Dream Warriors

DJ Rocambole brought Dream Warriors: Anthology A Decade of Hits with him for our last show together.



The Dream Warriors track was the most retweeted of all the songs played that night. That is a true tribute to the song's universal appeal that my listeners reacted relatively unanimously to the single.

I thought it was a big deal that Dream Warriors recorded with Gang Starr. I have reached for I’ve Lost my Ignorance in all of its forms or remixes at any chance I could over the years of my radio show.



Weeks prior while talking to Mulekick’s Oil Can Harry & One Love about the My Definition Of Boombastic Jazz Style video, I learned one of them had not seen the video.

For those that have not seen or know of the video, press play and enjoy one of Canadian hip hop’s greatest exports.




Dream Warriors were doing the eclectic, afro-centric hip hop thing before many, possibly even Americans. I was big into the afrocentric hip hop in the late 80/early 90s and loved tracks on their And Now the Legacy Begins release. The video for My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style was crazy to me with the energy and vibes of hip hop's most creative period. They have a song called Follow Me Not and there were many times I couldn't follow their meanings. They sort of lost me with their later work but the glory days of their debut is firmly planted in my mind.

Roy Orbison

When I was growing up, learning about the popular singers of the day were around for a lot longer than I was aware they fascinated me.

They fascinated me even more when black & white footage of them from the 1950s & 1960s.

The black & white footage of him performing Oh Pretty Woman fascinated me.



That meant he had been singing around the time my parents were younger and still old enough for me to know of him.

Such is the case with Roy Orbison.

I was old enough to remember that he was a member of The Travelling Wilburys before he died. However it would take me my 20s & 30s to really respect the value of the group members' music.

I'm not an Orbison aficionado but I believe no less than 20 of Roy Orbison's biggest singles in one spot is a great place to start and end where Roy Orbison is concerned.



As much as I thought he was old, I wanted that Roy Orbison hits collection. The other songs I knew of him like Dream Baby, Blue Bayou, Only the Lonely and Love Hurts made it a given that I'd be making a worthwhile purchase.

The CD of that Roy Orbison collection crossed my record store shopping path years ago.

As mentioned in previous posts, compilations and greatest hits packages fascinate me as well. I remember a Roy Orbison package with some 20 of his greatest hits advertised on television.

I less remember that he worked with K.D. Lang on a duet.



You Got It was Roy Orbison's last big hit before he died. 

The Jackson 5

I had not thought or seen anything related to The Jackson Five cartoon in over 20 years.

It was a pleasure to learn the group joined the ranks of other vintage musical cartoons

The biggest surprise of the Cartoon Rock Party presentation was discovering The Osmonds not only had their own animated series but by the same animators as The Jackson Five!

I discovered I once again had the good people of Blue Sunshine as well as Pop Montreal to thank for the vintage cartoon presentation.

Hopefully there will be another round of rock cartoons.

Bahamadia

Bahamadia was down with the late Guru and that meant I was down with her.

I made sure to get her debut CD when it was released.



I believe Three the Hard Way is the song that made the most impact on me because of the beat and she had 2 other strong female MCs on the track with her.

For some reason, I think of that posse cut as the female version of Clones to some extent.

On a recent record excursion, I found her early 2000s CD with Special Forces on Goodvibes.

Bahamadia is one of the credible voices for females on the microphone.

The Suite Delight new time slot is Tuesday morning 2-3am EST on www.ckut.ca & 90.3 FM.

If you haven't already, please make yourself familiar with the link below for more of your favorite show and mine.

Below are some podcasts to bring you up to speed.  Click here to download them and more.

The Suite Delight - March 11, 2014 Playlist:

1. The Roots - Proceed III feat. Bahamadia
2. Maestro - Stick To Your Vision
3. Classified - Quit While You're Ahead
4. Marco Polo - Back to Work feat. Artifacts
5. Moka Only - The Taste
6. DJ Format - The Place feat. Chali 2Na & Akil
7. Miles Jones - Coast to Coast feat. Kae Sun
8. Poor Righteous Teachers - Easy Star
9. Das Efx - Kaught In Da AK (Remix)
10. Zion I - We Got It
11. Dujeous - All M.C.'s
12. Substantial - That Damn Good
13. DL Incognito - The Masses

Prince (June 7, 1958 – April 21, 2016)

Prince's last show at Metropolis was my concert of that year and possibly the best concert of my life.




It was also the most expensive concert of my life as well. However, after that Prince experience, money didn’t matter at all that night. That show was worth every penny.



