As far as drums go, a lot of Tribe, Premier type stuff - actually a great chunk of
rap songs - use classic rock drums - bands like Rare Earth, Power of Zuess, Little
Feat, Bretheren, Area Code 615, SteppenWolf, LightHouse, Ballin' Jack, The Soft Machine,
Can, Rastus are a few that come to mind. There's probably a tonne of obscure rock breaks that
have yet to be dug up - a dude from a record show was once playing a CD for me from some
obscure Turkish prog-rock band from 1971 where every song started off with a clean
drum break (I forget the band's name, dude was selling the CD for $50). I've been collecting
ish but I've barely scratched the surface. All I know is, you can't sleep on anything.
My favourite break though is for Tribe's "Get a hold", a sample from a Turtles-kinda
band called The Cyrkle where they sample and splice together the last 3 sylables of the
last two verses to get "Drifting Back...Suddenly...". Even the theme to the movie
Grease has a drum break. For horns, basslines and keyboard riffs - if your're sampling,
any album that lists horns, bass, and electric piano/rhodes is game I guess. How you use
a sample is just as important as where you sampled it from (album, genre, etc.) - like
KRS-One's cover of Hey Jude - "We take the wackest song..." (headz can finish that line).
A dope song will remain a dope song.
shanti,
ashwin
ashwin@visgen.com