Some 80's private label pressings, released in limited quantity and which didn't get much airplay either :







[Edited 6/25/09 3:38am]

Speaking of songs from the 1980s, these are two of my favorites that did get a lot of airplay in my area but nowadays people don't ever remember them unless they hear them again so I guess they would be considered "obscure" these days....






And on the local scene here in Jackson, Mississippi....





Plus, this is my first time trying to post videos on here so I want to test it and see if it worked.
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[Edited 6/24/09 19:14pm]

I think what brooksie is trying to say SouPower is that there is nothing wrong feeling the vibe and the sounds of the past, every great band does so, but what her, and most people have noticed is that no one, mainstream or underground seems to be improving on the past music. No one seems to be listening to the funk and making a new style of funk, everyone sound like they came straight out of a certain era. Poets of Rhythm sounds like a throwback to the hard funk of the 60's, Amywinehouse sounds like she belongs in the era of the Supremes, the cool kids sounds like they just released a track from 1985. But what about releasing a track from 2009? what's the sound of 2009? everything in the industry regardless of genre, sounds stale and re-hashed.

We're all I think(but myself, vainandy and brooksie moreso) waiting for the new sound of the next decade( if it ever comes) and not a familiar sound we grew up with.

Sandino said:

Well there is something gritty and up to date about the Amy Winehouses and Duffy's of today..it's the writing. Amy's Addicted or Valerie jsut could not have came out in 1968 or 1969...it still sounds modern.

Its not straight up old school...however there are alot of underground STRAIGHT old schoolers....as well as there are up to date highly influenced retro artists like Mark Ronson, Basement Jaxx, Daft Punk, Bastian, Junior Senior, Mika, MSKRFT, Chromeo, Erykah Badu, D'Angelo ..I can go on and on with people that keep the old school style while still sounding '09.

Sandino said:

I understand what brooksie was trying to convey. I just don't agree with that notion.

First of all, I don't think that music always has to progress. That's what I meant when I said that I think she's being to analytical. Who cares if a new Funk band makes music that sounds like it was recorded 40 years ago, if that's the sound they enjoy playing and there are people who enjoy listening?

Second, I think that Funk definitely has progressed. Even more so, it has evolved - from the early raw, deep Funk to the more polished, mainstream orientated Funk of the 1970s to Disco and finally Hip Hop, which pretty much has absorbed Funk.

Funk has developed into something else, which means that its potential to develop any further is exhausted. Funk has reached its limits. If you step beyond these limits, it's not Funk anymore.

I think that's what brooksie meant when she said that Funk is dead. Musicians went as far as they could go, and they ended up at the beginning of Funk's evolutionary cycle.

And that's where I disagree, with this definition of being dead. I think a musical genre can be considered dead when there aren't any artists anymore who play it. But today, there are possibly even more artists who play Funk than back in the 1960s. It doesn't matter if they develop new forms of Funk or not - they are still keeping it alive by performing it, preserving it and breathing life into it.

Now I am overly analytical, but you asked for it.

Bottom line, as long as there are people who enjoy performing and recording Funk, as long as people love dancing to it, as long as there is an entire (sub) culture that embraces it, Funk is very much alive.
[Edited 6/25/09 12:01pm]

MrSoulpower said:

Yup. Until the music is definitley extinct...it can't "die". Mainstream wasnt the way music started...people been doing it looong before things could even been recorded.
Just think of what influences we could have had if people from the beginnings of times were able to record their voices and long lost songs they created that are now gone for good.

For one thing I definitley do not hear music from the 1800-s to 1930's being made anymore...is that dead? Or are people still making that type of music? Like "I've Got Rhythm" and "Bugle Boy?"

The "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" is swing type music from the 40s. I love that song.

As for hearing the type of music from the 1800s, you are still hearing it today. It's all over the radio and it's just as slow and dull as the music from the 1800s except they did add something new to it. Instead of a nerdy, geeky, Waldo type person making it, nowadays it's made by thugs. It's called shit hop.

vainandy said:

We need to go out for drinks seriously