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After reading Mark's review of the album above, HERC skipped the John Hughes Film Fest playing on the big screen here at The Hideaway, retreated to the Audio Archives, and proclaimed it Funk Friday, spending some quality time with some funky favorites.
Having made mixtapes since 1978, HERC has made A LOT of tapes. One of his favorite mixtape themes was "the yearbook", featuring songs from any given year. One of his favorite tapes, when he got his first car in 1984, was DA FUNK- Class Of 1980, a sixty-minute cassette featuring some of his favorite bass-heavy funk jams from the year. Some of those songs were recorded off the radio while others were dubbed from vinyl albums from his own or his friends' collections and most likely the tape would have been made in late 1981 or early 1982. It wasn't the best-sounding mix but it served its purpose. In hindsight and by definition, several of the songs on DA FUNK- Class Of 1980 would not be classified as "funk" but that is the beauty of making mixes - there usually aren't any rules or restrictions. Although he searched through the Archives for the original tape HERC was unable to locate it - the image above probably gave it away. He did come across a few other tapes labeled with years but none included DA FUNK.
So HERC turned to the modern mixtape-making system known as Spotify to see if he could recreate that mixtape as a playlist. As best as he could remember, he found the original eight songs that made up DA FUNK- Class Of 1980:
- Backstrokin' - Fatback (from the album above)
- Burn Rubber On Me - The Gap Band
- Don't Stop The Music - Yarbrough & Peoples
- Fashion - David Bowie
- Funkin' For Jamaica (N.Y.) - Tom Browne
- Let's Get Serious - Jermaine Jackson
- More Bounce To The Ounce - Zapp
- Take Your Time (Do It Right) - The S.O.S. Band
But our boy HERC didn't stop there. No siree. Over the course of the next few hours, he added to those original eight songs until he had the 32-song playlist below. While it is not a true representation of HERC's favorite funk songs from back in the day, it is an accurate portrait of music he has since discovered and likes now but was released back then. (Plus a few songs he liked but didn't have access to back then.) As always, comments are welcome.
Thanks and kudos to The CD Project for bringing the funk back to the front. Mark has also featured this funk bomb and these Phat Trax on his site. Both of those albums as well as the one up top provided inspiration for the playlist above. This page and this page, with their respective lists of funk from 1980, also proved to be excellent resources.
Oh man that is one tasty playlist. I can't get enough of Funkin' for Jamaica.
ReplyDeleteNow I'm inspired to seek out other volumes from the Phat Trax series. Rhino can sure put together some fantastic compilation series, can't they??
Rhino also has another series - In Yo Face: The History Of Funk - that you might like.
ReplyDeleteWas going to suggest What It Is! box but I can see you have already discovered it.
If you want more of the same, look for the Funk Drops series - there are three single disc volumes, mining the same vaults as What Is Hip? and though they are imports, they can be had relativey inexspensively.
To keep going down the funky rabbit hole, check out Super Funk series and The Right On! series.
It is a trip well worth taking.
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