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.

Four Crates: Episode Seven

Been a bit unwell lately so I've fallen behind in my schedule. I'm half way through one crate and have roughly two and half left to go. My chuck out pile is looking mighty healthy at the moment. More on that at a later date.

Wild Thing - Partyin'

Some generic band does covers of the latest rock n roll hits. Every single track is a floor filler! The only problem seems to be that the band falls in and out of time constantly. The drummer shifts timing in the middle of songs, it's so weird to hear something so unpolished out of an era where recording was a huge and expensive undertaking. I'm keeping it for the novelty factor but also because every single song on here is a winner. No beats.

Jefferson Starship - Red Octopus

I had the insert from this LP on my wall when I was a teenager without knowing where it came from or what it represented. Then when I found this copy of Red Octopus it all fell into place. I also realised that this record has a sample I used on an upcoming EP and I hadn't been able to figure out what the sample was, so that's great news. Also, it has a pretty iconic break on it too.

Honeytree - Maranatha Marathon

Was having a bit of a time with the camera last night. So, sorry about the flash flares all over the covers. Deal with it. Anywho, Honeytree was one of the keystone acts signed to Myrrh records. She was pretty big on the Praise music circuit and wrote some excellent jams like "Ain't It Grand To Serve Jesus!". Excellent if you're into that sort of thing. I don't know if you've seen that one sitcom 'The Middle'? Honeytree sounds like if the daughter from The Middle was morphed with Karen Carpenters band and they sung about how she used to do drugs but then found Jesus. Sounds like this:



Encore! - Great Gospel Songs

A double LP of great gospel tunes?!?! Count me in! But seriously, I picked this one up because it's on Word records, the most hiphop of all the Gospel music labels. Also, the covert art is amazing. Great colour scheme. Disc one was full to the brim of open drums, open pianos, open basslines and everything else you need in your beatmakers toolbox. Disc two was a bit crappy. But here is a beat to give you a taste:



Doug Sahm and Band - Doug Sahm and Band

A few years ago my fellow Dollar Brand writer, -M, lived down the road from me. As you can probably imagine his record collection is absolutely nuts. -M operates on an 'all bangers, no clangers' theory and thus everything you pull from his shelves is gold. At the time -M was having a huge clean out of records and he let me pick through the left-overs to see if I was interested in anything. I picked up a dozen and subsequently forgot about them. Anyways, this is one of the records and oh my word (blukku blukku!) this is killer. Promo DJ copy on Atlantic Records. Doug plays Country twangers and blues jams with Bob Dylan adding vocals and Dr John throwing down on the piano. 100% recommended.

Barbra Streisand - Stoney End

I just happened to have this in my 'unsorted' crates and after watching the above video I chucked it on. There is only one good song and it's the one J-Rocc sampled but by jove it's a doozy! Raer azzz!

Various - Australian Folk


There are some classics on this. I'm not really into twangy folk songs with twangy accents but to be fair there are some good dittys on this. It also has 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport' on it - which in some versions still has the lyrics "Set me Abo's loose, Bruce". Shocking. This has it. Put that in your TradeMe auction and smoke it.

Ariel - A Strange Fantastic Dream

This is another from -M's crates and when I picked it up, I thought I was getting some sort of weird Pysch-Rock record with noodling Moogs and reverbed drums. But if you open the gatefold it has a picture of a bunch of Australian Yobbos larking about on the Cortina production line at the Australia Ford Plant in Geelong. What? But upon further listening I did find the odd moog and pysch-out moments. Nothing that really hits you in your face but some great loops here and there. I've sampled this previously so no need to justify keeping it. Also, the cover reminds me of something that would be held up by this woman.

Andrei Gavrilov - Rachmaninov

I can't imagine I picked this up myself. I usually avoid classical if I can. The only possibility was that I thought I was buying some obscure Russian record after reading one too many Soul-Strut posts back in the day. Either way, I was pretty surprised to put the needle on and find out there was songs that be turned into this:



and this:




Right. Hopefully I can get this project back on track and give you another post soon. Enjoy the rest of your week.