21st Century Funk: Black Feeling

I must share with you the album I am most enjoying right now. I've played some of the tracks from this excellent compilation on Pod of Funk several times, but the album is wonderfully consistent and rewarding as a whole. Here I am right now, cup of darjeeling to hand, enjoying the summer evening and this wonderful, soulful, funky music. Shades of latin enhance the best piano and brass playing I've heard on these re-worked old tunes, old style grooves lovingly rekindled for modern ears. Retro funk for the 21st Century. Blog of Funk Recommended!

Pod of Funk Number Thirty One

This glorious image comes from here - I'm using it to celebrate number thirty one of my world-famous funk music podcasts, now available for your aural delectation.

One Man's Ceiling Is Another Man's Floor

Everyone is entitled to have a party, but there is a basic rule, which is summed up as "one man's ceiling is another man's floor". Paul Simon wrote a great song entitled this on his album, "There Goes Rhymin' Simon". This album was seminal in my development and appreciation of black harmony singing and american folk, and contains some of Simon's best work. It also contains a rousing song called "Loves Me Like A Rock".

I slept fitfully five hours with earplugs inserted (painful) until 6:15am, when with music growing louder rather than stopping, I decided that since the raving was actually gathering intensity, I would have to resort to the Rock.

The Rock is large and heart-shaped, usually reserved for door-stopping, and weighs several pounds. I made myself a cup of tea - herbal, in case I was going to be able go back to bed and actually sleep - and then prepared myself for the confrontation. I would have to impress upon my new young neighbours the need for them to address the volume level at his sacred hour in this shared block, and the Rock was going to assist me in this time-honoured purpose.

Dressed in nothing but my old toweling robe and slippers, I opened the front door, and stepped out onto the balcony, and breathed in cold January air. For a full minute, I heard the sweet, tuneful call of a blackbird, celebrating the pre-dawn silence of the city, a clean line slicing through the drunken raucous voices and pounding dance rhythms, echoing between brick-faced buildings, and acknowledged a wordless prayer of thanks that I was awake to hear it at this forsaken hour.

Holding the Rock, I went into my living room where the noise was loudest. In the room below, party drugs were still coursing through the veins of two dozen people. I lifted the rock six feet above the floor, and let go. It fell with a satisfying "crack!". I had to be careful not to let it hit furniture as it bounced. Whack! Whack! It was unmissable, the sound of Thor.

I repeated this seven or eight times to cut through the fug and furore. It felt good, but I was cautious. I wanted it to successfully admonish and correct, not create even more problems. Eventually after five or so minutes, the music reduced. Then it went back up, even louder, defiant. I retired into my study, wondering whether I would need to go and knock on the door, decided to give it a second attempt.

As I was giving my floor / their ceiling an increasingly louder and more resonant hammering, my partner appeared, bleary eyed, and asked whether I wanted her to go down and speak. No, give it time, I said, and dropped the Rock a couple more times. Please, don't do it, she said, so I stopped. Waited. Then I heard the sound of a neighbour banging also, somewhere else in the building, an insistent and regular thump-thump-thump-thump-thump. That will be Olly, I thought, a nice man, Irish. He came two floors up to tell me to STFU once, when I had a stupid, deaf person living here who had cranked up the stereo at 1.30am on a week night. If he has to get dressed to tell them to cool it at pushing 7am on a Sunday morning, they will remember it for a while.

The noise of several apartments at once in united protest seemed to do the trick. A final blast of Bob Marley, and the music has diminished.

If it creeps up to earplug level again, I'm ready with the Rock.

Funk Done Good

I'll finish 2007 with a quick summary of Funk.co.uk statistics for 2007 - by the end of today, it looks like I will have had over 4.5m hits, including 323,800 visits from 210,277 unique visitors. So, simple mathematics tells me that 113,523 are my returning visitors = my regular readership. Blimey! It doesn't show on the comments which are regular but scarce. But then, I practically never reply in comments to comments, as I prefer to email direct or visit the commenter's site where applicable, so I hardly encourage them. But I do appreciate them - so many thanks to all those who bothered to say something back.

This page is the most visited - beginning with, "Save The Planet? Hit Them In The Wallet" it's not bad, actually, some decent writing and relevant topics, even if I do say so myself.

Here's a present for all the people who like funk so much they keep coming back - one and a half hours of music to end the year and begin the new one.

Track listing on the Funkpod.co.uk website, as is my email address...

Happy New Year everyone!

In the face of persistently evaluating music, how is it possible to truly enjoy that which measures up?

This question was posed as a comment from Indigo Business a writer (both vertically and laterally) of blogs.

In the face of persistently evaluating music,
how is it possible to truly enjoy that which measures up?

Good question, Indi. And let me extend that question to other things - why stop at music? In the face of persistently evaluating anything, how is it possible to truly enjoy it?

