Last week Mister F and I went up to the Shacklewell Arms in London's trendy Dalston to see the young American noise-a-teers Laurel Canyon.
According to the blurb for their self-titled debut album "the guitars are drenched in an Asheton worshipping haze, melded alongside a Velvets chug and mid-to-late 80s Pacific Northwest guttural/ primal howl... this is American primitive music at its most powerful".
Now I don't know about any of that but they make a splendid racket and deserved a more responsive crowd than they got. Go and cheer them on if they pass through your town.
I have teamed them up with an earlier Laurel to pad things out a bit (not that anything Mr Aitken did could ever be dismissed as padding),
From Younng American Noise-a-teers to Young New Mexican Puppeteers - not Tom's original but a German Version for George and Mister F. They know what they did.
We have arrived at the penultimate destination in our musical tour of Africa. And a fine one it is too - Zambia.
Normally in this series I try to come up with a selection that spans the musical generations of whatever country we are in, but not this time. Apart from the MAR there is nothing in the audio section less than 35 years old. That is not to suggest that there has been nothing decent since 1989, just that I already had so much good Zambian music from the 1970s and 1980s in my collection that I did not feel the need to go searching further afield.
You can blame that on Zamrock, the heavy rock sound that swept the nation back in the 1970s. Regular readers may remember me raving about it in the past, and I know some of you went off and picked up Volume 1 and Volume 2 of "Welcome to Zamrock!" put together by the good folks at Now-Again Records. The rest of you should do so just as soon as you finish here.
From Volume 1 we bring you the great Chrissy 'Zebby' Tembo with a track originally released on his 1978 album "Heavy Connection". Chrissy was the drummer with The Ngozi Family, of whom more anon, and the rest of the band backed him on this and his earlier, equally excellent album, "My Ancestors".
On Volume 2 you can find The Peace, although not this particular track. Fortunately Now-Again did it again when they reissued their 1975 album "Black Power" last year. I have opted for the title track but the whole album is worth having. It has some soul and blues-rock influences that make it stand apart from most of the other Zamrock bands of the time. Some tracks sound like Steve Miller back when he was still good.
Its time to cast your mind back to the paragraph before last. You may remember me mentioning the Ngozi Family, whose 1977 album "45,000 Volts" would probably have been featured today if I hadn't plugged it heavily when it was reissued. Paul Ngozi was the guitarist and leader of the Family and he also had a successful solo career before his untimely demise in 1989 aged only 40.
You can find two of his solo albums from the late 1970s on Bandcamp (I would particularly recommend "Lightning And Thunder"). He was still firmly pushing the Zamrock sound at that stage but his music became progressively poppier during the 1980s. Today's track was first released as a 12" single in 1987. I found it on a bootleg CD called "The Definitive Collection of Zambian Legends" that I picked up on a very brief visit to Lusaka a few years ago.
We are sticking with the 1980s for our next two selections. Emmanuel Mulemena was a big name in the Zambian music scene of the 1970s and was one of the artists responsible for popularising the kalindula sound. After his death in 1982 his backing band renamed itself The Mulemena Boys and recorded a tribute album to their former boss. While largely sticking to his formula they spiced it up with one of those exciting new drum machines, which features prominently on this (and every other) track.
It appears the kalindula scene in the 1980s was dominated by a few families. Emmanuel's son John Mulemena led the Masasu Band, whose other main member was one Geasi Bwaluka. Geasi in turn had a younger brother Timothy who led the Bwaluka Founders Band. This track from their 1989 album "Kangumbe" can be found on a compilation that came out a couple of months ago called "Kampire Presents: A Dancefloor in Ndola" (Kampire being a DJ of some note it seems).
Which brings us to the MAR. I have struggled a bit because while there is plenty of good Zambian reggae very little of it is available to download. I intend no disrespect to the estimable MILZ (whose 2017 album "The Teacher" this comes from) when I say that he would not have been my first choice. It is still a nice tune though.
If any of you have looked at the title of this post and thought to yourself "surely he can't inflict that song on us" - oh yes I can. And worse.
But that is for later. First we must deal with the business of the day.
I don't think it will be seen as courting controversy to say I'm not a big fan of those archive boxed sets that ask you to stump up lots of money for multiple (and usually not as good) versions of songs that you already have, even when they are from artists I like.
Take for example Volumes 3 and 4 of Joni Mitchell's Archives series that between them cover the period 1972 to 1980. Volume 3 came out last year, Volume 4 last month. The combined price is £125 for eleven discs. For that you get six different live versions of "Big Yellow Taxi" which is probably at least five more than anyone needs.
That is not to say there isn't some good stuff tucked away in there. I really enjoyed the early demos of songs that ended up on "Hissing Of Summer Lawns" and "Hejira", my favourite Joni albums along with "Blue". I would happily buy a double album with just them on (which is sort of what I ended up doing by downloading the individual tracks).
Here are a couple of those demos, one each from Volumes 3 and 4 and one each from the two aforementioned albums, with the title track of "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter" added on - it seems that it was originally envisaged as a medley with "Coyote".
... with an extra special treat just for George. After a less than stellar solo career as Andy Andres, which included a German language version of the Paul Evans smash, young Andreas Lebbing became the lead singer of top pop act Wind under his real name.
