Professor Eddy

Liliane Maestrini The sky looks very grey today, so hopefully this Latin soul mix gives you the feeling of taking a well-deserved South-American trip. It summarizes almost 60 years of suntanned fun in modern music. Enjoy! Years ago my parents bought a house from the Meek's family, but they were not related to music legend Joe Meek, as far as I know. He was the first independent record producer in music history. In the late 1950s Meek started as an engineer and soon made a name for himself, because he added instruments and sound effects to recordings, which no one had done before. He experimented with the weirdest electronic effects and built his own early versions of synthesizers, a decade before Kraftwerk did. The spacy instrumental 'Telstar' by Tornados is particularly noted for being the first British record by a band to hit #1 in the United States, in 1962. You can hear Joe Meek sing on it as a drunken sailor at the end. He also created 'Have I the right',...

Ghostbusters I was very suprised to be #3 on the Mixcloud Best of 2017 Jazz, Funk & Soul chart ! I'm really happy with it :-) This week I chose to play (non-chilled) 80s (inspired) boogie, soul & pop, for a great part contemporary songs, like ‘Light years’ by The Midnight. I think that their 'Nocturnal' is the best album of 2017. Every track seems to be taken from the soundtrack of the 1980s hit series Miami Vice, but the songs are brand new, actually. And I've never heard sax solos played so wonderfully since 'The heat is on' by Glenn Frey or ‘Maneater’ by Daryl Hall & John Oates. The Midnight consists of Tyler Lyle and Tim McEwan. One of the tracks is 'Ghostbusters' by Ray Parker Jr. The song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on August 11, 1984. Everyone knows that it sounds very similar to 'I Want a New Drug' by Huey Lewis & The News. Lewis had been approached to compose the main theme song for the film fir...

Kenny Loggins (from Loggins & Messina) once said in an interview that in his opinion ‘yacht rock’ is a combination of West Coast pop/rock, smooth jazz and R&B . Connoisseur Mr Funk aka Seasidevibes calls the sub-genre ‘soulful West Coast’ and German DJ Supermarkt (known for his very successful ‘Too slow to disco’ compilations) claims it’s music you can almost dance to. The Smooth Operators (Martijn Soetens and I) think that it’s music that sounds best on FM radio. Enjoy our mellow yacht moods! Picture: Heather Gildroy for Camp collection - C-Heads Magazine Tracklist: Thundercat Feat. Kenny Loggins & Michael McDonald – Show You The Way (2017) Ned Doheny – Labor Of Love (1979) The Waters – If There’s A Way (1977) Cool Uncle Feat. Jessie Ware – Break Away (2015) The Ray Camacho Band ‎– Hollywood (1980) Toto – Waiting For Your Love (1982) Wouter Hamel – Can’t Do Without It (2017) Lalo Schifrin ‎– Middle Of The Night (1979) Photoglo – Steal Away (1980) You...

Aurélien Buttin This time I selected chilled grooves with their roots firmly in the 1980s, mostly cover versions that are not well-known or not known at all. For instance, Scandinavian band Amason turned the bombastic power ballad ‘I want to know what love is’ into a fragile love song. And I bet you’ve never heard of Kaoru Akimoto’s ‘Dress down’ before. It’s on 'Tokyo Nights: Female J-Pop Boogie Funk - 1981 to 1988', out on Cultures of Soul. Japanese boogie didn't reach Europe at the time, but the album proves that they could make solid and well-polished funk in Japan in the 1980s. They surely knew how to handle American R&B, boogie, fusion and adult-oriented rock (AOR) there. These foreign influences clearly reflect on the songs that are on the album and make them as least as good as their contemporaries from outside Japan. The track by Laytonwoohbill is from The Boogie Volume 6 , out on Tokyo Dawn Records. Enjoy this 21st part of Eddy's 80s Grooves ! Trac...

Basically, love songs contain three possible themes: pain (things are going downhill), peace (things are going steady) and pleasure (things are going uphill). And my definition of a love song is a broad one: songs about love for someone special as well as love for mankind in general. Two tracks are from new compilation albums. The first one, ‘Deep inside of you’ by The Harden Brothers, is from ‘Message In Our Music’, out on Favorite Recordings. And the second one, ‘Free and easy’ from Satyr, can be found on ‘Soul Festival’ (1971-1979 soulful floorfillers), released by Expansion Records. Both albums contain wonderful (rare) soul songs. Maggie MacNeal used to be one half of the successful Dutch duo Mouth & MacNeal. Their biggest hit was ‘ How do you do? ’ that peaked at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1972. Two years later they became third in the Eurovision Song Contest (which was won by Abba). After a quarrel Maggie MacNeal went solo in 1975. The closing track by The Mi...

Corynn Oceana by Brooke Olimpieri The opening track is on the recently released compilation album The Heart Volume 4, out on Tokyo Dawn Records. The Karen Carpenter solo album had been shelved for 16 years before it eventually came out in 1996. Some say that her brother Richard, the other half of successful easy listening duo The Carpenters, did not like the sexual content of some of the lyrics. Others claim that label boss Herb Alpert did not like the project, because it did not sound like the Carpenters. Most probably we will never find out the real reason why it has been withheld for so long. Fact is that the album has a very good slow disco sound and it is a real treat to listen to, no matter what the commanders in chief thought back in 1980. Enjoy this new slow disco car ride! Tracklist: Vindahl Feat. Jenny Wilson – The Question (2011) Space Captain – Blue (2017) Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band – I’ll Play The Fool (1976) Andrew Gold – Genevieve (1978)...