Blackbyrds - Rock Creek Park comes to my mind when I think rare groove.
But I think if somebody asked me to recommend one band to help him understand what rare groove sounds like, I would say "Pleasure". Couldn't even decide what album to go to.
To BATMON's point. Something like "Expansions" is common fare out here. Heard on the radio any classics mix show, I fucking heard it at the farmers market last weekend (granted, in Harlem).
My choice was based on the record being goddamn rare as shit, never hearing it on any radio or popular mix of tunes, and it having a certain British-ness about it in the appeal.
Yeah, for me if a record is to be the Epitome of rare groove, ie the essence, then it should live up to "rare". But a record doesn't have to be rare to be classic rare groove. It's about the vibe which is found on a lot of private stuff from the seventies, stuff that was non commercial as fuck like Micheal Orr's Spreading Love. That same flowing jazz/soul/funk sound can be heard on lot's of commercial stuff from the same period, like Charles Earland's Leavin this planet. Keyboardists seem to have had that shit on lock (Reuben Wilson has so many good jams).
like acid jazz, raregroove, another contemporary uk 90's term, always sounded a little bit corny imo.. the music though, much luv!!!!
So good! What is the story behind this anyway other than this comp pretty much un"google"able
this seems to be a 2007 uk comp, by design made to look rare funk from the 70's, cover versions, esperanto night of the wolf is actually a cover of the ita track tema del lupo which was rereleased as al foster band in the us, so this comp is not to be labeled raregroove after all, actually more like nu-funk, to use yet another love-able music term haha, heres the orig..
Blackbyrds - Rock Creek Park comes to my mind when I think rare groove.
But I think if somebody asked me to recommend one band to help him understand what rare groove sounds like, I would say "Pleasure". Couldn't even decide what album to go to.
Acid Jazz's most redeeming feature for me was the unearthing of older tracks like Joyous, Fantasy by Johnny Hammond and You're a Star from Aquarian Dream. That scene didn't do Terry Callier's career any harm either.
some of these joints are quite popular when and after they dropped.
i kinda dont understand the "rare" of the groove catagory to this day.
It makes it sound like it was lost and rediscovered in the 80/90s.
In the US the music was REdescovered but in mid 80s Britain where the term "rare groove" was coined, the music was DEscovered for the first time. Mid-80s, pre-internet Britain was a veritable dust-bowl for funk and groove. Expansions or pre '77 Ayers had never seen a UK release or any significant radio play beyond pirate. Beyond the Average White Band "Common groove" didn't really exist - all groove was by definition "rare". These LPs were highly prized objects brought over by pioneering DJs in battered covers w' scratchy vinly. I remember crazy scenes of collectors queueing up in front of Soul Jazz in Camden or Honest Jons in Ladbroke Grove, just because word had got around that a shipment was coming in from the US. I saw people jumping on LPs by Jean Carne or Dexter Wansel. 10 years later when I saw this shit sealed on ebay for 10 $ I couldn't believe my eyes.
some of these joints are quite popular when and after they dropped.
i kinda dont understand the "rare" of the groove catagory to this day.
It makes it sound like it was lost and rediscovered in the 80/90s.
In the US the music was REdescovered but in mid 80s Britain where the term "rare groove" was coined, the music was DEscovered for the first time. Mid-80s, pre-internet Britain was a veritable dust-bowl for funk and groove. Expansions or pre '77 Ayers had never seen a UK release or any significant radio play beyond pirate. Beyond the Average White Band "Common groove" didn't really exist - all groove was by definition "rare". These LPs were highly prized objects brought over by pioneering DJs in battered covers w' scratchy vinly. I remember crazy scenes of collectors queueing up in front of Soul Jazz in Camden or Honest Jons in Ladbroke Grove, just because word had got around that a shipment was coming in from the US. I saw people jumping on LPs by Jean Carne or Dexter Wansel. 10 years later when I saw this shit sealed on ebay for 10 $ I couldn't believe my eyes.
This.
Also, around '88 the 'revival' of this music was boosted by hip hop - Polydor started the Urban imprint and re-released the mighty James Brown and associates songs (Funky Drummer, Lyn Collins - Think etc) on 12"s and comps (Urban Classics I and II). These were sought after for many years, and rightly so - they were remastered, LOUD and featured extended edits and unreleased tracks.
some of these joints are quite popular when and after they dropped.
i kinda dont understand the "rare" of the groove catagory to this day.
It makes it sound like it was lost and rediscovered in the 80/90s.