The Wind of change paid off for him. In 1987 they took "Lass die sonne in dein herz" to second place in Eurovision behind Johnny Logan. Feast your eyes on the lady with the keytar and the enormous shoulder pads of the man playing the steel drums. And, yes, that is indeed one half of the future Milli Vanilli showing he could mime guitar playing as well as he could mime singing.
Wind had previously finished second in 1985, and remain the only act to finish second twice, but that was before Andreas joined them.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. And that man is King Jammy.
Just as the world seems on the verge of collapsing, the great man comes riding to the rescue with a brand new album called "King Jammy's Unites The Nation With Dub". Having successfully ended the pandemic with his 2022 album "King Jammy Destroys The Virus With Dub" he will be hoping to repeat the trick with this one.
The album comes out this Friday. Vinyl copies are already available for pre-order. There's no sign of the digital version yet but no doubt it will be up on his Bandcamp page in time for Bandcamp Friday next week.
The good folks at Greensleeves very kindly sent me an advance copy in the mistaken belief that I am some sort of mover and shaker (I'm not but keep it quiet, I don't want them to find out). The first track below is a sneak preview of the new record. I have teamed it up with a couple of golden oldies.
According to the United Nations there are 54 countries in Africa, yet there will be 55 posts in this series. This is the reason why.
The territory known as Western Sahara is the one remaining colony in Africa. Initially occupied by Spain in the 1880s, the Spanish handed it over to Morocco in 1975. It has been blocking independence ever since - the Sahrawi people are still waiting for the referendum that was meant to take place in 1992 - despite political pressure and the military efforts of the Polisario Front, who control about 30% of the territory.
Although only two countries have ever recognised Morocco's claim to Western Sahara, one of them being the US under the previous Trump presidency, there is no sign that the Sahrawi people will get the self-determination they want any time soon. Bad news for the estimated 150,000 Sahrawi (almost 40% of them) living in refugee camps in Algeria, many of them since the 1970s.
Despite the small population and the difficult conditions in which they live the Sahrawi have produced some amazing music. None more so than the mighty Mariem Hassan, one of best female singers I've ever heard and someone I have raved about many times on these pages. She only recorded three solo albums before her premature death from cancer in 2015. Today's selection comes from her third and final album " El Aaiun Egdat".
Before going solo Mariem had spent many years as the lead singer of El Wali who were essentially the Polisario Front house band and through whose ranks many fine singers have passed. A few years ago the always excellent Sahel Sounds reissued their 1994 album "Tiris". It really is a must have.
The line-up of El Wali that recorded that album does not include either Mariem Hassan or Dighya Moh-Salem, who also sang with them for a while. These days she lives in exile in Paris and fronts her own band. Their album "Leflij" came out just last month. Hot off the press, here is their tribute to the man who brought you such hits as "Boombastic" and "It Wasn't Me".
Group Doueh hail from the port city of Dakhla. Led by guitarist Salmou "Doueh" Bamaar with various friends and family members in tow, I saw them live in 2011 and found it a bit much at the time but have warmed to them since. They are not your typical desert blues band, more of a desert blues band that for some obscure reason has chosen "I Looked Up" era Incredible String Band as its blueprint. See what you make of this track from their 2012 album "Beatte Harab".
For a more conventional desert blues sound you could do a lot worse than give a listen to Aziza Brahim. Born in one of the Algerian refugee camps in the 1970s but now based in Spain. Her latest album "Majwa" came out in March this year but this track comes from her 2016 record "Abbar el Hamada".
Slipping smoothly into the MRV slot are Tiris, an eight-piece ensemble formed following a talent competition in the refugee camps in 2005 (making them the Sahrawi One Direction or something). Their debut - and possibly only - album "Sandtracks" came out a couple of years later. While not primarily a reggae band, the album does include the splendid Saharan skank of "Aid Istiqal".
On the last two Sundays just past I have been to see two of my favourite songwriters in two very different venues.
The Sunday before last found me and Mr F heading up west to the la de da London Palladium to enjoy an evening in the company of the great Ron Sexsmith. Ron has been over recording his latest album at Abbey Road and fixed up a few gigs as part of an extended 60th birthday tour.
The Palladium being a proper theatre we were treated to two sets, which gave Ron more time to play and the chance to look beyond the normal repertoire. The result was a truly career-spanning selection, from a song he wrote when he and the drummer met while working in a courier company 40 years ago that they first played at the office Xmas party right up to a song that is lined up to be on the new album.
With the added bonus of a brief guest appearance by Nick Lowe - as you can see in this photo if you peer hard enough - an excellent evening was had by all.
It was another excellent evening last Sunday. This time it was a small basement under a pub in Stoke Newington that in a previous life had been The Drop of Andrew Weatherall fame. In an even earlier life was one I used to visit regularly in the late 1980s and early 1990s when I lived round the corner. In those days they put on the occasional gig upstairs, the basement still being used to store proper beer then.
The star of the show on this occasion was the magnificent Amy Rigby who brought along her own Live Stiffs Tour alumni in the form of bass player and husband Wreckless Eric (not pictured so you'll have to take my word for it this time).
Amy has recently released a new album called "Hang In There With Me" so the set featured quite a few tracks from that mixed in with some old favourites, a version of "The Visitors" by ABBA which really needs to be recorded for posterity and a lovely tribute to her father who died last year.
