21 years ago this week I rounded up a bunch of current hip hop and presented the first half of a Solid Steel show that also included mixes from Four Tet and DK. The tracks largely fall into two camps, the serious, ‘backpacker’ kind, pushing things forward like the Anticon crew or the good time party kind with an eye of the 90s like the Quannum and Ugly Duckling camps. Samples are still a thing and the music is all the better for it with a mix of US and European artists. A lot of this has aged very well and I had a great trip down memory lane listening back. After the usual Solid Steel intro there’s a snatch of a US news report about the new phenomenon of hip hop where the newscaster actually raps along with a snatch of Beat Street Breakdown, probably found online.

Bristol’s Aspects open the show proper with a spoken word cut up track straight out of the Cut Chemist mould, possibly sampling the Columbia School Of Broadcasting set of ‘How To Be A DJ’ albums. Porn Theatre Ushers came out strong with ‘Me & Him’ in the late 90s and ‘Blah Blah Blah’ is taken from the follow up, Sloppy Seconds. They only released one album in 2004 which I’ve still not heard. PUTS were mining that classic 90s Primo/Pete Rock production style and always had solid tracks on their releases. DJ Vadim remixes Supersoul who released a bunch of singles and a couple of LPs over a ten year period and there’s another snatch of the vintage news report on hip hop.

The A-Trak scratch fest is worth hearing if only to catch DMC’s Tony Prince getting his name wrong from the time he won the Disco Mix Club finals when he was still 15. Def Tex were always underrated IMO, soulful production and decent lyrics, self-releasing before signing to Ninja-affiliated Son Records whose back catalogue is full of gems. It’s party time with the next three tunes kicking up the funk factor with The Nextmen remixing Rae & Christian, Cut Chemist all over Ugly Duckling and Pablo from the Psychonauts giving Lyrics Born and the Poets of Rhythm a bit of turntable grit. This track is a contender for the last great record on MoWax. More Aspects and Def Tex before a lesser known DJ Shadow compilation track makes an appearance.

Guru from Gang Starr’s remix sees him in Jazzmatazz mode of the M, M&W track and then we come to one of my fave Def Tex tracks, ‘Sing Sad Songs’. Produced by Francis Gooding (always asleep by midnight at parties) and Liam Large (he painted my windows once you know) under the name the Large Lefties on a one-off 7” that can criminally still be had for pennies. This is the instrumental part 2 with a scratched story over it but the Def Tex-rapped A side is great too. ‘Basmentized Soul’ is taken from Mr Flash’s debut 7”, ‘Le Voyage Fantastique’ and predates his move to Ed Banger by a couple of years. Changing things up a bit we get a Timmy Thomas cut from his debut LP before Canadian Kunga 219 slips into the mix. His sole album is quite a gem with people like Sixtoo, Buck 65, DJ Moves, Sole and more contributing production or rhymes and has since received a vinyl pressing some years back which you can still find copies of on Bandcamp. ‘Seasus’ brilliantly samples one of my favourite George Duke tracks, ‘North Beach’ so it made sense to finish the set with that.

Track list:
Coldcut – Solid Steel intro
Unknown – 80s Hip Hop News intro
Aspects – Correct English
Porn Theatre Ushers – Blah Blah Blah
People Under The Stairs – Underground Run
Supersoul – Sleepwalker (DJ Vadim remix)
A-Trak – Umbilical Chord
Def Tex – Hey Tune In
Rae & Christian feat. The Pharcyde – It Ain’t Nothing Like (Nextmen remix)
Ugly Duckling – Eye on the Gold Chain (Cut Chemist remix)
Quannum/Lyrics Born & The Poets of Rhythm – I Changed My Mind (Pablo mix)
Aspects – Bristol Fingers
Def Tex – Into The Future
DJ Shadow – Untitled Heavy beat 1&2
Medeski, Martin & Wood – Whatever Happened to Gus (Guru remix)
Def Tex – Sing Sad Songs Pt 2
Mr Flash feat. Mike Ladd – Basmentized Soul
Timmy Thomas – Cold Cold People
Kunga 219 – Seasus
George Duke – North Beach

As James Brown passed away on Christmas Day 2006 I thought it would an idea to do a tribute, but rather than the obvious list of classics we’ve all heard a thousand times, play cover versions, spoken word that referenced him and DJ re-edits for an alternate look at the Godfather of Soul.

