Last week I posted a 30 minute set made from records bought on a 2002 tour to the States and Canada with DK, Four Tet and Bonobo. Given that this was the great tour where we shipped kilos of records back to the UK mid-tour (detailed in part in Stevie Chick’s Ninja Tune history book) and we only had 30 minutes to play with, I had loads more records to plunder so this week’s upload is an hour long part 2 of the shopping trip that aired two weeks after the first. Above is a home made CD label version of the mix which aired in the second hour of the Jan 21st 2002 Solid Steel show. After last week’s upload I was told the sad news that Bop Street in Seattle (where some of these records came from) had to close due to the pandemic. I dug out some photos from the tour including the basement underneath and I think the shot of me in from of a wall of 45 boxes is also from there.

Some great tracks in here, not just from the tour but new promos and oldies too. More Jazz Club samples from The Fast Show in the intro into the Pointer Sisters ‘How Long’ and a mash up by Matmos of Missy’s ubiquitous at the time ‘Get UR Freak On’. They did it a little differently by sampling the sounds of coins to make the beats I seem to remember and there’s a nice little back and forth between the tracks at one point over the ‘I know you got a chick on the side’ refrain. The same happens between the Bill Cosby and Curtis Mayfield tracks where Cosby is having an imaginary conversation with someone on his track where you can only hear his side, talking about someone called Freddy who died. By chopping in Mayfield’s ‘Freddie’s Dead’ I could make the two tracks have a conversation even though the tuning is a little off in places.

Sidney Pointier made several spoken word albums in the 60s, his voice reminiscent of Rosko or Ken Nordine, reciting poetry over jazz and he flows into a curious 7” picked up in Toronto by The Casuals. ‘Moonbound’ is a novelty trip to the moon travelogue with a stewardess delivering the journey’s progress over a lovely easy listening ditty. When I met my current partner nearly 15 years later she was the only other person I’d ever met who had a copy. At the time the show went out, the first promo from the forthcoming Boards of Canada album, ‘Geogaddi’, had turned up, untitled. I now know that this was the track ‘Alpha & Omega’ and weirdly, I put some recordings of children from a Tony Schwartz album over parts of it only to find out later that the Japanese CD of the BoC album had a bonus track sampling voices from the same record.

Kousik’s debut 45 had been given to me by Kieran on tour, released on his Text label and that slips easily into Edan’s excellent ‘Adrenalin Rush’ – beautifully capturing the original excitement of 80s golden era hip hop without sounding retro. After this the mix bounces all over the place through jazz, electronics, spoken work and soundtracks. The David Pritchard track is from a great but odd Canadian electronic experimental album I’d picked up called ‘Nocturnal Earthworm Stew’, which has since been reissued and you can find here https://davidpritchard.bandcamp.com/
One of the phone messages is from Malachi aka Flying Fish and now head of the Dynamite Cuts reissue label although I don’t remember the mix he’s talking about. Spot the DJ Food samples in ‘The Stripper’… Nervous Nervous made loads of novelty singles and ‘Dig’ had to be bought just for the vinyl collecting connection.

More Jazz Club over an excellent cover of ‘So What’ by George Benson way before his smooth 80s soul period and then into electric Bo Diddley with ‘Bad Trip’ – so good! I have no idea why there are two Adam & The Ants tracks at the end as I most definitely didn’t buy them on tour, ‘Zerox’ was the first record I ever bought so maybe these two were filling up the hour and I know DK has a thing for this era of the Ants too.

Track list:
Solid Steel intro
Pointer Sisters – How Long
Dry Hustle – Do It Very Sloppily
Bill Cosby – I Know I Can Handle It
Curtis Mayfield – Freddie’s Dead
Sidney Poitier – Only The Brave Are Wise
The Casuals – Moonbound
Boards of Canada – Alpha & Omega
Koushik – Battle Rhymes For Battle Times
Edan w. Skillz Ferguson – Adrenaline Rush
William S. Fischer – Electrix
Bob Keeshan – A Child’s Guide to Jazz
David Pritchard – An Admission of Guilt
Cosmic Sounds – Taurus
Ken Thorne – Car Chase
John Keating – The Unknown Planet
Werner Muller Orchestra – The Stripper
Nevous Norvus – Dig
George Benson – So What
Bo Diddley – Bad Trip
Adam & the Antz – Zerox
Adam & the Ants – Ants Invasion

Prompted by a message from Martin (kudrnacek79) who was looking for a track ID from this set I dug it out and the memories flooded back. Above is a home made CD label version of the mix, below is one of the official CDs made for licensees of the radio show back in the 00s.

We began the new year in 2002 with a stonker of a show on Solid Steel, comprising the best vinyl finds of a recent tour to the States and Canada. Food & DK’s ‘Solid Steel: Now, Listen’ was released in September 2001 and Darren and I embarked on a trip stateside in November, accompanied by Bonobo and Kieran Hebden who, although not on Ninja Tune, had just released his ‘Pause’ LP on Domino and was looking to tour. Everyone hit it off immediately and it soon became obvious that record shopping was the order of the day during downtime. Several spots still linger in the memory – The Princeton Record Exchange (pictured below), a store in a mall in Ottawa whose name I forget and Bop Street in Seattle. This last store has two big rooms, the owner’s private office with the pickings for eBay and a huge basement that runs under the shop and next doors’ too, full of thousands of records.

