LEAF: the Twisty Story of a Baltimore Record
edulus
421 Posts
saw it on the citypaper bloghttp://www.citypaper.com/digest.asp?id=15363figured the soulstrut massive likes stories like this.
Comments
I have one in the shop now and always like playing it for folks.
For what it's worth I prefer the rock side. The funk side, despite the "open break" (gag) is kinda milquetoast.
For a label that's supposedly so above board there sure seems to be a lot of unlicensed BBE material floating around out there...
You don't know the half of it.
http://www.bbemusic.com/data.pl?track=GBEQT0800008
The 'A' side "Food Stamps" is in the media link on that page...
FULL DISCLOSURE: I work for a label group which distributes BBE (though I have nothing to do with the licensing).
Still though, it seems like a situation where a record company puts out something containing music which a group of dedicated music collectors and local historians have researched diligently and found nothing, and then happily pays the artist upon being contacted is far from the most flagrant abuse in current music licensing.
If only this were actually the case. Dedicated DJs that like a record have very little to do with tracking down these records. It's embarrassing how many of their compilations have unlicensed material that could have been easily licensed. From our catalog alone they've got five different bootlegged songs. If we can find them, they can too. They're either not looking or not interested. Both, it seems.
To the point though, what if you didn't want to be on some shitty DJ compilation? You find out about the record while googling yourself and say "Hey, this isn't how I want my material represented." But by this point there's 5000 units floating around, the train has left the station and all they're offering is mechanicals plus 12% split among 20 artists. Too bad, they're in the UK and it's barely worth it to try and find a lawyer overseas, let alone get them to take on a copyright case from the states. Maybe you can C&D every store and distributor carrying the record, maybe. The reality however is that the damage is done. You get a few hundred dollars and BBE look like geniuses for "unearthing" this music.
I feel like I'm pretty familiar with both BBE and Numero's catalogs, and wasn't aware of any intersection.
I found a copy of this record back in January and played it for a few friends and am excited and surprised at the synchronicity effect of all this info coming out about it around the same time. The most striking thing about the music to me is the curiosity factor of how "not-of-its-time" it sounds (or looks, for that matter). The funk side is more like 70s Wild Cherry meets 90s funk revival (Brand New Heavies or RHCPs) than anything I know of happening in 1982. And the rock side is more a sleazy stoner rock with fuzzed-out guitar soloing, which, again, seems to be so far removed from what was going on in 1982. And, of course, the packaging is D.I.Y. to the extreme. I can't say that I'm majorly riding for the record musically- it's cool but not the kind of thing I'm going to be bumping for a week straight- but it's definately an interesting document of a local sound I'm not sure many people knew existed.