The Mystery of Beat Shopping

While most beatdiggers can’t brag about finding three copies of the Heath Brothers’s Marchin’ On in their local Salvation Army, dollar bin diving still unites diggers everywhere. Goodwill summons dreams of the rarests of vinyl, but rarely delivers. But that stops none of the passionate ones. Indeed, the mere fact that our local record shop has dried up years ago urges us to check the same thrift stores twice a week in hopes of some poor son of a bitch ridding his dusty gold, thinking his jetsam is supporting the great cause of social betterment. A neverending practice, ours holds special meaning for us. The true thrift store sleuth has dropped all pretensions, leaving visions of Skull Snaps to the newbies, hoping instead to find a few interesting pieces, and maybe one or two slices that our neighbor has yet to discover.

Wax Poetics brings no pretense. Instead we politick to the common man and woman. We offer simple finds for those who, like us, are excited by the most banal of vinyl. We celebrate the underappreciated discs that bring small rays of light to the hard working beatdiggers across the planet.

Volume Two: Comps

For the beatdigger, the term compilation often calls to mind modern unlicensed records like Dusty Fingers and their low-budget counterparts like Beats From a Tribe; or the various European, licensed collections of hyper-rare 45 RPM funk tracks or library record breaks; or the new school of nicely packaged American comps. And while many new-school diggers started their very early funk education with, say, “Impeach the President” on a Funky Jams II LP (Hubbub Records), the more serious a digger becomes about searching for original vinyl, the more that digger will shun the comps.

But sometimes compilations have a life of their own, outside the music they contain. Instead of being known as simply an archive of older tracks, the comps themselves become as famous and as sought after as the original music. Case in point: the Ultimate Breaks & Beats series. And while UBB did compile some quite common breaks such as Billy Squier’s “Big Beat,” they also contained some impossibly rare songs, such as Manzel’s “Midnight Theme” and Melvin Bliss’s “Synthetic Substitution,” making the series necessary—especially at the time of its original release, before the current flood of reissued material.

Another such necessary compilation was Mo’ Wax’s Headz 2B. On here, Mo’ Wax re-released DJ Shadow’s first recording, an instrumental mix originally on the promo-only (and thus very rare) Hollywood BASIC EP of the African hip-hop duo Zimbabwe Legit. But now the Mo’ Wax comp (and the Headz 2 Sampler) is also rare and highly sought after—Spine Magazine even calls it “infamous.”

We must also take a look at the many compilations that came about in the early to mid-’90s out of what was America’s so-called acid jazz and trip-hop scene. New Breed’s now-out-of-print series Fat Jazzy Grooves shared with the US some very idependent artists such as Denmark’s instrumental hip-hoppers (and Beastie Boys remixers) the Prunes—before their Mo’ Wax recording and much-later Grand Royal EP. Fat Jazzy Grooves and others like it, such as Mad Jazzy Flavors, can now be seen as an early testament to the interest in beatdigging—an interest in the music of hip-hop; that is, beats for the sake of beats, sampling for the sake of sampled music.

Let’s go back a few more years to the 1980s when London’s Charly Records was releasing compiled best of albums like 1988’s The Very Best of Joe Tex and 1986’s Here Come the Metermen, which at times sells at New York record conventions as if it were a younger brother of the original three Meters albums on Josie. And—not to encourage price gouging of ’80s compilations—it is in a way a “younger brother” to the originals. If we see orginal vinyl as not just musical recordings but artifacts of a time period, we must see this compilation as having more history than more recent reissues, as it is only a decade and a half removed from the original and no longer in print itself. We must also examine this compilation on its own; in 1986 there were relatively few beatdiggers, and certainly not a movement as we see today, and yet Charly believed there was still a market for some of the rawest syncopated funk to come out of New Orleans. Thus from this Meters comp we have historical evidence of a soul scene emerging out of London in the mid-’80s.

Now let’s go back further: to the 1970s. When it comes to beatdigging, especially in the dollar bins, there are some very practical reasons for picking up comps. Instead of wasting time and money trying to find two copies of Ballin’jack’s debut, it’s much easier to snag a couple copies of Columbia’s Different Strokes in order to beat juggle the breakdown in “Found a Child.” Or perhaps you come across The Best of the James Gang for a dollar. You could have “Funk 48,” “Funk 49,” “The Bomber,” and “Yadig” all at once—or are you going to pass on it and wait to collect the rock breaks on their respective long-players?

