I treated myself to a day out in Canterbury earlier in the week and very nice it was too. A potter around the town, a stroll along the Stour. There was a cricket match on but I only made it as far as The Cricketers.
The cathedral was the highlight as always, it really is spectacular with a huge amount of history attached. The £20 entry fee might suggest that Jesus' line about the rich finding it harder than the poor to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven was a load of guff, but to be fair each ticket is valid for a year. When I left I gave mine to the first impoverished wretch I saw.
Many years ago, roughly midway between Chaucer and today, there used to be a scene in Canterbury. Here is a playlist featuring some selected scenesters. True to the spirit of the typical Scene output, it goes on way too long and some of the fiddlier bits could happily have been cut out completely.
I have been listening to Yama Warashi a fair bit recently and I thought you might like to as well.
Yama Warashi means mountain spirit in Japanese and it is the nom de plume of Yoshino Shigihara, a musician and illustrator who describes her sound as a mixture of free jazz and African music with a slice of electric psychedelia (and who am I to tell her otherwise).
Although now based back in Japan most of Yoshino's records to date were made while living in the UK, first in Bristol and then London. In 2022 I was lucky enough to see her live in London supporting Bas Jan. Quite a line-up.
She seems to have a thing about the moon. Here is one track apiece from "Moon Zero", "Moon Egg" (both 2016), "Boiled Moon" (2018) and "Crispy Moon" (2022). You can find all of those albums and more on her Bandcamp site.
Yoshino's hardly the only musician with a thing about the moon. It is after all one of the lyrical staples of popular music as these examples show. The first is sublime, the others marginally less so.
For this edition of Single Song Sunday I've chosen a song that has been covered much less frequently than most of those that we have featured previously. Some of them had 100+ versions knocking about. For this one the good folks at Single Song Sunday have only been able to verify nine. Seven of those feature here, and I've found a couple of others for you.
The song in question is "Thin Line Between Love And Hate", written in 1971 by the Poindexter brothers, Richard and Robert (not Buster), and Robert's wife Jackie Members. The Poindexters were New York based writers and producers who had a licensing agreement with Atlantic. Jimi Hendrix was a backing musician on some of their early releases in the mid-1960s.
"Thin Line Between Love And Hate" was written specifically as a launch pad for the newly formed Persuaders. It succeeded admirably, making it all the way to #15 in the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971 and topping the R 'n B charts. For me it is still the pick of the bunch.
It was quickly covered twice the following year, one being by The Lost Generation (we will come to the other one later). Then there seems to have a bit of a lull until 1984 when The Pretenders' version rocketed to #49 in the UK and #83 in the US.
We then had to wait another decade for a sudden rash of covers in the mid-1990s - Annie Lennox in 1995 and Sly, Slick & Wicked (on a live album) and H-Town both in 1996. The latter two are relegated to the videos - one is decent, the other is not.
Then there was another decade long gap until the mysterious Donald McCollum popped up in 2008. The single came out on a German label called Sundae Soul that was active between 2006 and 2016. Quite a lot of the singles it released were reissues by American artists like Barbara Lewis, so whether Donald's original recording dates from 2008 I have no idea.
Which brings us back to the other cover version from 1972, and probably my favourite apart from the original. Filling the MRV quota this time out we are delighted to present the late great B.B. Seaton. There is some extra MRV in the videos for you fanatics.
Earlier in the week I was at London's fashionable Wallace Collection for a panel discussion and a peek at the current Grayson Perry exhibition.
The eminent art guru C has already reviewed the exhibition over at her place, and if it had not been for that review I would not have found out about the panel discussion. So many thanks C.
The discussion was titled 'Visions and Voices: Madge Gill and Outsider Art'. I am a big fan of the East London artist Madge Gill, as is Mr Perry it seems as he has included a few of her works in his exhibition, and that was the main attraction for me.
After an unpromising introduction by the moderator that was full of art jargon like 'intersectional' and 'liminal' it turned into an interesting chat. As well as talking about Madge Gill's life and work - both extraordinary - there was a discussion about whether there is such a thing as 'outsider art'.
The general view of the panel was that it is an outdated and unhelpful term. As one of the panellists said, the artists who get labelled that way are all genuinely unique so trying to pigeonhole them and define them as one single group makes no sense. There is also a distinct whiff of 'not one of us' about it on the part of the establishment.
