Four Crates: Episode Eight

Long time no see! Haven't had time to blog lately as everything seems to be hitting at once. I wonder if Mercury is in retrograde? Anyways, enough with the excuses. Let's get down to business.

Various - Lay Your Burden Down

When I first discovered what a treasure trove of samples Christian records are, I found a beat up copy of this record with no cover. The song with the best drums had a huge skip in it (possible swap for -M?) and made it unsample-able. Anyway, I found a pristine copy with the cover and the paper insert that has all the lyrics. This is was a small victory for me.

The Mighty Wind - Reach Out

This is actually one side The Mighty Wind and the other side Certain Sounds '72 but side B is pretty crap. The Mighty Wind have a clavinet player who seems to leave lots of open notes for me to sample which is helpful. The photo is taken from when TMW were in Auckland City. I'm sure some eagle-eye could tell me where exactly. In the mean time, here's a beat I made out of various songs on the record:



The Hi Lo's - Suddenly It's The Hi Lo's

I bought this a long, long time ago before I had kids and had money to spend on records. For some reason my then girlfriend told me to keep it because the cover looked awesome and some of the songs were cool. I listened to her and seven years later she's now my wife and I'm finally giving this record a chance. She was right. This is a banger. Great vocal harmonies and arrangements. Hi Lo's is a pretty good name for a group too. Listen shelf-bound.

Stelios Kazadzidis - No 4

This is a total holy grail for me; A Greek record that doesn't have 'Zorba The Greek' on it! All of the liner notes are in Greek but helpfully they list the song titles in English. I don't know what the Greek version of Chinglish is - Gringlish? Anyways, this has it in spades. Cool enough for the cover but also sample-able.

Rod McKuen - Live At The Sydney Opera House

I'm not a huge Rod McKuen fan. I'm sure there are people out there that love him to pieces and collect everything of his. I've got a few of his records and this is probably the pick of the bunch. The banter with the audience in between songs is worth keeping this. Great photography and Adidas Super Star knock-offs on the cover. This has been sampled on a real old beat of mine so I'm keeping it.

Percy Faith - Today's Themes For Young Lovers

If you're ever hoping to make an underground New Zealand hip-hop hit and call it 'Irie', you'll need two cups of this record and fourty grams of unsalted Feature02.



Noman Leyden - Music For A Back Yard Barbecue

I mean you would keep this anyway right? It's got a song called 'Hamburgers and Hot Dogs' on it. It's got a recipe for a really ripping potato salad on the back. It's got some pretty sizeable steaks on the front cover. It's called 'Music For A Back Yard Barbecue', that's enough for me!

Los Indios Tabajaras - Always In My Heart

So the story goes that some honky was exploring in the jungle and left his battered and beat up guitar behind. It had four strings and had a big hole in it, but some how these two blokes picked it up and mastered it. They became the Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen of guitar playing. They recorded an album and then years later some radio jock discovered it and used it as his talk-beds. Then people starting asking what it was and the record company discovered there was a demand for their music. So they sent some guy back into the jungle to find the blokes and this album was recorded. Or something like that. The ending of the story is that I bought it, left it unlistened to for a few years and finally heard it yesterday. It's staying.

Honeytree - Me and My Old Guitar

Honeytree proving that you can kick out the Gospel jams live but still be terrible with grammar. My Old Guitar And I has the illest cover. If I didn't know it was Honeytree and on Myrrh records I'd be expecting some sort of freak-out music. Alas, no dice. Either way, there's some great on-stage banter ("I used to do a lot of drugs, then I found Jesus!") and her band is pretty rocking. It's a keeper, if not for the music then for the gate-fold cover which would sit nicely on the wall I think.

Dave Pope - Time To Take Account

Here's the deal: Dave is on Myrrh records, home to all the best Christian Rock breakbeats and open samples. But this record here is a special one. Drum breaks, open drum hits, open guitars - basically a cavalcade of open instruments for you to sample. This is probably the pick of this bunch. Next Salvation Army Christmas party, I'm playing this.


There you go. Hope you enjoyed this exciting adventure into my record crates.