Curtis Mayfield

Ah, random shuffle.  A Curtis Mayfield song that I apparently downloaded one day and then forgot about came on, and it has overtaken my brain: "Move on Up."  A fantastic piece of mid-seventies funk - not as heavy as say, the O-jays, it has some truly frenetic drumming, and a killer horn hook.  Mayfield's falsetto is worming it's way into my brain, and I've listened to the song several times today, before people at work started to complain.

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine gave me a box set - "The Funk Box" - that has four discs worth of classic funk music.  It's a Whitman's sampler of funk.  This is sort of an in-joke between us, because a couple of years previously, I'd decided to try and assemble 100 songs in every genre (and thus become truly well versed in music) and decided to start with funk.  Ergo, the box set, and the (half-)mockery that ensued.

It's actually a great box set, too, if you want to get into funk.  It has the best Rick James song that isn't "Superfreak" ("You and I"); it has some Parliament/Funkadelic/George Clinton; it has many great James Brown songs (but not "Get Up, Get Into it, Get Involved" which I now nominate as the greatest horn line ever); and, best of all in a box set, it has a ton of stuff from bands you've never heard of that fits in perfectly.

I really like box sets, in general.  I got my dad a Motown box set once, that had something like every top ten single Motown had between 1962-1970.  Rather than have to track down the one Marvellettes song you want ("Mr. Postman") it's there, right between two early Miracles songs.  Etc.

The other thing my funk immersion taught me, besides the fact that the Temptations had great songs after 1970 ("Shakey Ground"), is how to appreciate rap.  I used to hate rap, on principle, but it's really not too different from funk - the emphasis is on the groove, and if it's less melodic, it's only slightly.  It wasn't until I fell in love with Curtis Mayfield's "Superfly" that I could really get into the Beastie Boys "Car Thief". (Yes, I know it's "Eggman" where they actually used Mayfield's bassline, but "Car Thief" actually sounds like an old funk song, with its background singers, wah guitars, etc.)

It's this path that led me around to Danger Mouse's mashup album of Jay-Z and the Beatles.  Which I guess brought me full circle.