VINYL SHOW & TELL VOL 8 - MAN PARRISH FEAT. FREEZE FORCE...

Man Parrish feat. Freeze Force
"Boogie Down (Bronx) / Boogie Down (Dub)" disco 12-inch
Sugarscoop Records 1984 USA

I'm so stuck on the 1960's as a musical decade, forever talking about the innovations and sheer amount of diversity for which it produced. The truth, obviously, is that amazing music creeps out of every time period and every geographic location. With that being laid down, let's go back in time when hip hop was young, fertile, and more obsessed with outer space than Tangerine Dream...1984.

Bambaataa really messed a lot of dudes up when he dropped some Kraftwerk. It seemed to set the whole tone of a futuristic genre in the 80's that was half electro and half hip hop, full of the latest synths and drum machines. This was made by two producers (Man Parrish and Raul Rodriguez) who went on to win grammys for other huge projects later in their careers, while the MC (John Carter) is pretty off the map except for a few other spots on 12-inches. I'm gonna guess that the independent label itself (Sugarscoop) was a takeoff on Sugar Hill's massive success.

This tune is about as classic as any track from that time, the Roland 808's and 909's bumping like crazy, vocoded lyrics coming out of both stereo channels. I loathe 80's rock for being way too polished in terms of sound, but these guys knew how to work the aesthetics of the future perfectly.

This shit would still kill any dance floor today, especially the B-side dub mix. Recommended for fans of the Soulsonic Force, Jonzun Crew, Giorgio Moroder, or the theme song to that movie Fletch.

"...they snatch gold chains when the cops ain't lookin'..."
"...Mayor Koch boogies down to the Boogie Down Bronx..."

this gets a 7 out of 10 on the "that funky old record smell" scale...