Crooked Beat sent along a list of the Adams Morgan stores top-ten sellers for May. I pass it along not so much for its tiny news value as merely a reminder. Maybe you’re like me and totally slept on the new Camera Obscura album (it’s….No. 1 at Crooked Beat). Or maybe you still do not own Neutral Milk Hotel’s classic (No. 9).

Here’s the store’s Top 10:

1. Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career LP/CD
2. Vaselines – Enter the Vaselines LP/CD
3. St Vincent – Actor LP/CD
4. V/A – Dark Was the Night LP/CD
5. Iron & Wine – Around the Well LP/CD
6. Yo La Tengo – I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One LP/CD
7. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz LP/CD
8. Andrew Bird – Noble Beast LP/CD
9. Neutral Milk Hotel – In the Aeroplane Over the Sea LP/CD
10. Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Beware LP/CD

“I had a laptop stolen from me,” says drummer Andrew Black. “And when I bought a new laptop I decided that since I’m around ProTools so much, I should learn it. So, I started re-tracking all of these drum breaks that I had been playing and cataloging them.”

Black took four of these breaks—minute-and-a-half percussion grooves with minimal instrumentation meant to be sampled by hip-hop artists—and pressed them to a 7” single, dubbing the project AB’s Original Breaks. They’re up-tempo and lightly funky, the kind of thing that might have been snatched out of the middle of a James Brown tune. “I sit down and I try to play them and see if it feels like people would want to move to it,” says Black. “I like to play at about the speed of the human heartbeat—90 bpm. A lot of my favorite go-go is at about 90-95 bpm.”

Surprisingly, Black does mellow and groovy pretty well for a guy who has spent the best part of his career pounding the stuffing out of his kit with punk-rockers the Explosion and defunct D.C.-based power-pop duo Georgie James. Black still gigs frequently with post-George James quartet Title Tracks and with his hardcore band, Domino Team.

But Black put out the 7” for practical, as well as creative, reasons. He is an American studies major at the University of Maryland, College Park, and he received academic credit for pressing and distributing the record on his label, Black’s Records.

Black has also been a hip-hop fan for a long time—his interest blossoming around the time he took up skateboarding as a teenager. “It opened up this whole other world of perspectives,” he says. “It made me recognize that there were other people out there with perspectives that were completely different from mine. It changed way I thought at a young age.” Tied to that sentiment is Black’s appreciation for the break. “If you were to go pinpoint the life beat of hip-hop culture, you could argue that it was the drum break,” he explains. “And that stuff has just impacted me so much. I thought, well, maybe this is a little thumb-print that I can put on the face of that culture.”

 As a drum nerd, Black is also into the subtle technical aspects of the music. “When I was older, during my late teens/early 20s, I started paying more attention to where drum breaks were coming from—people like James Brown, Jim Gordon, the Incredible Bongo Band, Buddy Miles,” he says. “I started to think about how intricate [the playing] is.

“I would cut some of the breaks [for the 7”] and think, It’s too simple. But they’re all simple. I mean, it’s just drums,” Black continues. “Still, the simplest things have become the iconic parts of top 40 hits, like Queen’s “We Will Rock You” or James Brown’s “Funky Drummer.” People instantly recognize that stuff.”

Black tried to carry that old-school aesthetic over to his own project. “I guess I was just trying to create something that sounds a little more lo-fi, or older, in the hopes that more people who were interested in producing and creating hip-hop would step away from glossy productions,” he says. “I was hoping to release something that people would pick up and say, ‘That’s sick, that’s all I need.’”

And if somebody wanted to sample one of those grooves, that 45 is pretty much all they would need. Copyright law, it turns out, does not protect drum breaks, so there’s no need to get permission from Black, unless of course, a producer is looking to be polite.

“I called up the people up at SESAC and told them that I was going to issue this 7”. I thought I should get it cataloged,” explains Black. “They asked ‘Is there a melody on it?’ If not, it turns out they can’t copyright it. Old drum breaks existed in between parts of a recording, so those count. But mine is different in the sense that it’s just drums.” So, a sweet royalty check from Jay-Z is probably not forthcoming. “Best case scenario, I’ve been using these as calling cards, since I do studio work as well,” says Black.

But Black has been doing legwork to ensure that should anyone sample his grooves, it will be someone who can put them to good use. “They’ve gotten some really cool places,” he says. “Sean Peoples (proprietor of Sockets Records) has some stuff for an online mixtape. Also, I hand delivered two copies to Questlove [drummer of Philadelphia’s the Roots] two days before Fallon hit the air.”

Link Wray looking supercool.

Crooked Beat sent along this e-mail with a list of new arrivals at their shop. Includes Link Wray, the Wedding Present, and the new Animal Collective LP.

List after the jump.

Got the latest list of new arrivals at Red Onion. They got the new Beirut LP (actually two EPs), a bunch of Numero stuff, this Elder Utah Smith CD that looks killer, plus the usual awesome finds.

