisis. Following a pair of rejection letters from the Mickey Mouse Club and a brief stint as a two piece band, the two turned their focus to songwriting. Sometimes when they sat down and tried they got interesting results:



The Addrisi Brothers - Ghostdancer (1979) (buy)

The second couple of tracks today bear some relation to Mr. Noel Pointer:


Noel Pointer could play violin. He played it well enough to book the Chicago and Detroit symphony orchestras as his backing bands at the age of 13. He played it well enough to score a free US citizenship, and caught the attention of such esteemed organizations as the United States Congress and US Congressional Black Caucus.

He also recorded seven solo albums in four years (1977 - 1981) wherein he applied those band camp chops to the realm of disco funk et al. There, friends, is where we find the second of today's offerings - a track called 'Captain Jarvis', from his 1979 album Feel It:



Noel Pointer - Captain Jarvis (1979) (buy)

While we're at it, the violin prodigy + dance music = something to talk about formula brought one Mr. Kelly Polar to mind. If that name doesn't ring a bell check out these bells:



Metro Area - Miura (2002) (buy)