There is an implicit assumption here that analysis - aka persistent evaluation - removes pleasure, conjuring the spectre of unsmiling white-coated laboratory technicians holding clipboards, observing the mechanical processes of love, sex and death, yet unmoved by the passion, fucking and dying which they witness as they measure minute electrical responses and exact quantities of bodily fluid.

Detachment doesn't mean not caring. Analysis brings its own shiny set of pleasures to the table, which are not necessarily stainless steel cool. May I refer your honour to the glorious practice of looking at images? Exhibit A: my own image, Holloway Road handcuffs retrieved, M'Lud, from his very own blog.


First, our visual evaluation engages in the straightforward reading of the image. We derive no particular pleasure per se at this point, merely decoding the two-dimensional representation, shapes, lines, colours. As we make sense of the image - achieved on a submliminal level, far too rapidly for consciousness to be self-aware - we decode the elements into constituent parts: a road, railings, a white van, buildings; blurs in the top right are taken to be oncoming cars in the distance, the perspective trick of the vanishing point taken for granted; and finally, obscure although central to the image, the dominating element, a railing in close-up, to which is attached a pair of silver-coloured handcuffs.

The pavement, the road and railing fill the frame, with the handcuffs centre. The close-up of the railing in the picture against the steep perpective of the road gives the image dynamism, with the railings on the left and the road on the right arrowing the focal point towards the single body in the image, a dark, hooded figure, who seems to be crossing the road in front of the white van. The traffic lights are red, as are the rear lights of the van, and the contrast between red, white and black give the only notes of chromatic drama to the image, drawing attention to this otherwise small human detail.

Generally the colours consist of urban greys, pinks and browns; this is not an expressionist image. The image is slightly washed out, as if produced by a cheap camera phone - so, it has a casualness about it, the authenticity of a snap. This is no set up.

The daylight seems to be the kind of unremarkable, overcast weather which occurs frequently in coastal districts or estuaries; and the traffic furniture, and the left-driving vehicles show that unmistakably this is England. Clues as to exact location are given by the only clearly visible architecture. Top left of the picture, a brown-ish corner building, with some first story pillars, and top centre-right of the picture, a distant tower block with a distinctive shape. Examination of urban records shows that this is indeed, as the title implies, the Holloway Road, Islington, London, looking south towards the London Metropolitan University, with Waitrose supermarket (part of the John Lewis group) on the left.

Returning to the central image, the handcuffs and the railing: the railing itself is painted black, but with paint chipped and worn. One senses the passing of many hands upon this unobserved object in the middle of a busy urban road. There is a thin trickle of silver paint which has flowed downwards across the black, passing underneath the handcuff, and so there is ambiguity here; was the railing first black, then silver? Is this silver paint bad workmanship, or an unofficial addition to the local authority maintenance?

The liquid movement which the dripping paint implies is in fact crucial to our reading and interpretation of the image. This railing has a history, which pre-dates the recent history, during which time someone has attached the handcuffs. Handcuffs are intimately connected with human activity, authority, constriction, pain, pleasure, mischief, and the ancient wetness reminds us of human liquidity, blood, sweat, semen.

As to the central meaning and drama of the image, the questions which it asks: what narrative do we read here? What fate befell the handcuffed, to be so contrained, held for a time, in the middle of this constantly moving river of metal? Was this a deliberate act, or an accident? Was there a stag night, an impending marriage, did a group of drunken friends play a trick upon a groom-to-be? Was this the result of a dispute, revenge, or a part of some exhibitionist love play?

The railing's hand-sized round knob stands out against the pink tinge of the paving stones, the handcuff neatly fastened around its narrow steel neck. The fit is perfect. The second cuff disappears beneath the horizontal pole. In this image there is something Indian, the unexpected appearance of the lingam, encircled by the female principle, which tends the interpretation towards sex. Rising up from the circle of the railing's dome, the pole of the traffic light behind, with the symbols for no left turn, no U turn, now seeming to imply more than mere instructions for drivers. Is this to be our own fate, handcuffed to the city? Or should we dwell on the release in the image, the safety, humiliation and danger now escaped?

This is an image about human frailty, full of clues, hidden tensions, and sexual frisson.

"In the face of persistently evaluating music, how is it possible to truly enjoy that which measures up?" Simple answer. Dance. Move. Let your body feel the music.

Let's Talk About Sex

There is a bona fide 80s revival happening at last. Michael Jackson's Thriller is 25, padded jackets are in, and I'm just watching for an outbreak of big hair and ra-ra skirts among young women to complete the picture. Soon the miners will be on strike.. oh no, there aren't any miners left, are there? Thatcher had them all put to death.

But let's not dwell on the sordid - let's welcome the return of the Most Misunderstood Decade in Musical History. Beginning in post-punk, witnessing the rebirth of funk and culminating in worldwide rave, the 80s were a miraculous journey for music, resounding with the sudden impact of technology way before any of the other strings which make up our guitar-shaped culture - or as it was, a keyboard-shaped culture - as cheap Japanese drum machines and samplers found their way into bedrooms everywhere.