ROCK:

KISS: DYNASTY
T-BONE BURNETT: TRUTH DECAY
AU PAIRS: LIVE IN BERLIN
WILDWEEDS: SELF-TITLED (VANGUARD, NRBQ MEMBERS)
ROLLING STONES: BEGGARS BANQUET

DEAD KENNEDYS: BEDTIME FOR DEMOCRACY (WITH 2 NEWSPAPERS & INSERT)
STIFF LITTLE FINGERS: NOW THEN… (US PRESSING)
JOHN & YOKO/PLASTIC ONO BAND/ELEPHANT’S MEMORY: SOME TIME IN NEW YORK CITY (WITH PETITION, CARD & INNER SLEEVES)
CROW: MUSIC
WRECKLESS ERIC: SELF-TITLED (UK STIFF PRESSING)
FLEETWOOD MAC: RUMOURS
FLEETWOOD MAC: SELF-TITLED
NINE INCH NAILS: SIN 12″
X: LOS ANGELES (ORIGINAL SLASH LABEL)
BOB DYLAN: SLOW TRAIN COMING
GRINDER’S SWITCH: SELF-TITLED
ROY HEAD: DISMAL PRISONER
DON NIX: HOBOS, HEROES…
SPANKY & OUR GANG: LIVE
ROGER KELLAWAY: CENTER OF THE CIRCLE
GRATEFUL DEAD: ANTHEM OF THE SUN (70′S PRESSING)
THE WHO: STORY OF… (2LP UK PRESSING)

JAZZ:
KEN McINTYRE: OPEN HORIZON (INNER CITY)
CHICO FREEMAN: SPIRIT SENSITIVE (INDIA NAVIAGATION)
OLIVER NELSON: SCREAMIN’ THE BLUES (OJC PRESSING)
WES MONTGOMERY: FULL HOUSE (OJC PRESSING)
RAMSEY LEWIS TRIO: NEVER ON SUNDAY
MILES DAVIS: VOLUME 2 (BLUE NOTE, LIBERTY PRESSING)
CHARLIE PARKER: ON DIAL VOLUME 2 (UK, SPOTLITE RECORDS)
ARCHIE SHEPP: A TOUCH OF THE BLUES (FRANCE, FLUID RECORDS)
JIMMY SMITH: BACK AT THE CHICKEN SHACK (BLUE NOTE 4117, NEW YORK, USA)
HANK MOBLEY: AND HIS ALL STARS (70′S BLUE NOTE PRESSING)
COLEMAN HAWKINS/ROY ELDRIDGE/PETE BROWN/JO JONES ALL STARS: AT NEWPORT (JAPANESE VERVE PRESSING)
CHARLIE PARKER: WITH STRINGS VOL. 1 (FRENCH REISSUE)
CHARLIE PARKER: ONE NIGHT IN BIRDLAND (2LP, COLUMBIA CONTEMPORARY MASTERS SERIES)
KENNY BURRELL: MIDNIGHT BLUE (PA USA JAZZ ORIGIN SERIES)
MUHAL RICHARD ABRAMS: THINGS TO COME FROM THOSE NOW GONE
FRANK WESS: FLUTE OF THE LOOM
SONNY STITT: GOIN’ DOWN SLOW

FUNK/SOUL:
MALONE & BARNES AND SPONTANEOUS SIMPLICITY (LUV N’ HAIGHT REISSUE)
BARBARA LYNN: HERE IS (UK, 1976 OVAL/VIRGIN RECORDS REISSUE)
SHARON RIDLEY: STAY A WHILE WITH ME (SUSSEX ORIGINAL)
ARTHUR ALEXANDER: SELF-TITLED
LARRY RASPBERRY & THE HIGHSTEPPERS: SELF-TITLED

RAP:
BLACKALICIOUS: BLAZING ARROW (2LP ORIGINAL)

COUNTRY:
DON COOPER: SELF-TITLED (ROULETTE)

MISCELLANEOUS:
DAVID McCALLUM: MUSIC: A BIT MORE OF ME (PRODUCED BY DAVID AXELROD)
WHY DID LENNY BRUCE DIE?

Pick it up here.

Here’s a couple of sample clips:

Hume & the Phat Daughter Quartet: “Oneirnaut”

Hume & the Phat Daughter Quartet: “Oneirnatty”

Oh! I apologize, that wasn’t a come-on. I was just examining this Hey Girl comic book/7″. Carefully assembled by illustrator/songwriter Erin McCarley (ex-Problems), Hey Girl takes a multimedia approach–including drawings, songs, and elegantly silk-screened cover art–to addressing male-douchebaggery in its myriad insidious guises.

“Oh Jesus, really? I don’t want to have your baby,” sings McCarley on weary piano ballad “The End”, expressing an exhaustion/disdain that will not be unfamiliar to any young lady who has spent a week night sitting around at The Black Cat’s Red Room opting out of lascivious and undesired advances. Andy Gale (The Shirks, Haram) not only contributes drums, but also shows off his impressive acting chops by giving voice to said creeps and cads.

You can order Hey Girl online here or here, but copies will also be on sale at Crooked Beat Records and Black Cat’s upcoming “Rock n’ Shop” event.

I was over at Crooked Beat tonight. Jeez. They got in a huge shipment of reggae LPs. More than a hundred LPs in total. Way more. I saw Jackie Mittoo classics, King Tubby, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Delroy Wilson, Burning Spear, Alton Ellis, and tons of Studio One stuff.

So get over there.