Great obscure funky tracks to mention

[Funky Dude]

Hi all. Over the past several months I've gotten a hold of a lot of obscure funky music off Soulseek which some a lot are from albums like Funk Spectrum and Brainfreeze and Pulp Fusion and others. Anyhow thought I'd give these a mention and see what you guys think of them. To me they are top stuff:

Michael Longo - Like A Thief In The Night 1974 (very nice piece of jazz/funk/disco with a nice disco wah wah sound)

Nite-Liters - Buck & The Preacher 1972 (very funky Shaft/Superfly style funk music, fantastic!)

Sound Experience - Boogie Woogie 1975 (quite funny at the start when they go "boogie woogie boogie woogie" then they get right into the funky jam)

4th Coming - The Dead Don't Die Alive Pt 1 (top guitar wah wah funk with nice synth lines)

Jack Ashford - Do The Choo-Choo 1975 (this is a very fine piece of guitar funk music with a cool drum beat!)

Joe Thomas - Thank You 1972 (great cover of a Sly & The Family Stone hit with a real funky drumbeat)

Johnny Harris - Stepping Stones 1970 (really fast piece of funk with kind of a latin style to it, nice flute work and fast percussions)

L.T.G. Exchange - Waterbad Part II 1974 (cool instrumental version of part one, top funky disco guitar wah wah sounds and I think the triangles were used in this song too which give it a nice touch)

Sonny Stitt - Slick Eddie 1975 (nice piece of jazz funk, the start of the song is fantastic funky work and breaks out into a smooth jazz funky disco sound)

S.O.U.L - Burning Spear (fine piece of jazz flute funk which really stands out in the song)

Soul Searchers - Blow Your Whistle 1974 (another fantastic piece of funk by this group which has a funky guitar sound similar to their "We The People" song, the start sounds a little similar to an Elvis song that was remixed recently which was a big hit last year I think, top stuff!!!)

Banks & Hampton - Get On Up Shake Some Butt 1976 (fantastic piece of 1976 style funk/disco with great strings)

Tribe - Baby Feet 1975/76 (this has fantastic discotized funky sound I assume from guitar plus the horns really go off in the song with the drums and some awsome synths!!!)

Leroy Hutson - The Ghetto 1974 (great cover version of Donny Hathaway's)

Joseph Henry - Who's The King (great piece of James Brown style funk with a top guitar pluck funky sound and horn arrangement)

El Coco - Yakety Yak 1975 (a great cover of a 50s rock'n'roll song with funky disco keyboard/synth sounds)

Bad Medicine - Trespasser pt 1 (nice piece of early 70s funk with an infectious funky wah wah sound with synths)

Soulsistics - Jones N 1974 (awsome piece of guitar wah wah funk which sounds like a great early 70s car chase theme song)

Charles Pryor & Power Of Love - What They Doing (a really cool fast funky groover from around I guess the mid 70s, the horn lines really go off in this song especially when they hit the high notes!)

Luther Davis Group - To Be Free (a superb piece of late 70s funky disco music with a soulful touch to it, the bass and guitar funk is awsome!)

Crown Heights Affair - I Am Me 1975 (this is one of my favourite CHA tracks, the guitar wah wah and high-hats/drums are fantastic and the horns go off real well like that Charles Prior "What They Doing" song)

Fried Chicken - Funky DJ 1976 (nice slow funky jam with a great keyboard sound and hard funky sound when they sing "he plays that funky music....")

The Mystic Moods - Cosmic Sea 1973 (awsome smooth funky sound with a synthesizer line and distorted drumbeat and strings and keyboard sound and funky guitar wah wah sound!!!)

Pleasure Web - Music Man 1973 (nice piece of flute funk and drumbeat similar to Joe Thomas's "Thank You")

Simtec & Wylie - Bootleggin' (Pt 2) 1971 (great early funky song with a funky raw guitar sound to it!)

7-Eleven - Dance the Slurp (a late 60s song with a good guitar/bass funky line and the sound of slurping a frosty, interesting track as I wonder if it was a theme for the 7-Eleven stores?)

Mack Rice - Three People In Love 1968 (some nice early style funk with guitar wah wah which was probably new at the time in funky music)

Gary Byrd - Soul Travelin' pt. 1 (The G.B.E.) 1974 (awsome piece of funky music with bits of popular funk songs like "Superstition", "Theme From Shaft", "Freddie's Dead" and others!)

The Fabulous Mark III - Psycho Pt 1 1972 (this is a bloody awsome piece of raw funk with organs, horns and percussion beat, and it starts with a real sharp guitar wah wah sound and there's more of it in areas of the song which sounds awsome along with the flutes!!!)

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AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE!!! OI OI OI!!!

[QUINNY]

You might be on your own Funky. Most of these are seriously obscure, eh?
Congrats, you've just become a genuine funk trainspotter. :lol: :lol: :lol:

[Forrrce]

Looks like the track-listing for one of those £8.99 4-CD bargain boxes. Those tracks have all been wrung out, bootlegged, played and re-issued something chronic, over the past 20 years or so. If you're gonna insult peoples' intelligence like that, Funkydude...

[NickNack]

Originally Posted by Forrrce

Looks like the track-listing for one of those £8.99 4-CD bargain boxes. Those tracks have all been wrung out, bootlegged, played and re-issued something chronic, over the past 20 years or so. If you're gonna insult peoples' intelligence like that, Funkydude...

Interesting as I only recognize a few of the groups and almost none of the music.

Forrrce: Are you saying these were popular at the time? I'm asking because you said they've been 'chronically re-issued', which I guess means somebody wants them.

