Devotion #1

(Ed. Note – After getting the pleasure of introducing Dave last week, Audiversity is proud to present you with yet another amazing addition to our team. Fellow Chicagoan Ronnie Reese will be joining us on a weekly basis dropping knowledge and experience to further enlighten your hopefully already expanding musical tastes. Ronnie basically blows the rest of us out of the water with his résumé having graced nearly every one of my favorite mags and companies, including but not limited to Wax Poetics, Stop Smiling, Stones Throw, Allhiphop, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Defender, Chicago Innerview, Rollingstone.com, and on and on. Basically, Ronnie is our hero and we are ridiculously excited that he is on board with our cause.)



It’s 7:51am. I’ve been up all night working on a story, but slowed down as the procrastination bug hit. Now, I’m just kind of chillin’ – eating blueberry yogurt, waiting for bacon to thaw, and clearing hard drive space. It’s casual.

I’m thankful for the time to go through some of these tracks, because in doing so, I’ve found the missing piece needed to pop my Audiversity cherry. When I first contacted Michael about contributing, he was as happy to have me as I was to be down. I just wanted to get started sooner rather than later. I had a couple of tracks in mind, but was holding out for a third. Three is the magic number, you know, so when I found this:

Four Tet – "As Serious as Your Life" (Jay Dee Remix feat. Guilty Simpson) - Remixes (Domino 2006)

We were in business. This song has long been a favorite, and because of the close relationship I’ve had with Jay Dee/J Dilla’s music over the past couple of years – the past 11 or 12, really – it was an obvious choice for this inaugural post. If you’re not familiar with Dilla, you will be soon. He is arguably the best hip-hop producer of our generation, and I enjoy this track in particular because it showcases all facets of his approach, from rapping, to singing, to production, of course, and finally, DJing. This is how it should be done, and fortunately, many others are following his lead. You’ll be learning more about them as well.

What I eventually hope to bring to Audiversity is a mix of a lot of different things, old and new – a little hip-hop, a little funk, some soul and R&B, some jazz, and perhaps the occasional albino Scientologist blues-rocker. Pretty much everything you can’t find here on a regular basis, which I say without full conviction, because there doesn’t seem to be anything you find here on a regular basis. Audiversity is the ideal blank canvas. If I had one concern (which I don’t), it would be how well I fit in on a site that features material from a lot of artists that I’ve never heard of. But I realize that is part of the fulfillment found in “music appreciation.” Some of us know a lot, but no one knows everything, so we learn together.

Alright – enough of that corny bullshit. I stand behind those words, but I’m content letting the music speak for itself. Which is why I’m going to avoid a long-winded introduction of who I am and what I do. Some of you know of me, but most do not. In short, I collect vinyl, but I’m not heavy-duty, and was a both radio and club DJ in my younger days. Now, I’m just a moderately-talented journalist with some good music to share.

Herbie Hancock – "Gentle Thoughts" - Secrets (Columbia 1976)

Exile – "In the Night 22" - Artdontsleep Presents From L.A. with Love (Milan 2007)

These represent then and now. Michael, for the time being, is the musical director at WLUW-FM Chicago, where I was a DJ and co-host of a funk show from 10pm to 2am on Wednesday nights in the late ‘90s. From midnight on, my partner and I would mellow things out in a portion of the evening known as “Gentle Thoughts,” where this nice Hancock piece from the Secrets album set the tone. Long before then, I checked Secrets and Hancock’s Mr. Hands out of my local library on cassette and dubbed them up. I wore that tape out, so this track has been in the memory bank for a minute.

The bass is what grabs you from the start, courtesy of Oakland native Paul Jackson. His playing brings to mind something I heard from drummer Mike Clark, also of Oakland and a longtime friend and musical partner of Jackson’s. Clark performed and recorded with Hancock during his electric period in the ‘70s, and once told me that he, Jackson, and other players actually had to teach the legendary jazz keyboardist how be funky. “When I played with Herbie, he wasn’t like that at all,” said Clark. “He could hint at that, and he understood it, but he wasn’t playing like the really funky B-3 players because he didn’t live like that.” This came at a bit of a surprise, based on the success of Hancock’s electro-funk opus, Head Hunters, but then again…



Polka dots? That ain’t gangsta.

“In the Night 22” is a chilling downtempo instrumental from producer Exile. Exile is one-half of Emanon with Stones Throw artist Aloe Blacc, and also half of a more recent collaboration with rapper Blu on Below the Heavens. I first heard this in a Jay Scarlett mix on BTS Radio and it blew my face off. I didn’t own it at the time, but desperately had to track it down, eventually scoring this mp3 from the man himself. It’s also featured on the From L.A. With Love compilation. I’ll make a note to post a track from both albums in the upcoming weeks.

I don’t have much to say about this Exile beat that would do it proper justice. If I were to ever die in a car crash, however, this is the song that I would like to be playing loudly at the moment of impact. If that sounds morbid, forgive me. I can be a sick fuck, sometimes.