Ron is now back home in Canada but Amy has gigs in Swansea, Bristol, Hastings and Nottingham between now and the end of the month. If you are in the area go along if you can, you'll enjoy yourselves.
Among the many highlights of their respective sets were songs about going back to their home town so we will leave you for now with them and a tune that Ron that played to remind us to try to stay optimistic despite all the nonsense at the moment.
When we were in Uganda earlier in the week I played you a funky track from a compilation album which goes by the snappy title of "Mr Bongo Record Club Volume 1". Here are a couple more that have another link as well.
Amazones de Guinee were an all-female group formed by members of the Guinean military. "Samba" was recorded in Paris in 1983 and appears on their album "Au Coeur De Paris".
The samba is a musical form associated with Brazil, which is where we will find Alipio Martins with his tale of the fanged fish that might give you a nasty nip if you were foolish enough to dip your toe in the waters of the Amazon.
And if that wasn't enough there's a samba, a piranha and another river for you in the videos.
And we have reached Uganda. Musically it used to be seen as a bit of a backwater compared to its some of its neighbours like DR Congo and Kenya, but that has changed over the last ten years or so. After the emergence of Eddy Kenzo as a major pan-African star it is currently a bit of a pop powerhouse.
It is also a country where popular music and politics are inextricably linked. Earlier this year Eddy married the Energy Minister - in UK terms think Ed Miliband weds Dua Lipa - and was appointed an advisor to long-running president (and not very nice man) Yoweri Museveni.
This puts him firmly on the opposite side to fellow big name Bobi Wine who has been imprisoned and beaten up by government forces on a depressingly regular basis since he decided to stand against Museveni in the 2021 elections. A film made about his presidential campaign was nominated for an Oscar this year.
That is enough politics, let's crack on with the music. We will start with the oldest Ugandan track I have. It is a funky instrumental from 1974 by The Rwenzori's, named after the mountain range where many of the members came from. You can find it on Mr Bongo's "Record Club Volume 1" compilation.
One of the first popular music styles indigenous to Uganda was kadongo kamu which means 'one little guitar'. Originating back in the 1960s it was kept alive during the difficult Idi Amin years largely through the efforts of one man, Peterson T. Mutebi. You can read all about him here, and listen to Part 2 of the title track of his 1982 album below.
These days kadongo kamu has largely faded from view and this century the dominant form of popular music has been faster and shinier and heavily influenced by dancehall and afrobeat. There is still plenty of good stuff though as the next two selections show.
Jeff Korondo has been active since the late 1990s and as well as his music career he is the founder of an NGO called Music For Peace. This track is from 2003. I have not been able to find out any information about Stipper Man's humanitarian activities (or anything else about him) but he makes a jolly noise, as this tune from 2018 shows.
Readers with long memories and impeccable taste may remember me raving about an album called "Electro Acholi Kaboom From Northern Uganda" a couple of years ago. It featured lots of souped up versions of traditional acholi courtship songs and reminded me a lot of our own dear Tsonga Disco.
That album seems to be unavailable now but you can still get hold of a collection by Otim Alpha who was featured on it and was one of the pioneers of the scene. His album was released by the excellent Nyege Nyege Tapes label based in Kampala whose catalogue is worth checking out.
There is plenty of very good 'conventional' reggae from Uganda that I could have chosen for the MAR slot but I could not resist the charms of the Entebbe Eek-A-Mouse himself, Mr. Mankwa. Described as "a Ugandan Gibberish Dancehall Artist from the 90s" on the blurb for his "Saba Saba Sounds" EP, he is also the subject of a three-part documentary you can find on YouTube.
Eddy Kenzo may have fallen in with a bad crowd of late but his string of hits from 2014 still put a smile on my face when I hear them, so we'll start off the videos with the song that made his name. In the interest of balance Bobi Wine appears as well.
Normally in this series we finish off with a Mandatory Reggae Version (MRV) of whichever song it is we are featuring - and we will do today. But I think this is the first time that the song in question has itself been a reggae standard. I'm talking about "Johnny Too Bad".
The original version of the song was by The Slickers, whose members Derrick Crooks and Winston Bailey were among the co-writers. It came out in 1970 but only really attracted attention outside Jamaica when it was included on the soundtrack album for "The Harder They Come" a couple of years later.
As for the covers, we start with a couple of men who are not exactly averse to a bit of self-mythologising. You can see why the song might appeal to them. John Martyn included it on his 1980 album "Grace and Danger", but this is an alternative take found on the "Best of the Island Years" box set. Steve Earle put it out as a single in 1997. He was backed by The V-Roys, whose main man Scott Miller went on to do good things as a solo artist.
Obviously the punks have had a bash at the song. I have resisted the charms of the Anti-Nowhere League version to bring you this take by D.O.A., one of the original North American hardcore punk bands who have been around in one form or another since 1978. This is from their 2015 album "Hard Rain Falling". Their lead singer Joey Shithead is now the model of respectability and serves as a city councillor in his home town in Canada (fortunately under his real name).
