Lunar Funk - Mr. Penguin (Parts One and Two)

"Rumour has it that this record is completely electrical, and there are, in fact, no musicians involved..."

Label: Bell

Year of Release: 1972

"My name... is Mr. Penguin - you do your thang/ and I'll do my thang/ ha ha ha ha ha ha..."

I stumbled upon this record purely by chance in the soul and disco section of a second hand record store, and bought it on the strength of the band's name and the song title alone. "This," I thought, "is either going to be abysmal or great. And whichever it is, I bet I can at least write about it".

And guess what? "Mr. Penguin" is fantastic and truly absurd, though a lot of funk purists have been rather critical of this in some places online. Driven by fantastic jazzy electric organ riffs and a persuasive funk-disco beat, it tops the whole thing off with absurd, almost threatening spoken interruptions from the chap who identifies himself as "Mr. Penguin". He's deadpan, his laughter is somewhat hollow, and he couldn't give a fig what we think of him. It's the kind of record you'd place firm money was in Prince's collection somewhere at Paisley Park; it seems utterly at home with the man's love of funky riffs and also borderline psychedelic absurdity. So too can I imagine this finding favour with sixties mod types and Acid Jazz heads far more than it's likely to please the discerning, "serious" funk crowd. 

The track was also apparently put together in something of a hurry by the musicians Leroy Emmanuel, Mose Davis, Demo Cates and Andrew Gibson. Complaining to their employers that they had no money coming in for Christmas 1972, they were rushed into the studio to cut a couple of tracks which all concerned hoped would reverse the situation. One of the tracks, "Crawl Y'All", was issued under the band name Bad Smoke on Chess Records, then there was this little number for Bell, a single the label were apparently desperate to own and coughed up handsomely for. It became something of a dancefloor hit in the aftermath and was heavily played at a couple of regional American stations, and Radio Luxembourg in Europe, but it's become largely forgotten since.

Lunar Funk - Mr. Penguin (Parts One and Two)

Label: Bell

Year of Release: 1972

"My name... is Mr. Penguin - you do your thang/ and I'll do my thang/ ha ha ha ha ha ha..."

I stumbled upon this record purely by chance in the soul and disco section of a second hand record store, and bought it on the strength of the band's name and the song title alone. "This," I thought, "is either going to be abysmal or great. And whichever it is, I bet I can at least write about it".

And guess what? "Mr. Penguin" is fantastic and truly absurd, though a lot of funk purists have been rather critical of this in some places online. Driven by fantastic jazzy electric organ riffs and a persuasive funk-disco beat, it tops the whole thing off with absurd, almost threatening spoken interruptions from the chap who identifies himself as "Mr. Penguin". He's deadpan, his laughter is somewhat hollow, and he couldn't give a fig what we think of him. It's the kind of record you'd place firm money was in Prince's collection somewhere at Paisley Park; it seems utterly at home with the man's love of funky riffs and also borderline psychedelic absurdity. So too can I imagine this finding favour with sixties mod types and Acid Jazz heads far more than it's likely to please the discerning, "serious" funk crowd. 

The track was also apparently put together in something of a hurry by the musicians Leroy Emmanuel, Mose Davis, Demo Cates and Andrew Gibson. Complaining to their employers that they had no money coming in for Christmas 1972, they were rushed into the studio to cut a couple of tracks which all concerned hoped would reverse the situation. One of the tracks, "Crawl Y'All", was issued under the band name Bad Smoke on Chess Records, then there was this little number for Bell, a single the label were apparently desperate to own and coughed up handsomely for. It became something of a dancefloor hit in the aftermath and was heavily played at a couple of regional American stations, and Radio Luxembourg in Europe, but it's become largely forgotten since.

Blues & Soul magazine published a review of this record in 1972 which stated "Rumour has it that it is completely electrical, and there are, in fact, no musicians involved". Lord alone knows where this rumour stemmed from - a mischievous record label employee, I'm sure - but it's obviously total balderdash. It does, however, bring to mind some of the more ridiculous lines from Chris Morris's "Club Night" guides on the Bluejam radio show. "He uses guns, by the way, and there's no floor in the club at all". 

Spunky Onion - Cookie Man (Parts 1 & 2)

Label: Contempo
Year of Release: 1974

"Cookie Man" is an utterly brilliant and much sought-after single which attempts to tempt all the ladies in the vicinity with the promise of "cookies".  As much as some horribly negative spins could be put upon this proposition (although it's no worse than "my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard") it's placed on top of a slick and downright irresistible funk groove.  An absolutely wonderful disc with a some marvellous horn section breaks, it was obviously too riff-based to really stand a chance in the British charts at the time, but it can still provoke action on a dancefloor to this day.

Whilst The Spunky Onion is a downright peculiar group name, this would seem to be largely the work of one Clarence Reid, aka Blowfly.  Reid wrote scores of R&B tracks for other artists throughout the 60s and 70s, and was known for sneaking out sexually explicit material of his own under the Blowfly moniker.  Some of that is argued to be the earliest examples of rapping on record - sadly, there's not any evidence of it on this example, but it's still a damn good track.

There's a brief interview trailer for the documentary "The Weird World of Blowfly" on Youtube.

Hot Butter - Getting Off/ Getting On

Label: Dynamo
Year of Release: 1975

We've covered Hot Butter on this blog before, of course, and I've already passionately emphasised my love of the much under-rated "Popcorn", the early synthesiser track even Crazy Frog couldn't completely destroy. Stan Free was the man behind the band name, and in terms of innovations with new technology, his name is hardly up there with the likes of Kraftwerk or Giorgio Moroder - but still, his hit was one of the first widely popular electronic tracks, and with all the verve and gusto it had behind it, that's not surprising.

By 1975 the novelty of Hot Butter's moogy squeaks and squelches had worn off, which probably goes a long way to explaining how this equally brilliant single came into being. "Getting Off" is essentially a funk reworking of their earlier 1973 track "Space Walk". Whereas before the band clearly had interstellar ambitions for the track, "Getting Off" sounds more urban, bringing to mind images of housing projects, men swaggering proudly across streets with "Walk"/ "Don't Walk" crossing lights, and, er... cardboard boxes placed strategically in the middle of industrial estates for no apparent reason. It's a piece of funk which is very much of its era and does indeed underline all the usual cliches, but it swoops so gracefully and has so many pounding, exciting breakbeats (listen to the drummer yelling halfway through the track) that you'd have to have feet of lead to not be interested.

This wasn't a hit, but interest in the track has if anything increased over the years. Mark Radcliffe regularly used the song as a sound bed on his evening show on Radio One, and it continues to pick up club play in a lot of places. I suspect that will continue for some time to come.