why blackbeltjones.com?
Well, it came about, as all great things do - through a stream of happy little accidents.
I was in a now-defunct club in London, called The Big Kahuna Burger, around 1997. David Holmes was playing his usual excellent mix of the sort of music that sounds like The Bomb Squad racing their jeep against John Barry's e-type through an italian porn-film set...
The sweaty hoards in the bassment of the club were suddenly assailed by urgent horn-stabs, swingle-singers staccato scat, and kung-fu grunts... then an orchestra dived out of nowhere, sweeping the assembled throng of sounds up into a crazy chopsocky crescendo...
It was the cheesiest, most magnificent, incongruous record I had ever heard... except I had heard it before...
The Jedi Knights had sampled it for another favourite of mine: 'catch the break'
What was this record? Why was it so wonderfully evocative of all sorts of things I loved: kung-fu movies, blaxploitation-era funk, over-the-top orchestration...
The reason was that it was Dennis Coffey's theme tune for an over-the-top blaxploitation kung-fu movie: black belt jones
It took me another 2 years to track down the movie itself - and once I finally watched it, I knew it was possibly one of the finest examples of it's genre I'd ever seen.
The fantastic opening sequence is almost all you need to see to confirm this - an incredible ballet of kung-fu power in baby-blue velour...