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Music

Perlich’s Picks

Rating: NNNNN


Secret squirrel style

Another day, another funky DIY mix disc, right? But hang on, there’s much deeper digging going on with this mysterious Off The Beaten Path (Magnetic Fields) CD, and the track flow is significantly more seamless than most nefarious home jobs. That’s likely because the mix was masterminded by our kid Quantic , aka Will Holland . Although considering all the raw island funk and African boom-bap here, the “Heavy Jazz & Raw Soul” claim is a bit misleading. No props for the secret squirrel move of leaving off the track listing. Nasty but nice. www.quantic.org

Crowbar come-up

GrandSlam Magazine ‘s Daddy Bones and Chris “The Funky Plumber” Smith couldn’t launch their new Radford-based Crowbar label with just any old crap. They had to wait for the right funk obscurity, and they found it on an acetate owned by northern soulie “Dirty” Dave Raistrick . Credited to Troubled Soul , the two-part Funky Me (Crowbar) is a hard-bumping blast of James Brown-style dance-floor dynamite thought to have been recorded on the West Coast of the U.S. sometime in the late 60s, although even that’s speculation. The song was never published and apparently never officially released at the time, so if you know someone involved with the session, Daddy Bones would really like to hear from you at bones@gsmag.net.

Super Sonic funk

Long before the grunge gold rush hit the great Northwest, Seattle had a thriving R&B scene, as Light in the Attic ‘s enlightening new scene survey Wheedle’s Groove: Seattle’s Finest In Funk & Soul 1965-75 reveals. Compiled by Sharpshooters DJ Mr. Supreme , the fab 21-track disc focuses on joints with badass breaks – by folks like the Overton Berry Trio , Black on White Affair and the Cookin’ Bag – that will appeal to beat headz, but there’s still enough searing soul and righteous rare grooves for everyone else. A few modern head-nodders are thrown in for kicks, but more vintage burners would’ve been preferred.

Bluegrass calling

Eventually, someone was bound to try pulling together a multi-disc bluegrass retrospective, but the safe bets were on a European reissue operation. Well, Columbia Legacy beat everyone to the punch with Can’t You Hear Me Callin’ – Bluegrass: 80 Years Of American Music . The four-disc set draws on the archives of Mercury , RCA , Capitol and Rounder as well as Sony to present the best-ever overview of recorded bluegrass history, primarily focusing on the work of founding fathers Bill Monroe , Flatt & Scruggs and the Stanley Brothers and running through to contemporary players like Ricky Scaggs and Edgar Meyer . There are some odd choices (Four songs by the Byrds and none from New Grass Revival , Seldom Scene or J. D. Crowe’s New South ), yet with 109 tracks, it’s a great introduction to eight decades of high lonesome innovation.

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