I'm off on my travels again early tomorrow morning, a few days work in one location followed by a hopefully relaxing long weekend in another. As usual I'll need to draw a veil over exactly where I'm going.
I'll be back on here towards the end of next week. Until then here are some randomly selected tunes for you to enjoy.
"Nigeria London Na Lagos" - Bob Ohiri & His Uhuru Sounds
"Lagos Sisi" - Bola Johnson
"Calabar-O" - West African Rhythm Brothers
"Calabar" - Sacassaia
We're back with more from the gift that keeps giving, Dust-t0-Digital's "Excavated Shellac" box set. More details of what it contains and how I came to acquire it through the good offices of the mysterious JWA can be found in Monday's post.
This time we are featuring two tracks each from Discs 3 and 4 of the box set. In order, the place and time they come from are: Mauritius (l958 or thereabouts), Malta (1932), Iraq (1930) and South Africa (1967).
"Dans La Ville Mahebourg" - Francis Salomon
"Iz-Zakkiek" - Emmanuele Cilia
"Bilmez Pt 1" - Kawis Axa
"Maheshe" - Durban Lions
I was lucky enough to spend a couple of days in Mahebourg last year while working in Mauritius. A lively town and a lovely spot (see photo below) but I didn't do any dancing. I was wary of getting dizzy.
It was sad to hear the news yesterday that the great guitarist and all round cool dude James Blood Ulmer left us last week.
Born in 1940, for the first part of his career Mr Ulmer was a sideman plating with the likes of Art Blakey, Paul Bley and Ornette Coleman. The latter featured heavily on 1979's "Tales Of Captain Black", the first LP released under Mr Ulmer's own name. But it was his next record that first brought him to many people's attention, including mine.
I may have told the story here previously of how way back in the days of fanzines I wrote to Rough Trade asking whether they could spare any 7" singles for me and my pals to review. In return they sent some goodies by the likes of The Fall and Fad Gadget and a single by someone I had never heard of before. That was James Blood Ulmer, the record was "Are You Glad To Be In America?", and it blew open my then tiny mind.
Many years later I was lucky enough to see Mr Ulmer live in London a couple of times. Despite being well into his 70s by then he still sounded great and it was a privilege to be there.
Some people (well, Rol) claim that I am some sort of international man of mystery. I'm not really but I play along with it.
Someone who really is mysterious is the entity known only as JWA, a regular reader and underrated punster whose corporeal form appears to exist in both Sweden and the USA at exactly the same time. Other than that I know nothing about their identity.
What I do know though is that JWA is extraordinarily thoughtful and generous. They recently sent me a copy of a box set called "Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History of the World’s Music" released by the Dust-to-Digital label. As the name suggests Dust-to-Digital specialises in restoring and reissuing vintage recordings and we have featured tracks from its great catalogue a number of times here over the years.
"Excavated Shellac" includes 100 tracks from 89 countries over four CDs, all of which were originally recorded between 1907 and 1967. It comes with a fascinating 180 page book that discusses not just all the tracks themselves but the history of recorded music in different parts of the world. I can't possibly thank JWA enough for the gift.
Today we have two tracks each from Discs 1 and 2 for you to tap your toes to. They hail respectively from Mozambique (1953), Serbia (1927), Jamaica (1937) and Tahiti (1936).
"O Ta Nikona" - Enosse Kuhanya Muni
"Jeleno, Momo Jeleno" - Šule Radosavljevič-Šapčanin
"Perseverance" - Count Lasher
"Haere Roa Roa" - Tamari Tahiti
We'll be back with some selections from Discs 3 and 4 later in the week. In the meantime here is a song that celebrates Dust-to-Digital's mission (although you would probably need to replace "Rockin'" with "Capturing rare and unusual recordings" for it to be completely accurate).
Last week I asked readers to choose a number between 1 and 7000 to help me mark the appearance in the previous post of the 7000th song to be featured on the blog.
Six of you kindly did so. These are the songs that correspond to those numbers on my spreadsheet (on which songs are listed alphabetically by artist and then alphabetically for each artist where there has been one song from the aforementioned artist - for those of you taking notes).
