"FOREVER SHIT" (copyright Ghostface)
- Thread starter Hairy Moody
- Start date
I remember Diplo would promote his Hollertronix parties on here in the early 00's. I don't think there would be a Diplo today if it wasn't for her. She's the one who encouraged him and supported his parties.
Great Mix BTW!
[media]https://www.mixcloud.com/widget/iframe/?feed=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mixcloud.com%2Fsoulstrutdotcom%2Fwhite-lily-bottom-of-the-universe-2005%2F&hide_cover=1&light=1[/media]
Hairy Moody said:
- that rehearsal video of an embryonic New Edition working out "Candy Girl", with Ralph on the kit, Ronnie on synth drum, Ricky on clavinet, and Bobby Fucking Brown on congas, recorded in one ear and deeeeeep in the red. If you like or have ever liked breakbeats, distortion, r&b, the 1980s, youth, party and/or bullshit, this will never not cook your whole shit down to crystal.
- Tori Amos's voice fraying in the last verse of "Caught A Lite Sneeze"
- Whitelily's Bottom Of The Universe
Yes to so much of the list but had to highlight these three. That New Edition video is, by itself, a reason I am thankful for Youtube, it still makes me smile all these years later.
Hearing Whitelily's Bottom Of The Universe mix for the first time is one of those singular moments when I can pinpoint when my musical tastes were broadened/changed. It's still probably my favourite mix of all time and one of the reasons my own mixes always remain unfinished - I am aspiring to something perfect that manages to make me feel sad and happy in equal measures.
Re: Amos, the older I get the the more I appreciate her. Her voice fraying there reminds me of moments in songs that I wait the whole rest of the track for:
- The "Racing against time" part of Gaye's "Time to get it together" where it beautifully (clumsily?) builds before being interrupted mid loop and starting again. It pulls me in, out and in again.
- The way Bell's Forgot To Be Your Lover builds from an opening line that conjures up images of Cocker to an impassioned please over falling strings in less than 2 minutes. Extraordinary.
Harry Belafons on muppet SHows. I loved that as a child. Now you remind me and i still love it! Also his perform of 'earth songs' on the same show was magic.
top list, I'd add
Gil Scott-Heron "Whitey on the Moon" & "The Revolution..." version with full band backing
Jackie Mittoo & Winston Wright's hammond techniques/tastefulness
Gil Scott-Heron "Whitey on the Moon" & "The Revolution..." version with full band backing
Jackie Mittoo & Winston Wright's hammond techniques/tastefulness
No doubt. I find, though, that more than changing my tastes--though it did do that to some extent, for sure--what it really changed was my idea of the kind of emotional weight that a great mix can support. I wouldn't necessarily want to make or listen to another mix that has the same musical vibe as Lily's (I still don't own most of the records in that mix, and I probably don't need to), but man, I feel like some part of me will always be chasing the feeling of it.
Last year I was unduly geeked to hear that "white...lily" sample pop up on a Laurie Anderson record that I'd had--as your people say--since time.
(And for what it's worth, Whitelily's The American Dream also comes highly recommended.)
...
Oh, I saw something today that reminded me of another one:
Carole King's reaction to Aretha Franklin doing "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" at the Kennedy Center Honors a few months back.
The whole thing is just great. King is jumping out of her skin the entire time, looking not so much "honored" as "decimated," in the manner of one blissfully rendering her whole self up into the all-dissolving sun that the voice and presence of Aretha Franklin can be. Even as it's this big, rarefied thing happening between these two highly-decorated and unassailably-pedigreed musical goddesses, it still somehow feels like it also belongs at least a little to every one of us who's ever lost our shit in the face of music that we love and that seems to love us right back. From first to last, it's an astonishingly pure intersection of music and humanity.
But there's one particular moment I want to talk about, even if by now it's only to myself.
First, some context: Over the last couple decades, Aretha Franklin has, in terms of image, been moving steadily away from the ivory-pounding belter of her earlier days, away from the grody pop mama of her 80s days, away even from the hip-hop-propped diva of the late 90s. She has long since transitioned into the more refined image of Aretha The Icon--stately and sophisticated, single-spotlighted at the microphone with the gowns and the polish and all that. 2016 Aretha is not the Aretha that's at the piano all fierce and emotional with her natural and banging out "Rock Steady." That has not been the scene for a looooong time now. 2016 Aretha is the Aretha that's, like, doing "Nessum Dorma" at Notre Dame or wherever. "Amazing Grace" acapella in front of a lot of tuxedoed money-stacks at Clive Davis's millionth birthday. Singing to the pope and shit. If she was once a capital-C Creator, she seems to have a while ago settled for being a capital-S Singer.
I think because of all that, for me, the singular moment of the thing is when Carole King realizes that not only is Aretha Franklin going to sing her song for her, she is--sweet Jesus--going to play it for her, too.
If you doubt that this is that big a deal, just look at King's face when Aretha sweeps aside her floor-length fur and sits down at that bench.
