Monday, May 16, 2005

Boombastic Radio

It's easy to get the too-much-of-a-good-thing feeling with funk. For example, the comp The Funky 16 Corners features 21 funk tunes (and a break-beat remix by Cut Chemist) that are all fine on their own, and I'm sure they were great as 45s, but I'll be damned if I can listen to it all the way through. It's similar to T-Rex - Greatest Hits 1972-77-B Sides in that way.

Somehow, http://www.boombasticradio.com/ plays funky music and manages to keep me tuned in for long stretches of time without ever giving me that I ate too much candy feeling. They do that by drawing from various styles either explicitly or implicitly funky: old-school funk, hip-hop, reggae, dub, dancehall, electronic music, and even the occasional surf-rock number. It keeps things interesting, and this is one of those cases where picking out what to play next is being done with admirable skill. The DJs are anonymous, though. They never speak, nor could I name one of them. All you ever hear to remind you it's a radio station is the British guy doing the occasional station ID.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Paul and I just bought our first T-Rex album, coincidentally. I had no idea that 'Bang a Gong' was such an old song, from 1971. This purchase was part of our series of old LPs we've been buying that we should have heard a long time ago. -Mark

SDC said...

Howdy Mark,

Actually, if the album you bought was 'Electric Warrior' (which is possible, since 'Bang a Gong' is on that one), that album is one I can listen to all the way through. It's actually a very good album, one of the essentials of rock and all that.