Black and Proud
Say It Loud!: A Celebration of Black Music in AmericaRhino
By Keiran Scott
After the critical turf war sparked by Ken Burns’s Jazz, it’s bravery verging on foolishness to compress not merely a genre but an entire cultural identity onto six pieces of plastic.
If it’s a dustup you’re after, there’s certainly plenty to quibble with. Part of a multimedia retrospective overseen by producer Quincy Jones and tied to a VH1 documentary, Say It Loud! spans 84 years but flunks the last 25. It’s perfunctory on disco, erratic on hip-hop and oblivious to house and techno (genres hatched by black inner-city producers long before white ravers came onboard).
It is, however, impossible to conceive of a track listing that would satisfy everybody, and even jarring omissions Stevie Wonder, Public Enemy, Prince and Michael Jackson are presumably logistical rather than ideological. The enterprise’s most important achievement is to outline, however sketchily, a canon of entirely black music. When the usual critical consensus prefers its Stones Rolling instead of Sly, it’s bracing to be presented with history in which Motown is more important than the Beatles.
This set steers a convincing course: Robert Johnson begets Muddy Waters begets Chuck Berry begets Jimi Hendrix and so on, with similar trajectories for jazz and soul. Also, the airbrushing is minimal. Instead of safe choices, Sly Stone is represented by the unblinking “Don’t Call Me Nigger Whitey,” and the Temptations by the psychedelic “Ball of Confusion.”
The listener is thus encouraged to connect the dots. The current of pride and protest that runs from Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” to Ice-T’s “Colors” is underscored by crackly spoken-word excerpts, starting with Booker T. Washington and ending with the Rodney King verdict, and a parallel strand represents the equally potent legacy of joyful escapism. By no means perfect, this herculean task is nonetheless performed with style.
Bombay 2: Electric Vindaloo
Motel Records
International crew of mixmasters wittily retools Indian soundtrack music
By Rob Tannenbaum
As the punny, bicultural titles “Sexy Mother Fakir” and “Chakra Khan” show, this isn’t a straight-up collection of Indian music, but a mixmaster reinterpretation of instrumentals from ’80s Bollywood films. A sequel to 1999’s Bombay the Hard Way — beloved by the dozens who heard it — Bombay 2 remixes songs so thoroughly that (as after an orgy) it’s hard to tell who did what to whom. It involves Kid Koala, Mixmaster Mike, Ursula 1000 and others, and is inventively frolicsome. The best, “Bollywood B-Boy Battle,” is like Blur and New Order fighting over the last samosa. Suggested title for volume three: Curry That Weight.
Can You Dig It? The ’70s Soul Experience
Rhino
Enough ’70s soul to give anybody an afro
By J.D. Considine
After umpteen volumes of Have a Nice Day, Rhino summed up ’70s pop in 1998 with the ultra-extravagant box set Have a Nice Decade. Can You Dig It? takes a similar approach to ’70s soul. The set isn’t exhaustive — no Stevie Wonder, no Jackson Five, no Parliament/Funkadelic — but what is here is solid gold, from the sweet harmonies of the Stylistics’ “Betcha by Golly, Wow” (1972) to the chunk-a-funk “Dazz,” by Brick (1976). Still, the deepest pleasures on this six-CD set come from such half-forgotten gems as William DeVaughan’s 1974 smash “Be Thankful for What You Got” and Timmy Thomas’s 1972 chart-topper “Why Can’t We Live Together.”
Good Rockin’ Tonight: The Legacy of Sun Records
London-Sire
McCartney, Dylan et al. doff their caps to pioneering rock & roll imprint Sun Records
By Kieran Scott
On this big-name back slap, songs originally defined by rawness and hunger — from such seminal rockers as Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash — are remade by stars too comfortable to have much edge. It’s obvious that Paul McCartney loves “That’s All Right,” but his affectionate take lacks the lust that drove Presley’s version; likewise, Elton John’s solidly professional “Whole Lotta Shakin’ ” carries none of the wild-man abandon that made Lewis’s original so memorable. Sun alum Carl Perkins shines alongside Van Morrison singing “Sittin’ on Top of the World,” and Kid Rock delivers a gutsy “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee O’Dee.” And the rest? Buy an original Sun album instead.
Indie Choice 2001
Modmusic Records
Meet the new college rock — same as the old college rock
By Todd Pruzan
The Web site of the Churchills, one of 15 artists featured on Indie Choice 2001, explains that this sensitive guitar group performed twice on ABC’s Spin City, and indeed, they sound precisely bland enough to play on a hip sitcom. Like most of the ModMusic Records’ Indie Band Search winners compiled here, the Churchills’ entry — aptly titled “Disposable” — is cheerful but unmemorable. Fortunately, saucy diva Mehuman Jonson’s “Giant,” boasting a groovy Madchester shuffle, and Django & the Regulars’ “Dumbed Down,” which sounds like a cut from Joe Jackson’s Look Sharp!, provide highlights.