And finally… There are the very special compilations—the collections of remade songs by low-budget label house bands—and are found almost exclusively in the dollar bins. Many of these comps were never even sold in stores, but through mail-order only. Some of these contain more than a few breaks or a track that is funkier than the original.

Supporting the theory that today any record can be reissued, this LP has been re-released by Orlando, Florida’s Gear Fab Records, who specializes in rare psych reissues. Buy the MP3 album now. This particular release can be labeled as exploito—a recording of current radio hits (often reworked and renamed) cut by session musicians and marketed by budget record labels to appeal to a specific crowd—in this case, the psychedelic-loving kids of the late 1960s…good times. Labels like Custom and Contessa (home to the Associated Soul Group) exploited the true artistic movement of psychedelic and, worse, exploited the musicians whose original songs frequently went uncredited and unlicensed.

Are You Experienced not only doesn’t credit the original artists such as Jimi Hendrix and the Box Tops, but lists no information on the band itself. But to argue that T. Swift & the Electric Bag were more than a group of sessioners is absurd—but not new. Some psych diehards hoped to have solved the group’s mystery by pointing out a similarly titled Texas band Tom Swift and the Electric Grandmothers, who put out just one 45 (Sound Tex 1964). The similar names can be chalked up to innocuous coincidence if you know where to look. Tom Swift was a series of dime novels—many considered to be early science fiction—penned and illustrated by different artists throughout the 1900s. There were titles such as Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle, Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout, Tom Swift and His Electric Locomotive, and let us not forget about Tom Swift and His Electronic Retroscope and Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung.

Who the group of musicians were is less important than how familiar they were with their material; the best critic could only guess. One critic has assumed that the sessioners were out of touch with the psych movement—but session players are normally very in tune to current musical trends. Thus while Are You Experienced may not be psychedelia in its sincerest form, it is nonetheless competent. But ironically, another Custom release fails completely on this point. Psychedellic Guitars sports a similar cover design and perhaps a similar lineup. But just as psychedelic is misspelled in the title, it is also misplayed. The album consists wholly of uninspired surf rock executed with fuzz-distortion guitar and bass. Truly exploito at its lowest form.

T. Swift, on the otherhand, is attractive to connoisseurs of cheese, fans of psych, and explorers of exploito. And just as none of these categorized admirers of the album could listen to it all the way through with genuine satisfaction, beatdiggers must rely on just a few bars of worthwhile drums to explain their desire to acquire the vinyl. And like many psychedelic records, there are indeed drumbreaks to be found on this one. But as is the case with most psych records, it would be unwise to enter into a bidding war or lay down hard-earned cash on this album. Psych collectors are known to be ridiculous spenders, so while there are beats to be found on psych albums, beatdiggers ordinarily look elsewhere. But as this LP is on the budget label Custom, it’s bound to show up in the dollar bins of your community.

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The title track’s intro is worthy of a few listens, but as it travels down its inevitable path, it’s becomes painfully obvious that it should have been “Are You Experienced (Instrumental).” Thankfully for the listener, the vocalist decided sit out on their surf rock rendition of the Box Top’s “The Letter”—retitled “A Jet.”

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Compilations should not be overlooked. While newer break and funk comps (especially on CD) seem to take the listener far away from the original source, comps from the ’60s and ’70s are historically rooted in the era of the music. Just as an original LP is an artifact of its time (note: its reissue some thirty years later is an artifact of its time—fifty years from now, collectors will look back on the turn of the century as synonymous with the resurgence of vinyl production; i.e., reissues), the compilation carries the same significance. Sure, the compilation is indeed a marketing tool used by the big music corporations to sell more records. But rarely in music is there not a monetary incentive directing distribution and marketing. And the collector who is not also an amateur music historian is turning his back on an important aspect of collecting.