I was ill-prepared when Prince made his last trip to Montreal nearly a decade or so ago. 

It seemed he would breeze in and out of this city without my having seen or heard him. I remembered the show predictably selling out quickly, my inability to have obtained tickets for the show and being intimidated by the Prince ticket price tag. This year, all the stars were in alignment for me to see the superstar live in my city.



The Prince show at Metropolis lasted 4 hours that night. He made multiple returns to the stage due to the crowd’s multiple cries for encore performances.



Another element to the night was Prince being joined by legend Maceo Parker for a number of songs. Although Prince is not outright a jazz artist, I believe Maceo Parker’s saxophone was more than sufficient to compensate for whatever Prince lacked as far as performing in during this year’s Festival International de Jazz de Montréal.



When Maceo Parker performed Pass The Peas, my mind went directly to James Brown. James Brown produced Parker’s Pass The Peas. Brown was instrumental (no better word) in the foundation of hip hop. He influenced Prince as well as Michael Jackson, who too is no longer with us. Seeing and hearing Maceo perform the classic track made my eyes watery. Prince was onstage with his mentor’s main man and I was watching two of my own mentors in front of me.



Speaking of Jackson, Prince squeezed in a mini-Michael tribute. Although Prince did not sing the Michael songs personally, it was well-received by the groove-hungry crowd.



Prince was scheduled to return to Montreal’s Bell Centre not too long after the Metropolis show. I made a conscious and slightly painless decision to not see him again. 4 hours of my life and year were spent with Prince. Heaven knows one minute of Prince, even up in the bleachers, is worth the time and money but I’ve had my fill for a while. I had the luxury of watching him in the rather intimate setting of Metropolis where I consciously suppressed the urge to walk up to the front of the stage. The gladiatorial arena which is Bell Centre won’t allow me that luxury.


Purple Rain celebrated its 30th anniversary recently.  If you're lucky to find the 20th anniversary DVD, you get a bonus disc of classic material from videos to MTV coverage of the film's grand opening.  


To anyone that knows and loves Prince’s music and has not yet seen the movie Purple Rain, must I tell you to gett off your money maker to see it?

History repeated itself when I learned at the last minute he was performing in Montreal days before his death.

The Beatnuts - Intoxicated Demons: The EP (1993)

In 1993, I would learn The Beatnuts would release music of their own.

A DJ friend of mind had the Props Over Here 12” and I was immediately intrigued.

I was just thrilled there was another East Coast hip hop team putting out product.



Their affiliations with artists/crews I respected and admired made me a fan and eager for their full-length.



Although I was happy I would own Props Over Here with their full-length album, No Equal had no equal to me and it was a source of disappointment to not see it on the 1994 CD track listing.

Nas - Illmatic (1994)

Nasty Nas, as I knew him in 1991, dropped the hottest verses of the songs he featured on. My quest to own Main Source’s Breaking Atoms stemmed from hearing its album cuts as well as my desire to have Live at the Barbeque within arm’s reach. Back to the Grill Again broke my heart because it proved 3rd Bass was no longer. I took comfort in the fact that Nas was on MC Serch’s roster. The Zebrahead soundtrack gave us Halftime, reaffirming my love for East Coast hip hop. After those three singles, I was convinced that a full-length Nas album was gong to be incredible. The Source confirmed my theory.



At that time, Illmatic was the only album I had seen receive the coveted classic album status from the magazine. I can’t speak for anyone else but I’ll say that seeing hip hop’s Bible in magazine form give Illmatic 5-mics got me shook. All I knew was that I had to hear and most surely buy that album by all means necessary.


As I mentioned in my Beatnuts blog post, I bought their CD in 1994 over Nas, Organized Konfusion and Jeru the Damaja’s albums when presented with the choice. There was no doubt that I would own them all eventually but I knew I had to get myself a copy of Illmatic even if it meant paying more for it or waiting longer to do so.

Ghostface Killah’s Child Play, Tupac’s Dear Mama and Memory Lane are among my most sentimental songs in hip hop. If Dubny had chosen Memory Lane, I would have lost it. He didn’t, however, and I don’t fault him for choosing Represent. No one can fault him for choosing Represent.



I had been planning a post about Illmatic since late 2011 but never got around to it. That moment among the three of us convinced me the story would have to be told. There are not too many albums, at least hip hop wise that can unite cultures and generations like Illmatic. As different and individual as we three are, there was no debate as to the greatness of the album.   

