Trouble Funk
By All Music Guide
By All Music Guide
The first go-go record released outside of D.C., Trouble Funks 1982 debut Drop the Bomb appeared on Sugar Hill, the same label then championing early hip-hop. (The two styles had very similar origins, in the breakbeat culture of urban block parties.) Though the bands second album, In Times of Trouble, appeared only on the local label D.E.T.T., Trouble Funk earned national distribution with a prescient concert record, 1985s Saturday Night (Live from Washington, D.C.), released through Island. After taking the live act nationwide and even worldwide (they played the 1986 Montreux Jazz Festival), Trouble Funk returned in 1987 with the boundary breaking Trouble Over Here, Trouble Over There, featuring sympathetic heads like Bootsy Collins and Kurtis Blow. It was a bit of a stylistic misstep, however, and Island released the group from its contract. Undeterred, Trouble Funk kept on grooving around the city, playing often, even into the 90s, for nostalgic party goers as well as the musically curious.
