Blogarhythms

If you ever want to feel like the invincible hero of your very own 1970’s exploitation film I recommend going for a walk or drive around your neighborhood while listening to James Brown’s “Blind Man Can See It” from the Black Ceasar soundtrack. Don’t let the bouncy intro fool you, the oft-sampled breakdown that comes at about 45 seconds in won’t just transform the song, it’ll transform you too! By the time the snare-rolls towards the tail end of the fourth bar of sinister bass and Rhodes licks you’ll feel like the baddest of bad-mother-shut-your-mouth’s on your block. Granted, that feeling will only last for another minute and 25 seconds, so either make the best of it, or make sure you have something equally as hard lined up next.

While it didn’t feature in any actual blaxploitation-era movie soundtracks I’d recommend you choose something like “Getting It On” by Dennis Coffey and The Detroit Guitar Band from their 1971 LP Evolution. Although the title might seem like a reference to some sweet, sweet lovin’, the sound of guitars simmering on the intro, then whining and screeching throughout, as the track dips in and out of melodramatic breaks and bridges forces me to assume that the titular “it” is in fact some sort of criminal enterprise that resulted in a high speed car chase. There can be no other reason the Bomb Squad used it to back up Chuck D’s boasts about his bad-ass car on the classic Public Enemy track “You’re Gonna Get Yours.” And it’s for similar reasons that a number of other tracks on the album, all imbued with a sense of explosive, dramatic energy (the liner notes go so far as to call it “hard and heavy impact music”), have long been dancefloor classics and fodder for sampling producers as well.

Aggressively kinetic tunes like breakbeat mainstay “Scorpio,” “Impressions Of,” the afforementioned “Getting It On,” and a funky cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” with a skull snapping drum-break (all of which have been sampled, if not to death, then at one time or another) are the reasons Evolution is a must-have. It’s the sort of record that’s emblematic of crate-digging because it celebrates intangible things like rhythm and “funk,” and tangible things like musicianship and songcraft, while representing a physical talisman of vinyl-obsessed music cultures because it’s the corporeal genesis of so many sweaty moves executed on darkened dancefloors, and so many other, new musical creations that inspired more of the same in an unbroken link, like some primitive musical DNA. I guess the title is eerily prophetic in a way that the sometimes Funk Brother and his compatriots never could have presaged, no?

Whether you see evolution or intelligent design at work behind the music isn’t important though, because the energy that sparked so much movement and creation is still there any time you put the needle down on the record. It’s still alive, and it’s still as bad-ass as it was the day it came into being. Even as it’s own bad-ass-kids and their progeny continue their own evolution.

-El Keter