Record Rehab Revisited

I blogged about how I was becoming immune to the record on vinyl bug.  I named that piece Record Rehab.

That kind of thinking can lead one to feel a certain way about vinyl and result in selling up to three crates of records.  I know from firsthand experience.  Prior to discovering Montreal's Death of Vinyl record store in 2007, I trimmed down my collection.  I sure as hell have brought home the three crates and more in the last few years. 

At that particular point of writing the Record Rehab blog post, I wasn't hungry to buy records. I used to wish I’d find at least one record that interested me when I would go to a store and eventually lost that anticipation. My rationale was that I have a lot of records and most of them haven’t been heard yet.

It made me wonder why I’d be seeking more when I could probably be very surprised by my own collection. I have heard people talking about trimming down their collections and that brought me to ask myself some questions. If push came to shove, which is my most prized record on vinyl? Which are my prized records on vinyl? How many do I really need to own?

I finally learned that I can’t own or play all the music in the world. It’s starting to come together.

I had thought about cutting back, downsizing and curbing my appetite for records on vinyl since starting this blog.  After the two major Montreal record conventions each year, some intense crate-digging episodes during a handful of trips to New York and a few trips to Toronto in recent years, I've been forced to review that stance.

Record conventions like the WMFU Record Fair are right up my alley. There's a beauty in racing against the clock with more choices in records than humanly conceivable and hopefully remembering where/when/how you found those records before the vendors pack up at the end of the night.

The bi-annual Montreal record conventions, including the Puces Pop Record Fair, have been very good to me as well. On many occasions I come back home with a bag bursting with beats. I have found a number of wishlist records as well as others I didn't expect to see.

A local record vendor told me how much he admired my restraint where record hunting is concerned. That's an interest comment to make about me because for someone who practices restraint, I leave record conventions with my bag at the breaking point. I claimed to have wanted to cut down my record buying but have brought home multiple copies of records which I already owned and gave up years ago! What kind of restraint is that?

There are so many records & choices in this world that it can be easy to go overboard.

History has a way of repeating itself. I'm a vinyl man to this day but these days I gotta streamline the collection a bit. Pray for me!

My name is DJ Solespin and I love vinyl!

New York is the Crate Digging Capital of the World

A trip to New York for me is like a pilgrimage to Mecca especially when records are involved.

My cultural and spiritual home of New York is the most influential city of my life even more so than my own hometown.

Big Apple digging in the crates most usually results in me being face-to-face with one of my best finds of the year and highlights of that trip.

 

In 2010, I brought back nearly 2 crates of records from that New York visit.



I probably brought back the same amount in 2011 but the difference was that I found want-list albums and sprung for records that were a bit more expensive, along with some reissues.

The closing of Bleecker Bob's Golden Oldies is a loss of a record store option but there are still more than enough spots with mind-blowing finds.

I can easily make myself at home in a New York record store discount section and find great gems.





There is such a surplus of records in New York that one most often leaves behind a great deal of 12" singles or albums that otherwise may have been brought home if there were more time, money or luggage space.




There is such a surplus of records in New York that one most often leaves behind a great deal of 12" singles or albums that otherwise may have been brought home if there were more time, money or luggage space.



I always look forward to my next New York record shopping excursion.  

Nas

I remember Nas from his early 90s debut on Live at the Barbeque and Halftime afterwards.




Who would have known he would record a modern day hip hop classic in 1994 with Illmatic?



Perhaps those that oversaw the album’s creation knew but the masses weren’t in the know until the album hit the streets. The Source gave it the first 5-mic rating that I was aware of and I didn’t fault them.

I hadn’t heard lyrics from an MC like him since Big Daddy Kane, Lord Finesse or even Rakim. I think I pinned my hip hop hopes on him until I heard It Was Written. He had moments of brilliance like I Gave You Power but overall it was an album designed for commercial success.

Nas is too hard to ignore from making anyone’s best MC list regardless of my tuning out for a few years.

