Jazzman Records

I've been accidentally buying records from the UK's Jazzman label for a few years now. And thinking about it, I reckon I a decent part of my music education (thanks Mum) contained if not these exact sounds, then sounds closely related to them.

So I received a compilation on BGP Records this afternoon called Superfunk 2. It's old school, down home, FUNK. I wonder if this kind of music will die out as a form of tunes that are created by folks in the 2000s? Of the groups I'm aware of (and I'm no aficionado) there are Quantic, The Bamboos, and Breakestra all doing the business. And there's a certain Alice Russell who kills it on the mic too. She's good. And there was some band from Finland I heard recently too, but their name escapes me right now. Hmmm.

I caught this quote on Jazzman's site tonight, and I thought I should share it with the people who read this page, which to my knowledge is currently nobody:

It’s hard to make good music without drawing upon good influence, and we at Jazzman worry about the rubbish that kids today are listening to - it doesn’t bode well for the future of music in this world.

Amen my brothers and sisters. I worry about the rubbish the kidlets are listening too as well. If you were to ask me what sort of music I like, it'd give you a non-committal answer that goes, "Well, I like a lot of different music". I admire producers like Dan F, Elite Force and Meat Katie who are so incredibly dedicated to their sound. I just don't have that single mindedness.

These days I get booked to pay funk, rare groove, hip hop and assorted mid-tempo funkiness, and this makes me happy. I like collecting vinyl too - I get the majority of these types of tunes on wax you see, it makes the gigging easier. So here I am, writing about Jazzman, and funk music, and recalling the Motown music I heard so much of in my youth, unable to focus on one sound, yet exploring decades of recorded output and being satisfied by that. At least I'm honest.