
Today, Egon departs Los Angeles towards Japan with Madlib and Stones Throw art director Jeff Jank to meet J.Rocc, already on his way there from New York City. The goal? The grand-opening of the Stones Throw “pop up” shop at United Arrows, a Now-Again special on J-Wave radio, and a couple DJ gigs in Tokyo and Osaka. Sound familiar? If so, maybe you’re thinking of last year’s tour with Cut Chemist. If you missed those dispatches, follow the links below. And stay tuned for updates from the far East this coming week.
Link: Egon and Cut Chemist in Japan, 2009, Day One. .
Link: Egon and Cut Chemist in Japan, 2009. Day One and a Half.
Link: Egon and Cut Chemist in Japan, 2009. Day Two.
Link: Egon and Cut Chemist in Japan, 2009. Days Three and Four.

As the Kashmere Stage Band documentary Thundersoul continues to make the festival rounds, we here at Now-Again get a bit more serious about the idea that record collector and indie-distribution kingpin Joe Mansfield have been discussing for a while now: the definitive Kashmere Stage Band eight-LP box set. That day might come soon…. take a look at the sheet music that Mansfield dug out of his collection yesterday, above.
Yes, at one point in the distant past, any high school student in the nation could attempt to recreate the magical funk that the high school students at Kashmere Senior High School played under the direction of Conrad O. Johnson. An example is below.
Download: Kashmere Stage Band “Super Bad (Egon’s extended edit)” from our Texas Funk anthology.

We really don’t know how the good folks at Cheyenne, Wyoming’s World Psychedelic Funk Classics have the time to dig up so many incredible global-psych-funk joints and compile them… maybe the lack of decent local records to rediscover (the Soul Reflections’ “Grooving in the Basement” notwithstanding) has something to do with it. Anyway – their latest, an investigation into the “Aesthetic Expressions Of Psychedelic Funk Music In India,” is due out later this year. We just got a sneak peak at the cover and it looks miiiiighty promising.

We’re a bit late to the party on this one – but this mix is so damn good that we couldn’t help but link you to it. Even if we’re two weeks late! Thanks to Alex Chase at One Handed Music for posting Paul White’s mix for the BBC’s Tom Ravenscroft.
Link: Paul White’s BBC 6Music Mix.

Yeah, we know – Madlib’s not “on” Now-Again, but Egon’s overseen most every Madlib project at Stones Throw post Quasimoto’s The Unseen - and The Beat Konducta grabs liberally from the Now-Again crates. And you know that our official L.A. Listening Party partner is Palate Food + Wine…. So it’s only natural (we guess?) that we’d be announcing that the Madlib/Intelligentsia collaborative espresso blend that we’ve been working on for the past year – available while supplies last, beginning tonight, at their newly-opened Pasadena location – here.
If you’re in the L.A. area, come through tonight and enjoy some of The Loop Digga’s finest with us.