Franklin Ajaye opens with the title track from his comedy LP ‘Don’t Smoke Dope, Fry Your Hair’, riffing off JB’s quirks, he’d have had a field day with James’ later shenanigans. Enoch Light comes with a funky (for him) cover of ‘Hot Pants’ from The Brass Menagerie 1973. An easy cover of ‘Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag’ is taken from side 2 of Bobby & Betty Go To The Moon, a similar feat is performed on the uncredited Happy Monsters LP of children’s songs where they tackle the same track under the title, ‘Clap Your Tentacles’. Derek & Clive’s ‘Bo Duddley’ take off owes more to Mr Dynamite than Mr Diddley, analysing afro-American speech in the most British of ways. DJ Harvey’s re-edit of Dick Hyman’s easy take on ‘Give It Up Or Turn It Loose’ extends the original to nearly nine minutes. The Dick version is from ‘The Age of Electronicus’ LP but this re-edit turned up on a 12” on Black Cock records in the late 90’s.

I’ve no idea where the reggae cover of Hot Pants comes from, quite possibly cribbed from online somewhere but Nicky Thomas’ version of Soul Power was featured on the ‘Funky Kingston 2 – Reggae Dance Floor Grooves’ compilation in 2005. I’m sure if James was alive today he’d have capitalised on the energy crisis by remaking this as ‘Solar Power’… (I’ll get me coat). Kenny & the Beach Boys’ ‘Big Payback’ was bootlegged on a 45 in 2004 but I’ve no memory of having a copy, Kenny is a dead ringer for James but the band are no relation to Brian Wilson’s boys. The same Orchestra Werner Muller LP that yielded ‘Get Up I Feel Like Being A Sex Machine’ was pillaged for not one but two tracks by Bentley Rhythm Ace – a fairly easy album to come by entitled ‘The Strip Goes On’. Salaam Remi’s 40th Anniversary megamix of the hardest working man in show business turned up on a promo 12” in the late 90’s which can still be had for cheap on Discogs.

*Note: this mix was on the same Cdr that last week’s XFM Superchunk mix came from

Track list:
Franklyn Ajaye – Don’t Smoke Dope, Fry Your Hair
Enoch Light & the Light Brigade – Hot Pants
Bobby & Betty – Bobby & Betty Go To The Moon Pt 2
Derek & Clive – Bo Duddley
Dick Hyman – Give it Up Or Turn it Loose (DJ Harvey edit)
Unknown – Hot Pants
Nicky Thomas – Soul Power
Kenny & the Beach Boys – Big Payback
Orchestra Werner Muller – Get Up I Feel Like Being A Sex Machine
Salaam Remi – James Brown 40th Anniversary mix

The Remix was Eddy Temple-Morris’ Friday night radio show on the London-based XFM station. Eddy did the show for 15 years, featuring a 30 minute ‘Superchunk’ guest mix each week and asked DK and I to do one after the release of our second Solid Steel mix, ‘Now, Listen Again’. The first half is a live recreation of the beginning of the mix, as we did it on the tour upon the mix’s release but then it takes off and goes somewhere else using elements that I would subsequently put into my DJ sets.

If I remember correctly this was the first time I put ‘The Number Song’ with ‘Dark Lady’, a mix that was always a winner on the floor. Here it’s a bit wobbly in places but the vibe is there. As The Remix was the radio show that popularised the mash up genre I thought we should end the set with one and the uncredited mix of Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Diana Ross is nothing short of inspired. By 2007 the mash up craze was well and truly old hat but the odd one would pop up and hit the spot and this one does it for me. If anyone knows who did it then please let me know.

