Want Ad Women

All day long, and I mean all day, I have had the classic #1 single "Want Ads" in my head. I woke up this morning, and I just had the desire to hear it, so I went through my collection and grabbed some Capitol best of compilation I hadn't listened to in years. It's such good Detroit soul, but they were no Motown act. They were signed to Holland/Dozier/Holland's Hot Wax label, which was set up upon the famed writing/production team's exit from the aforementioned Motown Records. Honey Cone had a song here and there that charted, but never topped "Want Ads", which has been sampled a few times as of late by people who just know. Next step for me is getting Soulful Sugar: The Complete Hot Wax Recordings, because having a 10-track best of just ain't enough soul when it comes to Honey Cone.

2007: What the fuck happened?

2007 will be just another year to these trance DJ's who parade around with their rockstar shades and record crates full of boring Miami South Beach trash. For me, however, a person firmly planted in the love and lust of acid house, 2007 is a time to remember the groovy majesty that was Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty. For it was those two, under their guises The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu, The Timelords, The KLF, whatever, that brought acid house and sampling to grand heights and fiery crashes. If I am not mistaken, they were the first UK house act to have a Billboard Top 5 hit in the USA with "3 A.M. Eternal [Live At The S.S.L.]", and they were the last act to drop a dead sheep onto Brit Awards partygoers enjoying their cocktails, awards, drugs, etc.

The story is, well, storied, well travelled, etc. Drummond was a Scot who formed a Liverpool label called Zoo, putting out early singles by the likes of Echo & The Bunnymen, The Teardrop Explodes and The Wild Swans. Cauty was in a going-nowhere mid-80's act called Brilliant, working with Killing Joke's Youth in the process. When Drummond decided to make a hip hop album in 1987, he and Cauty got together and the rest is history. The album was called 1987: What The Fuck Is Going On? and was 40 minutes of schizophrenic UK hip hop, acid house, bleeps, blips, and cuts. Only 25 minutes of the album was void of samples, and it was those other 15 minutes that prompted Abba to sue the band, thus halting all sales of the album. The duo was ordered to turn over the master tapes and destroy all the unsold copies, and they did so in a field in Sweden during a trip to meet Abba, which never happened anyway. 1987 is an album that is highly sought after these days, trading for upwards of $50-100 depending on the condition.

A few more guises afterwards [The Timelords, with their classic Dr. Who/Gary Glitter inspired dance track "Doctorin' The Tardis", The Jams] brought the duo into KLF phase, with classic singles ["Kylie Said To Jason", "What Time Is Love?"] and classic albums [Chill Out, The White Room]. From hip hop to ambient house to stadium house, the duo has done it all. The Orb's Alex Patterson and Jimmy Cauty worked on a project called Space, which was to have been the debut Orb album, and Chill Out is regarded by many as the best ambient album of all time, a 44 minute journey, in Drummond's mind, through the American Gulf Coast, from Texas to Louisiana. The White Room brought them into the mainstream and remains a classic from the early rave days.

One could go on forever with the stories about Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, and this blog tell the story with 3264398 entries. The reason 2007 is important in KLF Communications history is quite obvious. For starters, the entire KLF Communications catalogue will have been deleted for 15 years in 2007. After the dead sheep incident, they released a statement basically saying they were retiring from the music industry and deleting all the back catalogue. In the UK, where most of these releases came out, they are still out of print. Additionally, it's now been 20 long years since they lost a lawsuit and changed sampling and copyright laws forever. A classic album is long gone, relegated to bootlegs running for $30 and originals going for much, much more. I am fortunate to have a copy of it, albeit bootleg cd, and I am thankful every time I put it on. It's a mess...one glorious mess. God bless the Church of The KLF. Kick out the jams, motherfuckers...all aboard the train to Trancentral.

REVISITED: Nightmares On Wax "A Word Of Science"

NIGHTMARES ON WAX
A WORD OF SCIENCE
WARP [WARP LP 4]
1991

The first N.O.W. album was, to the untrained ear, a schizophrenic mess. Most everyone nowadays remembers them for their chillout/trippy hip hop masterpieces Smokers Delight and Carboot Soul. While both are indeed classics of that genre of dance music, their debut was fully realized during the time when acid house and Madchester was heading out of fashion and warehouse/farm raves were all the rage. Not sounding chilled out enough to be like the aforementioned albums, A Word Of Science does have one of the finest ambient tracks ever, the oft-chronicled "Nights Interlude". Really, most any ambient/chillout compilation worth your hard-earned cash should have this track on it. It's a standard of sorts, a Warp Records classic to rival the Big Life Records classic, "Little Fluffy Clouds", by The Orb. The schizophrenia herein lies with the big beats of hip hop tracks like "Mega Donutz" and "Playtime" residing next to rave classics like "Dextrous" and "Aftermath". The identity of N.O.W. was still developing, and the rave kids, obviously, were going to be sorely disappointed with the rest of their catalogue from 1995 onwards. They were a duo comprised of George Evelyn and Kevin Harper, but Harper left immediately after this album and it is apparent that his love of rave music was the reason why this album has the bleeps and blips. Evelyn carried on with the N.O.W. name and his brand of chilled out hip hop shone brightly in the mid-90's. With Stereo MC's in the midst of their 9 year hiatus during the middle of that decade, N.O.W. carried the UK hip hop flag for a good long while. The Bristol crews during the years 1994-1998 [Portishead, Massive Attack, Tricky] were a bit on the dark side of the genre, and Evelyn made classic records that were a bit lighter for the soul. But, it all started here, and whether you want to dance in a warehouse or sit on a sofa, this record is a bonafide classic of both the rave and chillout genres, and deserves a listen. Essential.

The Picture & Shag Frenzy this Saturday night

THE PICTURE will be playing this Saturday night at my club night in Hartford, SHAG FRENZY.

Get into it. Get well fit. Disco down with Saint Nick. Come out and join Sara and I for a holiday party that leans more on party than most others. No gift swaps, no fireplace, no "quiet voices", just pure, unadulterated nightclubbing 'til the clock stops. Please join us for our final 2006 Frenzy!!! We love you all!!! Really...we do.

SHAG FRENZY
feat. THE PICTURE [playing live at 10PM]

SATURDAY 16TH DECEMBER 2006
9PM-2AM
NO COVER
21+

DJ SETS BY STEPHANIE DISCO at 9PM, JOHNNY STRANGLER at 11PM & GARAGE FLOWER at 12:30AM.

SWEET JANE'S
88 PRATT STREET
DOWNTOWN HARTFORD
near the Hartford Civic Center