Children’s television can shape people in strange ways. Like a lot of people in their late 20s or early 30s, the American show ‘Sesame Street’ was essential viewing for me as a child. Aside from the alphabet and numbers and all the other educational odds and sods that come with children’s programming, I learnt 3 important facts:
1: Muppets are cool
2: Americans call a block of butter a ‘stick’
3: I love The Funk.
Ninja Tune obviously had much the same upbringing, as, after negotiation with the Children’s Television Network, we’ve been treated to a re-edit of a couple of the old school Sesame Street classics.
Pinball Number Count is more funky than children’s television should be allowed to be. You know the one, the animation of a pinball racing around a landscape that looks like the brainchild of Fritz Lang and Rube Goldberg. A bouncy, syncopated dose of funk with female vocals (provided by none other than The Pointer Sisters on a session singing assignment) singing out the numbers from 1 to 12 over the top. Strictly Kev from NT has edited together the middle-eights from the original skits to round the track out to something you can bump and grind to. I defy anyone to listen to it and not think ‘hang on, it wasn’t this funky when I was a kid was it?’.
The remaining 2 tracks are re-releases of the Cookie Monster’s ‘C is for Cookie’, as remixed by late New York Disco patriarchs Larry Levan and Roy Thode. Both have been vinyl digger gold dust for decades, but despite their lineage and scarcity, suffer a little from ‘novelty track’ status. Whereas the Pointer Sisters track succeeds despite the target audience, the latter two are held back by a hook, which is essentially still a children’s’ ditty. Listening to it, I found myself wishing it would either stay as a kids’ song, or morph fully into the 70s disco funk it had been shoehorned into.
Even still, it’s hard to hold men like Larry Levan back and, while he may not have made a silk purse out of this particular piece of shaggy blue carpet, it’s certainly a friendly and danceable bit of discoboogie that raised a grin from me at least.
It’s Pinball Number Count that really makes this disc worth the price though. If you’re in any way nostalgic for you childhood, or are just partial to a slice of 70s funk, give it a listen.
Maq
Solid Steel Presents… Sesame Street is out now on Ninja Tune
Ninja Tune
RALEIGH WOMAN PLEADS GUILTY IN MORTGAGE FRAUD CONSPIRACY.
States News Service January 11, 2010 GREENVILLE — The following information was released by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina: in our site employment verification letter
The United States Attorney’s Office announced that in federal court January 8, 2010, MARY ROSE WRIGHT, 43, of Raleigh, North Carolina, pled guilty before United States Magistrate Judge David W. Daniel to wire fraud and conspiring to commit mail fraud, wire fraud, and bank fraud.
A Criminal Information was filed on November 23, 2009. According to the Information, from August, 2006, to November, 2006, WRIGHT, working as a mortgage broker for Fairway Mortgage, worked with others to defraud various financial institutions through the submission of false and fictitious mortgage loan applications. Using a falsified Power of Attorney giving authority on behalf of a co-conspirator to execute all documents in connection with the property purchase, WRIGHT then prepared false United States Individual Income Tax Returns for years 2004 and 2005 and a self-employment verification letter and caused to have prepared a fabricated financial statement to use in obtaining the property. She then submitted an offer to purchase a property. go to site employment verification letter
On November 27, 2006, WRIGHT submitted a loan application, which included false representations regarding borrower’s address, employment, bank account information, and rental real estate schedule, in connection with the purchase of the residential Raleigh property. That same day Equity Services, Inc., loaned a co-conspirator $1,537.500 for the property purchase.
In November, 2006, WRIGHT’s co-conspirator gave her $120,000 from a previously fraudulently obtained mortgage loan from Washington Mutual in the amount of $2,996,969 to be used as a down payment for the purchase of the Raleigh property. On November 27, 2006, WRIGHT took possession of the property after executing a HUD-1 statement containing false and fraudulent information. To date, no mortgage payments have been made.
“In recent years we have seen how pervasive bank fraud has become and how devastating it has been to our banking institutions and our economy. This guilty plea is another step in the Justice Department’s effort to deal with this problem and to ensure integrity in our financial systems,” stated John Stuart Bruce, Acting United States Attorney.
Investigation of this case was conducted by the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation Division, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation and the North Carolina Real Estate Commission. This case is being handled by the Office’s Economic Crimes Section, with Assistant United States Attorney Banumathi Rangarajan assigned as prosecutor .
Tags: funk, larry, number, numbers, street, track
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