Another Jam filled all 45 tape from King Shade, drifting warble synths in a one drop roots style. Pack a picnic, pick up the girls and peel the top off your 87 rabbit. Its rad to live in LA.

The Cornerstone Mix

The final installment of Ain’t Hard To Tell.

We didn’t realize then how little chance we had in New York. Violins and soft saxophones were the fashion…The only place we could play was in our rooms, at our own request. Krupa set up his drums and we played every night until the complaints began. Don Voorhees had a big band down the street at the station WOR; many of his men dropped in to see us and hear us play. They liked our music. One of them was Vic Berton, the drummer. Red Nichols was another. When we saw Vic listening with admiration to Krupa, our faith in our future rose. If musicians agreed we were good, how could the public resist? Something would break soon; Bee Palmer was sending us to agent after agent-one of them was certain to get us a job. Bee was also taking us to parties, where we were introduced as celebrities from Chicago. “But we’re still loafing,” McKenzie muttered. “How long can we live like gentlemen and work like bums?

Drum Machines! - Vol 1 - Roger Linn
w/ Samples Download

LM-1

Linn Electronics LM-1 was the world’s first programmable sampled-sound drum machine. Announced in 1979, this first product of Linn Electronics started a revolution in 1980s popular music. Originally sold for $5,000 each, only about 500 were ever made, but those 500 owners were a “who’s who” of the music industry. The 18 fixed drum sounds were mostly recorded by local L.A. session drummer Art Wood, and sampled at only 28 kHz using an 8 bit non-linear format. Cymbals weren’t included due to the high cost of long sounds. The operating system allowed both real-time loop recording of rhythm patterns as well as step entry, and introduced innovations such as quantize, swing and creating songs by chaining patterns together. -rogerlinndesign.com

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We just received a weekday treat from Steve Slabco. He’s got one of the baddest collections of ’45s around, and this mix is comprised of works from Big Youth (nee Manley Augustus Buchanan). Keep it on the download.

Slabco ’45s - Big Youth Mix

People, to me, make ‘dream’ albums…You can’t hustle everyday. You can’t hang out and party everyday. These things just don’t happen everyday… It just proves to me that you’re shallow.

Pt 3 - Organized Konfusion
Pt 2 - Tupac
Pt 1 - Cappadonna

2006

“Brother Reade producer Bobby Evans skillfully connects the dots between The Yay, Atlanta and Harlem through seamless blends and clever edits that switch up traditional snap classics like “Lean With It, Rock Wit It” into melodic ballads more suited to have you shoulder poppin’, slouched in your ‘69 Coupe Deville…” - URB

Features “Who Im is” from Jams F. Kennedy.

Cop the CD (Sold Out) or download the continuous mix at 192k for free.

Tracklist

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This is the elusive mixtape Lead the Field mixed by Killyou Meyou (Bobby Evans). Earl Nightingale hosts and features “A Few Bars” from Jams F. Kennedy. 41 tracks strong. Pick up the CD or download the continuous mix at 192k for free.

Tracklist

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Rap Music Zine

2007

$FREE

We made less than 100 of these and sealed them in an airtight package along with a t-shirt and a CD. Those limited packages are long gone but we do now have the zine available for free download as a PDF.

Earlier this year..Friday April 19 1996, Tupac Shakur graced the airwaves of KMEL Radio’s Westside Radio program in San Francisco. Here, in an historic interview he let the entire Bay Area know exactly what he was feeling and thinking at that point in time. For those who weren’t up on the backdrop at the time that interview aired, 2Pac had not spoken to anyone extensively since joining Death Row. His album, ‘All Eyes On Me’ was the album of choice for more then a few headz especially here in the Bay Area. The Bad Boy/ Death Row conflict was at an all time high… No one from the Death Row camp had spoken on co-founder Dr Dre’s departure. More importantly, 2Pac had not been through the Bay in what seemd like years…My boy Sway of The Wake Up Show was the person asking the questions.

Pt. 2 - Tupac

Rap music is a collage. before ‘found elements’ came into fashion amongst art school students and facile postmodern critics, there have been musicians in America and other places in the African diaspora that have been incorporating previously recorded materials into the things they play. even before that, the jazz standard set the parameters for players to interpret musical themes. they used old structures to build new ideas. rap music now owes as much to this spirit as it does to the narratives encapsulated in the blues. It is an evolving system of organization using old elements to get across current ideas. the mixtape is a higher order organization of these collages, and works like an anthology of both the rap songs it contains and the original elements the song was made of, all blended together in a seamless mix. In a sense, that’s what we’re doing here, blending these interviews into one digestible volume for you to take in and make sense of. We’ve given you not the works of these artists, but accounts of the artists lives and pastimes. Art always comes from trouble, and trouble always comes from life. maybe you do, or don’t know these things well. but in here, it ain’t hard to tell.-AHTT

Long lost Zine Jams and I put together a couple of years ago, never printed, never released, now separated into four parts ready for download.

Pt 1. Cappadonna