I felt like getting back to a more traditional Soulful Sunday post today. This album from Brother to Brother has got some groovy tracks on it, but I wanted to point out the title track “In the Bottle” which has a very particular jazzy groove and the lyrics still have relevance today. The sweet flanged-out vocals really add to the piece by recanting the lyrics in a pseudo club chant style. What might come as a surprise to folks listening to this is that this track is actually a cover of a Gil Scott Heron’s “In the Bottle” and even contains a similar flute solo like Heron’s.
This track has been getting a lot of reworks done as of late. The most notable is the rework done by Yosaku & DJ Day titled “The Bottle” on the BSTRD BOOTS label. (I have included the tack down at the bottom for your listening pleasure.)
“In the Bottle” is a must have in any DJs crate if they need just a solid groove early on in the evening. I don’t believe that it is a floor filler, but in many cases it’s going to get people’s heads nodding.
Yo everyone, it’s that time of year when all the radio stations and department stores are playing all the commercial tunes featuring some contemporary artist R&Bing every Christmas song memory you have. If you are like me then you are fed up with the junk and you want to replace your Christmas playlist with some holiday funk! Hit the jump to download the Stone Groove Christmas Mix 2010.
I don’t have too much time to write a super long post about this, but it’s definitely one of the most sought after albums by beat diggers. Oddly, you really don’t hear any steel drums on the opening track entitled “Down By The River” until close to the end. Most of the songs on this album are straight covers, but the cover for Kool & The Gang’s “Funky Stuff” the steel drums can be heard prominently and give that cover a great, very danceable vibe.
This Steel band is a twelve-piece seventies party band, consisting of Surinames and Trinidadian musicians.
Since Surinam was still part of The Netherlands in those days, the name of the band abroad was The Original Trinidad Steel Band and released two albums as such (Beautiful Caribbean and Caribbean Steel & Show on Hansa, with Frank Farian as their producer), apart from their three Dutch albums. Their most interesting Dutch album is Funky Limbo (EMI, 1978), which was produced by Ernie Anches. Anches was also involved with various other funky Surinam acts, such as Oscar Harris, The Twinkle Stars and Thunderstorm. The preceding album Dance Dance Dance (EMI, 1976) made DRSSB a lot more rare, because it contained their international hit single ‘January February’. This brought them a very busy touring schedule. Today the band is still active and consists of quite a few sons of the original members like Sticko who is the son of Dolf (Mr Satisfied) the founder of this Band.
Read (if you speak Dutch) the story and discography of the band here.
Tracks A1 Down By The River 5.09 (Vocals - Armand Colla)
A2 Theme From Shaft 2.41
A3 Snowfire 3.47 (Vocals - Gustaaf Milzink)
A4 Stoned Out Of My Mind 2.39
A5 Softly 2.57
A6 Hey Joe 3.19
B1 Feelin’ Alright 7.31
B2 Serenta 2.03
B3 Funky Stuff 3.22 (Vocals - Armand Colla , Bernito E. Riley) B4 Where Is The Love2.39 (Vocals - Gustaaf Milzink)
Just a short, sweet soul track with a haunting refrain. Everyone knows this song and it’s just something good to mellow out to on the start of your Sunday.
Today is more about a lesson than an album review. The dusty crate digging funk and soul lesson of today is you can almost judge a good album by its cover. To illustrate my point we’ll take this cover Tom Brock’s “I Love You More and More.” Now let’s take a minute and conjure up an image.
Let’s say that you were the smoothest cat at the bar and you actually picked up a beautiful young lady. (We all know that has never happened to you, but just make pretend for a moment that it has.) You are really attracted to this girl and you want to impress the panties off of her. Now you bring her back to your place, and you decide to get a little more comfortable and put on your pimp ass smoking jacket, and open up a fresh bottle of Columbia Crest Two Vines Merlot. You pour the lady and yourself a glass and sit down and begin to tell her how you save kitties stuck in trees, cried at The Notebook, and how much you enjoy John Mayer’s music. Now you aren’t jumping the gun to get in her drawers because you are smooth like that and want to get her so wound up that one touch from you will send her into ecstasy. Got that image in your head? Okay good. What does it look like? Chances are it looks like this cover here. And chances are this is the closest that you and I will ever get to that situation.
Anyway, this is Tom Brock’s finest and only album. It’s filled with beautiful strings, driving bass lines and rhythmic beats, with funky up-tempo rhythms. Tom Brock’s vocals on this album are top notch. Then again, what would you expect from a protégé of the walrus of love himself, Barry White. Oh that was never mentioned? That’s right Tom Brock was mentored by White himself. In fact, Barry produced this album. I am actually very surprised that this album never went anywhere. With it being produced by Barry, and just the great soul that is on this album, I’m just truly surprised that this wasn’t an instant classic.
Now for the juicy details of this album. We all know Jay-Z, well “Girls, Girls, Girls” came from this album here. Also, nearly every track on this album has sample qualities. In fact, I’m producing music for a few artists and already four tracks of there album were sampled from this. If you are a crate digger you must find this album.
Tom Brock – I Love You More And More
Track listing:
1. Have A Nice Week End Baby
2. The Love We Share Is The Greatest Of Them All
3. there’s nothing in this world that can stop me from loving you
