Tracklist:
Tarot - Der Narr
Brainticket - To Another Universe
Sun Ra - Journey Towards Stars
The Stooges - TV Eye
The Can - Father Cannot Yell
Amon Duul II - Halluzination Guillotine
Faust - Don't Take Roots
NEU! - Gedenkenminute (Fur A+K) mc shafty's scary mix
Boris - Droneevil brother jc crawford's testimonial mix
The MC5 - Ramblin' Rose - Kick Out The Jams
Julian Cope - s.p.a.c.e.r.o.c.k. With Me
Agitation Free vs Bonnie Billy & Marquis de Tren - Khan El Khahlili 2:15 meer mix
Faust - It's A Rainy Day:Sunshine Girl
Can - One More Night
Scanner - Speechless full face mix
Slade - Born To Be Wild
A Seamless 74 Minute Journey through the Cosmic Music DJ* mixed by MC Shafty April 2001
*DJ does not necessarily indicate the phrase 'Disc Jockey' - PLAY IT LOUD!!!
Originally released April 2001 as 1 ltd edition cd-r
Re-released April 2011 as 25 ltd edition cd-rs
April 2001, Melbourne, Australia
6 years into my Australia trip and it was looking like I would be in Oz for more than the 3 weeks I'd planned for. I'd pretty much decided that 'MC Shafty' was going to be the sole imaginary rock star name that I was going to play under. I'd flirted with 'Bent Pages' as a name for while doing live solo acoustic stuff - but I'd got a computer now and after a fortnight of wanting my old 4-track tape recorder back from Jimmy Spence I was subscribed to Future Music and downloading every warezed bit of music software that I could find. And I was spending the amount of time you can when your not a parent using it – but the stuff that I was recording just didn't match with singer songwriter stuff that I was doing outside of my bedroom. At college in Scotland in the early 90s I has an imaginary rockstar name – MC Shafty. He even had a crap catchphrase – 'Je Suis MC Shafty, Je Suis Be-bop' . He was in a real band – Luther Kingpin – whose violinist put us all onto CAN. The band folded pretty soon after its first gig, but I always loved the name MC Shafty. So, I readopted it for all of my bedroom music stuff, and seeing as I dropped the catchphrase I've never looked back.
On a trip back to the UK I'd found my copy of Julian Cope's Krautrocksampler along with a huge wad of mentil CDs that I'd stored in my Mum's attic. Around that time I also got a promo copy of 'Interpreter' from a second hand bookshop in the middle of nowhere in Central Victoria and it was time for a Julian Cope revival!
Me and my mates had dropped coin over the years on the odd Faust and Can record found on expensive cd import or very occasionally in junk shops (never in used record stores!). Johnny Nash's mates dad was a bin man and he gave us copy of the red NEU! album he'd found at the tip. I had 'Sci-Fi Party' and Ando Anderson had the black Faust album on vinyl! But, by 2001 the internet had really gone off. And for good or bad it was suddenly possible to actually hear most of the cosmic music that Cope wrote about in Krautrocksampler without sending yourself broke.
If only it had stopped at krautrock and JHC. Aquarius Records is still around today and the Head Heritage website is still pumping out masses of righteousness at the speed of sound. I came across V/Vm and People Like Us, synthesisers, all of those bands that you would read about in Wire, and the most obscure music you could imagine was as easy to find as the latest by U2.
All that shite like Morcheba do Back to Mine was getting flogged silly and compilations seemed cool at the time but only if they were DJ-Mixed by Moby or some other bald knob.
I wanted to make a Back to Mine that I would want to listen to 'back at mine'. So, with a stack of ripped-off music software, a bong, lots of vinyl, cds, mp3s and a few choice A-Team samples I mixed me own 'school disco' style. The title's pinched from the Cosmic Jokers' previously mentioned classic "Sci-Fi Party" album - which has the coolest album cover ever-end of story.
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| The Cosmic Jokers - Sci Fi Party |
Listening back, I reckon Sci Fi Party @ 2001 still rocks (even Slade!). I still remember being disappointed that I couldn't figure a way to get something from Reynol's 'Blank Tapes' in there somehow. It does mash-up Agitation Free and Will Oldham though- I wouldn't like to be the fart in that spacesuit!
I was, and still am, in lurve with that whole cosmic music vibe – but there's just so much 'out there'. All of the tracks on the compilation were being played lots by me at the time. I had Father Cannot Yell on repeat at super loud volumes for weeks any time I walked around the centre of Melbourne.
The cd started out as a Krautrock mix-tape but only one cosmic krautrock track in and it became clear that other equally cosmic tracks from beyond the borders of Germany just had to be on there too.
Nowadays, MC5 still get a good flogging round here now as does Robert Ashley's 'Automatic Writing' which would have been on the CD but I couldn't pick a 'best' bit. I hadn't heard the Faust tracks in ages though and they took me back to the early 90s in Glasgow and Edinburgh when Johnny Nash opened up my music taste and got me stoned on hash all through college days playing NEU!, 13th Floor Elevators, Orange Juice, Shamen, Skellington, Funkadelic and all sorts of other cosmic stuff.
At the time I burned 1 CDr of the mix to send to Julian Cope, but, being a bit of a lazy bastard, I never did send it. Here it is now (10th anniversary style) for yer download pleasure in 128kbps MP3 format with snaps of the original artwork.
In true re-release style I've done a limited anniversary edition of 25 numbered Cd-r copies with full repro artwork for a few lucky shafters.
I sent one to Mr Cope this week, so only 23 copies left (my mum got one too).
If you want to experience the full CD quality audio mix of 'MC Shafty's Flug Durch Die Kosmische Music - Sci Fi Party @ 2001', send me an email (mcshafty0@gmail.com) and I'll give you paypal details and arrange for a copy to be posted to your hot little hands - the price to anywhere in the world is a flat $9.95 (Australian dollars) to cover costs.
Anyway, enjoy the post.
MC Shafty 30 April 2011