Columbia’s “specially priced” Different Strokes flooded the market, and now is readily available in most dollar bins. The cover states that it contains nineteen contemporary artists performing music of our time; the our time implying circa 1970, post-Summer of Love, post-MLK assassination, pre-Vietnam withdrawal, pre-desegregation via busing, and right in the middle of it all. Thus our time connotes present-day, but denotes contemporary issues. The cover art depicts young people sitting shoulder to shoulder, massed outdoors, en masse, coming together for an important event. The power of the youth. The voting potential of the youth coming together as one. The political and social implications of the picture are enormous: We can change the world, y’all. And thus one gets the idea that the compilation contains political and social songs. But what we have instead—minus the folk songs and a couple others—is a handful of party songs, feel-good songs, rock songs. Big Brother and the Holding Co. singing about love, dancing, and getting drunk. Johnny Winter’s “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo.” Randy California and Spirit getting their groove on. Et cetera. But wait:

“Altogether, people, we’re going to the mill—to work out some problems,” the Chambers Brothers sing in the (Negro spiritual-style) gospel a cappella “Going to the Mill.” Let’s explore the fact that the Chambers Brothers have one of the few songs on the compilation with deeper, meaningful lyrics. The group of brothers were—like their contemporaries Sly & the Family Stone—considered soulful rock, or rock-tinted R&B, or “psychedelic soul”—depending on the critic trying to describe the Black band that rocked. “Going to the Mill” was from their LP New Generation, which also contains the socially aware tracks “Pollution” and “Practice What You Preach.” But aside from being socially aware, these songs were funky. Note: Also on New Generation is the track entitled “Funky” (claimed as their own by A Tribe Called Quest in “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo”). Funky is the imperative adjective.

Here, our time denotes funky. Columbia’s compilation includes funky artists. In fact, it’s a vinyl testament of a time when popular music was funky. However, out of all the modern funk songs on New Generation that Columbia could have pulled for the compilation, they chose instead the a cappella “Going to the Mill.” But “Going to the Mill” is important, as it shows the roots of soul music. From this early soul music (i.e., Negro spirituals) came blues, rock, and funk. But in 1970 (less than fifteen years after Chuck Berry and Little Richard gave rock and roll its identity), when a Black band played guitars and sang, the critics became confused, labeling them as a soulful type of rock (as with labeling a racially mixed band as funky rock), as though the two were completely different—soul and rock. (This critic-based confusion also played heavily in the labeling of funky jazz as rock inspired, due to the 4/4 beat.) But the compilation—a moment in time—illustrates that much of then-current rock was soulful and funky and blues inspired—as indeed that is the roots of rock and roll. Our time was a time when Spirit played “jazzy” rock, the New York Rock Ensemble had “funked up their music” (note: Columbia’s words; the term funk was used when marketing rock and roll), Soft Machine embraced the term fusion, and Laura Nyro’s next album would be Gonna Take a Miracle, recorded with Labelle as back-up and produced by Gamble and Huff—the poet songwriter (who penned “Stone Soul Picnic”) would remake classic soul and doo wop songs. As the big music corporations had been working so hard to divide the music into different groups, the music began breaking those given boundaries, acknowledging that the genres came from one source. And Columbia had to devise a way to market it. How to market Miles Davis’s At Fillmore? Different strokes for different folks. The Columbia people stuck a much-edited version of “Saturday Miles” on Different Strokes because the same consumers listening to rock also bought Miles’s uncategorically postmodern musings.

Different Strokes is an artifact of a funky era. A time when funky rock was the norm. Jazz was embracing funk as well. Fusion. The New York band Dreams had “some of the most respected people in jazz, rock, R&B, and Latin”—notably the Brecker brothers, drummer Billy Cobham, and session bassist Doug Lubahn (the Monkees, the Doors)—writes the Columbia marketers. While the group’s “New York” is certainly a mesh of jazz and rock and et cetera, it might sound, to the naive (the uninitiated into the world of funk), as simply ’70s music—music that calls to mind urban street scenes…on the corner. Elvin Bishop also played funky music. The Midwestern farmboy had first heard Black music on the radio as a kid. Upon moving to Chicago, he watched and learned Black music, mainly blues. After his many-year stint with the Butterfield Blues Band, he went solo. “Don’t Fight It (Feel It)” was from his country funk album Feel It!—see how easy it is for critics to label music? As with the Elvin Bishop Group, Ballin’jack was a racially mixed band. Oh, I get it. You mean, funky rock? Now you get the idea. “Found a Child” is complete with a sloppy, uptempo intro break, and a hand-clapping, dirty-street-sounding, get-your-groove-on breakdown (doesn’t it make you want to bust a move?).

Horn stabs, shouts and chants, funky bass lines, blues guitar licks, and drum breaks—progressively combined with aggressive singing: soulful rock, funky rock, bluesy rock—’70s music.

Our time.

“New York”

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“Don’t Fight It (Feel It)”

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“Found a Child”

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“Found a Child”

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