Fabulous Pleasure: EN-D Oversteps His Boundary

Monday, May 11, 2009

EN-D Oversteps His Boundary

Get White ESL Teacher's Funk

EN-D is your typical post-graduate indie-rock enthusiast. A former-college rock dj, lover of Pavement, reader of snooty fiction anthologies. Who is his to comment on funk? It's party music and EN-D is a rather curmudgeonly young man. He doesn't dance at parties. He won't join in any call & response chants, and he can't really keep time in anything but a simple 4/4. Afro-centric music may be far outside the bounds of his critiquing abilities, yet he cannot hide his adoration for sweaty, saucy funk. Though he plays bass with a pick he dreams of the day when he might be able to sit in with a air-tight group of musicians and laid down some devastating grooves. Still it's not to be. . . The world of funk is not his world. He can only gaze and wonder from afar.

But he has compiled a fantastic batch of singles. While White ESL Teacher's Funk is an homage to the genre that often inspires EN-D to dance and pivot in his underwear, it's also a nod to the mp3, the audio format that makes music truly democratic, for better or worse. EN-D did not compile this list by spending his Saturdays in the local record store, pouring through old vinyl. He simply downloaded some torrents and got some Stones Throw Records odds n' ends from E-music, picked out the duds, and there you go: a simply blistering mix of grooves. It seems that anyone can be a connoisseur there days.

(disclaimer: Some snobs might comment that a few of these bands aren't funk but rather Afro-beat or Soul, but all of them are of a heavily rythymic nature and far from what EN-D usually posts.)

Here's the roster. . .
Eddie Bo-Sissy Walk