Following D.O.A. we have The Silencers. Not as I mistakenly thought when I bought it the Scottish band of that name who had a degree of success in the late 1980s but an earlier outfit from Pittsburgh whose 1980 album "Rock 'n Roll Enforcers" includes this version. Rol may wish to note for future reference that Discogs lists eight bands called The Silencers.
We get a bit more mellow next with the mighty Taj Mahal, who covered the song of his 1974 album "Mo' Roots". There are a handful of reggae covers on that album and Aston 'Family Man' Barrett pops up on piano.
Even mellower is Desoto, one of several pseudonyms used by Canada's own Michael Phillips. He has kindly made his back catalogue available on Bandcamp on a 'name your own price' basis. This comes from a very good covers album "Musicians Are Cowards", originally released in 2005 and worth spending some money on.
Next we have a ragged but righteous version by Alex Chilton, released posthumously by Fat Possum on a fine 2020 compilation called "Memphis Rent Party". You can buy it for a bargain $7 on Bandcamp, then head to Discogs to find out who all the performers are.
Just because "Johnny Too Bad" is a reggae song doesn't mean we can skip the MRV. After all, The Slickers' recording is the original not a cover. As you can imagine there are no shortage of options to choose from so I've upped it to two MRVs.
The first is by Neville Staple, which was tagged on to a reissue of his 2002 album "Ska Au Go Go" as a bonus track. The second is the cream of the crop. It is by the great Bunny Wailer and it comes from his 1977 album "Protest". "Protest" is one of my favourite albums of all time. I would say this track is one of the highlights, but they are all highlights.
"They Crowned An Idiot King" was written about George W Bush. 'Idiot' isn't really adequate in this instance but the general point applies. Apart from that I have nothing to add to the wise words of my friend Mr. Dogg.
Cody ChesnuTT made two great soul albums ten years apart. The first was the modestly titled "The Headphone Masterpiece" which came out in 2002. It was a reasonable claim. We had to wait another ten years for the next masterpiece, "Landing On A Hundred". That is the one today's selections come from.
CC - as his friends used to call him until that name was trademarked by a famously litigious Caledonian blogger - released his third album "My Love Divine Degree" in 2017 but hasn't been heard of since. Whatever he is up to I hope he is keeping well.
Other Chesnut(t)s are available. Jerry only had one T and didn't feel the need to capitalise it, but he wrote three classic songs. Well two classic songs and one that has the same name as a classic Leiber and Stoller song, both of which were performed by that Elvis (hence my confusion). Many thanks to Spence for pointing out my error.
My friend Mano has recently shared some new Tsonga Disco albums with me (his finger is much more firmly on the pulse of that particular scene than mine is these days).
Among them is "Khuzani", the latest album by one Florah N'wa Chauke. Florah is a member of the Chauke clan, who are preeminent when it comes to traditional Tsonga music and who have made a big splash on the disco scene. Headed by the mighty Thomas Chauke, we have also featured Themba, Conny, Hammy, G.T. and Patson here in the past.
"Khuzani" is a worthy addition to the Chauke canon, featuring as it does contributions from the Shangaan Svengali Joe Shirimani and his little brother Prince Rhangani. Neither appear on this track from the album, which was selected purely because the title prompted the post.
Earlier this year the nice people in Promoland kindly sent me a copy of "The Three Times", an album by Norwegian band Flight Mode. It might be that Florah's song is a tribute either to them or to the Swiss record label of the same name, although perhaps unlikely.
To provide ballast I have added two top quality tunes starting with the word flight. That's how the magic works folks.
Just a quick one today. You know how it is - things to do, people to see, zeitgeists to surf.
Uniao Black were a 13 strong groove machine that came storming out of Rio with a self-titled album in 1977 determined to take over the world. They didn't, but they should've.
The gang disbanded the year after the album came out but some of the original members got back together in 2004 (now with a Banda in front of their name). They released a second album in 2006 before retreating again.
I thought they might have done some videos for the second album but I can't find any. So instead we bring you their local rivals Banda Black Rio from 1981. Never mind the video quality, dig the sound.
We have made it to Tunisia, a country I will be visiting for the first time in real life in January. I have a bit of free time and Tunis is only three hours flying time from London, so I thought I would pop over and have a nose around.
The music we have for you today fits the description "interesting and varied". It has taken a fair bit of digging to find the variety, as most of the Tunisian music available on Bandcamp and the like is death metal and rather dull electronica. But I think it was worth it.
We will commence proceedings with a track from the only Tunisian CD in my collection, "Sans Visa" by Ouled Jouini. They were formed in 1983 under the leadership of Farhat Jouini and this album came out in 2005.
Beyond that I don't have much to tell you - the sleevenotes on the CD are so minimal they don't even name the other members of the band. There is no sign of any new music since 2005 but they pop up on lots of 'Tunisian Hits of the 1990s' compilations, so my guess is that was when they were in their pomp.
Perhaps the most interesting of today's artists is Badiâa Bouhrizi, who also performs as Neysatu (in which capacity she contributed to "Adrian Sherwood Presents: Dub No Frontiers", one of my favourite albums of 2022, and previously to the On-U compilation "Pay It All Back Vol 7"). She describes her style as “the new sound of Northern Africa”, and as a mixture of local traditional and classical Arabic music with a touch of jazz, funk, neo-soul, electronica and reggae.
