Disco Monster #7 & #1 redux

Cameo - I Just Want To Be
Most of you will recognize the opening guitar riff from its appropriation in the Beastie Boys' Paul Boutique album. I can't believe I didn't have this song before getting this 12" EP. I gotta catch up on my Cameo . . . Word Up!

Brenda & the Tabulations - Let's Go (All The Way Down) Danny Krivit re-edit
The very first Disco Monster was the album cut of this very song. I have to say finding this Casablanca 12" EP reaffirmed my love for this song as none other than the Mr. K gave it a tasty re-edit back in 1985. I remember thinking there should be a 12" version and my initial research didn't turn anything up, but a little dig in the junky-ass flea market on San Pablo Ave. in Oakland proved the internets wrong.

O Som Dos Blacks

I'm a big fan of Brazilian DJ records from the 1970s. Taking a look at the tracks that were picked and all of the pictures and documentation of that era is like a secret window into a scene that is long gone. Sure, the Baile Funk parties that continue to rage in the same neighborhoods of Rio owe alot to their precursors such as the the parties thrown by Luizinho Disc Jockey Soul and his cohorts. This particular LP is from 1977 and shows what the height of the Black Rio DJ scene was all about. This album has got some serious funk on it and most of it is pretty deep. I've picked my favorite four cuts from here, but there are some other great ones to sample. If this scene is interesting to you and you wanna learn more, check out Thomas Fawcett's excellent website - Brazil Soul Power. Further down, I embedded a clip from the film "City of God" otherwise known as "Cidade de Deus" which has a scene depicting a favela soul baile. If you haven't seen the movie, check it out (the music is SUPERB!) or just peep the video to get a taste of what one of these 1970s soul parties must have been like. You gotta love the cover of this album. You just couldn't do this in the US! But Brazilian racial politics are different and being a "white" guy who DJs "black" music you could legitimately dress up as a half-black-face uncle sam. God Bless Brazil!


Hudson County - Bim Sala Bim
This is a rare one that's been comped here and there. Killer track.

Brother Soul - Cookies
Love it. That opening must have been sampled somewhere. This should have been my theme song from my cookie-stealing adolescence.

Zulema - Wanna Be Where You Are
A great cover of this tune done in a really upbeat style.

Chocolate Milk - Never Ever Do Without You
I've always liked Chocolate Milk for their work with producer and songwriter Allen Toussaint, but I had never heard this uptempo number until Luizinho introduced me.

And here's the "City of God" video. Skip ahead to 14:00 for the beginning of the party. I recognized the following songs in this sequence:
1) Dance Across the Floor - Jimmy 'Bo' Horne
2) So Very Hard To Go - Tower of Power
3) Kung-Fu Fighting - Carl Douglas.

Also, Seu Jorge's character is getting down at this party, towards the end.

La cité de dieu partie 4
Uploaded by zouz90

The following are all images from the back of the LP. The miracle of modern technology is that I can take pictures and blow them up. These are the best of the bunch. I particularly like Luizinho's "O Som Dos Blacks" logo!

Some More American Rarities By Way of Brazil

I've already posted a few songs culled from Brazilian DJ compilations (here and here), but I've been meaning to post some more, so here it goes! These songs are actually ripped from the original US-pressed 45s, but I first heard these songs on the following Brazilian compilations. Most of these 45s didn't set me back too much probably because they're not as well known as some of the other collectible funk 45s out there, but the old school Brazilian DJs, they knew . . .

Mod Singers & Mod Lads - Let's Have Some Fun, Part 1
This is a crazy track and never ceases to get inquiries when I play it out. The flip is an instrumental with a cookin' guitar part filling in for the vocals. Makes ya wanna have fun, don't it? Anyone have any info about this group? Somebody can pick up a copy here.

The Happenings - Tomorrow, Today Will Be Yesterday
This is a great little psych-soul stomper from the otherwise cheezy group, The Happenings. I think this single is not on any LPs, but could be wrong. The lyrics are pretty corny, I mean c'mon, "Tomorrow, today will be yesterday"? About as deep as a mud puddle. But that percussion break-down in the middle is smokin'.

The Assembledge - Satisfaction
This one comes from another DJ compilation from the early 70s in Brazil and also on TopTape records, however DJ Monsieur Lima compiled this one. He's sort of the third musketeer of the early Brazilian DJ scene.

Brazilian Sound Clash: Soul Grand Prix vs. Soul Layzer

Gatefold of 1976 Soul Grand Prix Album
And now for the Brazilian action, but rather than dive straight into it, I'm giving a little dose of American Funk and Soul by-way-of Brazil. One of my more esoteric genres for record collecting is the Brazilian DJ Crew party albums. I have no idea how many of these are out there, but they are awesome. Far from your K-Tel comps with 12-tacks crammed onto flimsy vinyl, these are soul and funk compilations culled by the biggest DJs of "Black" (pronounced BLA-Kee in portuguese) music in Rio de Janeiro and often mixed together or edited to give the effect of a non-stop party. I've discovered dozens of songs through these albums, many of them very rare. This is what I had to say about them in my Wax Poetics article:

"A good five years before the pioneering disco collection, “Disco Gold,” or Gloria Gaynor’s “Never Can Say Goodbye” LP, both done by legendary disco re-mixer Tom Moulton, Ademir’s LP’s had no actual mixing, but cued his favorite tunes back-to-back to produce a disco-like experience. For Ed Motta, keeper of the Brazilian funk flame and nephew to Brazil’s number one soul brother: Tim Maia, Ademir’s selections still surprise. “Actually he has some records from these sessions that are very hard to find independently released soul & funk [45s], like the DJ Shadow compilations [Brain Freeze with Cut Chemist]. . . people don’t know, for example that some DJs from these days used to travel using cheap chartered flights, flying 35 hours to buy records [in the U.S.], then coming back to Brazil.”

