MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA: LIKE PLIERS ON YOUR NUTS

I remember one night my homie Stinkweed and I were sitting out in front of KFJC, listening to one of his skitzo pause mixtapes on his old doombox (if you've heard, you know), getting faded when the intro to the Blahzay Blahzay LP came on. We used to bug out on how dope that loop was and wondered why the fuck Outloud just talked over such an ill sample. Gary from Noothgrush popped out of the studio and said, "Wow, these guys sampled Mahavishnu Orchestra?" and we were like, "Maha-whatta-WHAT?!?"

Blahzay Blahzay - Intro (Blah, Blah, Blah, Fader, 1996)

SURVIVALIST, BASING MY LIFE ON RAP LOOT

This has always been one of my favorite Tragedy verses since I first heard it on Stretch Armstrong and DJ EV's classic "Back 2 Back" mixtape. You can't really go wrong when the Foul Mahdi teams up with the soul brother Pete Rock to give a state of the union address on the hip hop industry in the late 90's. There was a slightly different version on "Soul Survivor" with additional verses by Cappadonna and Sticky Fingaz, but I've always preferred this one (who's the last MC on this version?). Fucking Pete Rock, man. Dude takes the very last couple of seconds of David Axelrod's "Smile" (as it's fading out, no less) and comes up with this. "Awake to harps and flutes and eat strange fruits."

Tragedy Khadafi, Pete Rock & ??? - Strange Fruit (white label version)

FREE TRAG!

QUESTOSAHN: A DOCUMENTARY

Questosahn: A Documentary from MOF on Vimeo.

Check out this DJ Quest documentary by the homie Matt Oner.

MYSTERY SOLVED: STREET BEAT RECORDS, SF

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My homie Walter sent me this note after reading my BBO post:

Hey,

Just a quick note... that record shop on Market and 6th was called Street Beat, run by this white dude from FL named Chuck. That place was great, totally ghetto! I used to go there all the time because he used to sell releases way before the release date, he used to bootleg stuff too, until he got roughed up by an unnamed SF hip hop group. Word on the street is that he owns a store in L.A. now.

Holla!

Walter

LIBRARY SCIENCE: THEMES FOR DRAMA, MYSTERY & WEIRD

Another book post? Yep. Seems like recently I've been able to spend more time reading books than I have been able to spend listening to records. My homie Jake Won just hooked me up with an early b-day gift - a copy of Jonny Trunk's book, The Music Library (Fuel Publishing, 2005), which is a really slick looking hardcover that serves as a primer for the world of sound library LP's. For those not in the know, sound library records were created for use in the film, television and radio industries featuring music performed by various studio musicians for all types of moods. Because they were never issued for retail sale, they are very rare and often go for big bucks on the ebay machine (especially for us in the states since most of the heavy library labels based in Europe). Stories of Euro diggers stumbling upon boxes sitting out for trash have been the stuff of many sweatily read record nerd message board threads. Check out this article from the SF Weekly for a nice background on sound libraries. The book is organized alphabetically by label and each label gets 1-2 pages (some of the heavies like De Wolfe and Chappell have bigger spreads) with full color cover scans. While the book's primary focus is on the cover art, there are some basic notes on each label and it comes with a 17 track CD sampler of some rare library cuts. Check out some of the covers:




Master Won also threw me a copy of Luke Vibert's "Nuggets" CD which is a collection of his favorite library jams. Here's a small sampling of tunes from both these discs:

Richard Demaria - Next Episode

Midas Touch - Intimations

David Holland - Zouche Drums 3

Raymond Guiot & Guy Pederson - Flutes Ad Libitum

Jean-Jaques Debout - Pop Bazaar

Guy Pederson - Kermesse Non Heroique

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Bonus for latecomers (when do you ever see that?), complete rips:

NUGGETS

THE LIBRARY MUSIC