January 2019 – Flabbergasted Vibes

Roberto Carlos – O Inimitável (1968)

By Dr. Vibes January 7, 2019 January 7, 2019 Brazilian, Soul

ROBERTO CARLOS – O INIMITÁVEL
1968 CBS Records (Brasil)
This CD pressing 199_? Columbia 850.105/2-464065

12 Days of Christmas – Day 12 – For Three Kings Day, you get one king. O Rei, the incomparable, inimitable Roberto Carlos. This is a thoroughly excellent record with the exception of one song that annoys the crap out of me. See if you know Dr. Vibes’ tastes well enough to figure out which one it is, and win a free year’s subscription to Flabbergasted Vibes! I’m exhausted, too exhausted to give this album a worthy write-up, but maybe I will share the MONO version of it sometime soon and unloosen my tongue with aplomb. Meanwhile this early CD pressing of the stereo mix sounds pretty good, at least it isn’t crushed / brick-walled like the version include with the “Pra Sempre” boxset. I hope you have all enjoyed this 12 Days of Christmas, perhaps inaugurating a new tradition as the blog continues into its second decade (!!). I’m going to be extremely busy in the next few months, so I don’t know how often you’ll hear from me, but may you all be free of trouble in this New Year!

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Orchestra Harlow – El Jardinero Del Amor (1976) [FANIA SLP 00499]

By Dr. Vibes January 4, 2019 September 22, 2021 Salsa

Dr. Vibes 12 Days of Christmas – Day 11 – Led by musical innovator and pioneer Larry Harlow (El Judio Maravilloso), Orchestra Harlow put out a string of top-notch albums for the Fania label. Larry had led a storied life – he lived in Cuba before the revolution, studying music and anthropology. He had helped revive the career of Celia Cruz with his “Latin opera” Hommy in the early 70s. And he was an accomplished santero. None of this prevented him from being ripped off by Fania – around the time of this album, he realized that they had not been paying what they owed to him, and he sued his own label. Needless to say they were counting down the days left in his contract to drop him, and did little to promote his records from this period. Which is a shame because this is pretty much non-stop greatness from start to finish. Of especial note is the folkloric-themed Cuento Carabali that works as a great grand finale here.

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Billy Paul – 360 Degrees of Billy Paul (1972)

By Dr. Vibes January 4, 2019 January 4, 2019 Funk, Philly soul, Soul

Billy Paul – 360 Degrees Of Billy Paul
1972 Philadelphia International Records ZX 31793
Vinyl rip in 24-bit/96kHz | FLAC | Art scans at 300 dpi
932 MB (24/96) + 297 MB (16/44) | Genre: Soul, Funk

Dr. Vibes 12 Days of Christmas – Day 10 – Second day in a row that I’m featuring somebody who I’ve wanted to feature here for years, but never have. Billy Paul, who passed only a few years ago, without a doubt had the biggest hit of his career off this record, and one of the most famous soul hits of the 70s, “Me and Mrs. Jones”. They had a thing goin’ on. Lots of people with lots of different memories tucked away between the notes of that classic. The whole record is prime cut Philly soul from start to finish though. Some great Gamble & Huff originals and the cover tunes are extraordinary – Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” and Elton John’s “Your Song”, both covered by scads of other artists, get a top-shelf Billy Paul treatment here.

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Abbey Lincoln & Hank Jones – When There Is Love (1993)

By Dr. Vibes January 3, 2019 January 3, 2019 Jazz

Abbey Lincoln – Hank Jones
When There Is Love
1993 Gitanes Jazz Productions / Verve Records – 314 519 697-2
Genre:Jazz || Style:Bop, Post Bop

I have been wanting to do some posts about the great Abbey Lincoln ever since I started this blog, and yet for some reason it’s never happened. Let this be the year, then. I also never would have imagined that I would choose this atypical album as her first entry here. But there is something very warm, charming, and relaxing about this collaboration with Hank Jones that seems to fit the mixture of exhaustion, laziness, and regeneration of energy to face a new and unknown world that’s marked these first few days of 2019 for me. We can get into Abbey’s more intense material later, but right now this will do just fine. Continue reading

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Help Yourself – Help Yourself (1971) (2017 Music On Vinyl)

By Dr. Vibes January 2, 2019 September 4, 2021 Folk-Rock, Psychedelic

Dr. Vibes’ 12 Days of Christmas – Day 8 – As a teenager in the US, I discovered Help Yourself in a second-hand record shop in the late 1980s, and thought that “Strange Affair” was their first album for the next twenty years. At the time Al Gore hadn’t invented the internet yet, and if you could find any mention of the band in music encylopedia / anthology-type books, it was as a footnote to the more famous Man band from Wales, which Help Yourself frontman Malcolm Morley joined for a while. But they had their own sound, and their own cult following in the UK. This debut album is inferior to the ones that followed it, but rare as hen’s teeth as an original pressing, so I was pretty excited when I saw that reissue label Music On Vinyl had chosen to release it. Continue reading

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Prince And The Revolution – Anotherloverwholenyohead (1986) (Extended 12″ single)

By Dr. Vibes January 1, 2019 January 3, 2019 Electronic, Funk, Soul

Prince And The Revolution
Anotherloverholenyohead (Extended single) b/w Girls & Boys
1986 Paisley Park 0-20516

It’s well into 2019 along the Pacific Rim and about 3 minutes from the New Year in Chicago, the city where I found myself and then lost myself. Most of my playlist this evening has consisted of mash-ups on this genius YouTube channel (have a look/listen to Shining Woman) and in between that I’ve been playing some records. This is a nice extended jam from one of the funk rockers off of Parade, where everything glides into a kind of Marc Bolan-electro that probably inspired Noel Fielding to get out his spray paint in the middle of the night. I have to be careful, getting tipsy with Prince these days can lead me to melancholic musical impulsiveness and before you know it I’m listening to Nick Drake or Donny Hathaway at 4 a.m. But both these tracks are uplifting and electric purple. Here’s to more positivity in the New Year, and may U all live 2 C the Dawn.

A Anotherloverholenyohead (Extended Version) 7:52
B Girls & Boys (LP Version) 5:30

Published By – Controversy Music
Record Company – Warner Communications
Pressed By – Allied Record Company

Producer, Composed By, Arranged By, Performer – Prince And The Revolution

Notes
Original versions on the Prince And The Revolution album PARADE, Music from the motion picture UNDER THE CHERRY MOON. Available on the Paisley Park album (1-25395), cassette (4-25395) and Compact Disc (2-25395)

Paisley Park Records, manufactured and distributed by Warner Bros. Records Inc., A Warner Communications Company. © 1986 Warner Bros. Records Inc. ? 1986 Warner Bros. Records Inc. for the U.S. & WEA International Inc. for the world outside of the U.S. Made in U.S.A.

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Ripping info
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LINEAGE: Paisley Park 0-201516 vinyl; Pro-Ject RM-5SE with Audio Tecnica AT440-MLa cartridge; Speedbox power supply; Creek Audio OBH-15; Audioquest King Cobra cables; M-Audio Audiophile 192 Soundcard ; Adobe Audition at 32-bit float 192khz; clicks and pops removed with Click Repair on very light settings, manually auditioning the output; further clicks removed with Adobe Audition 3.0; dithered and resampled using iZotope RX Advanced. Converted to FLAC in either Trader’s Little Helper or dBPoweramp. Tags done with Foobar 2000 and Tag and Rename.

16-bit 44.1 khz

password: vibes