Funk Publishing: Feeds » FUNK: we make nice stuff happen

FUNK: we make nice stuff happen (10 unread)

The Great Debate

Posted: August 31st, 2010, 12:20am BST by deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread)

Let it not be said that music plays a side role in the great battle for hearts and minds. As the 9/11 anniversary coincides with a particularly shrill and vicious campaign by the American right, I bring you Burka Blue. The music sounds great, very art school frauenband, an almost industrial rock pop anti-protest. I’m [...]
Swing Report

Posted: August 28th, 2010, 3:13pm BST by deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread)

How do you make a trio sound like a big band, and rock a club? Berliners Dirty Honkers played at the Old Street club I went to last Saturday, and did just that. In midday tropical heat at midnight, they bust up the joint with artful screeches and an entertaining set which veered like an [...]
I Love Electro Swing!

Posted: August 19th, 2010, 6:56pm BST by deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread)

I used to run a DJ agency ten years ago, and since those crazed times, I’ve not really bothered to follow all the nuances and subgenres and sub-subgenres of dance music.. there are so bleedin’ many variations, and so tiny are the changes, except once every ten years or so, that the entire dance music [...]
Can You Stand Upon One Leg?

Posted: August 13th, 2010, 10:41am BST by deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread)

Not every comic song has the panache to carry the idea through to its musically logical conclusion, but The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannan is refreshingly un-selfconscious in this charmingly silly ditty. I recently returned from Norway and Belgium and left behind me new fans, many of whom were standing on one leg. From song to [...]
Life Without Buildings

Posted: August 5th, 2010, 12:26pm BST by deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread)

This excellently odd song, The Leanover, was tipped me via Don Ratto from Unio and Petitio. You might not get it first off – as my pal Yana said, she didn’t dislike it, she didn’t like it. But I love its gently manic breathless stream of consciousness delivery. Once you grapple with them, the lyrics [...]
The Return of Blog of Funk

Posted: July 8th, 2010, 10:03am BST by deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread)

From 2004 to 2008, under the pseudonym Deek Deekster, I wrote Blog of Funk. This work was an unadulterated expression of personal truth, an exploration of the form, a long, rambling, tight, focused, fun, savage, kind, irritable, precise, impressionistic tour-de-force of a blog, which made me many friends and a few enemies. I ported the entire work to The Other Side of Everything where I continued to write in much the same vein, wanting to focus this domain on more pertinent subject matter, such as funk music, and specifically, the kind of music I like, write and perform.

Since the first blog was such a huge success, I scotched the title and left it to posterity, and I’m not saying I made a mistake. But, I do miss the title, Blog of Funk. It said what it was on the tin, even though it wasn’t just about music at all, but about the navigation of this contrary world we inhabit.

With the balance shifted towards the music, and my usual self emerging despite all attempts to encourage work elsewhere, enough time has elapsed to write this blog again under it’s old banner.

Welcome back, Blog of Funk.
Not Quite Dusted

Posted: July 6th, 2010, 12:05pm BST by deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread)

Spotify has more or less replaced radio for me. I’ve been listening to it for the last year or so. It’s an interesting and mostly good quality service. Sound is far better than MP3 format music because it uses superior OGG encoding. Mobile, I have actually walked through a park, searching for tracks on the [...]
Bed ‘O’ Roses

Posted: April 3rd, 2010, 12:53pm BST by deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread)

Enclosure: [download]

Ian Dury is one of my heroes. He was a unique person, a true bohemian, a painter who went on to make hit records with unforgettable lyrics, punk attitude, and irresistable funk, who performed and sang like a demented music hall artist. But along with his raucous, explicit, confrontational demeanour, Ian Dury also wrote tender, [...]
Caribou

Posted: March 18th, 2010, 10:42am GMT by deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread)

Enclosure: [download]

I’ve discovered this great band, Caribou, nine years late. Well, I’ve been busy so I have plenty of excuses – although the Residents once famously said, “Ignorance of your culture is not cool”, and it does make me wonder what happened to my once unbridled enthusiasm to seek all things new and excellent. It didn’t [...]
Satisfaction

Posted: March 12th, 2010, 12:41pm GMT by deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread)

Enclosure: [download]

Relentless rasping saw-wave with a robotic call to pleasure makes Benassi’s ‘Satisfaction’ peerlessly effective. If you don’t get it, don’t worry. It makes a lot of sense on the dancefloor. Despite my natural writing mode being a more traditional, instrument-based practise, I have enjoyed electronic music since I first heard sounds which I knew weren’t [...]