It reminded me of the dreadful phrase 'world music' which fortunately seems to have fallen out of favour. The idea that all the amazing and varied music made outside Europe and North America could be bundled together and treated as one genre always seemed misguided and - even if well-intended - slightly racist to me.
Enough of my right on rantings. Here are some outsiders and some art.
The Numero Group has been running a series called 'Eccentric Soul' for the best part of 25 years now. Focused firmly on the more obscure soul labels and artists there have been over 40 releases, with the latest due out in a few weeks.
Back in 2012 they decided to mark the tenth year of the series with a jumbo 88 track compilation. They named it "Eccentric Soul: Omnibus". Here are just three of the many highlights.
Our third stop of our tour of the Americas finds us in Bolivia. I found compiling this post more of a challenge that I expected. It is probably something to do with the high altitude.
Nearly thirty percent of the country is up in the Andes which in musical terms can mean only one thing - bloody p*np*pes (or zampoña as they are called locally). We can't avoid them completely but we'll keep them to a minimum and get them out of the way quickly.
El Milagro Verde come from Cochabamba, the City of Eternal Spring, and their mission is to "reinvent the wonder of Bolivian folklore with the catchy sounds of cumbia and the energetic power of electronic music". Whether they have succeeded you can decide for yourself by listening to this track from their 2018 album "Orbital Chicha".
For unadulterated indigenous music you really need to get Luzmila Carpio involved. She is a performer of Quechua heritage who has long been a champion of the American Indian peoples in Bolivia, with a distinctive voice and the best bird impressions since the late Percy Edwards. We've chosen a tune from "Yuyay Jap'ina Tapes", a selection of her 1990s recordings that were remastered and reissued in 2014.
There is nothing remotely indigenous about the next couple of numbers, both of which were clearly influenced by noises being made way further north. From 1966 we have Los Bonny Boys Hot's from La Paz - perhaps not the best Bolivian band of that era but definitely the one with the best name, which is really the only reason they are here. This comes from their EP "Shakes Con Los Bonny Boys Hot's".
Around the same time back in Cochabamba Grupo 606 were making a name from themselves as one of Bolivia's finest purveyors of garage rock. This cover of a Blue Magoos tune was released on an EP in either 1967 or 1969 depending on who you ask. They are not to be confused with 606 Group the progressive rock duo from Stockport.
We skip forward now to 1979 where we find Jorge Quiroga, formerly of Grupo 606's rivals Los Grillos, attempting to fuse American rock and Andean folk music with his new band Huinca. This track comes from their self-titled first EP and is considered by aficionados to be their finest moment. They are not to be confused with the metal band from Chile with the same name.
Enough living in the past. We will bring things relatively up to date with our final three tunes. The first two are representatives of the Sound Of Young Bolivia. Some of the influences are fairly obvious but both bands are pretty decent in their own right. Both also hail from Cochabamba. It is clearly the hub of the Bolivian music scene.
First up is Astronauto Suburbano, whose "Aneural" album came out in 2020, followed by Chicas Delfin with a track from their self-titled 2018 EP. Information on both bands ranges from scant to non-existent, but you can find them both on Instagram if you really want to.
We round things off with an example of what they refer to locally as reggae boliviano (MAR to you and me). It is by Illapa Reggae - there is a clue in his name - and it comes from his 2016 album "Illapa". Listen carefully during the early part of the instrumental break and you can detect some p*np*pes that prove it is genuinely Bolivian.
We will start the videos with Bolivia's most popular folk group and their best known tune. Los Kjarkas celebrate sixty years in the business this year and our still going strong - the current line-up played a couple of shows in London back in April as part of a short European tour.
They call the song "Llorando Se Fue" and the tune has been used as the basis for many other records since they released theirs in 1981. The best known version led to Los Kjarkas taking legal action for being ripped off without permission. Many of you will recognise it I am sure.
You may not recognise any of the songs in the other videos but you will no doubt be humming along with them all in no time.
Some records by people called Riley. That's the concept today folks. Its a simple one but then I'm a simple guy.
We start with four American musical styles including rock 'n roll from Billy Joe, some zydeco from Steve and his Playboys and naughty Agnes with her single entendre jumping blues. We follow that up with four reggae Rileys including the father and son team of Jimmy and Tarrus.
Today's post is dedicated to my old friend Steve Riley. He's not the Cajun one - he's no playboy and I doubt whether he would recognise a Mamou if one walked up to him and slapped him in the face - but he's a pretty cool dude in his own right.