The chosen track comes from her album "KahruMusiqa", the first music she has released under her own name. Although the album only came out last year it is actually a collection of home recordings she made in the 2000s. Many of the tracks are settings of poems by various female Arab writers.
Another distinctive but very different female voice next. Mara'a Borkan are a band. Their name means Volcano Woman. That's all I've got. They make a blistering racket though and the singer will knock your socks off. This track is on one of two releases put out through 'a world divided' (all trendy lower case) in 2020, although the band had previously released it themselves in 2015.
You may feel in the need of something a bit smoother after that to calm you down. I am happy to oblige with this groovy tune from Carthago, a band formed in the late 1970s when two of the funkiest combos in old Tunis town (Marhaba Band and the oddly named Dalton) teamed up to ride the disco wave. You can find this on an EP issued by the Habibi Funk label, whose catalogue has featured many times already on the tour.
Bringing the funkiness forward in time is Ammar 808, aka Sofyann Ben Youssef. He was apparently "the sonic mastermind behind the Tunisian sensation Bargou 08" (no, me neither). In 2018 he teamed up with a few singers from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia with the intention of giving traditional North African music a boot up the arse. The resulting album was called "Maghreb United" and the featured vocalist on this track is his fellow Tunisian Chen Hassan Tej.
When we were in Tanzania recently we kicked off the videos with a lad from Zanzibar who had a fair bit of success after moving to England and changing his name. Following that example, we commence today with the former Elli Robert Fitoussi, all the way from Menzel Bourguiba.
Heavenly shades of night are falling. Its Twinkle Time. Out of the mist Norman Grant's voice is calling. Its Twinkle Time.
Come with me way back to 1983 to enjoy a couple of tracks from The Twinkle Brothers album "Burden Bearers". By this point the original band of brothers were no more and it was Mr. Grant with some hired hands. But what hands they were - Flabba Holt, Style Scott, Steely in his pre-Cleevie days, Dean Fraser, The Mad Professor and more. No wonder the record sounds so good.
New music alert. There are a couple of records released this week that have been getting heavy rotation on my metaphorical turntable since I was sent them by the nice folks in Promoland a few weeks back.
First up is "Easygoing", the new album by one Skinny Dyck (his real name is Ryan Dyck so I guess he selected the Skinny sobriquet to preempt the obvious jokes). Mr Dyck is a countryish singer from Alberta who makes a charming sound. The album comes out today. Start with "Can't Change The Colour Of Your Eyes" (see below) and work out from there.
The other is "Swimming", the lead single and title track of the upcoming album by Sam Moss. The album itself is not released until early next year but the single came out on Tuesday. In my humble opinion it does not fully prepare you for quite how good the album is. It is a magical thing. One for any fans of Bonny Light Horseman and early Hiss Golden Messenger.
To encourage you to investigate their respective back catalogues as well as the new records here is a track apiece from Skinny's "Palace Waiting" (2022) and Sam's "Neon" (2018).
And there is no better place to start than with one of the hottest bands around, one that I have raved about in these pages previously - Nana Benz do Togo. I was completely blown away by their debut album "Ago" when I discovered it while visiting Paris last year, and then again when I saw them live in London back in the summer. That evening they closed their set with this track and sent us all off smiling.
Next we go back in time to meet Bella Bellow, a sweet-voiced songbird whose surname is the opposite of onomatopoeia (I don't know whether there is a word for that but Rol probably does). You will find absolutely no bellowing on this single from the late 1960s.
Bella's light shone briefly but brightly, becoming a household name all across West Africa and playing at venues like the Paris Olympia and the Maracana Stadium in Rio before tragically dying in a car crash in 1973 aged just 28.
Much less celebrated at the time were Orchestre Abass, who released a couple of blistering singles in 1972 and then promptly disappeared from view. They remained hidden until a few years ago when the good folks at Analog Africa did some high quality crate-digging and put out all their known recordings on "De Bassari Togo". There is plenty of bellowing on this one.
We will leap ahead to the present day to meet up with Brussels based Togolese trumpeter and composer Daniel Dzidzonu and his funky band. This is the opening track from his 2019 "Walls Of Wonder" album which also includes his tribute to Hugh Masekela, a video of which you can find tucked away in the bottom corner of his website.
A little photography exhibition for you today. It's not a patch on any of JM's marvellous monthly spectaculars, but like them it does have a theme.
During the course of my travels for international espionage unspecified work and pleasure I have been lucky enough to stay in rooms that have views that might politely be described as unconventionally attractive. About ten years ago I started photographing them and posting them all on social media.
Last month I was in Belfast and racked up the 100th view of the series, so I thought I would mark the milestone by sharing some with you. We'll start with the view that brought up the century and follow it with some personal favourites from Paris, Guimaraes and Genoa respectively.
In the unlikely event you want to admire all 100 (now 101) you can find them over at Flickr.
Tucked away in the bowels of Wednesday's post was a reference to a visit I paid to Flashback Records in London's fashionable Essex Road last weekend.
As well as the album by Hukwe Zawose that I featured then I also found two albums by Little Axe in the bargain bin. Based on the assumption that any album on On-U is worth risking £1 on I snapped them up.
The albums in question were "The Wolf That House Built" (1994) and "Hard Grind" (2002). Here is a track from each of them.