There’s not much more to say on this one, if you saw DK and I do one of our 4 deck sets at any point around 2007-2009 then you probably heard a version of most of this, minus the final bootleg. Great times, we toured the 4 deck mix all over the world for around a year or more and then spent a good part of 2008 learning how to edit video, building an AV version. We used the Videocrash event in London that September to launch the set for the first time and I’m pretty sure we were the first 4 deck AV DJs using Serato’s brand new VSL software of which we had a beta version. We hoped we’d repeat the world tour all over again with a video show in tow but the recession of late 2008 put paid to that among other things.

DJ Food & DK – Solid Steel Intro
MVP – Mic Check 1,2
Z Trip – Listen to the DJ
Timbaland feat. Magoo & Missy Elliot – Cop That Shit
Eric B & Rakim – I Know You Got Soul (acappella)
The Human League – Being Boiled
Area Code 615 – Stone Fox Chase
Cut Chemist – A Peek In Time
Jane’s Addiction – Been Caught Stealing
DJ Shadow – The Number Song (Cut Chemist remix)
X Clan – Rockin’ It (acappella)
DJ Food – Dark Lady
Q Tip – Breath & Stop (acappella)
Pepe Deluxe – Salami Fever
The Roots – Here I Come
FGTH /Diana Ross – Relax, I’m Coming (Bootleg)

An eclectic mixed bag with no real theme or consistent musical style, more a general round up of tracks from around that time, 17 years ago this week. We had a competition via the Ninja Tune forum to get people to remix the Solid Steel theme jingle and entries poured in over several months leaving us with bags of versions to use at will. I tried to find ones that would fit the mood of each set’s opening track so that most got an airing. Someone called Zoleede kicks off mix in fine style, no idea who this was the alias of but it reflects the show perfectly.

Madlib remixes The Bees in fine fast funk style – was this track in a film at the time (Tarantino?). The Osmonds kick out the jams with their ‘Hold Her Tight’, I maintain that the Osmonds were a decent outfit when they rocked out with their Moog and got their Led Zep funk on, pretty sure there’s live versions of this with full horn section somewhere on YouTube. It’d be a short mix but there’s definitely an Osmonds selector to be made of their finest moments.

Downtempo psych from Koushik on Stones Throw, he was so good and then disappeared. M83 turn in a beautiful electronic epic and Max & Harvey (actually Paul Frankland aka Journeyman and Mark Butt of Dead Sea Sound) grace us with ’Sleep’. There was supposed to be a Max & Harvey album at one point, it was on the Ninja Tune release schedule but never materialised. Looking on Discogs it seems there was a flurry of releases around 2010-2012 on Woob’s Big Amoeba Sounds label including the 2 track 10” that Ninja released this on and an archival EP.

The Shortwave Set and Viva Voce were both things I was either sent or found secondhand and took a chance on because they looked interesting. I think sometimes promotional companies would send me oddities that didn’t easily fit into a genre because they thought I’d be more likely to play them on the show. I’m usually the guy who rates the last experimental track on the B side over the commercial lead on the A. I’m not sure they’ve stood the test of time tbh – it’s quite winsome folk stuff when viewed with a bit of hindsight although ‘Is It Any Wonder’ is nice. Busdriver, one of the most gymnastic of MCs at that point, excels on ‘Unemployed Black Astronaut’, in an alternate universe this should have been a huge pop hit, great hook in the chorus.

Tom Tyler is another one who’s dropped off the radar after a couple of albums and singles on DC around 2000, he later morphed into Vincent Markowski for a couple of singles though. The second Viva Voce track here is the one I love, part of a 4 track double 7” I think, big drums and vocal harmonies, bit of mellotron in there too, job done. Really odd mix into Kidda, like a dial turn into another station on beat, it’s a bit of a stylistic switch, I quite like the simplicity of it though. We’re into more beat-y sample territory now but even Divine Sounds sticks out like a sore thumb, not sure why this is in here, maybe I finally scored an original 12” or something. A classic track which DJ Cheese used to cut to pieces in his DMC sets with two copies and of course DJ Shadow had a line out of too. Lemon Jelly changes the tone of it somewhat from NYC street rap to English countryside. I have no recollection of the Nylon Rhythm Machine Black Grass mix but it’s a decent hip hop history cut. We round things out with Four Tet’s ‘Smile Around The Face’, I love the looseness of it, drums samples flamming all over the place.