In the US the music was REdescovered but in mid 80s Britain where the term "rare groove" was coined, the music was DEscovered for the first time. Mid-80s, pre-internet Britain was a veritable dust-bowl for funk and groove. Expansions or pre '77 Ayers had never seen a UK release or any significant radio play beyond pirate. Beyond the Average White Band "Common groove" didn't really exist - all groove was by definition "rare". These LPs were highly prized objects brought over by pioneering DJs in battered covers w' scratchy vinly. I remember crazy scenes of collectors queueing up in front of Soul Jazz in Camden or Honest Jons in Ladbroke Grove, just because word had got around that a shipment was coming in from the US. I saw people jumping on LPs by Jean Carne or Dexter Wansel. 10 years later when I saw this shit sealed on ebay for 10 $ I couldn't believe my eyes.
This.
Also, around '88 the 'revival' of this music was boosted by hip hop - Polydor started the Urban imprint and re-released the mighty James Brown and associates songs (Funky Drummer, Lyn Collins - Think etc) on 12"s and comps (Urban Classics I and II). These were sought after for many years, and rightly so - they were remastered, LOUD and featured extended edits and unreleased tracks.
Yes, '88 era sampledelic Hip Hop did add fuel, but Pleasure Joyous & The Black Byrds - Rock Creek Park was already on Break Beat Comps before 1988.
And were/are considered Classics before absorbed into Hip Hop or Rare Groove.
So this is a UK perspective thang, right. like Tabira said.
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
batmon said:
So this is a UK perspective thang, right. like Tabira said.
Yes, again they've established a "genre" out of collecting stuff unavailable to them when it originally dropped.
For me the Epitome would be Nathan Davis "If". It was a benchmark record for me and defined the sound. I would put things like Cymande "Message", Johnnie Hammond "Gears", D. Byrds "Places & Spaces", Ramp, James Mason right behind it. This sound still does it for me and always will.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
HarveyCanal said:
batmon said:
So this is a UK perspective thang, right. like Tabira said.
Yes, again they've established a "genre" out of collecting stuff unavailable to them when it originally dropped.
I was about to make a "countdown until Harvey takes one of his standard 'cultural imperialism' shots" post, but we're three pages into this shit now, so of course I'm too late.
I'm not going to teach my granny how to suck eggs as regards the origins of "rare groove" as a scene - and it was a scene as much as it was a genre, possibly more so - mainly because I was more about hip-hop and early Chicago house when that shit began to pop off in the South of England. But I do know that it drew quite a lot of inspiration from the weekender/jazz-funk scenes of the late 70s in terms of its musical aesthetic. Certainly, tunes like Expansions, Rock Creek Park and Running Away were no more obscurities to UK listeners than they were to folks in the US. Back when I was a teenage punk-rocker spending most of my money on records by the Clash, Buzzcocks, the Ramones and them, I remember buying Running Away on a 45 just because I loved the groove - had no idea who Roy Ayers was at all. Also, someone mentioned You're A Star by Aquarian Dream, which was a huge record back then - big with disco crowds, jazz-funk heads and at places where they played Mecca-flavoured Northern.
Essentially what the rare groove scene did, or so it appeared to this observer-at-a-distance, was to develop an aesthetic through a combination of classic militant funk (JB-related shit, War, Fatback Band), soul-tinged fusion (and vice-versa) of the Roy Ayers/Mizell Bros variety and what later became known as boogie or modern, all focused around a handful of hit-and-run outlaw warehouse parties-cum-soundsystems and club nights. I recall it as being very much a London thing. Many of the records would get played at clubs in the North, but the wholesale embrace of it was shied away from, because blatantly aping what was going on down South...well, we didn't hold with that kind of thing at all. Nuh-uh. ;)
Surprised not to see any of the following posted yet;
And of course this, which was one of those that everyone jammed.
I can't find a working link to Don Blackman's Holding You, Loving You out here in Deutschland, otherwise I'd post that as well.
To touch on something that me, skel, Junior and Pattrick were talking about in the boozer the other week, those Midnight Music comps and their subsequent knock-offs might be a little outside that precise "90s bootleg" timeframe we were discussing, but they were hugely important in acting as a kind of roadmap for non-scene dudes like me who occasionally DJ'ed, and who actually already had some of these records in my own collection, like Eighties Ladies, Betty Wright, Little Beaver, some other Ayers stuff like Life Is Just A Moment, and a fuck-ton of JB 45s I'd scooped for peanuts when I was about 20.
It ought to go without saying that rare groove both grew out of and fed into a whole grip of sub-scenes both before and after.
Damn. Decided to look up dude and see what he's been up to the last while. Totally never realized that he was awarded MBE years ago by the Queen. Respect.
To a teenage me, in Manchester, the London scene was spearheaded by Norman, Robbie Vincent and dem, wheras the NW had Richard Searling, Mike Shaft and Expansion and dem, on a Wigan crowd tip. Rich is also a giant on the Northern Soul Scene, which has never floated my boat. I was into the boogie/moder music from Richard's radio shows, was too young to make the weekenders in person, stubble or not - it was an older crowd and the clubs that I'd seen were more Chad Jackson and kind of the tail-end of boogie and the nascent Electro scene - Malcolm X No Sellout and such. Remember those Crew Cuts comps?
