BEGV1 - Another Collection Of Classics

And here is Bravo's first offering - 40 tracks of an eclectic nature ranging from the Hammond Jazz of the late 50's/early 60's up to modern day turntablism from the likes of DJ Shadow and Mixmaster Mike, taking in the amphetamine fuelled (nme laugingly named genre) 'new wave of new wave' of These Animal Men, the dirty US garage punk of The Mummies, the acid jazz of Mother Earth, the disco beat of The Jackson 5 - yup! The Jackson 5!, modern day jazz/r&b from The Gene Drayton Unit, the 'indie' brilliance of The Charlatans, the crazy bongo's of 'Little' Jimmy Scott and the amazing voice and guitar of folk hero John Martyn along the way. With hindsight I wouldn't have included so many tracks if I'm honest but I think it flows well and still enjoy listening to it and hope you will too! I don't really know how i picked the tracks, they just sort of came to me, there was no formula or anything, just purely an eclectic mix from my record collection. There are print quality covers in the zipped file that you will download, don't bother trying to print the images here on the blog as they are just low-res versions.

DISC ONE

• 01 Too Sussed - These Animal Men
  
• 02 Soul Caravan - The Bongolian
• 03 Something For Johnny - Stereophonic Space Sound Unlimited
• 04 Sensual Woman - The Herbaliser
  
• 05 Keep Lookin' - The Artwoods
• 06 I've Got A Woman - Jimmy McGriff
  
• 07 Out Of Control - Thee Milkshakes
• 08 Theme From 'Dirty Harry' - JTQ
• 09 Oblighetto - Brother Jack McDuff
• 10 Little Short One Pt 1 - David Holmes
• 11 The Numbers Song - DJ Shadow
• 12 TV200 - Jarvis Humby
• 13 Supa Wyde Laces - Mixmaster Mike
• 14 Stronger Than Dirt - The Mummies
• 15 Monkeyshines - Nick Rossi Set
• 16 Love Is A Four Letter Word - Roy Budd
• 17 Come To The Mushroom - The Prisoners
• 18 Home Is Where The Hatred Is - Gil Scott Heron
• 19 The 5th Quadrant - Mother Earth
• 20 Hum Along And Dance - The Jackson 5
  

DISC TWO

• 01 This Is London - The Times
  
• 02 What Can I Say? - The Jetset
• 03 Atomic Moog 2000 (Bullet Train) - Coldcut
• 04 Berts Apple Crumble - Gene Drayton Unit
• 05 Girl At The Top - Alan Hawkshaw
• 06 Soopasound - The Strawberry Smell07
  
• 07 Ooh La La - The Faces
  
• 08 Feels Like It's Love - Makin' Time
• 09 Sproston Green - The Charlatans
• 10 Step It Up - The Bamboos
• 11 Golden Retriever - Super Furry Animals
• 12 Indian Rope Man - Brian Auger & Julie Driscoll
• 13 In 3's - The Beastie Boys
• 14 Talk Of The Grapevine - Donald Height
• 15 Funky Thing (Pt 1) - Larry Ellis & A Black Hammer
• 16 Coffee Providers - The New Mastersounds
• 17 Easy To Remember - St Germain
• 18 Devil Music - Jeep Beat Collective
• 19 Ob La Di Ob La Da - 'Little' Jimmy Scott
• 20 May You Never - John Martyn
  

Download the zipped file here and most of all ENJOY!

Peace! Out!

Charlie Bravo

Dizzy's Eclectic Grooves Vol.1 (see below)

A little bit of background: So I'd been invited onto this very cool website, Naive & Wise, a small but very friendly place filled with lovely people with great taste in music, and they had a server there where we could share each others music. It certainly wasn't a case of getting music for free you have to understand, because altho' it was free to download from it, it cost me a fortune in opening me up to new music which I then had to get for myself - The Go Team & Little Barrie being 2 of many examples that spring to mind. And not being someone who only likes to take I thought about what I should offer up in return. I'd been putting together some compilations for a group of mates - a soul one, a reggae one, jazz, funk, a Blues/RnB one etc - and picked out a selection from those that I thought would go well together and duly put it up on the N&W Server in a folder called "Dizzy's Eclectic Grooves". I then left it up to the people on there to cherry pick from it what they wanted. With 30 tracks to choose from I thought they could make up their own compilations. But Charlie loved 'em all bless him and even made up some artwork for the CD cover - and so was born the first of what was to become a series!

If you take the time to listen to it from start to finish you'll find it starts with 2 classic 60's RnB tunes that I found on a Mod Reggae comp, then goes into reggae with a soulful edge, a bit of classic reggae funk, onto some jazz-tinged reggae and then suddenly you're into hammond jazz with an RnB feel. The jazz section continues into a funky vibe 'til you find yourself on disc 2 where the funk takes you on a trip to some classic 'Northern' soul before melting into classic 60's RnB, finishing up with 2 beautiful Southern Soul tracks from a Dave Godin comp.