[Funky Dude]

Looks like the track-listing for one of those £8.99 4-CD bargain boxes. Those tracks have all been wrung out, bootlegged, played and re-issued something chronic, over the past 20 years or so. If you're gonna insult peoples' intelligence like that, Funkydude...

As mentioned a lot of these tracks, well most actually come from the "Pulp Fusion" CD series, "Brainfreeze Breaks" CD series and "Funk Spectrum" CD series.

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AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE!!! OI OI OI!!!

[Graham_Start]

Yakety Yak? I love Rinder & Lewis, but I think that's got to be the absolute worst track that they ever put out. A painfully bad cover of a painfully silly song...

[Forrrce]

Originally Posted by NickNack

Interesting as I only recognize a few of the groups and almost none of the music.

Forrrce: Are you saying these were popular at the time? I'm asking because you said they've been 'chronically re-issued', which I guess means somebody wants them.

Most of the tracks listed have been popular, over here at least. No doubt many were also big in the stone age (i.e., when Quinny was deejaying). They're no great secret - you'll probably know many snippets as samples and they're certainly not obscure by a long shot. But that's just the trainspotter in me getting uppity... 8)

[QUINNY]

Believe me Forrrce, Neanderthals like me wouldn't have played most of these records. We had something called taste, even in those days.

Most of the cheapo CDs and even many of the full price ones mentioned, that delve deep into the vaults, contain some of the most awful drek I have ever had the misfortune to listen to. Most of it should have been laid to rest and never revisited.

I guess what's been going on over the past decade or so is similar to what happened on the Northern Soul scene, except........... The scene hasn't had the same following.
I for one do not understand people's obsession with rarity, or their need to evangelise the product with such intensity, or with such detachment from reality.

[Forrrce]

There's a lot of good stuff there regardless, Q - well above the average tosh that gets raved about these days. S.O.U.L's 'Burning Spear' was a big track for me - I played it at all of my gigs and it used to mesmerise people, literally. And this was before it was sampled and eventually sought after. It will always be one of the records I was asked about the most. To me, it was my discovery. :D

Similar story with 'Stepping Stones'. 'Slick Eddie' - suprised you don't like this...or 'Waterbed'. Good (great, even) cuts aplenty...but they're just not news.

Still, I have trouble with those 'deep funk' comps which come out now. I can't listen to all that run-of-the-mill backstreet, funky soul. It just sends me to sleep. No point in reissuing that dry stuff - why do these guys think these records never sold..? I'm caught between a rock and a hard place, here - overfamiliarity and stone cold disinterest! :lol:

[QUINNY]

One man's good grub is another's average spread.
I don't particularly go for S.O.U.L - Burning Spear. I'd rather have Richard Evans - Burning Spear any day. So that tells you something, I guess.

Waterbed I used to play and liked, but it was never stunning.
A few others I recognise but don't remember,(not a good sign) and there may be some others that I have but have never made any impression. However, the vast majority are still obscure to me. Ya see, I'm not a collector, I'm not a fanatic when it comes to music and I certainly ain't no trainspotter by choice. I don't eat, drink and sleep records and never did. :lol:

Lest we forget. James Brown is obscure to a large percentage of the population. Need I say more?

I genuinely feel sorry for you Forrrce 'cos I do have some understanding of what it's like to know a fair amount and be somewhat disinterested in the rest. So I assume you agree with me that obscure so often means garbage?

[Forrrce]

I didn't think you cared, Queeny. So I'm a lost cause through preferring S.O.U.L. to Richard Evans?

It is possible to be a collector and a music lover at the same time, though in your world the two can't possibly coexist. It's also possible for good records to have come and gone without the Mighty Q hearing them in the interim - but again, in Q's world, they're rubbish and that's why they didn't sell 30 years ago. True for some, not for others. It's that simple. If you can't appreciate something for what it is and forget that it bypassed you for reasons beyond your control initially, then you're not into music at all, Q.

[QUINNY]

Forrrce: Oh dear! What did I say? :o :o :o

I merely said I like Richard Evan's version more than S.O.U.L.'s. No need to get uppity over that.

I don't know. In friendship, you puts yer hand on someone's shoulder, ya sympathise with 'em and they bites yer head off.

[NickNack]

Originally Posted by QUINNY

I genuinely feel sorry for you Forrrce 'cos I do have some understanding of what it's like to know a fair amount and be somewhat disinterested in the rest. So I assume you agree with me that obscure so often means garbage?

:lol: :lol: :lol: I read your "Oh, dear..." to Forrrce and had to laugh. You actually have no idea why he's angry? READ YOUR WORDS, they're insulting.

And before you come after me I'm backing out. You just amazed me... again!

[efunk_adelic]

:D :D lol :lol: :lol: :D :D

what a funny thread.... I've never heard almost all of these records...


I have to agree with Q on one point... sometimes (but not all the time) obscure means shit.


However, when I hear these records... i'll be the judge for myself... you guys crack me up...

[markydefad]

I think the Police summed it up quite aptly with "When the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around". :D

I've given up on today's music for the most part. :evil: Now, I'm fascinated by all the obscure stuff I missed back in tha day. I'd buy a compilation with all those titles on it. I've never heard of most of 'em. :o

I don't subscribe to the theory that ...if it wasn't successful back then, it wasn't any good. My list of favorites includes too many records that didn't exactly burn up the charts and aren't well-known today. BUT they're GREAT records!!!

Some of my absolute faves didn't even make the Top 700 as chosen by the DJs here. :roll: I've mentioned some of them before--won't get into that now. But, I'm always on the lookout for stuff that flew under the radar the first time around.