My original plan for the videos was to have two videos of songs about axe-wielding, Bob Marley's "Small Axe" representing the supporters and Baris Manco's "Nick The Chopper" the opponents. Baris duly delivered.
But I couldn't find any videos of Bob doing "Small Axe" so I tried looking for the Twinkle Brothers' "Axeman" instead. Again no luck but bizarrely YouTube's algorithm selected the second video below as the fifth best match. And who am I to argue with the algorithms.
Its T time on our tour. T for Tanzania to be precise.
We have had some highs and lows on the odyssey but none to match Tanzania which has the distinction of being the site of Africa's highest and lowest points (the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro and the floor of Lake Tanganyika respectively). And there are lots of good things in between.
Those good things include many groovy tunes. The music of Tanzania has perhaps tended to be a bit overshadowed by that of its neighbours DR Congo, Kenya and Zambia, but it deserves to be heard. So let's crack on!
We will start with the greatest band that never was, or at least the greatest name for a band that never was. Back in 1975 the Vijana Jazz Band were riding high in the charts and were very keen to get their new material on the market, but that enthusiasm was not shared by their record company who wanted to finish milking the current singles first.
So the band popped over to Nairobi, recorded some tracks and found someone who was able to persuade the record company it was a new band and get the record released that way. The name of that imaginary band? Why, Koka Koka Sex Battalion, of course. You can find the Sex Battalion tracks plus other Vijana Jazz Band releases on this 2011 Sterns compilation.
You will have spotted that the Battalion boys were heavily influenced by the rumba rhythms rolling over the border from DRC. The same is true for many other Tanzanian bands from the 1970s to the present day. One such example is Twanga Pepeta International (sometimes to be seen without the International and sometimes called the African Stars Band, making them almost as confusing as the Sex Battalion). Formed in 1994, the shiny little number is from their 2006 album "Password".
Not everyone was lured by the shimmering guitar sound back then in the 1970s though. Some like Sunburst looked further west and south, taking their inspiration from the funky sounds emanating out of Nigeria etc and the Zambian rock scene.
They were only around for a few years but made some great music in that time. In 2016 Strut records released their complete recordings on a compilation called "Ave Africa". The track I have chosen was originally a B-side in 1973. Those were the days when they still had proper B-sides.
All the acts featured so far hail from mainland Tanzania, so we should probably pop over to Zanzibar to see what is happening there. Well, Siti Muharam for one, whose 2020 album "Siti Of Unguja" is worth buying for the cover alone. Her great-grandmother, Siti Binti Saad, was the first East African singer to be recorded nearly 100 years ago and was credited with popularising taarab music. Siti Muharam made this album to help to preserve her legacy and does so magnificently.
Sticking with current female performers we follow that with the title track from "Maisha", the debut album from the Zawose Queens released last year. The Queens are sisters Pendo and Leah Zawose and this is their take on the traditional polyrhythms and polyphonic singing of the Gogo people based mainly in the Dodola region of the country. I refuse to bow to demands to refer to them as Gogo girls.
Like Siti Muharam, the Queens have an impressive musical lineage. Their late grandfather was Hukwe Zawose, the most famous exponent of the Gogo musical tradition. I had not originally planned to include him in this post, but when I paid a visit to Flashback Records in Islington last weekend I found a copy of his album "Chibite" in the bargain bin. I took it as a sign.
"Chibite" came out in 1996 on Real World and is pretty much a one man show. Dr Zawose handles vocals, thumb piano, fiddle, flute and ankle bells and is helped out only by Charles Zawose (who I think is his son) on harmonies and all-important second thumb piano.
And so to the MAR slot. This time it goes to dAbo Mtanzania. I am not sure why he chooses to capitalise the A - perhaps he was named after former Manfred Mann singer Mike d'Abo? Whatever the reason, here is is with a track from last year's "Undisputed" album.
We will start off the videos with one of the more obscure Tanzanian performers after which I will try to pander to your more populist tastes. So please all join me in giving a warm 27 Leggies welcome to Farrokh Bulsara from Stone Town in Zanzibar.
The tedium of real life work has been draining my creativity of late. So in the absence of any original thought I decided to jump on the Monday's Long Song bandwagon.
To give things a slight twist I have gone to both ends of the spectrum. Here, then, are the longest and shortest songs currently on my iTunes. Combined they clock in an just under half and hour, although the Bonzos only contribute 2% of the total.
The credit for inspiring today's cornucopia of cool sounds goes to that crazy cat from the Cotswolds, Khayem.
Last Friday being Bandcamp Friday he very thoughtfully provided links to a selection of reggae releases that were available to download for free. I had some of them already but diligently checked out the others.
One of these was "Let's Make Waves", a truly splendid EP by an outfit called Creation Rockers. Originally released in 2012 on the defunct Springline label, it was reissued in 2022 with some extra tracks by the Dubphonic label in Cyprus. I have gone with the title track but could have picked pretty much any one of them.
I have not been able to find anything else by Creation Rockers but some international man of mystery style sleuthing - i.e. reading the blurb - revealed that the leading lights were Brad Τurner from the duo Foshan Roots and Alan Blizzard aka Yabass. So here is something from each of them.