If you do download it I hope firstly that you enjoy it, but secondly that it takes you on a journey of discovery where you want to track down and BUY some of the music of the artists featured. There is not a track on this comp that I didn't buy and as Charlie says, if we don't buy music it will die, with the exception of the bland crap that passes as the mainstream - and what sort of world would that be for the rest of us to live in?

DEGV1 - A Collection Of Classics

Ok, here it is people, the original inspiration for the series. I can't remember the date when this was first compiled by Diz (can you Diz?) but I would imagine it was something like two years ago. As stated below it was originally for Lisa Spindots music forum N&W, I don't think this comp has been shared outside of that forum until now. There are some classic tunes on here and I listened to it only yesterday for the first time in a while and like the songs themselves it stands the test of time! There are print quality covers in the zipped file that you will download, don't bother trying to print the images here on the blog as they are just low-res versions. Got to say I'm not too impressed with the covers for the first two in the series now, they look pretty lame compared with the later versions but I see no point in re-designing them now. It's the music that is important.

DISC ONE

• 01 Laurel Aitken & The Soulmen - Last Night
• 02 Syko And The Caribs - Do the Dog
• 03 Eternals - Queen of the Minstrels
• 04 K.C. White - No, No, No
• 05 Boris Gardner - Melting Pot
• 06 Toots & the Maytals - Funky Kingston
• 07 Jackie Mittoo - Juice Box
• 08 Jimmy Smith - Uh Ruh
• 09 Jimmy McGriff - Dig On It
• 10 Boogaloo Joe Jones - Right On
• 11 Bobbi Humphrey - Lonely Streets, Lonely Woman
  
• 12 Jeremy Steig - In the Beginning
• 13 Gene Harris - Listen Here
• 14 Sonny Cox - The Wailer
• 15 Phil Upchurch - The Way I Feel

DISC TWO

• 01 Reuben Wilson - The Sweet Life
• 02 S.O.U.L. - Burning Spear
• 03 Classic Example - That's Groovy
• 04 Eddie Bo - We're Doing It (Thang)
• 05 Esquires - Get On Up
• 06 The Precisions - If This Is Love (I'd rather be lonely)
  
• 07 Ringleaders - Baby What's Happened to Our Love
• 08 Darrell Banks - Angel Baby
• 09 Sam & Kitty - I've got something good
• 10 ZZ Hill - Gimme Gimme
• 11 Little Johnny Taylor - Zig Zag Lightning
• 12 Skip Easterling - (I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man
• 13 Howlin' Wolf - Killing Floor
• 14 Timmy Willis - Easy as Saying 1-2-3
• 15 The Knight Brothers - Tried So Hard to Please Her

download the zip file here and enjoy!

What's it all about?

Some time ago on a sadly dormant forum devoted to quality music Diz came up with a compilation called 'Dizzy's Eclectic Grooves'. It was a compilation of all the music that Diz was listening to and playing on his DJ decks at the time. It was hosted on the forums server and enjoyed by its members - one of those members being myself. In fact I enjoyed it so much that I thought I'd have a go at compiling one myself.......and so it began.

We started off with double disc compilations but quickly realised that single discs were much easier to compile. I used my limited skills to design CD cover artwork and within 2 years or so we're now both on our fourth compilation and I'm in the beginnings of the fifth.

The compilations were intially destined only for the forum (Naive & Wise) but soon spread to other fora and have gone down well wherever they've been heard.

There is nothing special about the way we compile the tracks that we include, they are just good quality tunes from across genres, speaking for myself I'm not an avid vinyl collector, I just love good music whether it is on vinyl or compact disc. The tunes do lend themselves to the modernist genre which is where both of our influences lie at the end of the day and include soul, rhythm and blues, reggae, ska, funk, punk, garage, jazz and even electronica.

This blog is basically for the purpose of sharing these compilations with the members of the forums we are found on. If you've stumbled across this forum by chance then fine, I hope you enjoy the comps. You can usually find one or both of us on the unofficial paul weller chat forum here

One last thing, and something very important to think about is if you are here for 'free' music then fine but I hope you go out and buy some of the compilations and albums that these tracks are from and support these artists monetarily. There is no such thing as a free lunch and whichever way you look at it, free music is killing music. It's a great way of hearing new tracks/artists you may not have heard before but to make their music these artists and labels need YOUR support by buying their products. In no way do I advocate file sharing or 'stealing' music from them. I just hope you do as I do when hearing a new track/artist and go out and buy what you like. Without people buying music there will be less made and I don't want to think of a world where music isn't made anymore!

Both of our first efforts will follow shortly and over time all four in the series will be here. This blog will only be updated periodically. There are no release dates/schedules etc, it just happens when it happens.

Peace, out!
Charlie Bravo