Friday 29 May 2009

Style Wars - The Original Movie Soundtrack



So I set myself a little project a while ago. It was to collate and produce the soundtrack of hip hop's best graf movie, Style Wars.
There was never an album released commercially at the time, or to my knowledge, ever.
So here we are then, tracks of brilliance for you available for the first time.

I've also put the Adobe press kit in the .rar file which came out at the time of the dvd release. Very interesting backstory if you haven't had the opportunity to read it yet.



1. Siegfried’s Rhine Journey and Funeral Music
2. 8th Wonder - The Sugarhill Gang
3. The Wanderer - Dion
4. Jam Hot - Johnny Dynell
5. Pump Me Up - Trouble Funk
6. The Message - Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five
7. Beat Bop - Rammelzee vs. K-Rob
8. Sing, Sing - Gaz
9. Give It Up or Turnit a Loose - James Brown
10. Rockin’ It - The Fearless Four
11. Rocket In The Pocket - Cerrone
12. Feel The New Heartbeat - The Treacherous Three


Monday 25 May 2009

Friday 15 May 2009

***Style Wars News***

Word on the street is that esteemed urban culture photographer and author of Subway Art, Henry Chalfant is trawling through unused footage from the classic documentary Style Wars to include on (another) special edition for dvd.
The spin here though is that it is for an upcoming Blu-Ray release.


Last November (2008) Henry Chalfant and myself (Carl Weston) went out to Los Angeles for a week to go through some 29 hours of unused style wars footage,” Weston stated. “Henry and myself are in the early stages of prepping a HD Blu-Ray release of Style Wars. We wanna make sure all of the best of the unused footage is on that release. I shot all of this footage of the screen of the flatbed editor so the audio/video quality is very low.”

Did I hear right? 29 hours? How much does a Blu-Ray player cost anyway.....

And also, check back here very soon because I've got an Ageing B-Boys Unite! special exclusive Style Wars treat coming up for ya.




Here's a little taster of the Special Edition............

StyleWars - Outtakes from Carl Weston on Vimeo.

Thursday 14 May 2009

Hip Hop's Most Funky Year - Revealed!!


I have a long, endearing love of breakbeats. And none more so than those found on the infamous Street Beat label, Ultimate Breaks And Beats. All 25 volumes*.
So I decided to have a look and just see which year, according to UB & B, was the most funkiest.
Well 1962 - 1965 have zipadeedoodah, but the earliest year is 1961 with The Monkees "Mary Mary" (which coincidentally was the first track on side A on the series' first volume).
The most recent track used was "Liquid, Liquid" by Cavern and this was 1983, believe it or not.
Suffice to say that if you wanted to make a funky piece of breakbeat coolness then you would be better off having gone in to a studio sometime around 1975 where you would have rubbed shoulders with some of the following:
UPP "Give It To You"
Dynamic Corvettes "Funky Music Is The Thing"
Johnny Hammond "Shifting Gears"
20th Century Steel Band "Heaven And Hell"
Banbarra "Shack Up"
Please "Sing A Simple Song"
Magic Disco Band "Scratchin'"
The Headhunters "God Make Me Funky"
Chicago Gangsters "Gangster Boogie"
Donald Byrd "Change"
Roy Ayers "Brother Green"
Grover Washington, Jr. "Mister Magic"
The Black Byrds "Rock Creek Park"
Lonnie Liston Smith "Expansions - Part 1"
Yes, 1975 is the funkiest year with no less than 22 breakbeats used on this series. In fact 1973 - 1976 were indeed the funkiest years altogether with the most breaks than any other years.
So if you are celebrating your 34th birthday this year then you may have a feeling that you possess the funk just that little bit more than anyone else. Me? I'm 4 years out, sheeeit.

*Yes, I know that a further volume, #26, has since come out but I'm discounting this one purely on the fact that it's too recent. And I STILL haven't got a copy yet. On ANY format!
And there are a few 'unofficial' ones out there too like 499, 500 and 508.
Anyway it's my game, my rules and my decision is final. So spin on it!

n.b. Since writing this I've noticed that Mary, Mary is incorrectly listed as 1961 when in fact it didn't come out until 1966.

Sunday 3 May 2009

Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force - Planet Rock The Album (1986)


Who's up for some original electro funk, then?

Bam's first (and arguably only decent) album compiled some of his best early work. And they're in 12" mixes as well. Well, all except Frantic Situation.



1 Planet Rock (Original Twelve Inch Version) 7:31

2 Looking for the Perfect Beat (Original Twelve Inch Version) 7:02

3 Renegades of Funk (Remix) 6:46

4 Frantic Situation (Frantic Mix) 3:49

5 Who You Funkin' With? 6:23

6 Go Go Pop 6:00

7 They Made a Mistake 5:31


Ska Mania - The Return Of The Rudeboy




A slight change of pace now. This one's especially for the old heads like me who were probably into Madness, Bad Manners or The Specials back in the early 80's
They seemed to be all over the place with the rapid rise of the 2-Tone label.
Who's seen This Is England from a couple of years ago? It's set in 1983 and I was about the same age as the kid in it. In fact it could've been me. Except I wasn't as chubby. Or had a skinhead. But I was living up North at the time.

This 2-cd album may bring back some memories for you...........
Download Ska Mania below


Password - bancak

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