The first was at the Sebright Arms in Bethnal Green last weekend. The headliner was Nick Garrie, who was responsible for one of the great "lost" albums of the psychedelic era, "The Nightmare of J.B. Stanislas". The album has been rediscovered in the last ten years, and fortunately Mr Garrie is still around to enjoy live. The main support came from Raf & O, the main competition from Personality Barmaid, who appeared to be under the impression we were there to listen to her.
On Wednesday night I was in Brussels, and discovered that Kel Assouf - the Tuareg blues band from Niger - were in town. So I popped along to Ancienne Belgique to watch, and am very glad I did. For me they were not quite as good as fellow desert blues dudes Terakaft were a couple of weeks back, and maybe a little too prone to lengthy guitar jams, but they are still well worth seeing if you get a chance.
Here is a track from each of them. Nick's comes from "Stanislas", The Kel's from their latest album "Tikounen".
"Can I Stay With You" - Nick Garrie
"Izlan Nala" - Kel Assouf
Today's clip is a tribute to Steve Young, who passed away earlier in the week. I saw him centuries ago at the Cambridge Folk Festival, but didn't fully appreciate quite how good he was until I got hold of his "Switchblades of Love" album many years after that. You should track it down. I couldn't find any decent clips of Steve, so instead here is Waylon Jennings with one of his best known songs.
Liked the KelAssouf track, Ernie. I'm hoping they can play out our local World Music Festival this year.
ReplyDeleteSorry to here about Steve Young. I saw him at King Tuts - there must have been less than 50 folk there but he put on a great show. I finally got round to posting one of his songs a week or two ago
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