On returning to the UK, we all agreed we should commemorate the occasion with something on the show as soon as possible. The brief was simple: make a 30 minute mix of the best records you bought on the tour and come into the studio to present your section. I’m not going to lie, I was seriously trying to impress and pulled out all the stops for this set going to extra lengths to chop, scratch, re-edit and overdub tracks and make it as exciting as possible with the records I had.

Kicking things off with an answerphone message from Dom Smith, a Ninja employee who later went on manage Flying Lotus and join the Cinematic Orchestra, I think there was a party going on and they needed more content but it’s a hazy memory. A Busta Rhymes/Queen mash up over the Solid Steel theme (remember this was 2002, it was all going off for bootlegs around then) leads into a host of funky rock breaks, Beatles and Led Zep cover versions, jazz, spoken word and… Britney Spears. Now there had been a thing for Britney during the tour as ‘Slave 4 U’ was just out – produced by The Neptunes on a roll at the time – and three of the four of us bought copies (for the instrumental you understand).

Kieran had hipped me to several of the original sources for his classic ‘Glasshead’ track which we’d featured in our set each night and I rather ham-fistedly strung them together. Shopping still involved hoovering up jazz, electronics, soundtracks, spoken word (I finally managed to score a copy of Ken Nordine & Robert Shure’s ‘Twink’ on this trip) and dipping my toe into funky rock. Aynsley Dunbar was picked up because of the Frank Zappa connection and contains the excellent ‘Watch n Chain’ and the Fred Astaire LP was bought for a feature by Ken Nordine but contains this little skit on the beat. We were still all about buying vinyl for beats both to sample and play out and you can hear that The Fast Show’s ‘Jazz Club’ had debuted in British TV by the inclusion of a sketch mid-mix taking samples from it, “nice!”.

The Bill Cosby had been on the wants list for a while and I tracked down a copy in Seattle at Bop Street – the whole album is Bill doing skits on different drugs with a very odd cover where his head appears to be pasted on to the photo. “Oh, that’s a thunderous break, a beautiful break!” it cries in the middle which was pulled from The Crepitation Contest LP which is basically a farting contest on vinyl. Listening back to this mix it encapsulates part of what Solid Steel was always about for me, aside from showcasing the latest tunes it was also about digging and chopping things up to make new forms, sprinkled with humour and nods to other records or scenes. Lord knows how long I spent on this 30 minutes but I had more time in those days, pre-kids and with the downloading downturn of the music industry not yet making itself felt.

Given that this was the great tour where we shipped kilos of records back to the UK mid-tour (detailed in part in Stevie Chick’s Ninja Tune history book) and we only had 30 minutes to play with here I had loads more records to plunder so next week’s upload will be an hour long part 2 of the shopping trip.

Tracklist:
Strictly Kev – Solid Steel intro (new year remix)
Busta Rhymes – As I Come Back (instr.)
Queen – We Will Rock You
CCS – Whole Lotta Love
Elephants Memory – Madness
Drum Drops – Intro
Aynsley Dunbar – Watch ‘n Chain
Bud Shank – Blue Jay Way
Fred Astaire – The Afterbeat
Lincoln Mayorga – Peace Train
Norman Harris – Zach’s Fanfare
Dexter Wansel. – Theme from the Planets
Jean Vanesse / Miroslav Vitous – Thanks Billy
Bob Keenan – A Child’s Guide to Jazz
Ken Nordine/Robert Shure    – Clock
Paul Bley – Gesture Without Plot
Robert Kenyatta – Werewolf / Gypsy Man
Britney Spears – I’m A Slave 4 U
Grace Jones    – Operattack
Bill Cosby – Dope Pusher Song
Hair – Coloured Spade
Stanley Myers – End Title
Ken Nordine/ Robert Shure – Blotter

After the hip hop and turntablism of Pt.2 and the heavy beats and Drum n Bass of Pt.3 we take this down a bit for the last section. Paul Jason Fredericks was a friend of Riz ‘Neotropic’ Maslen and collaborated with her on a number of things on both her records and Council Folk label as well as putting this solo EP out on Oxygen Music Works. We all went to play at one of the first Coachella festivals in the US around this time and he did guest vocalist during Riz’s set. I’ll never forget him coming out onto the stage in an amazing kind of long drooping ballgown tutu, we were all sweating so much as the heat was insane and he didn’t seem to care one bit.

Another track from the only Ntone release by Tom Withers (aka Klute) in his Override guise comes next and then we’re into jazz territory with Freddie Hubbard’s classic, ‘Red Clay’. When I supported the Beastie Boys in 1998 at the Brixton Academy I remember them doing a track that sampled the famous riff from this throughout but, to my knowledge, it’s never been released. Maybe they had sample clearance problems or maybe it was just a tour thing? The theme to ‘Midnight Cowboy’ by Ronnie Aldrich precedes a short interlude track that I just can’t identify then another tune from Paul where we hear his stunning voice again.

Depeche Mode’s ‘Home’ plays out which is a very odd choice for me although I used to get sent promos for their singles all the time as they were always keen to get contemporary remixers of the day to do versions. Did you know that the song was produced by Tim ‘Bomb The Bass’ Simenon and was remixed by Air, LFO, Skylab, The Jedi Knights and Grantby? This version is the original though.

Thanks very much to Mr Armtone for helping me with this last section as I only had a portion of it in my archives, it’s nice to complete the set.

Track list:
Paul Jason Fredericks – Monday Morning
Override – Tubular Barriers
Freddie Hubbard – Red Clay
Ronnie Aldrich – Midnight Cowboy
Unknown interlude
Paul Jason Fredericks  – From Where He Stands
Depeche Mode – Home