In 1983, Professor Perry and I constructed an audio sampler in a biscuit tin (Scottish Shortbread, nice and flat) powered by the marvellously rubber-buttoned lo-fi monster, the ZX Spectrum. A full second and a half of 8 bit audio was available in ear-crunching glory. I sampled the Flintstones and recorded a version of "I Wanna Be In America" which I gave on chrome cassette to my black, gay American friend Donald, who was working with me that summer at the Tate Gallery, London.

Donald was the most out of out gay men I had yet met. He was a solidly built, perfectly charming, erudite, politically savy New York Columbia graduate. He wore long dreads, half-moon spectacles, and black Vivienne Westwood dresses. The rather square management of the publications department were quietly proud of him, like a trophy of their liberalism as they hid behind their brown cardigans and corduroy slacks in an otherwise conservative decade.

Donald opened my eyes to the vices and schisms of North America like no other person I had met. He told me about clubs, music, fashion, art, and sex. This was in the days when AIDS was a looming shadow, sex was not a subject for open debate, but I was fresh from art school, where all subjecs were fair game, and Donald's carnal knowledge was wide-ranging. And so, the two of us would charm and entertain our fellow book and ticket-sellers for hours, expounding the techniques of troilism, the benefits of cocoa butter, and the fine art of fisting in measured, reasonable tones at a volume just below public, in order to retain our employment.

Although I learned a lot, I was unshockable, and we both took perverse pleasure in observing various members of staff getting very hot under their collars, eavesdropping on our wide-ranging discussions on carnal behaviour, mores and morality. Donald seemed surprised to have ever shocked anyone, and on the rare occasions when a less bold staff member would request an explanation or a change of subject, he would always apologise politely and attempt to ensure there was no repeat performance of offending someone's more delicate sensibilities. One female staff member later confessed to me that she had been driven to masturbate in the toilets, as a result of the salty conversations we were having.

At a stroke, my life was divided into before and after - my impression of the USA before Donald, and my knowledge afterwards. Sex was a fascination for us both, but more lastingly, he told me of the deep racism that scars the land of the free, and how that freedom does not extend equally to people of colour. He told me about the black man who attempted the simple act of walking across America barefoot, north east to south west, and how many times he was arrested for doing that, and how many times the police beat him up for doing nothing but walking in the wrong place without shoes. Actually, he was telling me about himself. He became sad, honestly recounting tales of oppression and brutality, but, still despite his Europhile nature, maintaining an American's peculiar pride in his own, flawed country.

You know how it is: disposable pop music defines your life without you having any choice in the matter. For all his sophistication, Donald had a uninhibitedly straight taste in music, and loved cheap pop songs as naturally as flowers. This morning when I awoke and considered the ongoing 80s revival, it was Donald and Salt and Pepa who came to mind, rather than any of the musical greats of the 1980s which became my personal touchstones. Let's Talk About Sex will always remind me of Donald. And right now, I can't get the song out of my head.

Six Hundred and Seventy

Here it is, the post I said I would never write. Funk knows I intended to completely stop, and I sort of did, for over a month.

Stopping gave me the excuse to take stock and go back over my past work, also to assess the impact that writing Blog of Funk had not just on myself, the personal journey, but also the almighty blogosphere. I admit I had become disconsolate and saw no point in continuing to write. So, I just checked in with my bad self, so to speak, and sorted quite a a few things out while I was at it.

I remember that once I gave up music. I stopped writing music entirely. In fact, it was just this time that coincided with my discovery of what was then called multi-media, which soon became internet media, back in the days of Web 1.0 when pages were grey and text was black and links were blue (not followed) or purple (followed). Netscape was the browser of choice. We delighted in the misuse of the BLINK tag. Tables were revolutionary when they arrived, much like Mr Chippendale.

During this time, I consciously wrote and recorded no songs. This, bear in mind, after a period of 14 years in which I did practically nothing but record, write, rehearse, gig, and pursue like countless other dreamers before me a life of funk stardom, which was to be, eventually, just not when and how I expected it to be. Out of sync with the times, my dreams fizzled and popped, and I found myself in 1994 sitting in front of a Mac, pointing, clicking, dragging, dropping, and learning the basic HTML which propelled me into a new world of design and the internet. Within six months, I had a business, within eight months, I was on national television, part of the brave new world of technology.

Six years later, when circumstances completely unrelated to the dot com doom which devasted the online world at the end of the 1990s stopped me in my tracks, I found myself going over my past work, much as I have just done. To my surprise, I found myself listening to the songs I thought I had not written. There they were, neat, orderly, as always, decently produced sketches, surprisingly emotional; and I could not honestly remember much about writing them.

I guess I had not valued them enough to play them to anyone, or bother to professionally publish them, even though I had enough faith in my writing and singing ability to record them. As far as I was concerned, I was not making music, ergo, they didn't exist. Except, they did exist, because I still have them.

I guess the music was making itself, and that, I think, is the way forward.