Track list:
Zoleede – Solid Steel intro
The Bees – Chicken Payback (Madlib remix)
The Osmonds – Hold Her Tight
Koushik – Pretty Soon
m83 – Don’t Save Us From The Flames (Boom Bip remix)
Max & Harvey – Sleep
The Shortwave Set – In Your Debt
Viva Voce – The Tiger And How We Tamed It
The Shortwave Set – Is It Any Wonder?
Busdriver – Unemployed Black Astronaut
Tom Tyler – Forward Going Backward
Viva Voce – One In Every Crowd
Kidda – All I Need
Divine Sounds – Do Or Die Bedsty
Lemon Jelly – Baby Battle Scratch
Nylon Rhythm Machine – White Wind (Black Grass remix)
Four Tet – Smile Around The Face

The B side to last week’s A – apparently made over two sessions and you can certainly hear at least two tape edits during the set so maybe I was getting more experimental or maybe I made some big mistakes. This one definitely has three decks involved because of some fast transitions and the flange pedal is still in effect. Warning, there’s some NSFW language in this one as well as a few comedy riffs that definitely wouldn’t get a pass these days.

Classic mixtape starter skit with radio dialling from Ice Cube’s debut LP – straight RnB, straight RnB, straight… RnB. More JBs with a mystery breakbeat I can’t identify into the Ultimatum Jungle Beats from the free 12” with the UK edition of the Straight Out The Jungle LP. Funkdoobiest porno skit into the very un-PC Blowfly ode to anal sex. This album was a 10p find at a Surrey car boot in the late 80s, the cover showing a topless lady and a costumed Blowfly with very few other details, I had no idea what it was but thought I should investigate. As with all Blowfly records, funk and soul classics of the day are covered with filthy lyrics and no doubt no royalties paid.

The first of four Ballistic Brothers Vs The Eccentric Afros appearances – this was Rocky & Diesel with Ashley Beedle, Dave Hill and Uschi Classen, loads of samples, loads of fun. Justin Warfield made the first psychedelic hip hop record, then sadly changed his style but My Field trip To Planet 9 is a classic in a small genre within hip hop. More breaks, a Terminator X skit and then Coldcut’s mighty ‘The Music Maker’ into Tackhead featuring DJ Cheese. During this section I attempt some scratching which not only sounds like the faders were bunged up with glue but also skips several times.

Ballistic battle with Dust Brothers over several tracks until it all ends with an orchestral flourish and Andrew Dice Clay’s most famous nursery rhyme routine, not for the children. Dice was a comedian on Def Jam (and later Def American) and his shtick was similar to Eddie Murphy’s at the time, un-PC and full of profanity. His signature was a triumphant ‘ooooh!’ after a punchline which was later sampled as the hook to EMF’s ‘Unbelievable’. I think I was trying to be Alex Paterson here, playing odd spoken word over classical music, complete opposites that would raise an eyebrow or a smile.

Tracklist:
Ice Cube – Turn Off The Radio
Jungle Brothers – Jimbrowski
Mystery breakbeat 1
Jungle Brothers – Jungle Beats
Funkdoobiest – The Porno King
Blowfly – Spread Your Cheeks
Ballistic Brothers Vs The Eccentric Afros – Grovers Return
Justin Warfield – Cool Like The Blues
Mystery breakbeat 2
Ballistic Brothers Vs The Eccentric Afros – Save The Children
Terminator X – Juvenile Delinquintz
Coldcut – The Music Maker
Tackhead – Mind At The End Of The Tether
Ballistic Brothers Vs The Eccentric Afros – Anti-Gun Movement
The Dust Brothers – Chemical Beats
Ballistic Brothers Vs The Eccentric Afros – Blacker
Mystery breakbeat 3
The Dust Brothers – One Too Many Mornings
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra – An Der Schonen Blauen Donau
Andrew Dice Clay – Mother Goose
Derek & Clive – Just Another One Of Those Songs