King is so clearly torn between wanting to watch and wanting to look around to make sure that what she's seeing is being seen by others who can, when all this is over, assure her that, yes, it really did happen that way. The wonder of it just keeps unfolding in front of her, and you can see plainly on her face that joyous agony--wanting the moment to go on, but wanting it to wait for her, too.
Again, it's so singular, but so so relatable. It's being there when your favorite band plays your favorite song, times a million. It's hard not to cry whenever I watch it.
Mark4 said:
The BPM of this song is like 170... almost impossible to spin out back when there was no Serato.
Here's it on 'ludes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oriyLmPJ8i8
Mix it with some balleuraic at 85bpm
My Aretha "Forever Shit" is this:
https://youtu.be/Ye-ZFPbRdTM
At last she gets something lush to paint, via the effort of Luther, Marcus Miller and Tawatha Agee. Whilst Whikney (sic) and dem are coming with the cake decorations, Aretha is serving you the finest eyes-shut, melt-in-your-mouth steak you've ever tasted. Satisfying at a deeply human level, if not straight to the Lizard Brain. Some of the others try real hard, but to paraphrase Apollo Creed : "They sing great, but she's a great singer." Maybe there is just no substitute for life experience.
Chaka is up there for me, 'cause she brings her own style. Fusks for the conventional constraints of pitch and diction are not given, or are ejected Westward with disdain. And it still sounds great. "What Cha' Gonna Do For Me" is killer but you can't fusk with "Through The Fire". David Foster done wrote it just for her and she delivered. It's good when it comes together like that - see Aretha above.
Is my memory broak or did Chaka do a cover of "When Love Calls" (the Atlantic Starr one)? Because that can't happen soon enough.
https://youtu.be/Ye-ZFPbRdTM
At last she gets something lush to paint, via the effort of Luther, Marcus Miller and Tawatha Agee. Whilst Whikney (sic) and dem are coming with the cake decorations, Aretha is serving you the finest eyes-shut, melt-in-your-mouth steak you've ever tasted. Satisfying at a deeply human level, if not straight to the Lizard Brain. Some of the others try real hard, but to paraphrase Apollo Creed : "They sing great, but she's a great singer." Maybe there is just no substitute for life experience.
Chaka is up there for me, 'cause she brings her own style. Fusks for the conventional constraints of pitch and diction are not given, or are ejected Westward with disdain. And it still sounds great. "What Cha' Gonna Do For Me" is killer but you can't fusk with "Through The Fire". David Foster done wrote it just for her and she delivered. It's good when it comes together like that - see Aretha above.
Is my memory broak or did Chaka do a cover of "When Love Calls" (the Atlantic Starr one)? Because that can't happen soon enough.
Jimster said:
My Aretha "Forever Shit" is this:
https://youtu.be/Ye-ZFPbRdTM
That's gorgeous. You know what, though? I seldom see that record around here. I think folks hang onto that one. Her "Take Me With You," from a couple albums previous is big with the steppers.
Aretha's such an interesting case: Her perspective on adult love and adult relationships seems kind of arrested, and she doesn't always seem to be real connected with the, you know, essence of the material, but even in those cases her voice manages to somehow be the truth. I think "Satisfying at a deeply human level" is right on.
Jimster said:
Chaka is up there for me, 'cause she brings her own style. Fusks for the conventional constraints of pitch and diction are not given, or are ejected Westward with disdain.
Yes. Like Charlie Wilson, she's got that little buzz in the back of her voice that makes her sound like she's singing in close harmony with herself. Electrifying. (She's a long-time crush of mine, too. I thought spied her through a window at The Promontory a little while back and got all aflutter, but it turned to be an SZA poster hung in their vestibule. Booooo.)
Jimster said:
Is my memory broak or did Chaka do a cover of "When Love Calls" (the Atlantic Starr one)? I'm not sure, but I do know that within the first few comments underneath the YouTube for the Atlantic Starr original is the most succinct/cold-blooded/not-necessarily-inaccurate encapsulation of the age divide you will read today:
First commenter said:
the 55 people that didn't like this don't know what it feels like when love calls
Second commenter said:
They are probably young people from this loveless generation.
Brutal.
Hairy Moody said:
Her perspective on adult love and adult relationships seems kind of arrested
BINGO. I am thinking her home life wasn't the kind of library she could draw from when it came to, uh, reasonable adult behaviour, whatever that is.
Her folks split when she was very young, her pastor dad got at least one kid pregnant (but it's OK when they are holier than thou, right?) and she was a mother herself at 14 (IIRC Sam Cooke may have been the father). So, as another great singer once sang, "What's love got to do with it?". I've got a son around that age who can't be trusted with emptying a bin.
I believe that's why she went down the hard-and-fiesty-steez route, as a combined defence/attack mechanism. Which makes the non-fiesty stuff somehow more of a glimpse of the real, for me. Same for Tina.
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