The title of the CD I am featuring today is "America's Most Colorful Hillbilly Band Vol.1". The lack of the 'u' in "colorful" rankles but that is how it is spelt on the cover and I place great importance on accuracy (or "accracy" as they presumably spell it in America).
Anyhoo, the CD is a compilation of the early recordings of The Maddox Brothers & Rose released by Arhoolie Records in 1993. It contains 27 tracks dating from 1946 to 1951 and pretty much every one is a winner.
The band comprised Rose and four of her brothers, originally Fred, Don, Cal and Cliff with Henry stepping in when Cliff sadly dies in 1949. They were augmented by Bud Duncan on pedal steel and the magnificently named Jimmy Winkle on guitar. Rose handled most of the lead vocals but Fred took a turn for some of the more raucous numbers.
Here is a fairly representative selection. The first track is dedicated to one of our regular readers. There are songs about mules and milk cows on the album but sadly none about goats.
In sadder hillbilly news, on Sunday we lost Dave Cousins, the leader of bluegrass combo the Strawberry Hill Boys, or Strawbs as they became. Lay down, Dave, lay down.
Two brand new albums for you today. Both are by female artistes from West Africa. And both are splendid.
Regular readers may recall me raving about Nana Benz du Togo's debut album "AGO" and their live show at various points over the last couple of years. I'm pleased to report that their second album "SÉ NAM" (which means ‘understand me' in the Mina language) came out last month.
It is a worthy successor to "AGO". There is a bit more studio production this time round. I'm not sure they needed it but its fairly unobtrusive and doesn't detract from the general joyfulness of their sound, and hopefully the live show will still feature a man whacking big pieces of plastic tubing with a pair of flip-flops.
The second album comes from a fine singer from Burkina Faso who I had never heard of before and about whom I have been able to find out very little. Her name is Awa Guindo and the only information I have comes from her Facebook page, which tells us:
"Awa Guindo is part of the new wave of young Mandingo artists who have been shaking up the West African musical world in recent years. Originally from Banfora, in southwest Burkina Faso, she comes from a long line of griots".
So now you know. Anyway her debut album is called "Tama" and I would recommend giving it a listen. It is not on Bandcamp but you can find it on Spotify, at the tax dodgers' place and on EMusic in the unlikely event you have a subscription.
I can't find any videos of Nana Benz performing songs from the latest album so here is an old favourite instead. It is followed by what I think is Awa's searing critique of a corrupt sporting organisation.
A couple of weeks ago we featured "Till April Is Dead ≈ A Garland of May", Lisa Knapp's 2017 album of traditional songs associated with the month of May.
Since that post I have discovered the music of Arianne Churchman and Benedict Drew thanks to a review of their new album "The Tree Of The Left Hand" in the latest edition of Uncut.
A cursory glance of their Bandcamp page and that of the Thanet Tape Centre reveals that they are obsessed with the music of May to such an extent that Lisa seems a mere dilettante by comparison. And they are clearly keen to convert others to the cause as much of their material is available on a 'name your own price' basis.
Here are a couple of examples. Together they clock in at over twenty minutes, making them suitable for inclusion in the Monday Long Song ritual by those of you who still cling to such archaic beliefs.
Cornwall is particularly known for May celebrations and music. Helston alone has two songs associated with its festivities that take place every year on 8 May. These are they (some liberties may have been taken with the second).
We have arrived at our second stop in our search for the musical gold of the Americas and it is quite a contrast to Argentina. From the pampas to the swamps, from one of the continent's largest countries to the second smallest in terms of both size and population. Welcome to Belize.
Squeezed into a corner between Mexico and Guatemala and 750 miles due west of Jamaica, the former British colony of British Honduras can offer the visitor delights such as a Barrier Reef, jungles and more than 450 islands. Apart from tourism the country makes its living from sugar, papaya and money laundering.
Belize is the only country in Central America where English is the main language and perhaps because of that much of the music I have dug up seems to my inexpert ears to have more in common with Jamaica and some other Caribbean countries than its mainland neighbours. But what do I know.
As far as indigenous music is concerned the best known is probably the punta music of the Garifuna, a people of mixed African and Amerindian ancestry who have a minority presence in several countries in the region - in Belize they account for around 5% of the population. The interest in Garifuna music and culture will hopefully only increase following Tavo Man's Grammy nomination, the first for a Garifuna artist.
The man who did more than anyone to promote punta and Garifuna culture more broadly was the late Andy Palacio, whose 2007 album "Watina" found worldwide success and led to him being named a UNESCO Artist for Peace and winning the 2007 WOMEX Award. Sadly he died the following year aged only 48.