I’ve been looking back to the early 90s a lot recently, partly because of the passing of my old friend Chantal Passamonte, partly with the anniversary of the Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head this week. Nostalgia can be a comfort at times, not only for the times the songs represent but also for a time when your limited access to media meant you digested things more fully rather than the skim-reading/watching/listening it’s so easy to indulge in with the access we have today. After a run through of Check Your Head (still peerless and possibly their pinnacle) I was hungry for more of the same and dug back to a small caché of personal mix tapes made in the early 90s that weren’t broadcast.

These were made in my bedroom in the house I shared with Chantal, Mario and David who formed the Openmind/Telepathic Fish collective at the time. I would make tapes live and dub copies for my friends so only a handful of people have heard these mixes. By this time I had two Technics, a Phonic mixer and an old guitar flange pedal that I’d hook up and use occasionally (my mixer didn’t actually have an FX send and return so I’ve no idea how this actually worked). It’s as rough as you like with some terrible scratching in places but all one take to oversaturated cassette. I’ve rebalanced, de-clicked and levelled things out just to make for a more even listen but here is the first That’s My Boy! mix (there were three in total), a name given by David Vallade.

A quick run through of the tracks: My purile sense of humour still loves the absurdity of Derek & Clive and they crop up on both sides of the tape. Sandoz = Richard H. Kirk at his finest (RIP). Early Dust/Chemical Brothers remix action for The Sandals, loved The Ballistic Brothers vs The Eccentric Afros 12”s, so many great tracks, early trip hop that doesn’t get the props. Manic tempo switch with a snatch of Terminator X’s first LP where the Afros sampled the little sine wave sample from. A needle skipping start to X-rated Schoolly D, gangster before most others, uptempo Cypress Hill before they got obsessed by smoking. Constant record box staple – the Ultimatum (Stereo MCs) beats megamix of the JBs works well into The Orb, then Coldcut’s classic B&P – making the connection to the life-changing Coldcut meets the Orb mix set.

A cringeworthy car crash out of ‘Beats & Pieces’ into Busy Bee freestyle from the Wildstyle soundtrack, never try to beat mix another DJ cutting up two copies of a record. Cypress-sampling Ballistics into Beasties into Depth Charge classic before an A-Team intro insert (?). The Dub of The Sandals’ ‘Nothing’ got some serious play in our house around this time. Transglobal Underground’s ‘Temple Head’ sounds like some kind of cousin to The Primal’s ‘Loaded’ to me, loved this brief era of downtempo piano-led euphoria. The ending with The Prisoner Theme overlaid with more Derek & Clive I’d completely forgotten but still makes me laugh.

Thanks so much to everyone old and new for tuning in for over 100 uploads now, it’s really appreciated and gives me a motive to digitise my archive each week. Side B next week…

Tracklist:
Derek & Clive – Blind
Sandoz – White Darkness
The Sandals – Feet (Dust Brothers remix)
Ballistic Brothers Vs The Eccentric Afro’s – Valley of The Afro Temple (on 45)
Terminator X – Vendetta… The Big Getback
Ballistic Brothers Vs The Eccentric Afro’s – Valley of The Afro Temple (on 33)
Schoolly D – Saturday Night (X-Rated)
Cypress Hill – Light Another
Jungle Brothers – Ultimatum Ultramix
The Orb – Perpetual Dawn
Coldcut – Beats & Pieces
Busy Bee & DJ AJ – At the Amphitheatre
Ballistic Brothers Vs The Eccentric Afro’s – And It Goes Like This
Beastie Boys – 33% God
Depth Charge – Depth Charge (Death Drum version)
The A-Team TV show intro
The Sandals – Nothing (Dub)
Transglobal Underground – Temple Head (Pacific Mix – Airwaves)
Lynne Hamilton – On the Inside (Prisoner Theme)
Derek & Clive – Coughin’ Contest