Rebirth – Evil Vibrations (Cover Version of Song Used as a Sample by De La Soul on A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays


LA soul collective Rebirth cover Evil Vibrations by The Mighty Ryeders which De La Soul sampled for their hi-hop party classic A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays……

It was a track by an artist called Darondo that lead me to Rebirth’s cover of Evil Vibrations. Darondo is a forgotten soul master who Gilles Peterson unearthed for his recent album Gilles Peterson Digs America: Brownswood USA. I liked the track so much that I searched for an album by Darondo and found it on emusic. And, to paraphrase Victor Kiam, I liked it so much I decided to see what else was available on the same label – Ubiquity.

The thing that obviously caught my eye was an album of covers called Rewind 4. And the stand-out track on that was Evil Vibrations by Rebirth. It’s such a joyous piece of funky soul that I couldn’t bear to only have it as a download. I recognised it immediately as the original was sampled to great effect by De La Soul on the track A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays off of their much under-rated 2nd album, De La Soul Is Dead.

The De La Soul track kept to the spirit of the original, as does the cover by Rebirth: its the sort of track that would have even the most uncoordinated uncle dancing if it were plaed at a wedding. And if you don’t believe me, then you can hear it being played soon when I open the proceedings at an upcoming night of the club Shuffle – more details soon.

But if you can’t wait that long then you can download it at emusic as I did. And if you too then decide that you have to own Evil Vibrations by Rebirth on vinyl, you could do worse than head to Sounds of the Universe in Soho, London. I did last Saturday and picked up a copy of the album it comes from, Rewind 4.

Have a look at what De La Soul did with the original version of Evil Vibrations on their track Rollerskating Jam Named Saturdays here:

One comment

  1. De la soul is a great hip hop band and has obviously great tastes when they have to sample some stuff.
    this migthy ryeders song is awsome, put me smile on my face each time i hear it.
    thank you for your blog.

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