what would be considered the earliest "new wave funk" track?

live horns are acceptable as long as the drums are synthetic.

I know that the drum machine was used in the number 1 hit by Sly and the Family Stone called "Family Affair" in 1971 and it was used earlier with the group called Little Sister on the songs "You're the One" and "Somebodys Watchin' You" both written by Sly in 1970.

He said "new wave funk" tho... Sly's hits sounded more tribal. I would say "I Feel Love" but it's more like early techno music mixed with disco.

I wouldn't have any idea. Prince is the first person that comes to mind. I'm sure he probably wasn't the first but he's the first person I really noticed doing a lot of it.

Released on November 6, 1971,[1] "Family Affair" was markedly different from the earlier Sly & the Family Stone hits. "Family Affair" is a somber, Wurlitzer electric piano based record with a rhythm box (or drum machine) providing the rhythm, making it the first number-one hit to feature a programmed rhythm track

^
thx madhatter

but as timmy said its not very new wave/80s

ill just assume that prince recorded some unreleased shit back in 80/81 that sparked it all.

This isn't really new wave and I don't think it's drum machines either but if you're wanting something that sounds really Prince-like synthwise before Prince was doing it, Billy Preston's "Wide Stride" is definately the one. Just click the player on the right to listen.....

http://www.last.fm/music/...ide+Stride

good find.

although i checked wikipedia and that track was released in 77, not too far ahead of prince and he has been recording since 75 if im not mistaken so to say "before" is arguable. (famrant)

minneapolisFunq said:

Prince was still playing with live instruments until '77 or '78 though. Has anyone heard Prince's demos from 1974-76? lol

who knows.

but a track such as "just another sucker" was recorded in 1977 and that has Prince's signature style all over it.

that raises another question, what was prince's motivation 2 go electronic?

Oh, Prince was definately ahead of his time. I never heard the 12 Inch version of "Sexy Dancer" until the late 1990s but there is a breakdown with the synths in that version that sounds exactly like the kind of stuff he was doing with The Time later that really got him noticed a lot for having his own recognizable sound. And to think, Prince recorded this at the tail end of the disco era before musical styles in general had even changed yet.

As for his motivation to go to a cold electronic sound, I'm wondering if he did it from being a broke struggling artist and also as a way to try to live up to the image of being a "one man band". I mean, once he made it huge with "Purple Rain", then he switched gears totally and started sounding more traditional on each album. Lots of people kept thinking he would snap out of it and go back being his old self and he never did. It makes me wonder if "Purple Rain" made him enough money that he could do what he wanted to do all along. But then again, if his heart wasn't really in it before "Purple Rain", he was doing a damn good job faking it. Hell, with Prince you just never know what his motives are.

minneapolisFunq said:

Sly & The Family Stone -- Family Affair

And no, it wasn't "new wave funk" OR synth-funk.

Timmy84 said:

Kraftwerk -- Trans Europe Express

TonyVanDam said:

U R Late 2 the party.

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U make a good point andy, if Prince really enjoyed the new wave sound he crafted earlier in his career you think he would stick with it.

i still like a lot of his stuff post purple rain but i wish he didnt abandon his child so early. He could take the blame for the death of funk in the 80s. at one point everyone was trying to do the minneapolis thing and once he ditched it so did the everyone else.

TonyVanDam said:

You sure have problems with scrolling.

He might have just gotten tired of it or maybe he was being influenced at the time by particular band members around him. You just never know with Prince because he stays so mysterious and even when he does talk, he lies from time to time so you never really know what his real reasons are. I did notice that he still kept the synths and drum machines in his sound on a lot of his songs but he just kept adding more traditional instruments such as horns, strings, and things and started branching out into more genres like jazz. That just makes me wonder if that's what he wanted to do all along but just couldn't afford it because his teenage age years (teenage years are the ones that usually influence most people's musical tastes as adults) were during the 1970s when horns were very prominent in funk.

I would have loved to have seen him keep his signature sound for the rest of the 1980s until musical styles in general changed completely. Albums like "Around The World In A Day", "Parade", "Sign O The Times", and "Lovesexy" would have been absolutely wonderful coming out during the 1990s.

I disagree about everyone else ditching his sound once he did though. While he was doing his sound in the early 1980s, there were a few folks like Ebonee Webb and Bobby Nunn that were doing it but it was after "Purple Rain" that everybody started doing it. Ready For The World, The Jets, The Barkays, Chico DeBarge, Janet Jackson, Chaka Khan, Vesta Williams, Egyptian Lover, Madame X, Herb Alpert, Jane Child, New Edition, Bobby Brown, Human League, etc.

vainandy said:

The Human League were using synths & drum machines long before Prince was. League's first 3 albums (Reproduction, Travelogue, & Dare!) were all done with synths & drum machines only.
[Edited 3/25/10 23:26pm]

Yeah, they were but they didn't sound Prince-like (at least they didn't on the only two songs I had heard, "Don't You Want Me" and "Fascination) until "Human" which was a Jam and Lewis product.

the title of this thread is

1st FUNK song 2 make use of a drum machine.

of course people were using synths and drum machines before prince.

the term newwave is a bit misleading. i should have used electrofunk/synthfunk.


@andy i was pointing more towards around the world in a day as the culprit. minneapolis sounding jams were prominent up until that time frame (give or take depending on the artist).Prince was the top guy at the moment and I think he had the power to keep the funk alive for a few more years. who knows what music would b like now if that happened.

Electro funk... I say probably the FIRST funk song to use electronics has to be...

...no, I'm thinking more like Billy Preston kinda started it... Stevie Wonder was using it a bit... I would think Roger & Zapp were kinda the forefathers of "electro funk" though.
[Edited 3/26/10 1:03am]

I'm fairly certain that the unreleased track "Lisa" was the first time Prince used a drum machine. That was done in 1980.

Zapp's debut came out that year too but "More Bounce To The Ounce" was originally recorded in late '79. That probably pushed Prince in that direction (they were both on WB) as well as the fact that Prince was simply able to program more diverse beats using drum machines than he was capable of playing on real drums. And of course, it was a quicker method of composing. We know Prince likes to write his songs quickly whilst the ideas are fresh.

drum machines provided the "dub" in early reggae 1970's ...many forms of this was copied in the US i.e. Hip-Hop/Rap and Europe ...Techno..