The track I have selected from Mr Palacio actually comes from an earlier album ("Keimoun" from 1994) but the narrative will stick with "Watina" for now. For that album he gathered together Garifuna performers from Belize and beyond. They became known as The Garifuna Collective and some of them went on to record another album without him under that name in 2013.
Among the members of the Collective was Paul Nabor, one of the premier exponents of paranda music (a sort of speeded up version of punta). Mr Nabor himself passed in 2014 at the rather riper age of 86. The only material of his I have been able to find is on a compilation called "Paranda - Africa in Central America". Some of the other folks on there are pretty nifty too.
As well as the Garifuna, Belize has a large creole population (roughly 25%) who enjoy nothing more than a bit of brukdown on a Saturday night. Brukdown is a sort of local version of calypso and mento with some call and response chucked in and the late Wilfred Peters MBE was the king. When Mr Peters strapped on his trusty squeezebox nobody could resist his blandishments. This track comes from 1997's "Weh Mi Lova Deh".
All the albums featured so far were released on the excellent Stonetree Music label based in Benque Viejo del Carmen in Belize, and you can find plenty more goodies on their Bandcamp site. But back in the day there was only one label in Belize, Compton Fairweather's C.E.S. In 2006 the good folks at the Numero Group put together a compilation of the best C.E.S. recordings under the name "Cult Cargo: Belize City Boil Up". It's fantastic.
I have selected two tracks from "Belize City Boil Up". The first comes from Lord Rhaburn and his Combo who have been stalwarts of the local scene since the 1960s. I am very pleased to report that the good Lord celebrated his 89th birthday earlier this year. The second comes from TheHarmonettes, the brainchild of one Godfrey 'D-Mack' MacGregor. You can read a bit more about him and them here.
We are heading back to Stonetree Music for our penultimate selection, and it is highbrow stuff - some dub poetry courtesy of Leroy Young (aka The Grandmaster). Mr Young kindly provides a bit of a bio in the blurb accompanying his 2003 album "Just Like That", from which this track comes. He first made his name in the late 1990s when he used to be invited on to the local TV news every Friday, as explained in this clip from 2017.
We finish up with Bredda David Obi (or Bro David as he was known to the record-buying public of Belize). His debut album "No Fear" (1984) introduced what he considered to be a new sound that he called kungo, but it sounds remarkably like Mandatory American Reggae to me. Either way it is good stuff and you might want to invest in "Modern Music From Belize" which contains highlights from "No Fear" and Bro David's other early albums.
We start the videos with a little bit of politics and history from Cocono Bwai and his good friend Shamrock. Apologies to our many Guatemalan viewers for any offence caused.
On a recent visit to a charity shop I spotted a compilation CD with the dull but (mostly) factually correct title "Swedish Pop Music". Further inspection revealed that it was issued by the Swedish government in 2009 to mark the Swedish Presidency of the EU.
Not the most compelling reason to buy the album perhaps but when I saw it included the likes of Lykke Li, The Soundtrack Of Our Lives and Maia Hirasawa (whose video for "And I Found This Boy" is a thing of pure joy that has featured here many times over the years) I decided it was worth investing 50p.
Most of the tracks on the album are Noughties indie-tinged pop, some of which are included in the videos below. But there are two that really don't fit at all. Needless to say, those are the two that you are getting. And before you ask - yes, it's that Benny.
Last Friday I was in Beaconsfield on family business and took time out to visit Bekonscot Model Village for the first time since 1972.
We lived a few towns over for a while in the 1960s and early 1970s and I always enjoyed going to Bekonscot then. I enjoyed it almost as much as an adult and there are some aspects that I am better able to appreciate now, for example their takes on local landmarks such as the wonderful Hoover Building on the A40.
My friend Little Ernie came with me and he enjoyed it even more as he is small enough to make use of all the local facilities. Here he is about to board the funicular railway; you can find a full account of his big day out on Flickr.
Most of today's musical choices are fairly obvious but they are all pretty marvellous too. Take it away folks.
If you are based in London or the eastern Home Counties and want to do something a bit different for a day out, I can recommend following the directions from these gentlemen of the village.
I have been to two gigs in the last week, both in churches. Maybe I should have titled this post Gigs-a-God-God. Then again maybe not.
