Category Archives: Records

Taken from The Gap Band’s first self-titled album released in 1977, Not Guilty/Knucklehead Funkin’/Listen to the Music is great early Gap Band funk. Synths are not as prominent as they would be later, but these three songs have a lot of what made The Gap Band a very popular funk band in the late 70’s/early […]

I bought this album mostly for Breezin‘ and Give Me the Night, but this is a fine sampling of a jazz legend’s music. This album attempts to straddle the careers of George Benson the jazz guitarist and George Benson the smooth jazz vocalist, and includes big hits like The Greatest Love of All, later re-recorded […]

Heatwave offers, “If you can’t afford to move to England, you can at least afford to move to the English disco sound,” and I guess that’s true. The Rod Temperton-composed album features him playing keyboards while Johnnie and Keith Wilder of Dayton, OH provide the vocals. Heatwave began when Johnnie Wilder, Jr. responded to an […]

A lot of the songs on 1976’s The Royal Scam got me into Steely Dan when I was first playing guitar, and Larry Carlton’s work on this album made me a big fan of him (and The Crusaders) and of Walter Becker and Donald Fagan. If it hadn’t been for songs like Kid Charlemagne and […]

Carmel-by-the-Sea serves as the inspiration for Joe Sample’s album Carmel, released in 1979, seven years before it would elect Clint Eastwood as its mayor. “A spectacular greeting of the land and sea,” and “symphony of life” with “a thousand love songs” inspires an album of great piano grooves that feature The Crusader’s Stix Hooper producing […]

History has been kinder to Oxygene, which was received poorly when it was released in 1976. It was Jean Michel Jarre’s first album that wasn’t a soundtrack, but it still sounds like one, and critical comparisons to Tangerine Dream are valid. But the synths on Oxygene sound terrific and it made a lot of new […]

Akai got an MPC sale out of me because of this album, and I’m still inspired by what a single artist with limited equipment can accomplish. Endtroducing…, the 1996 album by DJ Shadow from Davis, CA is a thrilling listen from start to finish and pretty much invented the genre of instrumental hip-hop. I hear […]

Daydream Nation is one of my favorite albums from one of my favorite bands, and probably one of the best college rock albums of all time. Released in 1988, it is the album that made Sonic Youth alternative rock superstars and regularly is cited as one of the best albums of the 80s. This album […]

I found this at Amoeba for less than retail, and the quality of the groove is really high throughout. The horns are the highlight of this 1976 album, with arrangements by Fred Wesley and Bernie Worrell, while Dr. Funkenstein and Do That Stuff were also released as singles. I heard Do That Stuff’s synth hook […]

Another of my favorite albums of all time, Boards of Canada’s Music Has The Right To Children is the Scottish electronic duo’s breakthrough album and one of the best Warp Records releases, no small feat. Dreamy, nostalgic and astounding, this 1998 album also was one of my introductions to electronic music and really made me […]