Did what I had to do. This is the first thing I’ve written as DJ Larsupreme of Portland, Oregon. After 35 years of calling the Bay Area home (if you’re keeping record, that’s been my whole life) I packed up a Cadillac full of records, clothes and cameras to give life another go in a…
Tag: The Miracles
Languishing On An LP: 33 Revolutions Not Found In Your Platter Pack
Vinyl DJs swear by the portability of the 45 rpm single. In a platter pack or any sundry 45 carrier, you’ve got up to 100 tunes, since most of those boxes can accommodate 50 of those little plastic discs. Most of my fellow DJs decry LPs, especially Soul LPs of the 1960’s as full of…
Better Luck Next Time: 40 Hits that happened for someone else
Sometimes, it’s like, with a song, dust yourself off and try again. The perfect moment for a tune to become a success entrenched in the Pop Culture lexicon sometimes isn’t its first time up to bat. Sometimes it takes competition and revision to get things right. With this, I’ve gone a bit overboard, giving you…
Lady & Some Tramps: 32 Girlish Gems with Guy Support Systems
As you should know, there’s no such thing as gender binaries in Popular Music. Female and Male singers didn’t stay separate on stage, quite often, the blending of vocal harmonies across gender and range gave us our most beloved soul music. One of the most popular forms of this was having one female lead singer…
Live! Live! Live! Soul From The Stage To Your Stereo 1963-71
We’re decidedly blessed with continuous access to acres of studio recordings of our favorite soul artists. There’s the hits we know, and then even there’s alternate takes. Nevermind the LPs they released, the B-sides that end up being true gems, or the unreleased material that sees light of day more than a half century later….
Purification & Ponderance, Your Pisces Pre-Fixing For Spring Mix.
We’re coming to our last Mixcloud of the Astrological year as we welcome Pisces Season. The Jupiter meets Neptune sign of the fishes is full of inspired performers of mystical powers that tell tales of all that came before and release so it can all be re-born at the Aries point at the start of…
Man Crushes and Masturbatory Materials: 36 + Faces of Sixties Soul
I do realize when I pull together these mixes that aren’t themed around Astrology, CIS-gendered vintage men kinda get the short end of the stick. It comes from my place that in the terms of music history, women in general don’t get anywhere near the equal coverage in their monumental role in shaping our pop…
Hitsville Vaults ’66: The Top Twenty Motown potential hits you didn’t know existed.
You may or may not know, Motown records in its Golden Years from 1961 through 1968 was a constant hive of activity. The operations worked 24 hours a day each day of the year, some Motown gems were recorded and pressed on major holidays, some efforts saw release on others. Was December 31, 1965 a…
Standard Snuggles, Classic Cuddles: Late Summer After Midnight Merging of Classic Soul and Songs of Old
It wasn’t just Berry Gordy’s dream to cross over to the meat of the performance market during the 1960s. R&B singers early as Ruth Brown and Dinah Washington took to covering songs associated with Tin Pan Alley pretty early in their careers. The natural relationship between musical genres has always been an orgy; Jazz informed…
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles “Can You Love A Poor Boy?” (From the LP Away We Go-Go, 1966)
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles “Can You Love A Poor Boy?” (From the LP Away We Go-Go, 1966) There’s no other way to address Smokey Robinson other than as the first gem in the Motown Crown. The Pisces Poet and Prophet of the Motown sound turns a rather youthful 76 years old today. In 60+…