Last Saturday we were at St John's in London's leafy Leytonstone for a lunchtime show to mark Midsummer. It was a triple header. First up was Lucine Musaelian with her viola de gamba and some baroque and Armenian folk tunes, and last up were The Memory Band. I enjoyed them both.
But it was the woman in between who were mainly there to see - Lisa Knapp. She did not disappoint. I first saw her taking part in an all star Bert Jansch tribute back in 2013, around the time of her fine second album "Hidden Seam". Her follow-up album in 2017 was a collection of May songs and given the time of year she drew quite heavily on it during her set, including today's selection.
On Wednesday it was off to St. Pancras Old Church in London's... (you can probably work that bit out for yourself) to see Kassi Valazza on the opening night of a very brief European tour. She is over here to promote her new album "From Newman Street", a copy of which I picked up at the gig. I've not had a chance to listen to it yet but judging by the songs she played on Wednesday it is well up to the standard she set on "Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing" (from which today's track comes).
How much she really knows is hard to judge. It may just have been the jetlag but she wasn't what you would call a Chatty Kassi. Not that it mattered. Together with her band she put on a very good show with a fine selection of songs from across her career to date. As an unexpected bonus they galloped through "Matty Groves" as an encore. Obviously nobody can match Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson but they gave it a bloody good go.
On Monday I was in Henley-on-Thames for reasons that I won't bore you with. There was lots of activity as the folks down there were preparing for the annual rowing regatta which starts next week. As a tribute to them, and in the absence of any other ideas for a post, here are two songs with "row" in the title.
The first song ties in with Walter's post from yesterday in an attempt to turn this into The Congos Week on the world of blogs (please join in). I have also bunged in a wonderfully wonky Thai version of the second as a special treat for you all.
In my previous post I made the foolish mistake of offending Alyson by taking the mickey out of Lulu's ex and his brothers and her favourite ever love song. I have no wish to be on the wrong side of the Queen of the Blogging Scene, so to make amends here are the lads with what may be my two personal favourites from their catalogue. I hope you enjoy them more than the audience in the first clip.
We have a stripped down Single Song Sunday for you today. Severely stripped down - just the Mandatory Reggae Version. It is a Lee 'Scratch' Perry production of "How Deep Is Your Love" credited to The Inamans.
I know nothing about The Inamans. There is an online rumour that this gentleman was the inspiration for their name but it seems unlikely.
According to Discogs they only ever released one side of a single, with Dillinger on the other side, and this was not it. It seems this track was only ever released on a compilation called "Black Ark Volume 2", which came out in 1981 but was reissued a few years ago by VP Records.
Confusingly the reissue credits the whole album to Black Ark Players not the individual artists and changes the album title to "Black Ark in Dub Volume 2", possibly in an effort to trick people into buying it thinking it is a different record.
Our musical journey around the Americas is finally beginning, and as Andy Cameron might put it: "we're on the march wi' Ernie's army, we're going to the Argentine".
Unlike Ally's Tartan Army we're not off to win the World Cup, just to find musical gold. I think we have done it, although I had to sit through quite a lot of drab 1-1 draws with Iran before I found the aural equivalents of Archie Gemmill's wonder goal below.
We can't visit Argentina without taking in some tango, so we will start there. Astor Piazzolla pretty much invented nuevo tango in the 1950s, adding elements of jazz and classical music to traditional tango. He also scandalised polite society by playing the bandoneon standing up not sitting down. Today's track was first released in 1960 but can be found on plenty of compilations, and there's more Astor in the videos.
Astor may have caused a stir when he first burst onto the scene but by 1960 the hep cats in Buenos Aires were hankering for the groovy new sounds filtering down from further north. Which explains the success of Johny Tedesco whose 1961 single "Rock Del Tom Tom" is considered to be the first Argentinian rock 'n roll record. Johny went on to make bad films and country albums - if not quite the Argentine Elvis at least the Argentine Johnny Hallyday.
A few years passed and Johny suffered the same fate as Astor. The hep cats kept getting hepper and in the mid 1960s some of them formed a band called Los Gatos (presumably the word 'hep' does not have a direct equivalent in Spanish). Their big rivals locally were Los Beatniks.
We haven't got either of them. Instead we have the band that Pajarito Zaguri of Los Beatniks formed next, the mighty La Barra De Chocolate. This little sizzler can be found on their self-titled (and only album) from 1969, available on Bandcamp thanks to the good folks over at Munster Records.
