Greetings from an airport lounge. I have a couple of hours to fill before my flight so I decided to tidy up this post which was originally intended for next week. Having done that I recklessly decided I may as well post it now. Normal service will resume on Monday.
Some 1970s Japanese folk-rock for you. Both tracks can be found on the excellent compilation "Even A Tree Can Shed Tears", which came out on Light In The Attic records a few years ago. The album doesn't seem to be available in any format at the moment, but if you shout loud enough I'm sure they will do something about it.
Kazuhiko Kato was a singer, guitarist and record producer who founded underground folk group The Folk Crusaders, who had a big Japanese hit in 1967 with “Kaettekita Yopparai (I Only Live Twice)”, and then later co-founded Sadistic Mika Band with his wife Mika. He took his own life in 2009.
According to Forced Exposure, Masato Minami was "one of Japan's first beatnik hippie scum singers" (their words not mine) whose 1971 album "The Tropics" is "hyper-rare and demented all the way". He died in 2021 after losing consciousness on stage in Yokohama.
Regular readers may recall that a few months ago I suffered a twin technology tragedy when my desktop blew up and the external hard drive that I keep music and photos on got corrupted.
There was nothing we could do to revive the desktop but thanks to my clever friend Vijay we managed to retrieve everything from the hard drive and I am now slowly rebuilding playlists etc. One of the upsides of the whole process has been rediscovering all sorts of artists and albums that I had completely forgotten about.
This week I have been on the Es (alphabetically not pharmaceutically) and have been utterly baffled by much of what I've found. Ep's Trailer Park? Rachel Eckroth? Egg Hell? Who are these people and where did they come from?
However, by far the biggest surprise was discovering that I have 18 Brian Eno albums when I was under the impression that I had none at all. You would think I would remember when there are that many, but no. They cover the period 1973 to 1997 and include collaborations with the likes of David Byrne, Robert Fripp and Harold Budd as well as solo records.
I feel honour bound to share some of this Brainy Brian bounty with the rest of you. So here is a small selection from my extensive collection.
This is my last post of the month as I'm off on a dull work trip on Sunday and not back until the end of the week. I am going to pad things out in the hope of keeping you distracted until I return.
So to go with your Eno here are Geno, Dino, a shooting in Reno and some characters from the Beano. All of them best enjoyed with a nice glass of vino.
Back in 1985 when the world was young the Los Angeles punk band X teamed up with The Blasters' Dave Alvin (as he was then, this was long before he became Americana Elder Statesman Dave Alvin) to make a one-off country album.
The resulting album, "Poor Little Critter On The Road", was released under the name The Knitters and zoomed all the way up to No. 204 in the Billboard album charts.
Fourteen years later the folks at Bloodshot Records decided to drag assorted members of their roster into the studio to put together a track by track remake which they wittily called "Poor Little Knitter On The Road". It would be exaggerating to call it a 'must have' record, but there are some fine moments.
Inevitably my first selection features the golden-voiced Future Mrs Goggins, Kelly Hogan, who on this occasion teamed up with her old band Rock*A*Teens. Also in today's line-up is Kelly's good buddy Nora O'Connor alongside Ground Speed. I have never come across Ground Speed before so cannot tell you whether they were a 'proper' Bloodshot band or if this was a one-off. Noted Bloodshot authority Charity Chic may know.
Roll on another six years to 2005 and The Knitters themselves decided that it was time to get back in the saddle and trot the horse around the yard for a short while, as they have done intermittently ever since. The album they put out then ("The Modern Sounds Of The Knitters") was their last release, but those of you in LA might occasionally spot them live - as these lucky people did in 2011.
While I was typing the forensically detailed text above I remembered that Tapper had featured here before. On checking, I discovered it was exactly two years ago yesterday. Clearly mid-November is when an old man's mind turns to Zukie.
Last time I included a video of Caravan, on account of Mr Zukie sharing his real name with their keyboard player (David Sinclair). I am going to stick with tradition today.
Welcome to the 20th stop on our 55 stop musical tour of Africa. We will be resting here until December, as I have a week long work trip starting the Sunday after next and won't have time to prepare the next run of African posts properly before I go. Don't call it as a delay though. Rather think of it as an opportunity to linger and luxuriate in the magnificent musical legacy of Ethiopia.
Ethiopia is one of my favourite places. I was lucky enough to spend two weeks there in 2012 - plus a 24 hour stopover between flights in Addis Ababa in 2018 - and would I love to go back and explore the parts of the country I haven't yet seen. I won't bore you with my holiday snaps, with one exception, but in the unlikely event you are interested you can find them over on Flickr.
The golden age of Ethiopian popular music was the late 1950s to the early 1970s, when the local brass bands discovered American rock, soul and jazz and mangled them up with the pentatonic scales of traditional Ethiopian music, producing the most magnificently wonky sound. It is like listening to badly warped old Stax 45s. It was this era that Buda Musique captured on their excellent Éthiopiques series of albums from 1998 onwards.
It all came tumbling down after the Derg regime deposed Haile Selassie in 1974 and unleashed the Red Terror on the country. If you are ever in Addis Ababa I would highly recommend a visit to the Red Terror Martyr's Memorial Museum, it is a very moving experience. The damage the Derg did to Ethiopia before they were finally removed in 1991 is incalculable.