The Big 6 have come up with a pretty cool playlist. Of course that would not have been possible if I hadn't been cool enough to share the songs in the first place. Collectively we're a pretty cool gang. Bonus points go to C and her ESP for picking a number with the word "number" in the title.
"Wild Mountain Thyme" - Marianne Faithfull (Walter - 1893)
"Something On Your Mind" - Karen Dalton (Charity Chic - 1314)
"Peculiar Number" - The Abyssinians (C - 15)
"Sister Carol" - Barrington Levy (Spence - 3535)
"On A Saturday" - Keith West (The Swede - 6666)
"Dark Eyed Sailor" - Folkdove (Pete From Minnesota - 2026)
Walter chose 1893 because it is the year the mighty VfB Stuttgart were founded. While I'm always happy to hear the young Marianne Faithfull singing old British folk songs - and similarly happy to hear a bunch of Breton hippies doing the same on Pete's selection - I can't help wishing Walter's team had been founded just a year earlier. If it had been he would have selected what I consider the greatest mash-up of all time. Here it is.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have another winner, or rather winners. After some of the most extraordinary voting I have ever witnessed, tied at the top of the 'Herbs and Spices' chart are...
GEORGE with "Chive Talking" and...
MODESTY FORBIDS with "The Bitterest Dill (I Ever Had To Swallow)"
The votes were scattered far and wide, which I think you should take as a tribute to the overall quality of your entries. Nine different puns (i.e. half the entries) received at least one first choice vote. Weirdly the pun that got the most first places - "Thyme Is On My Side" (Chris) - picked up just a single point from the rest of the voting panel combined and as a result didn't even make the Top 5. Here's what did.
=1. Chive Talking - The Bee Gees
(George)
=1. The Bitterest Dill (I Ever Had
To Swallow) - The Jam (Ernie)
3. What A Fool Bay Leaves - The
Doobie Brothers (Steve)
4. Parsley Dutchie - Musical Youth
(Charity Chic)
5. The First Time Ever I Saw Your
Mace – Roberta Flack (Alyson)
As well as the top 5 and Chris, I should also commend Rol (Roxette) and Pete (whose Smiths pun was described by one enthusiastic voter as "not only the best offering this month, but one of the best puns of the series so far"), both of whom narrowly missed out on fifth place.
Thanks to all of you who submitted a pun and/or voted, your enthusiasm is much appreciated. I'm not quite sure when we'll be back with Pun Fun 7 as I'm going to be out and about quite a bit in June and July, but we will return.
Until then, as is traditional, we hand over to our winners to see us out.
A two-part post for you today.
Part 1. We passed a landmark in Wednesday's post on the music of the noble nation of Paraguay. If my WIAA-approved spreadsheet is correct we have now featured over 7000 songs in the audio files that I include in posts. 7006 to be exact, at an average of roughly 400 a year.
I know 7000 isn't much of a landmark but I can't wait another eight or nine years to reach 10000, I may be completely gaga by then. So 7000 it is. Feel free to drop a number between 1 and 7006 into the comments section and if we get enough of them I'll collate them in a post.
Part 2. I went to see Rickie Lee Jones at the Barbican on Wednesday. This doesn't really qualify as news either as I have seen her umpteen times over the years.
Rickie Lee was in good form with a fine backing band providing a bit of shading to the songs using guitar, violin, piano and accordion (a special shout out to Petra Haden on violin and vocals, who has done interesting stuff in her own right).
The set was heavily weighted towards Rickie Lee's first two albums. While they are both great records personally I would like to have heard more from the rest of her extensive catalogue. The 'newest' song she played was "A Tree On Allenford" from 2003 and for me it was one of the highlights of the set.
There was some exciting news. Rickie Lee told us she currently working up new material with Brad Cook, the producer and session musician who has worked with the likes of Waxahatchee, Hiss Golden Messenger, Iron & Wine and many more. It has been ten years since Rickie Lee released an album of original songs so hopefully the new stuff will see the light of day before too long.
Rickie Lee has featured here on plenty of occasions, but if my WIAA-approved spreadsheet is correct these particular songs have not.
"Circle In The Sand" - Rickie Lee Jones
"Jimmy Choos" - Rickie Lee Jones
"Stewart's Coat" - Rickie Lee Jones