As sure as night turns into day, the psychedelic rockers of the 1960s turned into weedy Cañón Laurel singer-songwriters in the early 1970s. Pre-eminent amongst them was Sui Generis. We've chosen the opening track from their 1972 album "Vida", once ranked by Rolling Stone as #11 in a list of the 100 most outstanding songs in Argentinian rock. Judge for yourselves.
Los Fabulosos Cadillacs are one of the most successful Argentinian bands, having achieved multiple gold records since they started in 1984. They also won a Grammy for their album "Fabulosos Calavera" in 1997, becoming the first Argentinian act to win a Grammy outside the classical (Daniel Barenboim) and jazz (Lalo Schifrin) categories. We have the title track from their 1989 album "El Satánico Dr. Cadillac" for you.
Next up is a singer that I was lucky enough to see live back in 2019 and would love to see again - La Yegros. Her Bandcamp blurb puts it better than I ever could: "Her incredible live concerts are a challenge thrown at those who do not have dancing feet. The singer never fails to unlock even the stiffest bodies, her energy radiating as if she was spitting balls of fire". Today's choice is from 2016's "Magnetismo" album.
Juana Molina is a rather different kettle of fish, being more at the electronic and experimental end of the pop scene in Argentina, but she can ride a groove as well as anyone when she puts her mind to it. The title track from her 2008 album "Un Dia" may well be the pick of today's bunch.
We finish as we mean to continue (if you follow me) with some MAR - Mandatory American Reggae. Los Pericos have been knocking about since 1988 when their debut album went triple platinum. We've opted for the title track from their 1994 album "Big Yuyo". 1994 was also the year they headlined at the Sunsplash festival in Jamaica, so they must have been doing something right.
We'll start the videos with a proud son of the city of Venado Tuerto in Santa Fe Province. You may prefer to skip ahead to the second video. Viewers of a sensitive nature may want to skip the last one as well.
This will be the last time you'll see me round here for a week or so. I will be spending a few days in sunny Southport with a pair of my oldest and dearest pals, and then after I get back to London I will be engaging with Uzbeks (I can say no more).
But before I go I have a couple of updates on the new series covering the music of the Americas, which will kick off shortly after I return. The first is that I have settled on a title - Ernie's El Dorado, named after the mythical city of gold supposedly located somewhere in South America not the short-lived 1990s soap opera. I can't promise that we will find musical gold at every stop on our journey, but that's the quest.
I am also able to report on developments since I petitioned the US and Canadian governments to rename Lake Erie 'Lake Ernie' for the duration of the tour. I have not heard back from the orange oligarch's acolytes yet but the Canadians have been in touch. They have politely declined for two reasons - the cost of changing all the signs and stationery, and because people might get confused if two lakes have the same name.
That's right, there is already a Lake Ernie in Canada, less well known than its near namesake but the pride of Clearwater County, Alberta. Two hours north of Calgary, or even less if you can afford to charter a flight into nearby Rocky Mountain House Airport, Lake Ernie offers plenty of opportunities for fishing. There are probably other things to do as well but the only activity anyone mentions is the fishing.
If you take a trip up there to bag some largemouth bass you will need somewhere to stay. The Voyageur Motel in the Otway district of Rocky Mountain House is a ten minutes drive from Lake Ernie and comes highly recommended.
In the world of cheesy country music videos going fishing takes priority over anything else God, the devil or Mrs Brad Paisley might try to tempt you with.
It is time for one or our irregular round-ups of new sounds sent to me by the good folks in Promo Land. There have been some goodies in recent weeks. Here are just five of them.
We will start with a new record from some old favourites. I enjoyed Jeanines' jangle-tastic last album "Don't Wait For A Sign" very much when it came out back in 2022. Their new album "How Long Can It Last" is a worthy successor. It will be released from captivity on 27 June and can is available for pre-order on Bandcamp.
Jeanines will be touring the UK in July. I have seem them before and can heartily recommend them. I'm hoping to make their London gig and they will also be playing Brighton, Exeter, Oxford, Coventry, Manchester and Glasgow. For some gigs they will be joined by their label mates Lightheaded who are also pretty nifty. But not London unfortunately.
One band I am definitely going to see are The Thing from fashionable Brooklyn who are playing at the Shacklewell Arms in London's equally fashionable Dalston tomorrow (their only other UK gig is Nottingham on Friday). You can find the new single below on Spotify and their previous releases on Bandcamp, but the upcoming self-titled album due out in August is currently nowhere to be seen.
