Bagarre - No Toys

Italian alterna-disco-pop group Bagarre are mainly known for their semi-hit “Lemonsweet”, an upbeat ode to LSD. As much as I love “Lemonsweet”, though, my love for the infectiously melodic “No Toys” surpasses it by an order of magnitude. “No Toys” reflects a creative, whimsical side of proto-Italo Disco, and lyrically it's dominated by a theme that crops up in many-an early/mid-’80s tune: imagining what glamour & sophistication must be associated with personal wealth that is just out of reach. The song has a brilliantly off-kilter chant for its chorus, and much like all the great Italo tunes, something’s just not quite right about it; certain English words are occasionally mispronounced or incorrectly substituted by the non-native speakers, vocal delivery is heavily accented and in unnatural rhythms, and the arrangement is simultaneously happy-go-lucky yet slightly dreamy and moody.

• Bagarre - No Toys
• Bagarre - Lemonsweet (search @ YouTube)

Google turned up no lyrics, so here’s my stab at them:

Ain’t got no toys The things that do for girls and boys A Cadillac smiles That I can drive for miles and miles One, two, ain’t got no toys The things that do for girls and boys Three, four, a Cadillac smiles That I can drive for miles and miles Bricks on bricks So I can make a house that slicks* Mmm, money So everybody will call me honey Five, six, bricks on bricks So I can make a house that sticks Seven, eight, money So everybody will call me honey Ain’t got no toys An orange Porsche and pink Rolls Royce Flowers in spring Diamond bracelets and golden rings One, two, ain’t got no toys An orange Porsche, pink Rolls Royce Three, four, flowers in spring Diamond bracelets, golden rings (repeat all of the above again)

Ain’t got no toys An orange Porsche and pink Rolls Royce Flowers in spring Diamond bracelets and golden rings One, two, ain’t got no toys An orange Porsche, pink Rolls Royce Three, four, flowers in spring Diamond bracelets, golden rings Dine at The Ritz Long fur coats and swocker on mitts** Ginny fizz And anything that will make me whiz Five, six, dine at the ritz Long fur coats and swocker on mitts** Seven, eight, ginny fizz And anything that will make me whiz Ain’t got no toys The things that do for girls and boys A Cadillac smiles That I can drive for miles and miles One, two, ain’t got no toys The things that do for girls and boys Three, four, a Cadillac smiles That I can drive for miles and miles Five, six, bricks on bricks So I can make a house that sticks Seven, eight, money So everybody will call me …honey

*In the 2nd verse it’s definitely not “house that sticks,” but in the chanted chorus, it definitely is. I'm pretty sure she’s saying "slicks".

**In the last original verse, “swocker on” is my phonetic approximation of what they’re saying. It’s definitely not “sparkling.” Maybe some brand of designer gloves?

Progressive House: born in 1988?

One of the things I’ve been doing over the last couple years has been painstakingly refining how I organize my digital music collection, which at this point is over 14,000 37,000 hand-selected tracks I like. It has no blind rips of full releases—otherwise it’d be 5 times as big, with lots of duplicates. So this means getting things filed away into a smarter system than just alphabetically.

Right now what I have is three main categories: DJ sets, Artists, and Genres. The first, DJ sets, is self-explanatory, and is still kind of a shambles. The second, Artists, is for artists that I have a lot of releases by, and who with only a few exceptions tend to cross genre boundaries (Orbital being a prime example). The third, Genres, is where the majority of the music lives.

The more music I sort into genres, the better picture I get of the history and nature of each one. For example, what used to be simply an Acid House folder evolved into three subfolders to partition the songs by decade—1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. Then the 1980s folder became more specifically 1986–1990 because some of the made-in-1990 tracks I had filed under 1990s were more closely tied, musically, to the original movement. Unlike in other genres, I haven’t split this period any further by years because acid house didn’t evolve very quickly; that is, 1986 acid house really doesn’t sound different enough from 1989 acid house to make it worth separating. Nevertheless, it became apparent that the decade-ish division wasn’t good enough, either, because there’s a distinct but difficult-to-describe difference in the acid house sounds created by geographically isolated producers. So the 1986–1990 folder now has subfolders: one for tracks originating in the genre’s birthplace of Chicago, one for New York, and one for the UK & Europe. If I queue up one of these folders and "drop the needle" on a selection of tracks within them, it’s astonishing how these seemingly pedantic divisions really make sense.

Also fascinating is that as I’m exposed to more music, I’m finding that some genres have histories going back earlier than I ever realized. Progressive house is a good example. There’s no good definition of this genre on the web, but generally speaking it’s house music that incorporates elements of trance and/or dub and/or breakbeat, and it has a plodding, smoothed out, not-so-bumpin’ sound (although there are exceptions). People usually know it when they hear it, but it’s hard to say what makes it “progressive”. Perhaps it’s defined more by what it’s not (it’s not regular booty-shakin’ house music) than by what it actually is.

