We have managed to get Feiyue shoes back in stock. Feiyue shoes were traditionally a Chinese martial arts shoe but have since been adopted as an alternative to the Converse / Vans style of sneaker.Due to its original use as a martial arts shoes they feature flexible and spongy soles perfect for everyday use. They come in Black & White as well as High & Low Cut versions. Check below for the range of styles. To inquire about availability please contact us at info@conch.co.nzAll Black - High TopSizes: 8 / 9 / 10 / 11All White - High TopSizes: 8 / 9 / 10 /11Black High Top - (Logo & Arrows)Sizes: 8 / 9 /10 /11White - High Top - (Logo & Arrows)Sizes: 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 Black High Top (Arrows)Sizes: 8 / 9 / 10 /11White High Top (Arrows)Sizes: 8 /9 /10 /11Black Low Top - (Arrows & Logo)Sizes: 8 / 9 / 10 /11White Low Top - (Arrows & Logo)Sizes: 8 /9 / 10 /11
Big thanks to the British Council, Murry Sweetpants, Chris Reed & everyone who made this happen. Check Greg Wilson out this Friday the 2nd March at The Nathan Club, tickets available from Conch Records or www.iticketexpress.co.nz
"Last night Conch Records hosted a session with legendary UK DJ Greg Wilson, talking about his DJ career, his approach to edits, and showing us how he worked a Revox B77 reel to reel. It was a fascinating talk, and he has some amazing stories.
Like how he taught Fatboy Slim to scratch. That story was funny as hell. Dated back to 1983, when Greg was doing a tour round the UK called the Hacienda revue, and it stopped off in Brighton. There was this enthusiastic kid called Quentin (aka Fatboy Slim/Norman Cook) who was hanging round the DJ decks asking questions, so Greg showed him the basics of scratching.
Fast forward a few years to Beats International hitting big with Dub be good to me, and Greg is reading an interview with Norman Cook of Beats International, and he cites his influences as Grandmaster Flash and Greg Wilson. Greg goes, what the heck's that about? He asks an old mate of his (Kermit from Black Grape/Ruthless Rap Assassins), and they remind him of that moment back in 83. Greg tells it way better than I do."
When Greg got onto the internet, about 15 years ago, he noticed all the various dance scenes being documented, but black culture wasn't being included. He talked about that black culture in the UK going back to the 50s and 60s, even earlier with US GIs coming over to England, bringing jukeboxes with them. The dance scene there didn't start with a bunch of DJs coming back from Ibiza and suddenly inventing dance culture.
He mentioned that some folk say the northern soul scene led into rave, but he noted that there was a 7 year gap between the Wigan Casino closing and rave hitting in 88. Discussing his edits, he said he's rubbish, technically, but he's got a mate who is really good at all that technical stuff. He put Greg onto a program that he said was prefect for Greg, called Acid, which was ideal for making loops, the basis of a good edit. He talked about black music from the UK not being taken seriously in its country of origin, as it wasn't American. He namechecked a handful of UK acts, like Cymande and Freez.
He talked about the New York hiphop scene. I asked him about Afrika Bambaata, who used to go downtown to the record pools to get records that no one else in the Bronx had, and wanted to know how Greg went about getting records that were exclusive.
He answered by going into a story about the northern soul scene, which thrived on DJs scoring exclusives that no one else had, using an example of a record DJ Ian Levine found. The rumour went round that he had discovered this amazing, rare record called Theres a ghost in my house and was going to play it that weekend. And he was right, says Greg, it was an amazing record, and later went on to be a chart hit in the UK. But on the way home from the casino at the end of the night, some folk had stopped off at a service station (gas station) to get a feed, and they were flicking thru the record stand in there. EMI put out these cheap compilations for a pound (records were 3 pounds then) called Music for pleasure, and on the track listing was Theres a ghost in my house. He wanted to highlight that kind of exclusivity that riddled the northern soul scene, as he said he was not interested in it at all. He wanted to popularise the tunes he found, share his discoveries with everyone.
Greg talked about when he got into DJing at 16, he bought a book by a famous UK radio DJ named Emperor Rosco, called Emperor Rosco's DJ Book, and in the back were the addresses of the record companies. Greg wrote to them all and started developing contacts to send him the latest records and US imports, getting on their promo lists.