The PR wiz that came up with the headline "Ugandan industrial hip-hop gone psychedelic" knows exactly how to press my buttons. That is the phrase they used to describe "Magada Biwuka", the new collaboration between Ugandan MC Swordman Kitala and UK-based producer Soft-Bodied Humans which comes out on 11 July. Once you have pre-ordered it make sure to pick up a copy of their previous effort "Kaiju Kitala" as well.
Stocking with the vaguely exotic, next up we have La Banda Chuska, who describe themselves as being "Brooklyn-based purveyors of cumbia and surf". I wonder if they hang out with The Thing? Their debut album "Basic Bichos" came out at the end of May and is just what you need to get in the mood for our forthcoming tour of the Americas.
Last but definitely not least is Montreal's own Common Holly whose new album "Anything Glass" is out this Friday. The selected track is described as "a cinematic and delicate piece of lyrical imagery that unfolds like an apocalyptic folklore tale, grappling with themes like the acceptance of finality and the relentless force of mother nature". So now you know.
Speaking of gigs as we were, last night I had the pleasure of seeing the Zawose Queens at the Curve Garden, yet another venue in London's fashionable Dalston. The Queens last appeared on these pages when the African Odyssey visited Tanzania. There was just the two of them and lots of percussion but they made a splendid sound.
Yesterday Khayem a.k.a. the King of Kool treated us to another of his always excellent reggae and dub mixes, this one featuring exclusively tracks from 1975.
Tucked away in the middle of the mix was "Baby I Love You So" by Jacob Miller & Augustus Pablo. Jacob was one of the greatest reggae singers of the 1970s and as well as his work under his own name he had a parallel career as the singer with Inner Circle.
By coincidence, earlier in the day Khayem and I met in person last week I had picked up a 45 track compilation bringing together many of Jacob and the gang's finest moments. It included half a dozen tracks credited to Augustus Pablo & Inner Circle. Here a couple of them, both of which also date from 1975.
In unrelated news, 1975 was also the year The Shadows represented the UK at Eurovision with "Let Me Be The One". It came second behind "Ding-A-Dong", but haven't we all.
Following the worldwide acclaim for George's recent guest 'Single Song Sunday' I thought I should pull my finger out and do one myself. After reviewing the long list for all of a minute or two I opted for Gerry & The Pacemakers' "Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying".
There are two reasons why perhaps I should not have done. The first is that that I had forgotten about the blues song "Don't Let The Sun Catch You Cryin'" (no 'g') first made famous by Louis Jordan. Both songs have been covered extensively and several cover artists stray onto the wrong side of the 'g/ no g' boundary, which added considerably to the amount of time required for weeding out.
The second is that you really only need Gerry's version (which I adore). But the work has been done now so we are going ahead.
We start with the original recording which, to my surprise, turns out not to be the one by Gerry and the lads even though they wrote the song. They gave first dibs to Louise Cordet, a singer who had toured with them and The Beatles, and her version came out in February 1964. It was only after Louise failed to bother the charts that the band decided to release it themselves.
Gerry's version was a relative failure in the UK when it was issued in April 1964. The band's first three singles all went to #1 and their fourth made it to #2 but this peaked at #6. However it was their first big hit in the US were it got to #4. a position they never subsequently bettered.
I am going to partially retract my earlier comment about only needing Gerry's version and add one more to my personal 'must haves'. That is the rendition by the always magnificent Rickie Lee Jones on her "Flying Cowboys" album (1989). We follow that with another iconic female singer, Ronnie Spector. Her take can be found on "English Heart", her final album that was released in 2016.
We go mildly Latin next, first with the ever reliable Jose Feliciano (from 1967) and then an obscure Latin Soul take credited to The Mumy. I have not been able to find any information about it but it sounds like it dates to the late 1960s and the label says it is produced by Pagan, Alvarez & Mingo. I suppose it is possible that Pagan is Ralfi Pagan, who performed with some success on the Fania label in the 1970s, but I have no proof that is the case.
From Latin to Continental. We commence with a super smooth French version by Lucky Blondo from 1965 followed by a marginally less smooth Greek version from 1970 by The Olympians. Lucky (real name Gerard Blondiot) later went on to record in Nashville with The Jordanaires. The Olympians did not later go on to record an album on Daptone in 2016 - that was another band of the same name - but they did churn out a lot of singles.
We end in the traditional way with some MRVs. In fact we have a double dose for you today. The first is by Dave Barker (1970), produced by Lee 'Scratch' Perry with backing by an obscure band called The Wailers. The second is from 1982 and is performed by a man who sings so smoothly he is sometimes known as "the Jamaican Lucky Blondo", Mr Barry Biggs.
