Listen: Cheerful Little Earful / A Cheerful Earful
Cheerful

No. I do not know a thing about A Cheerful Earful. But I do know Command released endless muzak meets lounge albums in the early 60′s, some marketed and imaged as the sound of the future. They were all pretty good, the sleeves being particularly stunning.

Stumbled on ‘Cheerful Little Earful’ somehow long ago, only rediscovered while trying to immerse another box of haphazard, probably senseless 45′s into my library. But when played, I heard from a floor below “That sounds pretty out there Dad”. Yes, if a fifteen year old and her friends respond that way, it certainly reinforces a previously guilty pleasure.

Overall, ‘Cheerful Little Earful’ documents what many of those Command albums touted: the revolutionary new world of stereophonic sound, or some such technology of the moment, despite thankfully issuing the singles in mono. Comical as it may seem now, the single retains a purity of the period when indeed, nothing else sounded quite like this stuff. I dare say ‘Cheerful Little Earful’ could in fact have been the acid house of it’s day.

Listen: It Takes Two (Radio Edit) / Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock
It

Nothing like chilly autumn weekends to hibernate inside a warm house, filing records. My shelves are freaking me out, they’re jammed, and there’s hundreds of singles in white boxes awaiting a slot. So, much of Saturday was spent removing a ton of records I almost couldn’t believe I owned. Some acts with like ten singles deep, sitting wasting space.

Mind you, nothing really gets eliminated, just moved to the backup library or officially into storage. Mostly 80′s and 90′s rock titles I hadn’t listened to even as they were being filed, like R.E.M., The Cult, Everything But The Girl. Seriously, hundreds and hundreds more.

Years ago I created a hip hop 7″ section. We’re talking the early days, given the confusion I anticipated organizing DJ this or MC that. As with some other random sections: jazz, reggae, world, acid house, I found I quite liked the setup, made it easy to scan for a song when the genre bug has bitten. Mind you, this requires a second copy of everything: one for the genre section and one for the main library. In the heyday of 80′s/90′s record business, everyone was only too happy to unload 7″ singles my way. Nobody wanted them, a result of the 12″ or CD taking preference.

Fantastic.

As with some of the aforementioned genres, hip hop 7″ singles looked almost odd, like they weren’t really meant to exist in that particular size. Now of course, they’ve become quite scarce, and I guarantee their values will continue to rise as a result. They’re fast becoming my new obsession so needless to say, I ended up log jamming through them, pulling out more to play than I was putting away.

As with yesterday’s post, and probably tomorrow’s, I’m on a roll. Even the most mainstream hits look and sound great on a 7. Hip hop pressed in the UK is even more perverse. They might be my favorites of them all.

‘It Takes Two’ got slammed with sampling issues early, like a bunch of other records at the time. In the case of Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock’s biggest hit, the single used James Brown and Lyn Collins’ ‘Think (About It)’ without clearance. Combine that with other unauthorized snippets, especially a Frankie Beverly & Maze sample, and the IT TAKES TWO album, despite selling millions, hit financial disaster. The calamity was the talk of the industry, which of course likes to talk so who knows, but the mess seemed to throw cold water onto their career.

One last bit. Many of the hip hop 7′s provide the only access to each song’s radio edit, and out of laziness, the labels carelessly assigned the instrumental version or some throwaway remix onto the B side, making them even more collectable.

Listen: This Is Ska (Skacid Mix) / Longsy D’s House Sound LongsyD.mp3

I felt one of those late 80′s / early 90′s acid house moments coming on over the past weekend, so pulled out a few that were my staples in the day. No one ever mentions it, but ska had yet another revival of sorts during the E craze. Remember The Beatmasters’ ‘Ska Train’ or Rebel MC’s ‘Street Tuff’? I must post those soon.

The more or maybe most hardcore acid/ska floor filler,as the natives like to say, was definitely Longsy D’s House Sound ‘This Is Ska’. Fuck, it even charted. Yes, I recall riding around London with Crowley, Radio 1 beaming this down the airwaves and out of the dashboard, Friday, dinnertime traffic jam, Soho, looking for a place to park along Dean Street en route to Grauchos. If only we could turn back the clock.