Various Artists – "Street Sounds Electro 2" (Street Sounds – ELCST 2) 1983

Got some stone cold classix on this one,including the radical re-arrangment of Hip-Hop godfather Herbie Hancock's seminal electro prototype "Rockit"by the B-Boys.You know, the one that MTV refused to play because it had a Black Man in it, so to get around this blatant racism,Team Hancock, made the classic human-less video with the dancing mechanical mannequins.....its a good one albeit slightly disturbing.Hancock himself is restricted to a few appearances on a portable TV stage left.The second black artist to (Not)appear on MTV, following Peado Jackson's "Billie Jean " video.

The samples in "cuttin' Herbie, were suitably subtle,and enjoyed some co-operation with the Herb himself,which cannot be said to be the case with Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel's "White Lines" which had clear chunks of Liquid Liquid's Cavern used by the Sugar Hill Records house band without proper permission or attribution.Moan as much as they could,the Liquid's must admit if they weren't sampled,royalties paid or not, they would have been long-forgotten today,instead of still touring since they reformed in 2008.

I notce also that Two Sisters also use the Liquid Liquid bassline, no-one seems to be bothered about that particular infringement of copyright law....and so they effing shouldn't!

Its the same argument I have to face regularly for writing this Blog.

I just cannot stand hard done by whinging Musicians,or, even worse, Music 'Fans' of whinging Musicians!Thanks to Hip-Hop culture vast amounts of forgotten and ignored music still lives on(unfortunately so does Aerosmith!),enabling the 'artists' to earn a decent living actually working for a living playing Live.Whinge Whinge Whinge, Fuck Off!

Volume 2 does however contain one of the greatest Electro numbers of the pre-House era in Hashim's "Al-Naafiysh (The Soul)", this rocks the beat enough to open the white boys' ears enough to realise that Electro wasn't invented by New Order, although Blue Monday,is a fine tune,and sold a thousand times more copies than Hashim's influential chunk of electronic grooviness.

Just like MTV,you gotta be pasty faced to get in the Charts.Systemic Racism by proxy.(usually whenever I sound as 'Woke' as this,certain conspiracy nuts and MAGA supporters awake from hibernation to hurl insults and abuse in my general direction.

Ironically "Blue Monday" was where i got off the Joy Division Bus...I thought the fuckers had sold out artistically, as well as shifting thousands of units in a loss making popularity venture.

Allegedly each copy of Blue Monday lost 5p due to the fancy cover.

Silly buggers.

Tracklist:

1.The B Boys– Two, Three, Break 5:01
2.The B Boys– Cuttin' Herbie 4:36
3.Xena– On The Upside 5:53
4.Hashim– Al-Naafiysh (The Soul) 6:06
5.Rammelzee Vs. K-Rob– Beat Bop 10:10
6.Two Sisters– B-Boys Beware (Club Mix) 5:50
7.Grandmaster & Melle Mel–White Lines(Don't Don't Do It)7:33

DOWNLOAD what joy division could have been HERE!