Greg pointed out that these record promo lists started in 1971, predating the arrival of the much-trumpeted record pools started by David Mancuso and co in NYC by 4 years. He talked about with his current approach to DJing, he is always "looking for the balance between the past and the present." He mentioned DJing off laptop, but had reintroduced the Revox reel to reel in his DJ setup. One way he uses it is to drop sound effects and samples into his mixing. He also uses it in the Jamaican dub style, dropping the reel to reel into record, then feeding it back into the mix, creating a live tape delay effect. So, does he still make edits on tape? For the romance of it (as he put it)? "Madness! No!" He uses a computer, much easier say to make a 16 bar loop - he only has to edit it once, then enter repeat 15 times and it's done. He talked about when he got back into DJing, after a 20 year break, which was on the back of an old mate of his, Kermit, playing him the first Black Grape album, and asking what he thought of it. Greg could hear where the edits needed to be, so he learnt digital editing using a system popular in radio, called Sadie. He finished with a quick demo of the Revox, how to chop up tape and find the edit points. It was a very entertaining few hours. Big thanks to Conch Records, Murry Sweetpants, the British Council, and everyone involved in making it happen.Go see Greg Wilson 1st March at Debajo, Queenstown, and this Friday night at the Nathan Club, Britomart, Auckland.
It’s been a long time coming, but After Laughter Comes Tears is the first ever anthology of southern soul legend Wendy Rene, whose classic, organ-driven “After Laughter (Comes Tears)” has been covered or sampled by everyone from Wu Tang Clan (“Tearz”, from 36 Chambers) to Alicia Keys (“Where Do We Go From Here”), Lykke Li and El Perro Del Mar. “If I could sing like anyone,” said Lykke Li, “It would be her.”
Born Mary Frierson in Memphis, Tennessee, home of Stax Records, Wendy Rene was christened by Otis Redding on signing to Stax as a teenager in 1963. Back then, she and brother Johnny Frierson, both singers at the Church of God In Christ, were determined to make it in music. Forming singing quartet The Drapels with two friends, they took the bus to 926 E. McLemore Avenue, auditioned for Stax co-founder Jim Stewart, and won a deal on the spot. “As soon as we finished with the Drapels’ songs and [the rest of the band] were going to the bus stop, I showed Mr. Stewart my songs,” recalls Rene. The result? Stewart found two acts in one, and Mary had two contracts with Stax.
Both Drapels and Wendy began recording with the greats – that’s The MGs on the group’s “Young Man”, Booker T. Jones playing organ on “After Laughter” and Steve Cropper playing guitar on the dance craze-inspired “Bar-B-Q”, the success of which caused Wendy – then a teen bride – to leave school.
The Drapels dissolved almost as quickly as Wendy’s first marriage, partly due to the attention lavished on youngest member Wendy’s solo career. But a real hit eluded the singer, and in 1967, with a growing family with second husband and Stax employee James Cross, Wendy decided to retire from the business. “I wanted a baby to hold and coochie-coo to, and I didn’t want to miss any more time away from my kids,” she says.
Wendy was due to perform one last show with Otis Redding and the Bar-Kays, but changed her mind at the last minute. It was an auspicious decision – that weekend, Redding and four Bar-Kays died when their plane crashed in Lake Monona.
Mary mourned her friends but not her music career. She taught harmony to her children and she sang in church, not in the studio. Then, in 1993, something strange happened – a friend of her son heard Wu Tang Clan’s “Tearz” on the radio. As new generations of artists have rediscovered Wendy Rene’s work, they have touched her life in various ways: Alicia Keys’s remake of “After Laughter…”, “Where Do We Go From Here”, for example, helped pay for her current home. Keys tried to meet up with Rene when she played in Memphis. “I wasn’t able to do it,” says Wendy, revealing little.
In September 2010, Wendy Rene returned to live performance, albeit very briefly, playing a set at Ponderosa Stomp in New Orleans. It was to be a bittersweet occasion – Wendy’s beloved brother Johnny had died suddenly in June 2010 and performing brought back a flood of memories. “I was so choked up I wasn’t able to perform like I wanted,” she admits. Though her career was brief, Wendy Rene left behind a thrilling catalogue of classic soul. Here, Light In The Attic gives it the archive treatment it richly deserves. Listen, delve and enjoy.
In December of 2001, Wax Poetics debuted its first issue to a small following of record collectors and “beat diggers.” Ten years later, Wax Poetics has carved out a niche for itself in the world of music journalism and expanded its audience to a worldwide congregation of music lovers.
