Funky16Corners Radio v.60 - Finger Lickin’ Good!

Playlist

Greetings all.

This edition of Funky16Corners Radio – the 60th?!?!? – marks an even more unlikely event, that being of the completion of the fourth year in the existence of this very blog, and thanks to a wonderful bit of synchronicity, the beginning of a new era in the United States.
Back in November of 2004, when I started the Funky16Corners Blog, I had no inkling that I’d still be at it four years down the pike.
If statistics are any indication, the average life of most blogs is between two and three months, which makes Funky16Corners something Methuselah-esque. If there’s any key at all to its longevity, it would be that I enjoy doing it. As anyone that reads the posts here can tell you, I’m a busy guy, with the job, and the little kids and all the rest of the accoutrements of life in the suburbs (though those that know me would be hard pressed to describe me as typical in that regard).
That said, I started blogging as a way to redistribute the amount of work I was doing on the Funky16Corners web zine, which preceded the foundation of the blog by another four years. My oldest son had just been born, and I wanted to keep writing about music, so I figured that if I broke the work down into bite-sized pieces, that I could continue to do so without running myself ragged.
Needless to say, that hasn’t always been the case.
However, it didn’t take much time before I realized how addictive this enterprise would be. The blog provided an outlet for my writing, then a few years on to my compulsive mixology, and thanks to a largely cordial and appreciative audience I often learn as much as lay out.
That aspect of the blog has been among the most rewarding. In addition to shout outs from folks who just dig hearing the music, I really dig hearing from other collectors who help flesh out the sometimes sketchy bits of information that I’m able to gather. Along those lines – and especially rewarding – are the notes from artists and their friends and families saying how much it means to see that someone still appreciates the music.
Thanks to the blog, I’ve met some very cool people, first and foremost my man DJ Prestige, founder of the Asbury Park 45 Sessions, the all-45 DJ night that I’ve been a contributor to for almost two years.
I’ve been writing about music on the fringes for more than two decades. I started my first zine, Incognito, back in 1985, when it was all manually cut and pasted, and then taken to the copy shop and Xeroxed. A few years later I purchased my first computer (an Apple Performa 200) and entered the world of desktop publishing. My second zine, Evil Eye was a somewhat more sophisticated affair, with scans and tons of crazy fonts, but as before, it all ended up at the copy shop, as did my jazz zine, Gone which I started in 1997.
During the late 80s I spent some time doing freelance writing for the paper where I still work today, doing occasional feature pieces, as well as a column in one of our weekly products that lasted for a little over a year. Though the experience was rewarding, I soon discovered that I wasn’t going to be able to write the way I wanted in a regular paper, so back I went into the underground.
It wasn’t until the late 90s, after a friend at work gave me a rudimental working knowledge of Front Page, that I first set foot onto the interwebs, with the web zine version of Gone (traces of which still remain in the ether). It wasn’t too long after that, that work started on the Funky16Corners web zine.
The web zine (which is still maintained as the Web Zine Archive) went on for 13 issues, and if you take the time to stop by you’ll find lots of interesting feature articles, discographies and interviews.
When I started the blog, it was not – as it would soon be – devoted to the sounds of soul and funk. In fact, the earliest posts on Funky16Corners closely resemble a format that would be resurrected in 2007 in my other blog, Iron Leg.
Though my first intent in blogging was to keep writing, the unintended by product, and probably the most interesting aspect of the whole deal is how it has taken my record collection and turned it from a room full of inanimate objects into a living, breathing thing. The collection has continued to expand unabated for many years, and more often than not, as new material has made its way into my life, it has also appeared in this space, and conversely, as things have been blogged about, my interests, and the variety of the music I dig for has expanded (and continues to grow), so the influence travels in both directions. The process of relating stories about the music I love, has expanded my collection, and the process of expanding my collection (and the knowledge associated with it) has enriched the blog.
A happy little circle to be sure.
The mix I bring you today, in celebration of the anniversary, and of the people that stop by here on the reg, was in fact suggested a while back (more than a year of memory serves, and sometimes it doesn’t) by a reader. When I decided to finally get this mix together, I went back into the vast heap of e-mail, but was unable to locate the original suggestion. Aside from the fact that it was a regular reader/commenter, I can’t remember who made the suggestion of an “all-chicken” mix, and for that I am remiss and I apologize (but still say Thanks!).
So, the “all chicken’ mix (or mostly chicken with a bonus side of poultry) is here. You might have seen some of these tunes here before (in fact you definitely have), but never before gathered together in the henhouse, or better, cooking in the frying pan and hitting the table alongside some greens, mac and sweet potato pie. Fried chicken may be the soul-iest soul food of all (apologies to the vege-ma-tarians), and I thought about making this mix ‘Soul Food Pt3’ but then I figured that with the hyphens and the subtitles and what not the name would never fit, so ‘Finger Lickin’ Good!’ it is.
That said, I want to thank those of you that have been coming here for a while, and say welcome to those that just started falling by. With any luck, we’ll still be here next year. As far as I know you can’t get laid of from the blog-o-mos-phere (not yet anyway).
I’ll be taking the rest of the week off to hit the road with the F16C fam. We’re going for some west and wewaxation.
I’ll see you all on Monday.

Peace
Larry

PS Make sure to stop by Iron Leg …

PSS Check out Paperback Rider as well