Late Summer Mix

So, It's been a while. Actually, lets not talk about how long it's been since it will only depress me to think how lazy I've been about posting on this thing. All I can say is that everyone who reads this should thank Steve for keeping on my case about posting on here again.

To welcome back the non existent reader base I have prepared a spontaneous mix of late summer jams for 'yall. It's so spontaneous that it doesn't even have a track list. Deal with it, like you would deal with a pastrami sandwich of immense size from Katz's deli...

Johan's Spontaneous Late Summer Jam Mix

World Premiere

Here's a tune from Easy Street records by World Premiere. It's a really groovy track. I particularly love the hand claps they used. Not sure what the drum machine is, but I would love to get my hands on it. Other than that I can;t say to much about this tune as it's late, I'm tired, and I need to rest up to have energy to play Sweater Funk on Sunday night!!! oh, yeah, you should come down to that if you're in the SF Bay area (Li Po Lounge 916 Grant).

word.
World Premiere - Share the Night
World Premiere - Share the Night (Instrumental)

Drum Machine Soul

It's been a little nutty around here lately... sickness, surprise Swedish girls, and going out to Paradise Lovers Disco has kept us busy so we had to take a break form posting for a couple of days. But we're back now, strait form the top, with Act 1 and a little more obscure though not outrageously hard to find track from Lady Margaret & The Stovall Sisters.

"If It Is Let It Be" and "Party Hardy People" are a couple tracks more along the soul/funk line. the reason I picked them is they both have great sounding early analog drum machine tracks. And though they have this definite synthesized backing beat they incorporate live hand claps, piano, and guitar to keep that really soulful human element that we strive to look for here on Tough Track. It also helps that these were taken from 7"s as they have a unique sound unto their own.

Also, To make up for not posting enough the last 2 days We've included a little Tres Lingerie edit we did of and RFC medley called "Startrax". Downloads away!!!...

If It Is Let It Be - Lady Margaret & The Stovall Sisters
Party Hardy People - Act 1
Startrax - (Tres Lingerie Edit)

Quick Slick

I only recently found out about Syreeta Muhammad. Don't know much about her except that Syreeta was the former wife of Stevie Wonder and she recorded some music with Billy Preston. I picked up here track Quick Slick on 7". I guess it's not a very rare record to find out here in CA, but I never came across it in NYC. Then again I haven't been looking for disco-funk-boogie stuff for very long...

Quick SLick has a great bass line. It's a synth bass, analog, but it sounds like the producer, Hal Davis, decided to have the synth player stack about 4 pulse-wave and 2 sawtooth oscillators on top of each other to produce this slightly phased dynamic I can almost imagine my Prophet 600 making in "unison track" mode. Anyway, it's a sweet playful track that Syreeta sings great on. See what you think.

Syreeta - Quick Slick

Creme D'Cocoa

Creme D'Cocoa is a group of cool cats from...I don't know where actually, but they funk pretty hard. Most people probably know their track Doin' The Dog form the album Nasty Street. Doin' The Dog actually showed up on the Grand Theft Auto soundtrack for the in-game K109 radio station. ROCKSTAR has always had pretty good taste when it comes to their in-game music selection in GTA. Maybe I'll have to do a post about them later on.

But I have chosen to highlight a different track from the album Nasty Street, titled Doggin' It. So without further interruption here's Creme D'Cocoa Doggin' It in the Nasty Street for your aural pleasure.

Creme D'Cocoa - Doggin' It

QWEST

I thought we would start our posting with a little ditty from Lonnie Reaves that I picked up recently on Qwest Records. Qwest was started in the early 80's by the holy ghost himself, Quincy Jones, and put out some quite well known acts like New Order, Jay-Z, and Frank Sinatra to name the top 3.

I didn't just pick it because it was produced the year I was born and shares a word form our blog title, but that didn't hurt it's chances either. Too Tough is a solid boogie funk tune sure to satisfy those with the appetite for a more 80's drum machine sound. Add a little variable 8th and 16th note primitive digital delay and you've got yourself a great dance-floor groove.

Lonnie Reaves - Too Tough