![]() ![]() ![]() Especially the album that this booklet accompanies: The Bar-Kays’ mammoth Money Talks. But the music released in this period is some of the best funk and R&B released in the late-’70s, as worthy of rediscovery as much as earlier LPs by label stalwarts. This period was short, and it hardly ranks in any Stax history: Robert Gordon’s veritable Stax bible Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion devotes only two sentences to this period in its 350+ pages, and Rob Bowman’s earlier Soulsville, U.S.A. Its legacy as the most important soul label ever is undebatable, and assured for history, despite it lasting for roughly 15 glory years.īut there’s a forgotten period in Stax history that brings us here today: the roughly 18 months in 19, when one of the label’s ace songwriters ran a newly relaunched Stax, pulled old songs out of the vault and made new albums, signed new acts and had charting singles. Stax was mostly a reissue concern until 2005, when Concord Records bought it, and signed some of the label’s original artists and new artists like Nathaniel Rateliff. By the end, Stax Records couldn’t get into stores or off pressing plant floors, and the label was purchased out of bankruptcy in the late-’70s. They had shining towers of success, followed by devastating lows that included the label being forced to close up shop in 1975, when a variety of banking concerns cut them off. But as a refresher: Stax Records started life as a small regional soul label, got distributed by Atlantic for a few glory years, realized their contract with Atlantic left them not owning their masters, left Atlantic, and struggled for years to regain their foothold, ultimately culminating in some of the most iconic R&B of the ’60s and ’70s. I've heard a version without the drum machine, vocoder and with a different synth arrangement, so it might actually have been released earlier (sounds like a late-70s song) and redone in 1984 but I really can't say as a quick Youtube search only resulted in the '84 version.For the purposes of these liner notes, I’m going to assume that you are familiar with the broad contours of the Stax Records story, thanks to our eight previous Stax Classics selections (I’m including The Immortal Otis Redding here) and likely our The Story Of Stax Records Anthology box set from earlier this year. But if someone has more specific info, please chime in (the video above shows a Prophet-5 and Moog MemoryMoog -I have neither, so I can't compare, but could those have been used?) Sounds like a Linndrum, a vocoder of some kind (the Roland SVC-350 was very popular among the 80's "electro" funk crowd as far as I know) but I can only take a guess at the synths: Prophet 5, Oberheim OB-X/OB-Xa were probably the most common funky sounding 80s polysynths at the time, as has already been suggested here. ![]() There's also an extended version which has some cool sound effects. "Freakshow on the dance floor" -The Bar Kays. The first track I heard from the Bar Kays was "Freakshow on the dance floor" (from the "Breakdance" (1984) movie): Mine's modified for a faster attack rate (a common complaint against the SE-1) and an added external filter input jack (just as with the Minimoog). I had a Minimoog a while back, but although an awesome synth I sold it and bought a Studio Electronics SE-1 which is very similar (I compared them side by side before deciding to sell the Minimoog) but has the added advantage of patch memories, properly working MIDI (I never got to properly MIDI-interface my Minimoog -keyboard tracking was never successful) and of course a more compact rack along with other features the original never had. That awesome "bass drone" sound which I'm guessing is a Minimoog and is clearly heard of "Pump up the volume" by MARRS as you already mentioned is really funky! MeneerJansen wrote:Their track "Holy Ghost" is a master piece.
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