Issue 50 marks our ten-year anniversary and does so with one of the most iconic musicians in the history of African American music, the one and only Prince.
We’ve also done a full redesign, making the magazine slightly larger—8 × 10.5 inches—and we’ve embraced a new paper stock. Wax Poetics will look a bit different on the newsstand, with a new mark making its debut in place of our old logo, but the magazine will continue to be a collectible objet d’art, something to be saved on your shelf as a musical reference manual, not recycled like other mags.
Wax Poetics has also returned to its roots as a journal and is back to being quarterly. The new price reflects not only radical changes in the publishing industry and the economy, but also the guarantee of continued quality from the paper stock to the writing and photographs. We vow to keep Wax Poetics in print as a tangible entity, bucking the trend of ridding our culture of old-school reading products.
Join us as we embark on our tenth year of celebrating the unprecedented and untouchable African American musical tradition!
In the Issue: Prince, Frank Ocean, Larry Graham, Morris Day, Toro y Moi, DJ Quick Record Rundown, Blood Orange, Questlove on Prince, Jesse Johnson, Madhouse, The Family, Grand Central, and 94 East Re:Discovered.To order back issues please contact us at info@conch.co.nz
Due out March 2012, to pre-order please contact us at info@conch.co.nz
On February 28, 2012, Robert Glasper Experiment will release Black Radio (Blue Note Records/EMI), a future landmark album that boldly stakes out new musical territory and transcends any notion of genre, drawing from jazz, hip hop, R&B and rock, but refusing to be pinned down by any one tag. The first full-length album from the GRAMMY-nominated keyboardist’s electric Experiment band—saxist Casey Benjamin, bassist Derrick Hodge, and drummer Chris Dave—Black Radio also features many of Glasper’s famous friends from the spectrum of urban music, seamlessly incorporating appearances from a jaw-dropping roll call of special guests including Erykah Badu, Bilal, Lupe Fiasco, Lalah Hathaway, Shafiq Husayn (Sa-Ra), KING, Ledisi, Chrisette Michele, Mos Def, Musiq Soulchild, Meshell Ndegeocello, and Stokley Williams (Mint Condition).
Throughout the Experiment wears its eclecticism on its sleeve, presenting new collaborative originals and surprising cover songs. They transform the Afro-Cuban standard “Afro Blue” with Erykah Badu, Sade’s “Cherish The Day” with Lalah Hathaway, David Bowie’s “Letter to Hermione” with Bilal, and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” with Casey Benjamin’s vocoder vocal.
Glasper has long kept one foot planted firmly in jazz and the other in hip hop. His gig at the Blue Note Jazz Club earlier this year became a freestyle jam session when Kanye West, Mos Def and Lupe Fiasco crashed the stage. The Los Angeles Times once wrote that “it’s a short list of jazz pianists who have the wherewithal to drop a J Dilla reference into a Thelonious Monk cover, but not many jazz pianists are Robert Glasper,” adding that “he’s equally comfortable in the worlds of hip-hop and jazz,” and praising the organic way in which he “builds a bridge between his two musical touchstones.”
All Black - High Top
Sizes: 8 / 9 / 10 / 11
All White - High Top
Sizes: 8 / 9 / 10 /11
Black High Top - (Logo & Arrows)
Sizes: 8 / 9 /10 /11
White - High Top - (Logo & Arrows)
Sizes: 8 / 9 / 10 / 11
Black High Top (Arrows)
Sizes: 8 / 9 / 10 /11
White High Top (Arrows)
Sizes: 8 /9 /10 /11
Black Low Top - (Arrows & Logo)
Sizes: 8 / 9 / 10 /11
White Low Top - (Arrows & Logo)
Sizes: 8 /9 / 10 /11
All Black - High Top
Sizes: 8 / 9 / 10 / 11
All White - High Top
Sizes: 8 / 9 / 10 /11
Black High Top - (Logo & Arrows)
Sizes: 8 / 9 /10 /11
White - High Top - (Logo & Arrows)
Sizes: 8 / 9 / 10 / 11
Black High Top (Arrows)
Sizes: 8 / 9 / 10 /11
White High Top (Arrows)
Sizes: 8 /9 /10 /11
Black Low Top - (Arrows & Logo)
Sizes: 8 / 9 / 10 /11
White Low Top - (Arrows & Logo)
Sizes: 8 /9 / 10 /11
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