There are several Foshan Roots recordings on Bandcamp. This track comes from their album "Sky Warrior Dub", another Dubphonic reissue and another that is available to download for free. Brad now goes by the name of The Manor and churns out reggae and ska releases on a regular basis from his studio in swinging East London.
As for Yabass, he has now extended his name and has released a couple of records in recent years - "Year Zero Dubb" in 2020 and the 2023 single featured below.
A final shout out to the other members of Creation Rockers, Drummie Dan and Papa D, whoever and wherever they may be.
And we trundle on. We have crossed over the northern border of South Sudan into Sudan. When is was still a single country before the South gained independence in 2011 Sudan was the largest country in Africa. Even now it is third in size behind only Algeria and DR Congo. We are talking BIG.
Like its regional neighbours Ethiopia and Somalia, Sudan had a thriving music scene in the 1960s and 1970s which came to an end when the ruling regime banned fun and targeted musicians. In Sudan itself this process began in the early 1980s but the full effect was not felt until the introduction of Sharia law by President al-Bashir in 1989.
Things seem to have loosened up in recent years following al-Bashir's overthrow in 2019, but it seems that the only Sudanese music recorded during that thirty year period was in exile, and we will finish off with one such example. Before that we have four tracks from the golden age and two from the groovy new scene.
We will start with a couple of selections from an excellent compilation called "Two Niles To Sing A Melody", released on the Ostinato label in 2018. It is worth having any form but the CD comes with an informative booklet which describes the history of the golden age (and how it came to an end) and includes interviews with some of the featured musicians.
First up is the man considered to be the biggest musical star Sudan ever produced, Mohammed Wardi. Born in small village near the border with Egypt in 1932, he moved to Khartoum in the mid 1950s where he began his recording and performing career.
Mr Wardi went into exile in 1989 but returned home in 2002 where he remained until his death ten years later. This particular song, the title of which means "The Photo" in English, was recorded in 1970 and clocks in at just over nine minutes.
The other chosen track from "Two Niles To Sing A Melody" also dates from 1970. The title translates as "We Don't Know What To Say", which is appropriate as I don't know what to say about the man who performs it. I have found no information about Taj Makki, who doesn't even get a paragraph in the booklet. But the aural evidence suggests he knew how to knock out a cracking tune.
For our next two treats we move across to the ever reliable Habibi Funk label. And what treats they are. The first comes from Sharhabil Ahmed who according to the title the label has given to their collection of his vintage recordings is "The King of Sudanese Jazz". I am in no position to contradict them. Mr Ahmed was born a couple of years after Mohammed Wardi and their careers have some parallels, although Mr Ahmed never left Sudan and made his living as an illustrator during the prohibition.
Sharhabil Ahmed's wife Zakia Abu Gassim Abu Bakr played in his band and was Sudan's first professional female guitarist. I don't know whether she is any relation to Saif Abu Bakr, the singer with our next act The Scorpions. I could have asked him myself on Saturday just gone when he played up the road in Hackney. Unfortunately the first I knew about it was when I Googled him for this post on Sunday. So I just had to content myself with listening to their great 1980s album "Jazz, Jazz, Jazz".
You can read all about Noori, his band and the history and culture of the Beja people here. As for Jantra he apparently "cuts a mysterious figure, a rather unknown quantity even in Sudan, outside of the select few circles which have granted him cult status to perform at their humble gatherings or at street parties far from the gaze of the wider world". But if you happen to find yourself in one of the towns near the Sudan-Ethiopia border keep your eyes peeled for a man with a blue Yamaha keyboard, that might be him.
Finally in the MAR slot we have one of the exiles I mentioned back at the start. Rasha (Rasha Sheikh Eldin to give her her full name) is a musician and actress from Omdurman who emigrated to Spain in the early 1990s. This jaunty little number comes from her album "Let Me Be", released in 2000.
We also have some recent MAR in the final video. The first three videos hail from the golden age and what they lack in high visual quality they more than make up for in charm.
After Friday's attempt to turn a missing Jimmy Reed CD into the subject of a blues song, comments from esteemed readers C and Rol reminded me that I had never followed up on a promise I made to them last year.
That promise was to dig out a demo of "Bedwetter Blues", a previously unreleased future classic from the early 1980s - one might even call it a sleeper hit. With apologies for the delay, I am pleased finally to be able to honour my promise. C and Rol may be less pleased. Further apologies for the poor sound quality.
You can find out more about A Cuddly Pair and how they narrowly missed stardom in my post from July last year. As for the song itself, the singer (who also wrote the song) has asked me to emphasise that the lyrics are not in any way autobiographical.
It seemed appropriate to team "Bedwetter Blues" with another number from the early 1980s. This one came out on Sugar Hill Records in 1983 and may actually be the more ludicrous of the two.
In the words of Waterbed Kev, I can't hold it back, the paint is flowing over...
You can imagine how pleased I was to pick up something billed as "four Jimmy Reed albums on two CDs" as part of one of the regular '3 for £1' offers in our local Buddhist bookshop. But...
[Note to readers: please insert "da da da dum" or other blues riff as appropriate when reading the next bit, and make sure you have your harmonica ready so you can do a solo at the end].
When I woke up this morning/ and I opened up the case/ one CD was missing/ I had tears all down my face.
Now I only had two albums/ When I was expecting four/ Well I'm happy with what I got/ but I'm still left wanting more.
