Roots

Funking hell! Just discovered Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings. The super-hot weather we've been having lately has been annoying me. But as I drove home from work in the usual rush hour traffic last night, a Sharon Jones track came on and everything was alright for 3 minutes.

This video isn't the song I was listening to but it makes me want to get back to my roots and try and write a funk song.



Did I tell you I used to be a funk DJ? I played at the Yum Yum club in Swansea when I was at University there. It was great! It used to be free to get in and you got Big Issue sellers in there. One guy would play reggae and dub to start off with, then I would play funk then someone else would play more latin jazz style funk. It was the highlight of mine and my housemates two weeks. I met my first girlfriend there too when she drunkenly asked me to play another record.

I've loved funk ever since my mate Bezz got me into The Brand New Heavies in the nineties. Bezz lent me a load of Stax records and I heard all the originals of beats I'd heard sampled on hip hop records. I realised that the bits of hip hop records that I liked the most were the beats and grooves. Listening to the original funk records was like heaven: pure beats and groove.

I know you probably have to be more of a jazz musician to be able to write a funk song, and I don't want to stop writing melancholic folky stuff, but I'd love to give it a try.