Most folks who know about progressive house are aware it was associated with, if not partly defined by, the music on William Orbit’s Guerilla label during its heyday in the UK in 1991–1993; they know that “progressive trance” and “progressive breaks” are roughly the same style of music but with bass & percussion resembling trance or breaks moreso than house; and they know that by the late 1990s the word “progressive” was being used by itself as a catch-all for these plus music that wasn’t any more trancey than it was breaky or housey.

As with most genres, these names came into existence after a fair number of examples had already been produced, so it’s not surprising that the 1990 subfolder of my progressive trance/house/breaks meta-folder has been filling up with examples of music that was all just filed under ’house’ at the time it came out. What is surprising, though, is that not only is there now a 1989 subfolder that’s just as full as the 1990 one, but I’ve also had to start a 1988 subfolder. Progressive house in 1988? Heresy! How could it be true? Well, so far, the folder has one track in it: UK producer Richie Rich’s B-side “Salsa House”, modest remixes of which comprised a hit single in the following year. Listening to it, there’s no doubt in my mind: it does not belong anywhere else but in the progressive house folder. Now I’m wondering if this folder will fill up, too, and whether a 1987 folder is on the horizon.

Richie Rich - Salsa House

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Free ambient/downtempo music from Ishq / Ishvara / Indigo Egg

Despite my rant the other day, sometimes creators & rights holders need no persuasion, because they're already on board. Cornwall's psychedelic ambient/downtempo prodigies Matt Hillier & Jacqueline Kersley, for example, are proponents of digital sharing, and Matt was kind enough to give his permission for my favorite selections from their repertoire to be made available here.

1. Ishq - "Sky Blue (Live)"
   This track was on the Ishq website for a while in the mid-2000s. It's very similar to the studio version which appears on the 2002 Orchid album, but I just prefer this one a little better because of the way it builds in the beginning. This song is rather unusual for Ishq, as it uses a straightforward Balearic-style breakbeat sample and prominent bass riff throughout. Between the bass and synths, there's an actual melody. I think of this as "their disco record." Maybe not their deepest, but it's still one of my favorites.
2. Ishvara - "Nomad (Arabiq Mix)"
   This, too, was on the Ishq website. It's a nice, long building track with churning percussion throughout. It never got a full release, but an edited version, "Nomad (Arabian Remix)" was released on the Vampire Sunrise compilation in 2009. The edited version doesn't have the long ambient intro and outro, but is otherwise the same as this one.
3. Elemental Journey - "Air"
   This is Hillier in collaboration with Matt Coldrick. The 2005 album it comes from is rather trancey in a way that's not my cup of tea, but this beatless track is much different from the others and is more in line with Ishq's catalog.
4. Indigo Egg - "Clouds of Indigo" / "Shamballa" / "Smiling Buddha"
   All three of these tracks were enhanced, remastered, and released on the official 2008 release of Ixland. What I'm giving you here are pre-release versions from around 1998. Another mix of "Clouds of Indigo" first officially appeared on a compilation in 2000. Other mixes of "Smiling Buddha" appared as Ishq - "Happiness" on a compilation in 2004, and also on the Ishq website in 2005. "Shamballa" was retitled to the pair of songs "Clearlight" and "Home" on the 2008 release of Ixland.
5. Ishq - "Opal (Opaque Mix)"
   This is a c. 2000 pre-release mix, slightly different than the one which later appeared on Orchid.

And here are some links for further research:

• Discographies: Ishq / Indigo Egg / Ishvara / Matt Hillier
• Ishq's music blog
• Ishq's website
• Hi-res cover art for Indigo Egg - Ixland (2008 release): outside cover / inside cover

Accept & leverage unauthorized distribution networks now!

If you like the song, support the artist and buy the record!

Oh wait, you can’t, because the Cesarez record, for example, has been out of print for 26 years. A secondhand copy of the 12″ was sold on eBay earlier this year for US $50. The artist, label, and publisher aren’t entitled to any of that money, due to the “first sale” doctrine of copyright law, which is as it should be.

The only way anyone would even know that these tracks might have a market for a reissue is for savvy A&R people to do research and find out what the DJs are playing, what’s hot in niche radio markets, what the critics are playing for each other, what’s being shared on the ’net, what’s being talked about and posted in the blogs. Well, we are right here, and we are doing this work for you for free.

So...

Attention labels, artists, and publishers: Music bloggers, including those who provide audio downloads, are your free market research services and your free publicity hounds. We tell you which tracks to remaster and reissue. We’re the tastemakers. We generate buzz in niche markets. We are part of the new face of radio.

People are willing to pay for good music, if only you’d make it available for fair prices, without a handover of personal information! Stop holding music for ransom. Accept the reality that all music is making its way into the underground distribution networks. Accept the reality that people who download music with no intention of ever paying for it wouldn’t have paid for it anyway; they would’ve bought a secondhand copy, copied it from some other source, heard inferior-quality clips on radio or in DJ sets, or simply gone without. Accept the reality that peer-to-peer sharing and direct downloading is the new radio; people try out tracks en masse and discard what they don’t want, and re-acquire “legally” what they can, depending on how convenient it is and how much it costs.

