Willie Smith/Cliff Driver’s Infernal Machine – I Got a New Thing
Listen/Download -Willie Smith – I Got a New Thing
Listen/Download -Cliff Driver’s Infernal Machine – I Got a New Thing (inst)
Greetings all.
I hope everyone (in a geographically appropriate radius) is enjoying the prematurely ‘spring-y’ weather. Not all that far removed from what seemed like an eternal wall of snow, we’ve been grooving on 70 degree-plus weather the last few days. Sure it’s still chilly in the early morning and after the sun goes down, but since I tend to remain indoors during those hours, I don’t mind all that much.
I took advantage of the wonderful weather to drive two hours in my car and stand around in a warehouse for two and a half hours more digging at the legendary all-45/78 record show in Allentown, PA. This has become – over the years I’ve been traveling to Allentown for record-related purposes – quite the Pavlovian exercise, with yours truly enduring a painfully monotonous drive so that I might, like a hamster eager for num-nums, be rewarded at the end by stacks of vinyl.
Today was an especially nice trip, mainly because I scored a heap of nice stuff (split about 50/50 between soul/funk and rock/pop) and got to meet up with some groovy people.
As I was driving out to the show, I was giving some thought s to what I’d write about the experience, deciding in advance that I’d take it upon myself to counter the stereotype of record shows as a freak parade of basement dwelling, vinyl hungry Morlocks, crawling to the surface so that they might once again drag records back to their lair.
As I stood on the steps of the ‘mall’ where the show is held, waiting for the doors to open, scanning my fellow attendees, I thought that I would be unable to follow through on my hypothesis. Fortunately, once I got inside, to the actual record show, the ‘sampling’ evened out somewhat, providing much needed balance and my faith in humanity (or the dark little corner of it inhabited by record collectors) was restored.
Sure, the crowd was close to 99.9 percent male, and, thanks to the unpleasantly close quarters in which one is forced to dig, almost as smelly, but when afforded a moment to step back and soak in the scene, I realized that what I was looking at was a cross section of the ‘serious’ digger community, writ large. The age range stretched from teenagers to folks that remember what the Korean War was like (firsthand). There were doowoppers, Beatle-haircut guys (split evenly between actual “butcher-cover” grippers and garage punkers), serious (like extra-continental) out of towners from the UK and Japan, your hippity-hoppers, your blues 78 cats, soul and funk diggers, serious DJs (I had a chance to say hi to two of New York’s heaviest, Mr. Finewine and Mr. Robinson) and tons of non-descript minglers, providing the caulk binding the stylistic tiles in the room.
Something else I saw, at least on the ‘meta’ level was hundreds of hardcore music lovers. There was almost as much conversation – with old friends and new catching up and trading stories – as there was actual digging.
There’s nothing quite like moving around a tightly packed record convention – especially one like the all-45/78 show, which tends to pull in the heavy hitters – and watching the faces of people extracting a long-sought 45 from a stack of thousands, or wading through a pile of prospects with a portable turntable.
When I go to a show like this, I tend to work the middle ground, avoiding the huge, disheveled piles of randomly packed 45s, as well as the boxes where there isn’t a record to be found selling for less than one hundred dollars.
When you survey a show like this, you realize that there are people working all over the financial spectrum. You tend to hear stories about pre-show horse trading (sometimes back at the hotel the night before, sometimes – as I saw this time – out of the back seats of cars in the parking lot), and as I said before, there’s everything from heaps of cheap filler to boxes of ultra-rare gold, literally something for everyone.
No matter how much cultural snobbery there is, from both outside of and within the scene, the bottom line is that what you feel on your way out of a show like this is an atmosphere thick with satisfaction. Some of the people clutching a prized white whale that they’d been chasing (and saving for) for years, some with piles of things new to them that will provide hours of sonic exploration, and some (like me, for instance) with a little of both.
I can’t say that I scored any grails this time out (most of my remaining heavy wants are far outside my financial reach), but I did grab a couple of things from my want list, as well as a number of interesting things that I’d never heard before, which I’ll record, listen (and re-listen) to in the coming weeks and research as much as I can, eventually presenting them to you on one of the blogs.
Since I’m not done digimatizing the new stuff, the track I bring you this fine day is something I grabbed last year.
The 45 in question, ‘I Got a New Thing’ by Willie Smith, with an instrumental version on the flip credited to Cliff Driver’s Infernal Machine, is a rough and ready, bluesy funk 45. Featuring a tough, soulful vocal (Mr. Smith I presume?) and some fantastic guitar work (straight ahead, and wah-wah-i-fied), ‘I Got a New Thing’ is a serious, meat and potatoes slice of funk.
This is the kind of funk 45 that could really be used as an all-purpose stand in for the entire genre.
It’s funky (naturally).
Passably, but not slavishly James Brown-y (‘James Brown. Of All the James Browns in the world, you’re the James Brown-iest‘*).
Packed with all the proper signifiers, i.e. heavy drums, chank guitar, organ, brass punctuation and soul shouts.
And, at least in this case, largely anonymous.
Aside from the New York City address on the label (which, considering the concentration of the record biz in NYC – at least back in the day –means nothing at all) I can’t tell you much about the record in question.
The instro dub on the flip, is pretty much a straight lift of the bed from the vocal version, with a honking sax-o-ma-phone solo running around where the voice used to be. I think I prefer the vocal version, but the instrumental side is nothing to sniff at.
I hope you dig the sounds, and I’ll be back on Wednesday with something groovy.
Peace
Larry
*Apologies to Charles Schulz
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Themocracy
I presume this is the same Cliff Driver that did Wind Your Clock with Naomi Shelton – originally for Desco and then reissued by Daptone last year? Or is it a completely different Cliff Driver?
Good question. I have no idea.
I clicked on comments to ask where I had heard the name Cliff Driver before, thanks for jogging my mind about the “Wind Your Clock” 45. It would have to be the same guy right?
It is the same Cliff Driver!
Just picked a copy of this 45 up for myself the other, looks like it was pressed in enough quantity to get label variations, my copy doesn’t say Cliff Driver’s Infernal Machine on the label.
Same cliff driver who plays with naomi… brilliant organist and piano player.
I wonder if this is the Willie of Wee Willie & The Winners? They also appeared on the Genuine label.
This 45 had a UK issue, but was so obscurely tucked away on a mostly-reggae label that hardly anyone knows it.