Massive Unreleased Heat from the Carl Maxx Kidd Archives

My eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw this canary yellow label in the rack. Al & The Kidd was the brainchild of Carl Maxx Kidd, one of those outsized legends whose real life challenged the outrageousness of any movie that might be made about it. Maxx Kidd was “the Berry Gordy of Washington” DC according to Gregory Elliot – a promoter, producer, songwriter, tout, distributor and the energetic force pushing DC-style Go-Go Music into the mainstream in the 1970s and 1980s.

Kidd had been in poor health since the 1990s, and I was sad to see died on March 13, 2017. This label – its a real label now – was apparently launched to propagate his archives and my God what treasures must be buried in there. Previously unreleased, “We Like To Party” is the first product to emerge from four tracks recorded in a 1980 session at New York’s Media Sounds. 10 minutes a side, this runs the table: funky bassline, singalong vocal and pinpoint perfect fretwork. At a certain point the vocalist has a beer and its all a jam from there. I have no idea if anyone has thought to ask if Tom Moulton might want to brighten this up before a legion of track-starved diggers begin editing and sampling this to death, but someone should get Tom or John Morales or Al Kent or KON or someone on the phone STAT.