The AFOS block "The Street" will be renamed "Beat Box" this Wednesday

(Photo source: Deadlydelmundo)

I got tired of calling it "The Street."

The playlist is staying the same. The only thing that's changing is the block title. The weekday block's time slots are Mondays at 6-9am and noon-3pm, Tuesdays through Thursdays at 6-9am and 1-4pm and Fridays at 7-9am and 1-3pm.

I really should have done this on January 2. Five days after New Year's Day, I realized I didn't like "The Street" as a block title anymore, so I chose January 11 to implement the title change because date-wise, January 11 kind of looks like January 1.

The playlist contains selections from '60s, '70s and '80s film scores with funk, synth or jazz sounds that have been sampled or referenced by beatmakers in their music, as well as cuts from more recent scores with funk, synth or hip-hop sounds--like the Attack the Block score (dig the ATB fan art above)--that were composed by those same beatmakers or their peers. One of these newer composers who are featured during the block that's soon to be formerly known as "The Street" is Adrian Younge, who wrote and performed the original music for both the hilarious Black Dynamite and the upcoming animated series of the same name.

Last month, Younge, who's also a resident DJ at the Verdugo Bar's monthly "Rendezvous!" night in L.A., was behind the ones and twos for a spectacular "Rendezvous!" DJ set. DJ Alfonso, who runs "Rendezvous!" and shares with Younge the same tastes in '60s and '70s Italian and French film scores, posted the results from that night.

Younge threw in "It's Me" from his own album Something About April, a track that I assume is a Joe Bataan joint, a cover of The Dramatics' "In the Rain" I've never heard before and instantly dug, bits of giallo-era Morricone (hello again, The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion [at 40:13, to be exact]), a 007 triple-shot, some Moog-y cover of Nino Rota's "The Godfather Waltz" and an even Moog-ier instrumental cover of "Walk on By" that sounds like something straight out of the out-of-print Cinemaphonic: Electro Soul library music collection that was compiled by Black Dynamite and Megas XLR music supervisor David Hollander.

ADRIAN YOUNGE DJ SET by djalfonso

"Rome, Italian Style" Track of the Day: Adrian Younge, "1969 Organ"

Song: "1969 Organ" by Adrian Younge
Released: 2000
Why's it part of the "Rome, Italian Style" playlist?: It's my favorite track off Black Dynamite editor/composer Adrian Younge's imaginary soundtrack Venice Dawn, a long-out-of-print homage to '60s and '70s Italian film music from 2000 that Younge and Wax Poetics Records reissued as a free download earlier this week.

"It is well documented that American soul expanded the thresholds of contemporary music and influenced composers around the world. Classically trained European composers, such as Ennio Morricone, loved the sound of soul and synthesized this compositional style with his music," said the self-taught musician, film editor and former hip-hop producer to Wax Poetics. "Ennio Morricone is by far one of my favorite composers."

Younge is also fond of the Italian band Goblin of Suspiria fame and similar-sounding psychedelic soul acts, and their sounds also influenced Venice Dawn (I also detect a little Jerry van Rooyen in the organ riffs in "1969 Organ"). Like Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi's Rome project, Venice Dawn is a score written for an old movie that doesn't exist. At the time of Venice Dawn's initial release, Younge pretended Venice Dawn was a real piece of Italian cinema and punked everyone.

That mischievous spirit was carried over by Younge and director Scott Sanders into Black Dynamite. The 2009 blaxploitation homage is one of the funniest and most effective comedy films of the '00s because its approach to spoofing blaxploitation flicks is refreshingly timeless (unlike the lazily written and instantly dated pop-culture references of the Epic Movie/Disaster Movie/Meet the Spartans spoof franchise) and the actors in Black Dynamite play everything straight--just like the Leslie Nielsen who was completely dead-serious and stone-faced during the brilliant and short-lived Police Squad! TV series, not the Leslie Nielsen who went completely broad and resorted to mugging to the camera in the Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! movies.

While we await both Younge's score music for Adult Swim's animated version of Black Dynamite in spring 2012 and his Wax Poetics album Something About April, which is scheduled to drop in September, he's offered us an appetizer to Something About April in the form of the newly unearthed Venice Dawn--an EP that can now be sampled during the "Rome, Italian Style" block of imaginary soundtracks and covers of '60s and '70s score music from Monday to Thursday at 11am on A Fistful of Soundtracks.

All the other "Rome, Italian Style" Tracks of the Day from this week:
Count Basie and His Orchestra, "007"
Frank Sinatra and Count Basie, "More [Theme from Mondo Cane]"
Goldfrapp, "Utopia (New Ears Mix)"
Babe Ruth, "The Mexican"