The Suite Delight - 2014- 05-27 by Dj Solespin on Mixcloud

The Suite Delight - May 27, 2014 Playlist:

1. Quantic & Anita Tijoux - Doo Wop (That Thing)
2. Sola Rosa - Turn Around Ft. Iva Lamkum (DJ Vadim Remix)
3. The Seatbelts - Cat Blues (Mr. Scruff Remix)
4. James Brown - Funky Drummer
5. The Cactus Channel - Wooden Boy (Part 1)
6. The Roots – Don't Feel Right feat. Maimouna Youssef
7. J Dilla (aka Jay Dee) - Love Movin' feat. Black Thought
8. Nas - It Ain't Hard to Tell
9. Termanology - How We Rock Feat. Bun B
10. Marco Polo - Lay It Down Feat. Roc Marciano
11. Buff1 - Never Fall feat. Black Milk
12. The Extremities - New Season feat. Ohmega Watts & Moka Only
13. Lords Of The Underground - Tic Toc (Remix)
14. Lone Catalysts - The Ultimate (Kev Brown Remix)

The Suite Delight - April 8 2014 Playlist:

1. Big L - Put It On feat. Kid Capri
2. Common - Resurrection
3. O.C. - Time's Up
4. Big Pun - Super Lyrical feat. Black Thought
5. 2Pac - Ambitionz of a Ridah
6. Jay-Z - This Can't Be Life feat. Scarface
7. Gang Starr - Just To Get A Rep
8. Nice & Smooth - Early To Rise
9. The Beatnuts - Off The Books
10. Cypress Hill - Hits From The Bong
11. Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth - Mecca & The Soul Brother
12. Black Moon - I Got Cha Opin
13. Smif-N-Wessun - Bucktown
14. Nas - The World Is Yours (Remix)

The Suite Delight - April 1 Playlist:

1. James Last - Inner City Blues
2. Scrimshire - All I Do feat. Stac
3. Aloe Blacc & The Grand Scheme - The Dark End Of The Street
4. Greenwood Rhythm Coalition - Guajira '78 (Colman Bros. Remix)
5. Omar - Ghana Emotion (Una Mas Trio Remix)
6. Bob Marley & The Wailers – Get Up, Stand Up (Thievery Corporation Remix)
7. Mo Kolours - Bomptious (Shafiq Husayn Remix)
8. Fashawn – The Ecology
9. Jazz Spastiks - Move (Remix) feat. Apani B Fly
10. Moka Only - More Soup feat. MF Doom
11. Fat Joe - John Blaze Ft. Nas, Big Pun, Jadakiss & Raekwon
12. Jadakiss - Why (Remix) feat. Styles P, Common, Nas & Anthony Hamilton
13. Naughty By Nature ‎– Guard Your Grill (Smooth Mix)
14. EPMD - Total Kaos
15. Freddie Gibbs & Madlib - Robes feat. Earl Sweatshirt & Domo Genesis

The Suite Delight - February 25, 2014 (2) Playlist:

1. Nas - It Ain't Hard To Tell (Large Professor Remix)
2. Diverse - Uprock
3. Jay Dee - Pause feat. Frank-N-Dank
4. Strong Arm Steady - Questions
5. Souls of Mischief - That's When Ya Lost (Remix)
6. Soul Khan - Knuckle Puck featuring Koncept, 8thW1 & Homeboy Sandman
7. Quasimoto - Rappcats, Pt. 3
8. Supastition - Yada Yada
9. Murs & 9th Wonder - Murs Day
10. Mobb Deep - Win or Lose
11. Wale - Um'Ricka feat. K'Naan
12. K-Solo - Letterman (Pete Rock Remix)
13. The Extremities - Cold Cheese
14. D-Sisive x Tone Mason – Maybe I Will feat. DJ Grouch

Bleecker Bob's Golden Oldies

New York 2011 was not quite the highlight I hoped it would be but it gave me great chances to do some record crate digging.

I learned early that I wouldn’t be able to check out the WFMU Record Fair. After two consecutive years of WFMU Record Fair, the separation anxiety was a slightly bitter pill to swallow. I was forced to make do with any and all record stores I could visit during my time in New York.

I remember saying that I was going to use restraint and discretion where my record buying was concerned. I believe that subconsciously the lack of WFMU Fair made me seek comfort in as many vinyls as I could find.

In 2010, I brought back about 1.5 crates of records from that visit. I probably brought back the same amount in 2011 but the difference was that I found want-list albums and sprung for records that were a bit more expensive, along with some reissues.

I played Peter Parker snapping photos with the good graces of the stores who remembered me from the last few years. 

These photos are from the first record store I visited upon my arrival in New York 2010 & 2011.

I was devastated to find out that Bleecker Bob's Golden Oldies closed.  I was not too happy to hear that news because it is a loss of a New York record store option.

Bleecker Bob was opened incredibly late even by my standards but was great for passing time before going back to the hotel to sleep.  I miss the store for the memories and most importantly the records.