To me, it seemed like the sampling by contemporary hip-hip of artists like Roy Ayers is what threw a net around the sampled singles and the album tracks around these, and the net was called Rare Groove. It had always been there, but now it had a name.
One of my all time fav DJ's. And one of the nicest dudes I've ever met.
It's funny to think that a guy who was a part of the 80's pirate radio scene (Which many say he coined the term Rare Groove) goes on to be MBE'd by the Queen.
Would be awesome if he :hayek: 'd in and gave his top 10 list on Rare Groove.
Essentially what the rare groove scene did, or so it appeared to this observer-at-a-distance, was to develop an aesthetic through a combination of classic militant funk (JB-related shit, War, Fatback Band), soul-tinged fusion (and vice-versa) of the Roy Ayers/Mizell Bros variety and what later became known as boogie or modern, all focused around a handful of hit-and-run outlaw warehouse parties-cum-soundsystems and club nights. I recall it as being very much a London thing. Many of the records would get played at clubs in the North, but the wholesale embrace of it was shied away from, because blatantly aping what was going on down South...well, we didn't hold with that kind of thing at all. Nuh-uh. ;)
Yeah, a London thing really although Brighton was bit of a hotbed, too... That Milton Wright tracks sums it all up for me along with Expansions. In no particular order I remember hearing all of these on the regular in the early days - Lynn Collins, AM/FM, Johnny Hammond, Don Blackman, Lamont Dozier, Edna Wright, Lonnie Liston Smith, Francine McGee, Patti Jo, Sisters Love, Gil Scott Heron, Jones Girls, JBs, Dexter Wansell, Manzel, Roy Ayers, Sho Nuff and definitely Milton Wright. What with the jazz dance scene, house music, the rare groove nights and all the warehouse parties it wasn't a bad time for musical hedonists but rare groove was what got me digging in earnest. The first Totally Wired comps kind of marked the intersection of all those scenes with Acid Jazz...
Comments
But I think if somebody asked me to recommend one band to help him understand what rare groove sounds like, I would say "Pleasure". Couldn't even decide what album to go to.
i kinda dont understand the "rare" of the groove catagory to this day.
It makes it sound like it was lost and rediscovered in the 80/90s.
My choice was based on the record being goddamn rare as shit, never hearing it on any radio or popular mix of tunes, and it having a certain British-ness about it in the appeal.
So good! What is the story behind this anyway other than this comp pretty much un"google"able
Not sure it qualifies but seems to have most elements:
this seems to be a 2007 uk comp, by design made to look rare funk from the 70's, cover versions, esperanto night of the wolf is actually a cover of the ita track tema del lupo which was rereleased as al foster band in the us, so this comp is not to be labeled raregroove after all, actually more like nu-funk, to use yet another love-able music term haha, heres the orig..
Acid Jazz's most redeeming feature for me was the unearthing of older tracks like Joyous, Fantasy by Johnny Hammond and You're a Star from Aquarian Dream. That scene didn't do Terry Callier's career any harm either.
In the US the music was REdescovered but in mid 80s Britain where the term "rare groove" was coined, the music was DEscovered for the first time. Mid-80s, pre-internet Britain was a veritable dust-bowl for funk and groove. Expansions or pre '77 Ayers had never seen a UK release or any significant radio play beyond pirate. Beyond the Average White Band "Common groove" didn't really exist - all groove was by definition "rare". These LPs were highly prized objects brought over by pioneering DJs in battered covers w' scratchy vinly. I remember crazy scenes of collectors queueing up in front of Soul Jazz in Camden or Honest Jons in Ladbroke Grove, just because word had got around that a shipment was coming in from the US. I saw people jumping on LPs by Jean Carne or Dexter Wansel. 10 years later when I saw this shit sealed on ebay for 10 $ I couldn't believe my eyes.
This.
Also, around '88 the 'revival' of this music was boosted by hip hop - Polydor started the Urban imprint and re-released the mighty James Brown and associates songs (Funky Drummer, Lyn Collins - Think etc) on 12"s and comps (Urban Classics I and II). These were sought after for many years, and rightly so - they were remastered, LOUD and featured extended edits and unreleased tracks.
Yes, '88 era sampledelic Hip Hop did add fuel, but Pleasure Joyous & The Black Byrds - Rock Creek Park was already on Break Beat Comps before 1988.
And were/are considered Classics before absorbed into Hip Hop or Rare Groove.
So this is a UK perspective thang, right. like Tabira said.