[Harmonica solo]
Well I took myself down to the river, as you do in these circumstances, and after staring into its murky depths for a while a dawning realisation crept over me that two Jimmy Reed albums for 33p is still a pretty good deal, especially when they contain such much-covered classics as "Big Boss Man" and "Baby What You Want Me To Do".
The albums in question are "Rockin' With Reed" (1959) and "Found Love" (1960), and here is a big boffo tune from both of them.
Last Sunday night found me at La Botanique in Brussels. It also found Les Deuxluxes there. This was not a coincidence.
Les Deuxluxes are a hard-rocking male-female duo that comprises Anna Frances Meyer on vocals, guitar and occasional flute and Etienne Barry on guitars and drums (simultaneously - M. Barry operates the drum kit with his feet, having presumably decided that was easier than trying to play the guitar that way). Between them they put on a cracking show.
To keep things nice and simple I have opted for the title tracks of their two albums to date in the audio section. They were released in 2016 and 2020 respectively and you can find them both on Bandcamp. You might want to pay Les Deuxluxes a visit there on Friday. And if they ever pay your town a visit you should go along.
I recently picked up a copy of Warren Zevon's "Learning To Flinch" for next to nothing. Despite being a fan for many years - as I know some of our regular readers are as well - for some reason this album has never previously crossed my path. So I snapped it up.
Released in 1993, "Learning To Flinch" was Mr Zevon's second live album. But unlike 1980's "Stand In The Fire" on which he and band rocked their socks off, on this album it is just the great man on his own recorded at assorted venues in the US, UK, Europe and Australia during 1992.
Among the 17 tracks were three new songs. Two of them subsequently popped up again on "Mutineer" in 1995, but the other never made it on to a studio album. So obviously that has to be the first pick.
For the other selection, how about an 11 minute version of one of the best songs ever written (recorded appropriately in Norway, home of the headless gunner himself)?
The opening track on "Learning To Flinch" is a suitably splendid version of "Splendid Isolation". Here is another one from around the same time on which Mr Z is accompanied by someone called Neil Young (no, I've no idea either). To that I've added two more clips from the same concert, including a cover version I had not expected to find.
I'm away working for a few days at the start of next week. See you on my return.
Welcome aboard, everyone, as the next leg of our odyssey takes us to South Sudan. After spending time here we will head on to its northern neighbour Sudan. The two were a single country until 2011 when 98% of he population of what is now South Sudan voted for independence.
South Sudan is the world's youngest officially recognised independent country, becoming a teenager back in July this year. Its early years have been troublesome with civil war, famine and many other challenges. Let us hope things improve for its citizens as it approaches adulthood.
When preparing this post I did some research to try to identify artists from previous generations born in Juba or the other towns and cities in South Sudan, but failed dismally. So all today's tunes date from the last 15 years or so.
We'll start with Mary Boyoi, who spent part of the 1990s in refugee camps in Ethiopia as a result of the civil war in Sudan, before returning home in the 2000s to undertake relief work and become a campaigner for independence.In 2009 she released "Election Jai" ("the elections are coming") and actually stood as a candidate herself.
Mary is still recording and judging by some of the videos on her YouTube channel has reinvented herself as a bit of a saucepot in recent years. Whether this has helped or hindered her political career I don't know.
Next up is Emmanuel Jal, probably the best known of today's artists. Like many of those featured in earlier legs of the journey his life story is quite extraordinary. He was a child soldier from the age of eight before being adopted by a British aid worker and smuggled out of the country to Kenya where he was educated.
It was in Kenya that he began his recording career in 2004 and he has gone on to enjoy a degree of global success, helped in part by being the subject of a documentary called "War Child" in 2008. Today's selection comes from an EP released in 2010 and was included on a 2012 album called "Sudan Votes Music Hopes Remixes" in 2012, which is were I found it. I can also recommend "Ceasefire", his collaboration with Adbel Gadir Salim, a renowned oud player from the north.
Ajak Kwai's biography starts in the same way as Mary and Emmanuel's, being displaced because of the civil war. She spent eight years in Egypt where she started performing before emigrating to Australia around the turn of the century. I have chosen a track from her 2008 album "Come Together". You can find that and her 2021 EP "Red Sands" on Bandcamp.
Gordon Koang is another South Sudanese who emigrated to Australia, albeit more recently. He happened to be there in 2013 putting on some shows for the local expats when renewed conflict broke out back home and he applied for refugee status. His music is based on the traditional music of the Nuer people. This song comes from his 2020 album "Unity".
All of which brings us to John Frog. No relation to Kermit, Crazy or the members of Paul McCartney's chorus, he was given the nickname "aguek" (meaning frog) by his parents due to him being a breech birth baby. He burst onto the scene in 2018 with "Guondo Sakit", jumping up to the top of the charts across East Africa (you know, like what a frog would do). I can do no better than bring you the hit.
We finish, as is only right and proper, with our far-famed Mandatory African Reggae slot. Barnabus Samuel is a bit of a polymath, describing himself as an artist, songwriter, activist, author, humanitarian and entrepreneur. I can't vouch for his full range of skills but his music is pretty decent. You can find several of his records on Bandcamp. This track is on "Sambara" released in 2021.
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.