On a happier note (no pun intended) its time for the music. Obviously we start with some of the biggest stars of the golden age: Alemayehu Eshete (aka the Abyssinian Elvis and the Ethiopian James Brown), and two men who came up through the ranks of the Imperial Bodyguard Band, Tlahoun Gèssèssè (known as The Voice) and Mahmoud Ahmed, who in my view may be the finest of them all. All feature heavily in the Éthiopiques series.
I was luckily enough to see Messrs Eshete and Ahmed perform as part of an amazing night of Ethiopian music at the Barbican in London way back in 2008. Everything about the show was special, but witnessing the then 67 year old Mahmoud Ahmed bouncing up and down on the spot while at the same time crooning beautifully is something I will never forget.
Missing from the line-up that night was Tlahoun Gèssèssè, who by then was already ill with the diabetes that would take him the following year. On my short visit to Addis Ababa in 2018 I took the opportunity to pay my respects by visiting his understated grave in the grounds of the Holy Trinity Cathedral. You can pay your own tribute by going to Bandcamp and picking up a copy of a great compilation of his 1970s singles.
Also on the bill at the Barbican back in 2008 was Mulatu Astatqé, the arranger and vibes and keyboards player who is credited with creating Ethio-jazz (which fortunately is much funkier than most 'real' jazz, as you can hear in this tribute to a young lady called Netsanet).
Mulatu is still going strong at the age of 80, in fact he was back at the Barbican just last week. The pick of his older recordings are available on an excellent compilation on Strut Records, and he has also made a few records more recently with The Heliocentrics and others.
Next up is Netsanet Melesse. I don't think she is the subject of Mulatu's tune - as far as I can tell she only started performing in the 1990s - but both have played with the Wallias Band at various points so who knows. Mind you, everyone else we've mentioned worked with the Wallias Band as well; they were the Booker T & The M.G.s of the Addis scene back in the day. This track comes from Netsanet's 1993 album "Spirit of Sheba".
Aster Aweke arrived on the scene around the same time as Ms Melesse and went on become one of Ethiopia's biggest stars. Her first albums were released while she was living the US, and did very well with the Ethiopian diaspora and in Ethiopia itself. Things really took off after she returned home in 1997, with her albums "Hakere" (1999) and "Fikir" (2006) being particularly popular. Today's track comes from "Hakere".
When I was in Ethiopia in 2012 I managed to catch Teddy Afro in concert in the grounds of the Ghion Hotel in Addis. Teddy had recently released "Tikur Sew", his first album for seven years. One of the reasons for the gap was the three years he spent in jail from 2006 to 2009 having been found guilty of drink driving and a hit and run incident. Some fans believed he was set up, noting that the charges followed suspiciously shortly after the Government banned some of his previous records for being seditious.
Today's Teddy of choice is "Minilik", which is the opening track on "Tikir Sew". There are a couple of decent reggae tracks on the album, but given the close association between reggae and Ethiopia I didn't think it appropriate to fill the MAR slot with dilettante dabbling.
You need a specialist for that. Specifically you need Jah Lude (or Jah Lude the Reggae Dude as I call him). Here he is with a track from his 2012 album "Yachin Neger".
The first two of today's videos have particular memories for me. The first is one I recorded myself while in Lalibela, which is home to many underground churches that were hewn from rock in the 12th and 13th centuries. By chance my visit happened to coincide with the holy day of St. Mercerios, and this is just a short extract from the service in the Bet Mercerios church.
The second was played relentlessly by the likely lads who I had hired to drive me and my bags from Gonder to Bahir Dar later during the same visit. By the end of the four hour drive I was as keen on it as they were.
No stories behind the other videos. I just like them. All come courtesy of the treasure trove that it the Ethiopian Oldies YouTube channel.
I recently acquired for the princely sum of 50p a compilation released last year by the Hamburg based Bureau B label. It rejoices under the very snappy title "Eins und Zwei und Drei und Vier, Vol. 2 - Deutsche Experimentelle Pop-Musik 1978 - 1987", As it is the second volume it should perhaps have been called "Fünf Und Sechs Und Sieben Und Acht" instead.
I was familiar with a few of the names featured on the compilation, such as Cluster and Thomas Dinger, but the majority were previously unknown to me. Walter, on the other hand, probably knows most of them personally.
Here's a couple of tunes from the compilation. If you like them you can find the album and many more German goodies both old and new on the Bureau B Bandcamp page.
Some sweet-voiced folk-rock from the early 1970s to start the week.
Shelagh McDonald is a Scottish singer-songwriter who released a couple of very nice albums before then 'doing a Vashti Bunyan' and disappearing completely for thirty years.
By her own account, Shelagh had a bad LSD trip and moved back up to Scotland, met her late partner and spent many years living in tents and homeless shelters before eventually reconnecting with her old life and resuming recording and gigging in 2013.
Along with many others I first discovered Shelagh's music through the 2005 compilation "Let No Man Steal Your Rhyme", which I believe is still available. After her reemergence she made an album called "Parnassus Revisited", which I have never heard as it was only sold at the handful of gigs she played in 2014 and 2017. If anyone knows how to get hold of a copy please drop me a line.
Since then things seem to have gone quite again. Shelagh has a website but there has been a grand total of one new post in the last nine years. Hopefully she is well wherever she is and whatever she is up to.
Here's a track from each of her first two albums, "Album" (1970) and "Stargazer" (1971).
Links stay up for a month or so. If you are an artist or copyright holder and want me to remove the link, or if you want to get in touch for any other reason, e-mail me on leggies27@hotmail.co.uk.
