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On this show I’m going to play a track off of one of the more rare albums I own. The song is called “Hunk of Heaven” and it was recorded by a group called Lemuria. I haven’t been able to find a whole lot of background on the group. They were from Hawaii, and the main force behind the group was producer Kirk Thompson. Thompson assembled a great bunch of musicians, including a seven-piece horn section, and put them behind four incredibly powerful women vocalists. The result is a sound that’s akin to Roy Ayers’s later output. It’s deeply rooted in jazz, but sounds more like soul, and it features flourishes of latin flavor and just a hint of good disco.
This track was released on Lemuria’s self-titled album on Heaven records in 1978, and aside from a 45 of this same song, I don’t think the band or the label had any other output.
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On this show, I play a track called “Pork Butts” recorded by the New Earth Rhythm Band. This is not to be confused with the Whole Earth Rainbow Band, who I’ve played before. The New Earth Rhythm Band were a Chicago group in the mid- to late-70s, that near as I can tell only ever recorded this one song. This track is off of a compilation of Chicago bands called Hometown Album, released by radio station WKQX, 101 FM in 1977.
I picked this album up on a whim the other day for 99 cents, because, well, when you like the kind of music I like, you’ll spend 99 cents on just about anything with a song containing either the word “Pork” or “Butt,” so when I saw “Pork Butts” in the tracklisting, I had to have it. I got lucky. “Pork Butts” is smoking uptempo big-band-style horn funk, which is surprising, since all the rest of the bands on the album sound like like half-hearted Eagles ripoffs.
Even though this track is unmistakeably party music, the musicians are really precise. The horn lines are tight and interesting, and there are times when it sounds like if Kool and the Gang listened to Frank Zappa’s “Peaches En Regalia.”
As a saxophone player, I’m a little sensitive about the instrument, which I feel is often really cheesy. I, for one, have my doubts that the soprano sax can ever be reclaimed from easy listening hell. On this track, however, Linda Shew plays a tight and soulful alto line that really drives the song.
audio/mpeg (4 547 ko) Well, this post is long overdue, but I wanted to make a formal announcement that the Vinyl Podcast is defunct. A number of factors influenced my decision to cease production of the podcast. I began a masters program this summer in addition to working full-time, and the 2-3 hours required to produce each show were harder to come by. Also, this fall I got a packet in the mail from BMI, informing me of the details of their podcast license. It wasn’t threatening, but I interpreted it as a friendly first warning.
As of this moment, it is nearly impossible to legally podcast major-label music. I give ASCAP and BMI some credit for introducing relatively low-cost blanket licenses for podcasting, but these only solve half of the problem. ASCAP and BMI cover rights to the composition, i.e. the part of a song that you could write down on manuscript paper, but they don’t cover the mechanical rights to the recording, the actual sounds produced by the musicians. In order to license a recording, each song has to be cleared individually through the Harry Fox Agency, at a rate which is determined in part by the number of copies you intend to distribute. This scheme is prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. For example, at Vinyl Podcast’s peak, I had over 5,000 subscribers. Using an example from harryfox.com, a song 4:07 in length would have cost $455.00 to license for use in my podcast.
I took great pains in the design of the Vinyl Podcast to be respectful of the artists whose music I presented. The music I played was not available commercially except for in the second-hand market or, in some cases, via import. Each Mp3 file I distributed included several minutes of commentary, and my voice overlapped the beginning and end of each song. Each recording was made from 20+-year-old vinyl, and was not cleaned up or enhanced, throwing the DMCA’s notion of a "perfect digital copy" out the window.
That said, I was well aware that the Vinyl Podcast was operating afoul of current copyright statutes, and it became clear that the wild west that was the early months of podcasting would quickly become less Black Rock City and more Las Vegas, and that the inevitable commercialization of podcasting would bring increased scrutiny to the legality of the show.
So, I hope those of you who listened to the show on a regular basis discovered through it some different music, or rediscovered some old favorites that may have been languishing in the attic. I hope a few people dusted off their old turntables, and discovered that the cheapest source of un-DRM‘ed music is your local second-hand record store.
I’m keeping a couple of my shows online for download here, specifically those containing music that, to my knowledge, is not covered by ASCAP or BMI license. As with most early podcasts, the Vinyl Podcast was a money-losing operation. I spent about $20/month on hosting. I racked up about $50 in Google AdSense revenue, which, should Google ever see fit to cut me a check, will be donated to the EFF. Thanks for listening.
P.S. - I intend to blog sporadically at codyhanson.com. Eventually, this feed will be redirected to the feed from that site.