Ademir about to detonate a bomb (left) and Big Boy scoping the crowd for a "Big Girl" (right)

Ademir was one of the first and definitely the most prolific in releasing these funk compilations with at least three compilations under his belt and a fourth one in partnership with Brazil's superstar of youth radio, Big Boy. Ademir & Big Boy even teamed up to host a weekly party in Rio de Janeiro, called Baile da Pesada, the "Heavy Party." This weekly party contributed to the growing popularity of Soul and Funk music in Brazil and spawned many imitators, as I wrote in the Wax Poetics article:

"Competitors sprung up all over Zona Norte, now organized as DJ crews, or equipes de som. Like Jamaica’s mobile DJ sound-systems that started in the early sixties, these homemade sound-systems were generally owned by a local businessman, and operated by an underpaid and anonymous team of DJs. Ed Motta might have still been in diapers then, but his research into the topic reveals that, “they used to listen to loads of American Soul and Funk and some things that were playing in the Northern Soul scene, like some hard-to-find [albums] like Reality, Cane & Able and Mickey Murray.” Ademir’s monopoly on the funk came to and end with the market now flooded with equipes: Soul Grand Prix, Black Power, Mr. Funk Santos, A Cova, Petru’s, Dynamic Soul, Um Mente Numa Boa, Tropa Bagunça, Cashbox, Soul Layzer, Furacão 2000, Mind Power as well as celebrity bailes hosted by Big Boy, Ademir and DJ and TV host, Messiê Limá. Some of these equipes, most notably Furacao 2000, are still active and successful today."

So the post today focuses on some of the later Equipes do Som that became famous in the late seventies in Brazil. Soul Grand Prix is undeniably the best known of the early Equipes due to its leadership from DJ Don Filo (pictured) and that Atlantic records head, Andre Midani, took a risk and made one of Atlantic Brazil's first releases a SGP compilation. From the SGP album I have a rarity in the form of the allstar band dubbed the Hot Stuff Band, made up of Azimuth augmented by drummer Wilson das Neves, doing a funked-up cover of Passport's "Ju Ju Man."



Download: Ju Ju Man

I also have a unique medley of Archie Bell & the Drells tracks made exclusively for this compilation: "I Just Can't Stop Dancin'/Tighten Up." The additional significance of this track is that SGP actually hosted a tour of Archie Bell & the Drells in Brazil in the mid-seventies that evidently was a major bust, forcing SGP to sell some of their sound system to afford Archie and crew to fly back to the states!



Download: I Just Can't Stop Dancing/Tighten Up

Soul Layzer is a far less known Equipe do Som. I found this record among a handful of beat up records at a streetside book seller's shop in Sao Paulo. I didn't think much of the tracklist at the time because I was still very firmly entrenched in the mindset that anything released in the latter half of the seventies (god forbid the eighties!) was inferior to earlier releases. Soul Layzer's sole LP compilation (the I know of) was released in 1980 and was composed of two extended mixes: side A is funky and side B is romantic. Hitting the record shelves in 1980, Soul Layzer's release perfectly captured the divide taking place within the Black Rio scene. Equipes became known by the kind of music they played, either "Funk" (pronounced FUN-KEE) or "Charme" (pronounced SHAR-MEE) and most Equipes catered to one of these two dancing subsets. The "Funk" audiences were the antecedents to what is now known as "Baile Funk" or "Funk Carioca", while "Charme" continues to exist more as a nostalgia movement with well-dressed men and women executing coordinated partners dances to smoothed-out R&B. It might help to think of the difference in terms of the scenes' respective American influences:

"Funk":Hip-Hop ala 2 Live Crew
"Charme":R&B ala The Gap Band

When in Rio I asked some old scensters about Soul Layzer and they recalled the equipe as being from the very neighborhood we were in at the time, but the recollections stopped around there. However, the Side A from their LP is a treasure of early eighties disco gems mixed to perfection by the equipe so skillfully that I often throw this record on while DJing if I need to head for the bathroom, grab a bite, or make-out with a hot DJ groupie (kidding, Baby). I've since tracked down nearly all of the tracks on here for my own collection, but I still struggle when trying to recreate their seamless mixes on here. Side A of "Soul Layzer" is the more uptempo side, featuring tracks from Central Line, Starpoint, Fatback, Lizzy Mercier Descloux and more.
Equipe Soul Layzer - Funk Side
This is a 22-minute MP3, so it might not play too well in the flash player, but be sure to download it for an instant party whenever and wherever you need one.