Mike Brooks is one of those reggae stalwarts who are highly respected by the fans but whose name mean little or nothing to the wider public. He has been active as a singer, producer and occasional label owner since the early 1970s, first in Jamaica and latterly in the UK.
Mike is still going strong. His latest single, "I'm A Superstar", came out a couple of months ago and he is sounding as good as ever. The new single does not seem to be on Bandcamp but plenty of his other recordings are including "Mother Earth" which came out last year.
Back in 2017 the Burning Sounds label reissued what are probably Mike's two best known albums in the old 'two albums on one CD' format - "What A Gathering" (1976) and "One Love" (1983). It is worth tracking down if you can. Here is a track from each to whet your appetite.
Ten years ago Mike released a single addressed to the UK's then Prime Minister. That one was pretty dreadful and we have an even worse one now, meaning sadly that Mike's message is even more relevant now.
On Monday we promised you a guest post by George and here he is, with his unique take on current affairs.
No tales of goats today, but instead, reptiles and amphibians. The latest cat to join our ranks, and the smallest, lives at the farm. She is not very big, so she only catches very small creatures, such as butterflies and grasshoppers. And what I initially thought were very small snakes. But on rescuing them, I noticed feet on them.
So not snakes, but skinks, and the species native to these parts is Chalcides bedriagai, commonly known as Bedriaga's skink. They are only found in Iberia, and hardly at all in northern Spain. And hardly at all in and around our farm (nowhere near northern Spain)
Told you it looks like a snake. And having wanted to shoehorn skink into these pages I then set about looking for relevant music. There’s a band called The Skinks. They sound a bit like Iron Maiden meets The Sweet, and not in a good way. And there is a song called Skink Song. I bought the album, "Far And Familiar", by Colamo.
And I would not want to waste the opportunity to give you a relevant prog track, and joy of joy King Crimson provide that, referencing a shingleback skink in the track "Neurotica":
The shingleback has a blue tongue. It is found in Australia.
And back to Iberia, and the accordionist Pascuala Ilabaca, from Girona. I have no idea if she has an interest in skinks, but I have an interest in her. That sounds a bit pervy. What I mean is she performing at the nearby World Music Festival in July, and if the song below is anything to by, this could be a very good thing:
What about the amphibians mentioned at the top? After a few days of much needed rain here a couple of weeks ago, it seemed to stir the local amphibians into action. On consecutive days my partner found a toad and then a frog swimming about in one of our wells.
I was not unduly concerned about there being frog or toad pee in the water (we don’t drink the water) but nevertheless the hoppers were scooped out and relocated to the bottom of the farm. Look, it could have been worse, we could have flown them to Rwanda.
And why the Bedriaga’s skink? It is named after the famous Russian herpetologist Jacques von Bedriaga (not a very Russian-sounding name, is it?)
And there it ends. I'm still puzzling over why George mentions that these skinks aren't common in Northern Spain when he doesn't live in Northern Spain. And is the whole thing meant to be an elaborate allegory about Russians being where they shouldn't be?
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. What passes for normal service round here will resume on Friday.
On Friday I set you a little quiz, asking you to identify the link between Red Lorry Yellow Lorry and Clint Eastwood's "I Talk To The Trees". The correct answer was "Paint Your Wagon", as it is the name of both the film in which Clint sings and the Lorries' second album.
The stalwart George was the only person to enter the quiz and he didn't know the answer, but he went to the effort of finding a couple of other fairly tortuous links so he's getting the prize anyway. The prize is getting a post dedicated to him, and this is it.
When I contacted George to tell him the good news I took the liberty of asking whether he would be willing to grace these pages with one of his distinctive guest posts. I'm delighted to say he has agreed to do so just as soon as the burdensome task of goat herding allows. Its a tough and sometimes lonely life.
By extraordinary coincidence, today music selections start with a tale of a man called George and his goat. The second song title is the English equivalent of Duque das Cabras, which is how the awestruck Portuguese villagers refer to our George, while the video tells the absolutely true story of how he met his other half.
Leeds in the late 1970s and early 1980s was a hotbed of post-punk and gothic rock. Well we call it that now. At the time my late grandmother called it a dreadful racket, because there were no proper tunes and it was all just bang, bang, bang.
One of the many bands to emerge from the fetid swamps of the Leeds scene were Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, who had a string of hits on the NME indie charts between 1982 and 1989. I can't claim to have been one of their most devoted fans but they had their moments. Here are two of them.
Special prize for the first person to identify the link to the video.
In unrelated news, earlier in the week we went to the delayed launch party for Bas Jan's "Baby U Know" album, which I have raved about here before. It was an excellent show and if you get the chance to see them I would recommend it. And you should buy the album of course.
We were in Poland on Monday, but we have traveled in a south-westerly direction to Italy - specifically Naples, where we find two men called Francesco, or Franco for short. Although both of them are locals they have surnames that suggest they are from elsewhere in Italy, Romano and Calabrese. It is most confusing.
Back in the mid 1960s they decided to form a singing duo by the name of Franco IV e Franco I. I don't know which Franco was which or what happened to Francos II and III, if they ever existed. Again, it is most confusing.
Anyway they had a big hit in 1968 with "Ho Scritto T'Amo Sulla Sabbia" ("I Wrote I Love You In The Sand"), after which they made a few more records before Franco R gave it all up to study the science of radiation protection. Here are two of the few more, both from 1970.
What better way to start the week that with a funky 1970s Polish radio orchestra. That's a rhetorical question, so don't bother writing in asking for something else because you won't get it.
A couple of years ago some bright spark decided to have a rummage around in the Polish Radio archives in Łódź, where they rediscovered the forgotten works of Henryk Debich and the Orkiestra Polskiego Radia i TV w Łodzi. Wowed by what they heard they have started to share it with a grateful world.
The series of reissues started with "City 1978", a compilation of Henryk and the gang's recordings from that year. Some are proper funky, others are more in the smooth style of Barry White - what you might perhaps call the Łódź Unlimited Orchestra. Here are a couple from their funkier side.
"Z Pustego w Próżne" - Henryk Debich & Orkiestra Polskiego Radia i TV w Łodzi
"Obsydian" - Henryk Debich & Orkiestra Polskiego Radia i TV w Łodzi
On the subject of Barry White and Love Unlimited Orchestra...
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