Finally! Music Ed. and Funky Soul gets its due!

This is amazing news:



There is a documentary coming out about the Kashmere Stage Band!

Who is the Kashmere Stage Band, you ask? This was the high school jazz band at Kashmere High in Houston, Texas that performed from the late 60s to 1978. The director, Conrad Johnson basically taught these kids how to be a funk band...and the results were incredible! Seriously, before I knew these kids were in high school, I figured they were pros.

As a result of their badassery, Johnson had them record a number of 7" singles and 12" albums.

Once these masters were rediscovered, it didn't take long for DJs and crate diggers (like DJ Shadow, in particular) to get in on the action.

Check out the following:



This is from 1973, and was famously sampled in "Holy Calamity" by Handsome Boy Modeling School. High school drummer on this = fantastic.



Their cover of Dennis Coffey's "Scorpio". More breakdown niceties (maybe a little loose on those sextuplets, this time, but the flute solo is a welcome surprise).



Their cover of Sly & the Family Stone's "Thank You". A little on the front of the beat, and the percussion break almost falls apart, but nice guitar work.



The Kashmere Stage Band as sampled by DJ Shadow and Dan the Automator.

So yeah, that's a high school band.

Don't know when the movie comes out, but check out a review over at http://www.aintitcool.com/node/44272

This is fantastic news for me and you:

I was recently made aware that there is a soon-to-be-released documentary about Bill Withers.
For those of you that don't know who Bill Withers is, you'll probably find out that you do know who Bill Withers is. I have done what I can as one man to spread the gospel of Bill Withers (more than one person has recounted to me how turning them on to Bill has 'changed their life a little bit'), and I always thought someone should make a movie about him.

So who is Bill? He was a regular guy from West Virginia working on 747s installing toilets when he decided to take music more seriously, and when he did that at 32 years of age, he got a record deal. What followed? -

Ever heard, "Lean on Me"? Of course you have. In fact, you already know the words to it and don't even remember how you learned them.

Yeah, well, Bill Withers wrote that gem back in 1972. In addition to that, Withers penned "Ain't No Sunshine" (an oft-covered classic), "Use Me" (which you heard on the "American Beauty" soundtrack), and "Lovely Day" (which was used in that Gap commercial a while ago).

After Bill had all these hits (there were more that you should check out...a list is coming), he quit the music biz completely in 1985. Poof. Gone. Into reclusive-mode like Sly Stone and JD Salinger (RIP). From what I understand, he didn't like the way the music business worked (not too shocking of an indictment) and so he left it. Big balls on Bill Withers, it turns out.

So this documentary is a long time coming...to me this will hopefully be not only the story of a fantastic artist who is one of the best living songwriters, but it should also be a great way for people to learn about the greatness of Bill Withers, someone who really has languished in obscurity in my opinion. Plus, there aren't too many successful artists that will tell you how much they hate the biz.

Not sure when it will be released (website just says "Spring 2010"), but I look forward to it.