 The Eastern Star on The Western Sky, meet Biddu. When the Beatles were heading East, this man headed West in the 1960s to create history. With music in the head and soul and a deep passion to create melodies, he embarked on a journey to amalgamate the sounds of the east with the sounds of the west. He is the man behind Carol Douglas's "Kung Fu Fighting" and Tina Charles's "I Love to Love". After producing the immortal hit "Aap Jaisa Koi" in the 1980 movie Qurbani, he proceeded to become the Godfather of Indi-PoP a genre less known in those days. Coming out with an exceptionally good "Made In India" album with Alisa Chinoy in 1994, he kept steady on his journey of jump-starting the musical careers of various artists today. Here is his fresh-est creation. A magnum opus, a great effort to bring the new generation towards spiritualism through music. One does not meditate to this music as the music meditates YOU. As Biddu calls this "A spine chilling vibe" Sit back and take a listen to, The Biddu Experience. *Link in comments*
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  Here is a record from the hair-dresser turned drummer, French record producer Jean-Marc Cerrone. Now this guy has his own story. It was the year 1975 (France) when Cerrone finally quit his day-job of a hairdresser to do something he had a strong passion for - Music. He was earlier associated with a band called Kongas which was a pretty impressive lot. Try getting your hands on Kongas - Anikana-O album which is magnificent. After meeting Alec R. Costandinos, the Costandinos-Cerrone due produced their very first album Love In C-Minor which was an immediate hit in the New York City clubs and Paris. Costandinos was furious when Cerrone did not credit him for any work on the album and they departed for good.
The early albums by Cerrone have massively orchestrated Disco music with mind blowing violin ensemble and great basslines. Courtesy of Alec Costandinos. With his album Supernature that came out in 1977 and proved to be his most successful opus, Cerrone went totally electronic. We can hear a bunch of synths and other electronica playing. Courtesy of Alan Hawkshaw and Don Ray. We move to 1980s when Cerrone came out with "Cerrone IX : Your Love Survived" which featured a couple of great grooves. The rest was the cliche 1980s style stuff. Take a listen ! I specially like "Look for Love" and "Give Me Love". The track "Back To Champs Elysées" has some more of the 1980s essence to it. Here's a decent vinyl rip. :) *Link in comments*  Kalyanji-Anandji were better known as the Funk brothers of India. Having a completely different approach in music direction, they composed some of the best Spy music/Funk scores during the 1970s and 1980s for Hindi Cinema. They were heavily influenced by Lalo Schifrin. Here's an example of Sleaze Funk from the movie Bombay 405 Miles. The single was published on a rare 45 with Side-B containing a really funky groove or I must say Turkish Funk groove from around 1979-80 by an artist called Baris Manckow. Never heard of that guy before. However, the track seems to be really rare since I did not find much information on Google. Also, the artist seems to be gone from people's minds too. No info on him either. Here we are, with my very first vinyl rip. Currently I am using Audacity and Sony Sound Forge to rip and edit the records. If you have any suggestions regarding the quality of the sound or anything related, please let me know. I am still learning. Thanks! *Link in comments*  Even before I could understand what music is, I was already listening to it. I am talking about the time around the end of 1980s when vinyl was dying and making way for audio cassettes and compact discs to come in. People started trashing their old turntables and records, some went on the walls as souvenirs some to the child to play some for the dog to chew and the rest, to the trash can. However, there were people who cherished their collections and have held on to it till date. I'm glad my Dad did not trash his treasure. Somehow, I had this keen inclination toward listening to music on the turntable. Of course, analog quality is un-beatable. :)
It was my teen-age when I started paying serious attention to the old vinyl treasure lying in my own room and that gave birth to a passion which was never to be defied. Fifteen years after record production stopped in India, I hit the stores that once sold records in city. I started calling the stores asking them for "records" (if any). The kind of responses I got were indeed interesting. Like, "Hi, Kohinoor Stores, do you still have any records left in the store?" The response would not be a Yes or No but would be something like "Huh ! May I know with whom I am speaking??" I also once over-heard a faint voice in the background saying "Some wacko wants records. Is he new to the town or something? What do you want me to tell him?" Well, anyway, they did have some stock left. All I did was, "weigh" the records and bought the entire stock by weight. Paid Rs 2000 for like 1500 records (Over 50 kilograms). I did that with 4 other stores and soon had a room full of records. Due to the random stock buying adventure, I also ended up having over 10 copies of the same record. I ended up keeping them. The picture changed when I left home to study in California, USA and the story remained back there. The passion never died and so I started collecting all over again right here. Sometimes spending half of my pay checks on rare records and sometimes just grabbing some great ones at local record stores at Haight-Ashbury and Berkeley areas, there was just no stopping. I discovered some people ripping their old vinyls and putting them to blogs. What specially took my attention was a blog called "The Third Floor Music" blog by a person from Norway who collects, rips and posts records in a language totally unknown to him. Just for the sake of good music! Now that was impressive. Gaining inspiration, I decided to do the same thing to my blog. So here I am with my very first attempt at digitalizing my old vinyl records - EPs, 78s and LPs. Have fun listening to them. :) |  AuthorThe whole point is to entertain. You will find articles that are funny, related to Music or that have just some interesting information. So have fun reading, laugh, cry, dance, freak out and make the most of it. ArchivesApril 2012 CategoriesAll  |
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