You’ll never eliminate the underground market, and you’ll never completely monetize it. But right now, you’re not getting anything out of it. Free publicity is going completely to waste. You probably didn't even know until now that your deep catalog music, which you thought no one cared about anymore, is generating interest again. It could be reissued in a limited edition physical media, and sold digitally through a site like juno.co.uk, netting you at least some income, even while it’s simultaneously freely available elsewhere. You could even ask music bloggers to take their clips offline once you’ve made the reissues available, and you'd be surprised that most of them would oblige because they want to support you.

But instead, you’re committed to letting the music languish in your archives, lamenting the fact that people aren’t paying you a living wage each & every time they copy & distribute their mediocre “rips” in the secondhand & digital sharing marketplace, angry that bloggers didn’t ask your permission even though they had naturally feared you would’ve come after them or placed unreasonable limitations on them.

It’s your choice. Do you want a piece of the action or not? Get on board and take advantage of the market and services that are right here in front of your eyes. Reissue lost tracks. Contact music bloggers to ask them to talk about your music, post free tracks, and direct folks to your authorized distributors, rather than ordering them to cease & desist. We are not your enemy.

Cesarez - Si tu sais compter… (Crazy Mix)

I had a little trouble finding a complete copy of this fun little French Canadian synth-pop song. It's part of the long tradition of French singers who are either children or just sound like children.

There are apparently 3 versions:

• 4:19 version from the 7″ and 12″
• 3:31 version from the 7″ only
• 6:04 Crazy Mix from the 12″ only

Enjoy!

Others who have posted about this song:

• Overfitting Disco
• Psychébélique (en français)

MP3.com to die, replaced by what it could've been

It looks like MP3.com is finally shutting down. They're going to redirect most of their site to Last.fm.

Wow, the irony.

Back in 2001, MP3.com got sued into oblivion for trying to start up my.MP3.com, an ad-revenue-supported streaming service that had a brilliant, built-in scheme protecting against the one thing that makes the music industry scared of streaming audio: people "downloading" and sharing permanent copies they wouldn't otherwise have bought already.

Then Universal/Vivendi, the company that won the suit, bought them out. But rather than exploiting the my.MP3.com cash cow themselves or setting up an iTunes-like store, either of which would've netted them $billions by now, they milked what they could from its back-end technology, and let its public-facing site languish before selling it to CNET, who continued to run it into the ground. And now it finally shuts down, declaring its successor to be Last.fm (now owned by CBS, which also bought CNET)...Last.fm being an ad-revenue-supported streaming service & successful revenue stream catalyst for the music companies who allow their music to be transmitted, a service not at all unlike what MP3.com was and could have been.

Imagine if they had gone down this road in 2000-2001, rather than sending an army of lawyers to destroy, destroy, destroy, even after being embarrassed by the success of iTunes. It's utter failure on the part of Universal and the other Big Four, who continue to assault potential revenue stream catalysts, be they Internet radio stations, YouTubers, music discovery bloggers, P2P networkers, or independent startups in music marketing & distribution. And yet slowly, inevitably, they inch toward embracing the conclusions that pragmatists like MP3.com founder Michael Robertson saw all along.

William "Boogie Knight" / "Kid Delight" Stroman, R.I.P.

I didn’t intend to post anything hip-hop related in this blog, but I was doing some research on The Boogie Boys (known for their 1985 hit “A Fly Girl”) and stumbled across a number of touching posts by people who knew the group’s central figure, William Darrell Stroman, a.k.a. “Boogie Knight” / “Kid Delight” on wax, then “Delight” / “9×Delight” / “Boogie Knight Kid Delight”. Stroman was murdered on October 9, 2001.

Everyone who wrote about him had such good things to say about him. If you have a minute, spend some time reading at these sites and get to know him.

• July 2001 interview with William Stroman.
• October 2001 announcement of Stroman's passing, posted by DJ Yoda (Crash Crew/Zulu Nation).
• 2004 Boogie Boys / William Stroman mini-bio by DJ Yoda in a message board thread.
• 2005 remembrance / memorial post by a friend/Army buddy of Stroman. The comments on that post contained further remembrances by more friends, ex-girlfriends, and others who loved him, so I used to recommend that people who knew him post there, so the comments would all be in one place and more easily found in searches. But as of late 2013, all of the comments on that blog have disappeared, and the comments on that particular post weren't saved by archive.org, so please feel free to just post here. It may take me a while to make sure your comment is not spam, but I certainly won't delete anything.
• 2007 Boogie Boys bio

To hear Boogie Knight in action, check out this trio of Boogie Boys 12″ singles ( pw: 3BoogieBoys12s ), containing:

• Rappin Ain’t No Thing – which has an ultra-old-school (1981) party vibe
• A Fly Girl – their big hit
• You Ain’t Fresh