The Politicians – Free Your Mind
The Politicians – Close Your Big Mouth
The Politicians – The World We Live In
Holy Christ! I’ve been so busy with personal thangs, school and the KPFK fundraiser that I just realized I hadn’t posted anything here in over a week! All apologies…to make it up to y’all here’s a no brainer of a record that I only recently got acquainted with. I’ve seen this LP in more than a few places and for whatever reason I always passed it up, clearly without ever having actually listened to it. Maybe it’s all that green, but for whatever reason I saw no reason to give this record more than a passing glance. 
Then, fairly recently, I was digging in the 45 bins at Bagatelle in Long Beach and I turned up a 7″ from a group called the 8th Day and their song “It’s Instrumental To Be Free.” A quick spin caused my Golden Era heart much gladness as I instantly recognized this is one of several samples from Professor Griff & the Last Asiatic Disciples song “Pawns In The Game.”
While I was doing some online homework to see if this group put out an LP I happened upon the Politicians and their song “Free Your Mind” which is basically the EXACT same track. This isn’t terribly unheard of (The Chubukos morphing into Afrique on LP comes to mind), but is still a bit odd. I wonder about the story behind the name change but for the most part it seems lost to history. Thankfully I was able to right my historical wrongs and pick up this very fine instrumental LP from the Politicians/8th Day and my world is better for it and now that I can share a couple of tracks off of it with you, I’m sure your world will be better for it too! In addition to the already mentioned psychedelic soul monster “Free Your Mind” I’ve included “Close Your Big Mouth” just cause it’s SUCH a solid groove and sounds like a party and “The World We Live In” for it’s over the top funkiness. I could have easily gone with most every other track on this record, it’s a rare soul/funk LP without any weak tunes and something that stacks up nicely against similar earlier work from the Ohio Players, the Bar-Kays and Kool & the Gang.
Cheers,
Michael
P.S. Here’s the song that sparked my curiosity so many years ago that eventually led to this record…yet another classic Golden Era production.