tell us all about SKULL SNAPS
youngEINSTEIN
2,443 Posts
we all know "it's a new day" but who was the skull snaps??? are they a white group trying to cash in on blood, sweat and tears fame??are they a black group with a political message?fill me in. .stein. . .
Comments
gangstarr - take it personal
diamond d - sally got a one track mind
pharcyde - passin me by
how many potentially good tracks have the break ruined in recent time? i always want to throw up whenever i hear it used. i guess its mainly because all these newjacks who sample it cant chop proper... or better yet, did anyone use it recently with good results?
sorry i dont know anything about the band!
I have a stupid-ass question! i am not one that follows breaks and samples and what not, but...was the intro of that song sampled from a Jimi Hendrix record?? just wondering.
Wow stein thats a really good question and I can't beleive that in my 3 years on this site and the countless mentions of this group no one has really looked into them.
I wish I knew something about them but I don't have a copy of their album to even take a look at (I'm guessing theres no picture of the group on the back though)
I'm curious to see how this comes out
cool. i thought it sounded familiar.
you mean that organ-intro? Thats not jimi, thats Quincy Jones.
That group is not white, without a doubt.
Alcohol is a hell of a drug
sorry about that.
Its the intro to Are You Experienced.
I know thats an easy one for most, but I thought I'd go for it since nobody else has.
Did anyone know GSF was owned by Lloyd Price?!
(Producer) Ed Stasium: "I guess it was a band from Newark, N.J., called the Skull Snaps. The recording of that band came out years later, and when I was meeting with Vernon Reid about producing the first Living Colour record, the mention of the Skull Snaps and that I recorded the first album clinched the deal for me. It was really bizarre. He learned how to play guitar by listening to that record."
Who was behind the boards for a lot of the Smithereens output as well...
As well as a gang of Ramones records, check his credits:
I only have the Skull Snaps on CD reissue, are there any production credits listed on the OG?
I want some George KErr solo records dammit!
As for rap dudes being up on it, people jock Stezo/Dooley O for being the first to sample the Skullsnaps, but I think it was known by b-boys long before that-- if memory serves, it was mentioned along with other breaks in Steven Hager's hip hop book, which came out in like 1983/1984.
With Kerr, I really like his production for others but the artist LPs I've heard have never grabbed me. I can't front on the instrumental flip to his "3 Minutes 2" single, though.
For what it's worth, Steven (former High Times editor-in-chief) Hager's book on St. Martin's Press from '84 commands around $ 500.00 for a copy - long out-of-print - and certifiable classic read - 1 of the 3 tomes that Jeff (Zen) Chang and I agreed upon - the others bein' Ahearn's 'Yes, Yes, Y'all' and David Toop's 'The Rap Attack'...
Copped my OG copy back in '84... And it's essential for the examination of the Puerto Rican contingent in keepin' the flavor alive when a lot of the black crowd had gravitated towards disco in the mid to late '70s...
Ahh, that might explain why John Anderson was grabbing those back then, I wonder if they sold for cheap. A friend told me that lp was going for 30-40 bucks in Japan in the late 70's, just for the sweet stuff...I don't really dig the ballads on there myself.
I haven't had the luck of grabbing any Kerr lp's...but his vocal tune on the "New Jersey Hits" lp(All Platinum) kills me. Might have been a single too.
Don't know that one. I'll have to check for it.
As the Diplomats, they had one really rare funk single, "She's the One" on 3rd World. According to the Soulfulkindamusic site (http://www.soulfulkindamusic.net/diplomats.htm), they also recorded as the Puzzles and as All Dyrections. The Four Puzzles-- probably the same personnel-- had a really great soul single on Bill Curtis' Fatback label called "Especially for You Baby."
carry on.
Okay, one more weird factoid. In the early 90s, Luv 'n' Haight put out a couple bootleg breakbeat records called "Bulldog Breaks," one of which featured an "It's a New Day" loop. Dan Prothero, the guy who made the breakbeats and has more recently run a label called Fog City Records (putting out shit by Galactic and the like), told me he later met the Skullsnaps engineer and tried to get him to explain how he got the "It's a New Day" drum sound. The engineer responded that he had no idea because it was the first session he'd ever done and he'd gotten the sound totally by accident.
Although the webpage design is a bit grating...this site's well researched list of discographies is excellent!
Thanks for the link.
No doubt. They seem to be kind of spotty where funk stuff is concerned-- for example, they have the name of the All Dyrections b-side wrong, they omit the "It's a New Day" 45, etc., but they do have a lot of useful information.
Undoubtebly.....BTW, this John Anderson you speak of, he is English?? Maybe, operates a radio station or radio show dedicated to Northern and the like??