digging the 90ties funk...
milliondollars
568 Posts
i am desperately looking for unknown/less-known funk bands from the 90ties.does anybody of you know who really got the ball roling back then...?today you have got loads of new funk bands but in the 90ties there must have been only a hand full of them. it must have been really hard to release records and reach the right audience since the internet wasn't spread all over.if you know some good records i should look for your help would be highly apprechiated...the only ones i know are:- Poets Of Rhythm (obviously! no describtion needed...)- Happy Alright (the name and the cover art of this LP is awful but i'm still glad that i did grab this unbelievale deep-funk LP by a unknown swedish band! highly underrated if you ask me! record was released in 1994 on Pure Records, same like The Soul Providers - "Gimme The Paw" by Gabriel Roth)- Aquaflesh (another unknown funk band with a LP named "Roll Your Own Funk" on grey vinyl. like the Happy Alright the cover would never made me want to buy this record but the sound sounds raw & dirty and reminds me of the Whitefield Brothers somehow. released on Umoja Recordings in 1995) all these bands i consider as pioneers of the new funk scene and the most of the new releases can't mess with them.please help and add more records if you know some... 
Comments
Plankton B2[/b] - Z'Zw??nzg Min??tige / Full Flesh / Jam (STRATS-1)
sample (Z'Zw??nzg Min??tige): LISTEN
to be honest i never paid much attention to the label, i thought they did mostly electronic stuff...
recommend some titles please!
http://www.myspace.com/farukgreen
Not just the label, but the genre! A lot of acid-jazz records were really just funk in '90s electronic drag. Even somebody like the Brand New Heavies sounded like a lost funk band back then.
A couple of other funk bands from that decade to check out:
- Repercussions (studio project with a female vocalist up front; one album on Warner Bros.)
- Crown Royals (quartet from Chicago who were reminiscent of the earliest funk bands from the Meters/Dyke & the Blazers/early Kool & the Gang era, featuring Ken Vandermark on sax...had a really good album on the Estrus label)
Not quite right. As I said up above, a lot of the acid-jazz bands had a very obvious funk influence going on. The only problem was that these 90's funk revivalists were closer to Donald Byrd than, say, the Watts 103rd St. Rhythm Band. Which was good if you wanted genteel danceable jazz, but no one was covering the gritty Keb Darge "houseparty funk" angle. I think the Desco stable was one of the few that did.
Were you old enough to buy records or go to clubs back then? Because it wasn't really as bad as you make it sound!(((GRIN))) There WAS a network for labels to market this stuff, it's not like everybody was waiting for the World Wide Web to take off so they could do their thing. See, the Internet may not have blown up yet (although it was around), but there was one secret weapon we could count on - ACTUAL RECORD STORES!!!!
As I remember it, funk was sorta on the way back, as a subsidiary of the whole acid-jazz craze. Matter of fact, quite a few stores had an a-j section; we covered this a while back, in a thread called "Acid Jazz Revisited." It wasn't quite as widespread as it is today, in these post-Daptone times - there were some LAME records being passed off as nu-funk (remember the Solsonics? T.J. Kirk?), so you took what you could get. But it was out there.
Fronted by none other than Nicole Willis.
That, I didn't know! I haven't played this CD (great as it is) in a long time!
I AM SAYIN!!!
There were all kinds of cats givin up the Funk in the 90's. Whether it was Acid Jazz,Neo Soul,StrR&B,Funky Electronica stuff,of Funk sampled Hip Hop.
Straight-up FUNK Bands.....Pure100%.......not really.
Lo-Key? is a Mid-West 90's R&B band in the order of Mint Condition, who on their second album were tryin to do "modern" Funk for the radio. Live shit w/ modern production.
They were a mix of Funk,Soul,Reggae,Jazz,etc. Pretty much a culmination of what was happening in the 90's w/ the genre blending.
Not super Funk, but Funky enuff.
Which is kinda what got me about the BNA and their wave of popularity back then. Everybody kept mentioning the word "jazz" as if they were Dave Brubeck or something. Okay, I could hear a sorta-kinda jazz influence going on, but why people would free-associate JAZZ before coming up with FUNK is beyond me...
No doubt.
Doesnt the term "Heavies" reference a Funk quality. Like James Brown Heavy Funk?
I wouldnt ever connect BNH to Jazz. Never Stop is some New-Funk.
Ill add Sade,Prince, and Jamiroqui(Acid Jazz) to pop cats droppin tha FONK.....'pagin Bassie'......
However, as people above have noted, it's worth parsing apart what we mean by "funk" in the 1990s. If there is one constant, it's that a good deal of the "new funk" bands mentioned straight up HATED HATED HATED on acid jazz. A-J was like their very antithesis. Same with post-P-Funk "fonk."
And so while I think it makes sense to talk about funk in the '90s as encompassing all these different styles, that doesn't mean the artists themselves would see things the same way. I've been chatting with Jan from the Poets and he's very clear in stating that what he and the group were trying to do was show people that there was a sound of funk that didn't sound or look like acid jazz. People who've read Gabe Roth and Philippe Lehman's stuff in Big Daddy can attest to that as well.
For real - since this topic has cropped up - if anyone has any first-hand knowledge on how, for example, the Desco releases (or things similar to that) were marketed/promoted, I'd absolutely want to talk to you. PM me! (And Pickwick, you can expect a PM in a minute)
understandable, but then marketing is a very powerful thing.
ive had friends who played in rockabilly bands who HATED HATED HATED the whole swing craze of the late nineties.
yet and still, a lot of these neobilly bands were getting gigs thanks to swing.
why?
because club owners and audiences would see these guys decked out in fifties gear and lump them in with the swing crowd, especially if they wore suits like deke dickerson.
rockabillies/the swing fad = new funk bands/acid jazz (if you follow my analogy)
this association may have been cool while the trend was going, but when it went down the toilet, im sure none of the new funk people wished to go down the drain with it
Raw Stylus- (which Premo sampled a loop of and produced a song for)
Sweetback- (Sade's band doing an instrumental lp)
I remember getting promo 45s and cds from Desco in 1998 when I was a funk dj on Penn State Student Radio.
thanks a lot for all the feedback
have to check these tunes out
FUNK METAL!
And although I know this is about nineties ish--YES I'm even talking about Jamiroquai's recent jams.
WHERE YOU AT FRENCHIES? I KNOW YOU PEEPIN THIS!
Ok, sorry to have
I just picked this up the other day, and it kills:
http://www.discogs.com/release/1562539
A Study In High-Fidelity Comp.
a mix of deep funk tracks with some tracks mixed in by Joey Altruda Quartet feat. Phil Lehman on drums (I do believe). It comes on blue marbled vinyl and it's
30% of Soul Strut are going "Jamiroquai? They're STILL around?
And another 30% are going "Jamiro WHO?"
sonuds great! ordered that one straight away!
hopefuly that thing is worth the 8 bucks!
I have to disagree. Its more Neo-Soul/Electronica.
but here is a str8 band making modernized 70's style Funk....
Dag - Righteous
Mad SoulStrut dudes have funk metal in their closet.
This is a terrible thread.
It should be deleted and everyone who poasted in it needs to be BAN.
funny how theyve now been typecast as a jam band, even though the most recent thing ive heard by them was solidly funky
D.I.G (directions in groove) that where more jazzy funk... they had some nice albums and a few twelves (including one with a killer Dj Krush remix). They also reformed into a short lived outfit called Multiball (but I never seen a release of theres).