Hey, look behind you, Jennifer Lopez is taking a shower and rubbing the soap all up in her boobies! Ha ha, naw. Naw, dude, I’m just joking. Totally. I’m jus funkin’ wit’cha …

Yep, ’tis the X-mas season, and though the War on Christmas is a ragin’, we can all agree that gettin’ funky is, as the kids say, totes rad. It’s a holiday tradition! I’ve previously done a couple soul mixes that have focused on late ’60s and early ’70s soul, so today I thought I’d reach down deep into my funky bag of tricks (don’t mess with my funky bag of tricks, I’m serious, yo) and pull out some late ’70s/early ’80s soul/funk/disco jams. Don’t trip!

Read on for track list and link …

SIDE A
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01. Al Downing — “I’ll Be Holding On” I always hear this song as a really good disco aping of Jackie Wilson’s “Higher and Higher”.

02. Carl Carlton — “She’s a Bad Mamma Jamma” Does she like to jam things? Mammas? Mammaries? She has good mammaries? I get it. Sly dog!

03. The Lover — “Lip Service” Sly dog!

04. Stevie Wonder — “Part-Time Lover” I imagine Stevie Wonder has part time lovers, but I don’t like to.

05. The Gap Band — “You Dropped the Bomb on Me” The first song to deal publicly with the poignant issue of stink bomb dropping.

06. Kano — “It’s a War” Kano is actually (surprise surprise!) an Italian disco group, but their style of music was similar to the Kraftwerk-influenced electro soul of early ’80s Prince, Parliament/Funkadelic and Cameo.

07. Parliament — “Flash Light” George Clinton really loved flash lights.

08. Prince — “Let’s Work” A little hard work never killed anybody. Show some elbow grease!

09. Kid Creole & the Coconuts — “Annie” Kid Creole strangely enough found a home on New York’s Z Records alongside no-wavers such as James Chance, Material and Lizzy Mercier Descloux, but he was always a pop-dance dude at heart.

10. Herb Alpert — “Rise” So smoove.

11. Smokey Robinson — “Quiet Storm” The song that named a genre. A smooth genre.

12. The Bee Gees — “Love You Inside Out” I am obsessed with this grindin’ jam. The Feist cover makes me feel all crabby inside. In a good way.

13. Donna Summer — “MacArthur Park” Probably the last song I would ever consider turning into a disco single, but hey, what works works.

SIDE B:
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14. MFSB — “Love Is the Message” Barry White’s backing group gets they jam down.

15. Grace Jones — “My Jamaican Guy” I wish she would sing the line “Jamakin’ me cah-razay” in this song, but otherwise I have no complaints.

16. Roger & Zapp — “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” Vocoder-tastic!

17. The Whispers — “And the Beat Goes on” G-funk, right?

18. George Clinton — “Nubian Nut” One of the coolest art exhibitions I’ve ever seen was a display of the original Pedro Bell covers of George Clinton’s first three solo albums at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

19. Average White Band — “School Boy Crush” Sampled in Too Short’s “Life Is Too Short”.

20. Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band — “Sunshower” Composed of Kid Creole and Coati Mundi before their respective solo careers. This track was sampled in M.I.A.’s song of (almost) the same name.

21. Stevie Wonder — “Living For the City” Boy arrives fresh-faced in city, boy gets tricked by burglar being pursued by cops, cops mistake boy for burglar, boy gets arrested! It’s the same ol’ sad story everywhere you go …

22. Coati Mundi — “Que Pasa/Me No Pop I” Former member of Dr. Buzzard’s aforementioned Savannah Band.

23. Michael Jackson — “Off the Wall” Definitely achieves smoothness and dance-ness in wonderful equilibrium.

24. Hall & Oates — “I Don’t Want to Lose You” Daryl Hall was all bragging to Pitchfork about almost being the first solo act to sign to Motown. I think he’s full of shit, but no doubt dude definitely has soul.

25. Chaka Khan — “Through the Fire” Them’s some grindin’ jams.

26. Carl Carlton — “Everlasting Love” With this, we complete our “Everlasting Love” triumvirate.