Yes, again they've established a "genre" out of collecting stuff unavailable to them when it originally dropped.
I was about to make a "countdown until Harvey takes one of his standard 'cultural imperialism' shots" post, but we're three pages into this shit now, so of course I'm too late.
I'm not going to teach my granny how to suck eggs as regards the origins of "rare groove" as a scene - and it was a scene as much as it was a genre, possibly more so - mainly because I was more about hip-hop and early Chicago house when that shit began to pop off in the South of England. But I do know that it drew quite a lot of inspiration from the weekender/jazz-funk scenes of the late 70s in terms of its musical aesthetic. Certainly, tunes like Expansions, Rock Creek Park and Running Away were no more obscurities to UK listeners than they were to folks in the US. Back when I was a teenage punk-rocker spending most of my money on records by the Clash, Buzzcocks, the Ramones and them, I remember buying Running Away on a 45 just because I loved the groove - had no idea who Roy Ayers was at all. Also, someone mentioned You're A Star by Aquarian Dream, which was a huge record back then - big with disco crowds, jazz-funk heads and at places where they played Mecca-flavoured Northern.
Essentially what the rare groove scene did, or so it appeared to this observer-at-a-distance, was to develop an aesthetic through a combination of classic militant funk (JB-related shit, War, Fatback Band), soul-tinged fusion (and vice-versa) of the Roy Ayers/Mizell Bros variety and what later became known as boogie or modern, all focused around a handful of hit-and-run outlaw warehouse parties-cum-soundsystems and club nights. I recall it as being very much a London thing. Many of the records would get played at clubs in the North, but the wholesale embrace of it was shied away from, because blatantly aping what was going on down South...well, we didn't hold with that kind of thing at all. Nuh-uh. ;)
Surprised not to see any of the following posted yet;
And of course this, which was one of those that everyone jammed.
I can't find a working link to Don Blackman's Holding You, Loving You out here in Deutschland, otherwise I'd post that as well.
To touch on something that me, skel, Junior and Pattrick were talking about in the boozer the other week, those Midnight Music comps and their subsequent knock-offs might be a little outside that precise "90s bootleg" timeframe we were discussing, but they were hugely important in acting as a kind of roadmap for non-scene dudes like me who occasionally DJ'ed, and who actually already had some of these records in my own collection, like Eighties Ladies, Betty Wright, Little Beaver, some other Ayers stuff like Life Is Just A Moment, and a fuck-ton of JB 45s I'd scooped for peanuts when I was about 20.
It ought to go without saying that rare groove both grew out of and fed into a whole grip of sub-scenes both before and after.
Damn. Decided to look up dude and see what he's been up to the last while. Totally never realized that he was awarded MBE years ago by the Queen. Respect.
Tiny man, very big dude.
To a teenage me, in Manchester, the London scene was spearheaded by Norman, Robbie Vincent and dem, wheras the NW had Richard Searling, Mike Shaft and Expansion and dem, on a Wigan crowd tip. Rich is also a giant on the Northern Soul Scene, which has never floated my boat. I was into the boogie/moder music from Richard's radio shows, was too young to make the weekenders in person, stubble or not - it was an older crowd and the clubs that I'd seen were more Chad Jackson and kind of the tail-end of boogie and the nascent Electro scene - Malcolm X No Sellout and such. Remember those Crew Cuts comps?
To me, it seemed like the sampling by contemporary hip-hip of artists like Roy Ayers is what threw a net around the sampled singles and the album tracks around these, and the net was called Rare Groove. It had always been there, but now it had a name.
AS THE BEST ONES USUALLY DO.
One of my all time fav DJ's. And one of the nicest dudes I've ever met.
It's funny to think that a guy who was a part of the 80's pirate radio scene (Which many say he coined the term Rare Groove) goes on to be MBE'd by the Queen.
Would be awesome if he :hayek: 'd in and gave his top 10 list on Rare Groove.
Yeah, a London thing really although Brighton was bit of a hotbed, too... That Milton Wright tracks sums it all up for me along with Expansions. In no particular order I remember hearing all of these on the regular in the early days - Lynn Collins, AM/FM, Johnny Hammond, Don Blackman, Lamont Dozier, Edna Wright, Lonnie Liston Smith, Francine McGee, Patti Jo, Sisters Love, Gil Scott Heron, Jones Girls, JBs, Dexter Wansell, Manzel, Roy Ayers, Sho Nuff and definitely Milton Wright. What with the jazz dance scene, house music, the rare groove nights and all the warehouse parties it wasn't a bad time for musical hedonists but rare groove was what got me digging in earnest. The first Totally Wired comps kind of marked the intersection of all those scenes with Acid Jazz...
and how much overlap was there?
i imagine AJ being live bands and RG being DJ orientated.