R.J.'s Latest Arrival

Artist: R.J.'s Latest Arrival

LP: R.J.'s Latest Arrival

Song: "Swing Low"

[ listen ]

Song: "Baby I'm Sorry"

[ listen ]

The guy's name is R.J. who owns and operates Daybreak Records over in Fremont. The store has a 'New Arrivals' section for LPs they've just put out for sale, but I've always thought the section ought to be called "R.J.'s Latest Arrivals."

 

[ R.J.'s Latest Arrival ]

U.T.F.O.

Artist: U.T.F.O.

LP: 12" single

Song: "Roxanne, Roxanne"
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This is one of the best rap songs I've ever heard. And I've heard at least a dozen. But don't take my word for it. VH1 ranked 1984's "Roxanne, Roxanne" #84 of the 100 Greatest Hip Hop Songs of all time. Dr. Ice, The Kangol Kid, and The Educated Rapper started out as dancers for Whodini—well two of them did, anyway—before forming U.T.F.O. (Untouchable Force Organization) in Brooklyn in 1984. This is their first single, produced by Full Force. Sadly, The Educated Rapper died this past June after a battle with cancer. More about U.T.F.O. can be found on Wikipedia here.

[ U.T.F.O. — Umm...Totally Forgot the Outfits ]

Drum

Artist: Drum

LP: 12" single

Song: "Bite-It" 
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I had a feeling Buffalo and I were going to get along pretty well, but I had no idea I was going to fall in love. I even bought these t-shirts to prove it. 

Buffalo is so much more my style than what Seattle has become over the past ten years. Buffalo is like a fun night out bar-hopping with The Bangles circa 1983, whereas Seattle has turned into an uppity vanilla-scented candlelight dinner with Swing Out Sister, where you're not allowed to smile at anyone and you have to be home in bed by 11pm. I mean, the prices on menus at restaurants in Buffalo still have decimals on them!  

Don't get me wrong...oh, forget it. Get me wrong. I don't care. The first record store I visited the day after I flew into town was Record Baron, in the north part of Buffalo. It's actually in a Buffalo suburb called Kenmore. The shop was full of great stuff stacked up all over the place, just the way I like it for digging. Dan, the owner, is a super friendly guy who gave me the two-minute tour, then set me loose in the bins, though he did first point out a few gems he knew I'd like. 

I found plenty at Record Baron worth posting, but settled on this 1984 hip-hop single by Drum (I was hoping maybe they were called Dr. Um) in which lead singer Gillespie Kelly performs a Swahili rap taught to him by someone called Mesfin the African. It's a doozey. The record doesn't seem to be particularly rare, but the copy I found has been sealed in plastic for the past 32 years, so it was a treat to break it open and finally drop a needle on it.
 

[ Drum ]
 

[ Record Baron — Kenmore, New York ]

Neneh Cherry

Artist: Neneh Cherry

LP: 7" single

Song: "Buffalo Stance" 
[ listen ]

I'm practicing my Buffalo Stance this weekend to prepare for my visit to New York's biggest rusty city later on this week. There will be record stores. The population of Buffalo was 580,132 in 1950, when it was the 15th largest city in the country. But according to figures from the last census in 2010, only 261,310 people remained. 

More Buffalo trivia: U.S. President William McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo in 1901, when the city's population stood at approximately 352,387. Buffalo's lovely Cazenovia Park, created in 1893, was designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who also designed New York City's Central Park, and Golden Gate Park in San Francisco too. I've been instructed to eat here at some point during my stay. Oh, and if you want to know about Neneh Cherry, click here.

[ Neneh Cherry's Buffalo Stance ]

"D" Train

Artist: "D" Train

LP: You're the One For Me

Song: "'D' Train Theme" 
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Since I ended up on the freeway north of Seattle yesterday after breakfast, I decided to see if the record store I'd stumbled upon in Everett about ten years ago was still around. The place has moved to a bigger spot, but Bargain CDs, Records & Tapes is still going strong! I spent the entire afternoon rummaging through their bins as a windstorm raged outside. I remembered their prices as being a little on the higher side, but fortunately yesterday they were having a store-wide half-price sale (which has been going on for years, according to Yelp reviews), which made the prices pretty reasonable. I ended up taking home a nice stack of treasures, one of which was this dancetastic 1982 LP from James "D Train" Williams. Read about "D" Train the man here, and look here for "D" Train the group.

[ Bargain CDs, Records & Tapes — Everett, WA ]

Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five

Artist: Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five

LP: Greatest Messages
Song: "The Message"
[ listen ]

Song: "Freedom" 
[ listen ]

In "The Message," released in 1983, Grandmaster Flash and His Five were Furious about poverty, racial inequality, and the general state of American society. It's regretful (more than regretful—it's incomprehensible!) that we can only report that things are really not much better here 30+ years later. On the bright side, we haven't given up yet. People now carry little cameras with them everywhere they go and are able to record and bring to light via the Internet crimes and injustices that before would have been swept under the rug. The conversation about social inequality and racism now seems to be louder and more direct than it's been in years. 

I have some hope.

My favorite of the "Greatest Messages" included on this LP is the opener, "Freedom," in which Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five envision life as great big party—a party with no VIP section and where everyone's invited. We're all just gonna' be dancing together and having fun, if that's alright with you. Happy MLK Day! 

[ Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five ]

Griffin

Artist: Griffin

LP: Hot Fingers

Song: "Lock It Up & Rock It (The Wild Thing)" 
[ listen ]

Song: "No Humans Allowed" 
[ listen ]

Reggie "Rej" Griffin was in the group Manchild during the second half of the '70s (he's front/left on the LP cover here) before going on to work with fellow bandmate Kenneth Brian "Babyface" Edmonds throughout his solo career. Speaking of solo careers, Rej Griffin produced this solo LP of his own in 1984, on which he handles all lead vocals, lead and rhythm guitar, bass guitar, Voyetra, Prophet, Korg, Oberheim and Yamaha DX7 synthesizers, piano, electric piano, alto, tenor and soprano saxophones, flute, turntable scratching, percussion, drumulator programming and loud, obnoxious noises...so basically, just about everything. Someone named Rayford Griffin helps out with percussion, as you can see in the slightly blurry notes below. I wonder if he's Rej's brother! It's too bad Griffin isn't better known today. I like that on the back of his record he encourages fans to register to vote. In my many years of dating, it's been virtually impossible to find a man who dresses this well and has good hair, who's also civic-minded, has hot fingers, knows how to program a drumulator, and who can play three types of saxophones and a korg! This gives me hope.

Bandolero

Artist: Bandolero

LP: 7" single

Song: "Paris Latino"

[ listen ]

Somebody recently dumped a bunch of their 1983 Spanish pop and new-wave 45s at Jive Time, so I picked up a few of those too when I traded in my records last weekend. My favorite is probably Bandolero's dance/rap single "Paris Latino," which whizzed up to #2 on the Swiss pop charts and cracked the top 20 in Belgium and Holland.

Kurtis Blow

Artist: Kurtis Blow

LP: 12" single

Song: "Christmas Rappin'"

[ listen ]

Christmas just isn't Christmas without eggnog, snow, Christmas lights, and Kurtis Blow. You can read about Kurtis on Wikipedia here, where I've just learned that he was the very first rap artist signed to a major label, and that his name gets mentioned in a passage of formerly indecipherable lyrics to one of my favorite Tom Tom Club songs.

 [ Jolly Ole' St. Blow ]