Charlie Clemons And The Mighty Power Band ‎– The Devil Has Made This Land His Playground / God Is Fire

Strongly limited edition of 200 copies.

1980 - Inglewood, CA: Charlie's group of immediate music buddies included the members of the Watts 103rd St Rhythm Band, some of whom appear on these recordings. In 1980 he decided to enlist those buddies, and head out to Warner Bros studios to cut a few songs to have made into singles. Not really hoping to get a record deal as much as to make a statement about his own spiritual and political agendas. To get this message through best he decided to lace the songs in the popular Disco style of that era. Though the songs were technically Disco, they lacked the drug induced production and DJ crafted dance edits/mixes that many of the other East Coast indie labels were mastering at the time.

Luckily, Charlie held onto his 2" masters & I convinced Charlie to give me a crack at them. My concept was to take an indie recording made in a world far from the NYC disco inferno, and give it the full on Tom Moulton era disco extensions, as well as a 70's "Crown Heights Affair" angel dust laced mix that the NYC indie labels like Salsoul, Prelude & De-lite would have done. Finding the team and proper studio took about one year. Finally, the mixing skills of stalwart Scott Stallone at Found Sound studios in Philly proved to be a great match for this project, and what we came up with is pure disco fire! Two slamming sides consisting of crushing drums, phaser bathed strings, space echoed (and previously muted) vocals. Not leaving out Dj friendly rhythm edits. No new instrumentation has been added, simply a late 70's disco face-lift for two previous songs which had mad potential, but weren't fully realized.

Mixed by Scott Stallone at Found Sound Studios, Philadelphia, PA.