Mixtape #2

Last updated on November 25, 2023

This was in a tape deck at a thrift store which did not sell cassettes. I thought I’d got a dud, there’s 3 minutes of silence on side B, but picks up after that. Some of these songs are recorded off the radio, though I can’t say if all of them were. Broadcast identified at one point as 102.7 FM WBMX, a station based out of Illinois in the 80s.

WBMX
In 1974, the station’s call sign was changed to WBMX, standing for “Black Music EXperience”, and the station adopted an urban contemporary format.[2][19][20] The station continued airing an urban contemporary format into the late 1980s.[21][20]
During this era the station helped give rise to a new generation of DJs whose formats brought dance music to Chicago’s airwaves. The Hot Mix 5 went on to help define what became known as Chicago House music.

I live on the east coast, so who knows how the tape made its way here. A mix of some good funk songs! Nothing newer than about 1981.

SIDE A

Golden Touch – Rose Royce
Yearning For Your Love – The Gap Band
Freaky Dancin’ – Cameo
Give It To Me Baby – Rick James
Heaven Of My Life – Change
Love on a Two Way Street – Stacy Lattisaw (cuts off midway through the song)
Brief snippet of someone singing.

SIDE B

The back half of Love on a Two Way Street
Double Dutch Bus – Frankie Smith
Searching to Find the One – Unlimited Touch
Endless Love – Diana Ross
I Heard it Through the Grapevine – Roger Troutman
Controversy – Prince

I’m really not versed in music history so these were new to me. This version of Grapevine is amazing.

Troutman frequently used the talk box, a device that is connected to an instrument (frequently a keyboard, but most commonly a guitar) to create different vocal effects. Roger used a custom-made talkbox—the Electro Harmonix “Golden Throat”—through a Moog Minimoog and later in his career a Yamaha DX100 FM synthesizer.

As both band leader of Zapp and in his subsequent solo releases, he scored a bevy of funk and R&B hits throughout the 1980s and regularly collaborated with hip hop artists in the 1990s.

The youtube playlist is here.