Rare Groove Disco
pookeyblow
406 Posts
Later end of the rare groove erea? Rare groove + blaxploitation + disco? Blaxploitation, OSTs and rare groove with disco rythm/drums??Dunn Pearson - Groove On Down, Ojeda Penn - Brotherson, Jimmy Jones - Cosmic Disco Raphsody, Tommy Stewart, Ultrafunk etc etc etcOh yeah post your favs, come with recommendations and all that..btw, does anyone have a full list of all songs produced/arranged by Tommy Stewart?
Comments
CLASSIC
dude why do you need to be so nit picky??
"name all your favorite disco jams made by 2 dominicans a black man and a funky dread that are between 103 and 105 bpms and feature ocarina solos.. I'll kick it off..."
LOL... isn't pookey a youngin? His knowledge of this stuff is pretty deep... I can't help!
Is Super Jay's Love Theme[/b] rare groove?
Young & Co. - I like what you're doing to me
Charme - Georgy Porgy
Standing right here - Melba Moore
(all from the same comp, so don't mistake me for someone with deep knowledge...
don't know if I'd classify this as rare groove disco (what is raregroovedisco?), but this track is killer.
Anyone that sort of likes disco should cop this, well worth the cheap price. Go get this!
Is 'Justice of the Peace' considered raregroovedisco???
THAT is Rare Groove...
A loooong time ago, long before you collected records, in an ancient time called "the 1990s", some dealers used this term to describe Roy Ayers and Donald Byrd LPs.
i think the phrase was first coined by norman jay in the mid 80s. he had a show called the "rare groove show" on the bbc where he spun funky blue note joints and the like. its a pretty antiquated term that has outrun its usefulness.
And oh, try African Music Machine: "Black Water Gold"
Be that as it may, these are still fundamentally flawed modes of understanding the music that emphasize the experience of the collectro over the music's own history--I'm not sure that many of them are deserving of much more than peremptory dismissal.
But that's part of the point: the "experience of the collectro" (AND their audience) in the UK (and elsewhere) has become undeniably a HUGE part of these musics' histories as we currently understand them. Calling a selection of music "Northern Soul" may be a "fundamentally flawed" approach, but there's thousands of people who would insist that the label is a highly important and useful one.
Speaking as the true young American you are, you couldn't have proven my point any better if you tried.
BTW TheM*ck and F*ux I'm not trying to hatt or accuse anybody here. It just irritates me to see Strutters routinely dismiss rather tried-and-true genre terms just because they don't happen to understand or use them. Sure, almost any genre label is given to generalization, but most users of such terms would gladly admit this. I don't think anyone who uses the phrase "rare groove" would try to convince you that Moody Scott and Roy Ayers sound exactly the same.
I think I understand what you mean by "emphsizing the experience of the collectro over the music's own history." But wouldn't you agree that sub-grouping by genres is helpful in understanding the continumum of the music's history? I mean disco (by and large a commercial craze) is different than funk (more of a DIY thing). Even though its all soul, I think these labels are useful because--at least to a certain extent--they emphasize the ethos behind a given sub-genre.
Not really.
I'm interested in soul music; I can't imagine being less interested in what soul tunes were popular with a bunch of British dudes (no offense to my British dudes) at the Wigan Casino at a certain point in time.
While it might add to my understanding of certain aspects of British culture, it adds nothing to my understanding of soul music.
I'm not arguing against the use of all genre tags--if we didn't use them, we'd have to start from scratch in describing each recording--but I am arguing against the utility of those that are based on which British dudes took an interest in which records at a particular time.
But that's part of the point: the "experience of the collectro" (AND their audience) in the UK (and elsewhere) has become undeniably a HUGE part of these musics' histories as we currently understand them. Calling a selection of music "Northern Soul" may be a "fundamentally flawed" approach, but there's thousands of people who would insist that the label is a highly important and useful one.
I don't consider the term 'Northern soul' useful at all beyond its ability to signify the type of music played at Northern "do's". As a genre it's a meaningless conflation of music that in other circumstances would be considered soul, blues, R&B rockabilly, funk, etc. By no means do I mean to downplay the importance of the Northern scene on the preservation of black American music, and I would recommend that anyone with a general interest in soul should listen to the Keb Darge interview that was posted earlier this week (http://www.ducktape.ca/chitchat/kebdarge/index.html). My point is simply that to anyone outside of the UK, the genre 'Northern Soul' is pretty meaningless...unless, of course, you're selling on ebay.
but that's like saying you take issue with certain labels used to identify different art periods (renaissance, impressionist, expressionist, etc.) through history because it was coined by an art historian after the fact.
Well, I truly don't know enough about visual art to explore the analogy, but I think that it would be more like accepting genre classifications invented by art historians based on common aesthetic traits and historical circumstances that connect artists, while rejecting genre classifications invented by art historians that are derived from which art collectors took an interest in what works.
fair enough, if true. but it seems to me that the brits are, in fact, classifying the sub-genres according to the sound, or as you say common aesthetic traits and historical circumstances. the tags modern soul, rare groove, nothern soul, etc. have more to do with their own sound and the development of the music than their scene.
I think the word 'works' is exactly right here. My knowledge of Northern history may not be substantial, but I know that at one point a Northern DJ was adventurous enough to play Paul Anka's "Can't Help Loving You". It worked, and it instantly become Northern. Five years earlier, however, the song probably would have tanked because the audience wouldn't have been ready for it yet. That is, for years the song wasn't Northern Soul, and then suddenly it was. That's the nature of Northern Soul.
The breadth of music subsumed by the label is under constant reconstruction. This is unlike contemporary music that pushes familiar music in new directions. In these cases, we often refer to this new music using extant genre labels until a new descriptive term is coined that better encapsulates the music being made. You might use Anticon as an example. For a couple of years Anticon was generally (though often cautiously) called hiphop, then someone came up with the term emo-rap, which is obvisouly much more appropriate. The term 'Northern Soul' does nothing for one's understanding of Paul Anka or Franki Valli's music.
Genre tags in Art History are much more efficient in classifying time periods, location, style etc. especially for the resercher/student. Even If an artist works into another genre (like jazz artists that release soul or funk albums) It is easy to track where the art came from.
Music may be an entirely different animal, but i think it deserves a better understanding than what we are working with now. The lines that have been drawn by the collecting world do not have the intentions of the recording artists in mind. Arguing over what is "northern soul, modern soul...." is rediculous.
Can anyone recommend me similar songs to Dunn Pearson??s "Groove On Down" and Ojeda Penn??s "Brotherson"??