Blogarhythms

This week began with a shout out to my good friend and sometime radio co-host 12XU and the 2nd Annual Flywheel Arts Record Fair which went down this past Saturday at The Marketplace at Eastworks in Easthampton, Massachusetts and he spearheaded the organization of. My attendance at the fair marked my first crate digging expedition in a long time. In fact, my presence at the last Flywheel Record Fair this Fall was as a vendor trying to make space in my apartment by unloading non-essential 12” records and hopefully putting some dough in Flywheel’s coffers in the process. This time however I was there to support 12XU and, with a modest amount of money earmarked for the purpose, to come up on a couple of treats.

Before leaving the fair I found an eccentric gentleman with rather vocal opinions, not only about the bands whose music he was peddling but the politics of the current presidential administration, selling all his records for a buck a piece who I picked up some joints from. By then I’d actually spent the larger part of my alloted cash which I’d blown withing mere seconds of entering the fair on a single piece of vinyl. Longtime readers should remember that I normally make it my policy to stick to the dollar bins. But when I saw a copy (there were actually two) of the self-titled 1980 Salsoul Records debut from Disco/Funk/R&B vocalist Cameron staring back at me from a box at the second table set up only a few feet from the entrance to the fair I had to have it!

I’d been looking for this particular record since 2004 when the DJ for a certain Bay Area-based independent Hip-Hop star revealed to me that it was the source for the memorable vocal sample, whose origins had up to that point haunted myself and Emeyesi, used as a hook on one of the standout tracks from that same artist’s then recent debut solo album. At the time I didn’t know anything about Georgetown, Guyana-born vocalist Rafael Cameron, or the fact that the album was produced by Randy Muller, leader of the legendary Brass Construction, I just new the vocal sample, and that I wanted it!

I never found a copy in my travels to used record stores and other locations where used records can be found around New England though, so when I saw it Saturday I thought I was hallucinating. I pulled the record out of it’s sleeve to examine it’s condition and pleased by it’s unscuffed appearance demanded Emeyesi produce his portable turntable so I could spot-check the record and see if the sample was indeed on it. It wasn’t on the first song, but upon putting the needle down in the midst of the second track, “Funktown,” I immediately heard the familiar vocal harmony and had my money out to make the purchase almost before I’d returned the disc to it’s cardboard home.

Score!

As a whole the album is an artifact of ’80s Post-Disco, Electrofunk and dancefloor R&B that reminds me of acts like Shalamar, D-Train, Sylvester specifically and the sound of the SOLAR Records stable, as well as that championed by Larry Levan, both as the DJ at the legendary Paradise Garage and in his productions, in general. “Funkdown,” the track I’d prized for so long, actually sounds something like an attempt to translate the Parliament/Funkadelic aesthetic into the then de-facto musical language of Disco and slick, electronic R&B. The result is actually really dope, with composer Muller’s melodic homages to P-Funk (which are joyfully spread about between almost every player in the assembled band) juxtaposed against Cameron’s vocal which ranges from a high falsetto to a mid-range growl.

Muller gets his Patrick Cowley on with a tight robotic Disco beat verging on Hi-NRG on “Together” over which Cameron (alongside guest Denise Muller) does his best Sylvester style vamp, and it’s a convincing simulation all around. While “Let’s Get It Off” is a string-driven hustle-ready Disco bumper with slap-happy bass, jazzy electric piano & vibraphone, hand-claps and party-crowd background ad-libs. And album closer “Can’t Live Without Ya’,” the only selection written by Cameron himself, smooths things out with a sophisticated arrangement influenced by Soul, Jazz, Latin and Caribbean rhythms that prefigures the sound Sade would take to the top of the charts a few years later, but keeps it rooted in the Disco/Electrofunk milieu with a liberal use of electronic instruments.

With only six songs there’s not a lot of room for fat on the album, but that’s okay because there actually isn’t any. Instead what vocalist Cameron, composer/producer/arranger Muller, and backing band Funk Deluxe/Skyy offer up is a choice selection of smooth but danceable grooves that proved well worth the wait and the price of purchase.

- El Keter