A Star Is Porn

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday February 12, 2005

Bernard Zuel

Slow-burning tracks help heat a steamy film.

Soul/funk

Bernard "Pretty" Purdie

Lialeh soundtrack

(Light in the Attic/Creative Vibes)

Various Artists

Baadasssss soundtrack

(BBE/Creative Vibes)

Wayne Mcghie & the Sounds of Joy

Wayne McGhie & the Sounds of Joy

(Light in the Attic/Creative Vibes)

Our journey today takes us back to the first half of the 1970s, when funk and soul hadn't been subsumed yet by disco and then hip-hop. Direct from the period is 1974's Lialeh, the ever-so-groovy soundtrack to what was billed as the first black soft-porn film.

Touch Me Again is a bit of a heavy breather, but drummer Bernard "Pretty" Purdie's other songs have a natural, slow and sensual mood which stand up as classy pieces of music.

Melvin Van Peeble's 1971 proto-blaxploitation classic Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song may not have been the smoothest piece of filmmaking ever but it made black cinema a viable factor. And along the way its soundtrack laid the template for the funky genre (soon to come was Shaft). For Baadasssss, his film of the story behind the making of Sweet Sweetback, Van Peeble's son Mario was as careful with the soundtrack as his father had been.

This album has a foot in both the past and the present but never loses its rhythm. There's some pure '70s soul/funk sliding later into some righteous and angry rapping and there's a dollop of spread-the-love hip-hop and some reggae-influenced soul.

Toronto-based Wayne McGhie's album, which has got plenty of kudos latterly as a source of little-known groove samples for modern DJ/producers, is more pleasant curiosity than crucial and not as rewarding as the Lialeh soundtrack. The pop-conscious blend of Marvin Gaye soul, his native Jamaica and light funk has its moments, though.

© 2005 Sydney Morning Herald

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