Hey Obama! Here Is One For Your Collection: Go Go Crankin' Paint The White House Black

I’m not sure how much time Obama has to be listening to records in the White House basement. If the presidential collection’s last update was in 1981 this may be a good time for a few additions. I’m thinking a proper welcome to Washington, DC would be a copy of Go Go Crankin’ Paint The White House Black from 1985.

Go Go is the indiginous funk sound of Washington, DC. If you’re ever been to DC and gotten off the beaten path I’m sure you’ve heard Go Go being played in at least a passing car or two.

President Obama, I’d be willing to trade this for your copy of the Ramones’ Rocket To Russia.

From the album’s back cover:

The Go Go is a sweatbox. Any number of bombed-out theatres dotted around the less wealthy vanilla suburbs of the capital they call chocolate city.

In the small, regal square mile that is D.C.’s public face, the Go Go doesn’t exist. Its’ lifeline is in the new housing redevelopment areas of the north west and the ghettos of the south east — it is the Washington nobody knows.

Cut through the razamatazz — the White House, Lincoln Memorial, a thriving tourist industry — and outside the golden mile the heritage is one of mass uemployment and widespread unrest creating a tension that must be channelled before it explodes. Go Go is the creative force born to absorb the anger. Go Go music is functional. It is a hard hitting percussion-led punch that reflects the audience’s ’say it loud and say it proud’ stance. Go Go’s heroes are few and far between, but the boxer Sugar Ray and the conceptualist George Clinton are high on the list.

Congas and timbales, cowbells and triangles — the instruments that hypnotise the audience and incite call and response between rival sections. In chocolate city they know how to crank.

For up to ten hours at a time a thousand kids are a part of the performance. A non-stop musical declaration of war littered with social comment and strident anti-drug references. If you’ve boarded the love boat you could get outlawed. Trouble Funk are the enforcers, E.U. the cadets and Chuck Brown the respected elder statesman.

Go Go has its’ own laws, its’ own enforcers, its’ own politics in the city that houses the nation’s President. It is a collective voice of a community that history has ignored.

Stairway To Heaven 20th Anniversary Commemorative Edition from 1992

This 20th anniversary promo book marks one of the few times “Stairway To Heaven” was released as a single. The band’s recording label wanted to release the song as a single but the Led Zeppelin’s manager refused in 1972. With that decision record buyers began to invest in the fourth album as if it were a single.

If you are looking for your own copy of “Stairway to Heaven” here are some great deals on Led Zeppelin IV. Be sure to check the section for used copies.

From the descriptive insert:

In 1971, the members of Led Zeppelin—Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham—gathered at Headley Grange, a converted poorhouse in Hampshire, England, to begin recording their next album. One night, they started work on a new song…

Page recalls: “Bonzo (Bonham) and Robert had gone out for the night, and I worked really hard on the thing. Jonesy and I then routined it together… Later, we ran through it with the drums. Robert was sitting there by the fireplace just writing away, and suddenly there it was…

Plant picks up the story: “It was done very quickly. It was a very fluid, unnaturally easy track. There was something pushing it, saying ‘you guys are okay, but if you want to do something timeless, here’s a wedding song for you.’”

The song was “Stairway To Heaven,” and as Page once noted, it was the song which “crystallized the essence of the band.” The final, eight-minute version was recorded at Island Studios in London, and released November 8, 1971 on the untitled fourth Zeppelin album. Never edited and never released as a single, it nevertheless went on to become the most played song in the history of rock radio.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of “Stairway To Heaven,” we are pleased to present you with this very limited, promotional-only edition. Twenty years on, the song remains the same—a magical moment in the history of rock and roll music.

—February 1992