I got home yesterday afternoon after spending a few days hanging out with the cool kids in Bristol in such fine establishments as the Crafty Egg and the Kings Head. It was great to see everyone, and particularly good to meet Khayem, Walter and The Swede for the first time.
It wasn't just eating and drinking though, there was plenty of culture too. Bristol has some fantastic street art as you would expect from Banksy's hometown - you can find a few examples in my holiday snaps - and some pretty nifty museums and galleries too.
In one of them - possibly the Arnolfini - I found another piece by our old friend George Ginnis. This one was rather different in style to previous examples of his work I have seen but reflects the same preoccupations.
This one is called 'Water, The Destroyer' and was produced using some technique involving photographic negatives and zinc plates. According to the blurb the piece is "a literal and metaphorical representation of the impact of over-development on the urban environment". I'm not sure I get it, but then what do I know.
Bristol's musical heritage is as storied as its artistic one, and many of those stories have been collected and compiled by the good folks at Bristol Archive Records. Pretty much everything in their catalogue is worth a listen and I have opted for a couple of examples of 1980s MAR (Mandatory Avon Reggae) from their 'Bristol Reggae Explosion' series.
And some more vintage Bristol sounds to send you into the weekend. I have saved the best to last. It may be a slightly controversial inclusion but Brother Adge was originally from Portishead so I think it counts (also he mentions me three minutes in).
Friday evening found me in London's fashionable Dalston at Cafe Oto, home to all that is weird and/or wonderful.
Some of it is too weird for me. In your average week there will be some musique concrète, some atonal jazz squawking and some other stuff that I can neither describe nor tolerate.
But there is a lot of wonder as well. Lonnie Holley, James Blood Ulmer, This Is The Kit, Trembling Bells, Bas Jan, Hiss Golden Messenger, Meg Baird and Josephine Foster are just some of the many fantastic acts I have seen there over the years.
Then there are the gigs that manage to be both weird and wonderful. Last Friday was one example, as travelling musical family Tennger were in town. I can't really describe the experience but here is a brief factual summary to give you the general idea.
The band consists of a funky Japanese synth dude, his wife a Korean vocalist who also wields a mean harmonium and their 12 year old son who expresses himself through the medium of interpretative dance. They dress all in white and wear gongs around their necks. At one point in the show mother and son wander around the venue waving jingle bells in the faces of the audience and bar staff. Add in some bird noises and that is about it.
The music is pretty good too. I suspect if I has listened to it before seeing the band I might have dismissed some of it as being too 'new age' for my tastes but live it works really well. Today's selection comes from their most recent self-titled album that came out in 2023.
I also enjoyed the support act Marina Moore who arrived armed with two violins and more buttons and switches than the cockpit of Concorde.
Marina is no slouch on the old fiddle, having worked with the likes of Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry and Peter Gabriel. Her own music has been described as 'pastoral' and 'bucolic' and I agree even though I'm not entirely sure what either of those words mean. Her brand new album 'Baroque Era' is worth a listen.
In 2023 and 2024 we went on a lengthy odyssey exploring every nook and cranny in Africa.
After that finished I needed a bit of a rest, but six months on I am fully revitalised and itching to get back on the road.
So next month we will be embarking on our third Grand Tour. This time we will be covering the length and breadth of the American continent, from Utqiagvik up in the north to Ushuaia way down in the south and all points in between.
I am going to restrict it to countries on the continental landmass; if we included the North Atlantic and Caribbean islands we'd be wandering forever. We can perhaps set sail for the islands in a separate series in the future.
That still leaves us with 23 countries, so quite enough to be getting on with. I have hundreds if not thousands of recordings from the major hot spots like Belize and French Guiana. It may be more of a struggle to pad out a post on some of the obscure backwaters like Brazil and the US.
Speaking of the US, I have been inspired by their recent enthusiasm for renaming geographical features and written to both them and Canada suggesting they add an 'n' to the middle of Lake Erie for the duration of the tour. I'll let you know when I hear back.
The as yet unnamed tour (CC - any ideas?) will kick off in Argentina in a few weeks time. Until then, here are some songs about just a few of the places we will pass through.
Before we go to any of them, though, I am going somewhere even more exotic in real life. Bristol. I'll be back on here in a week or so.
I recently found myself in London's fashionable Peckham, as you do, so I took the opportunity to pop into the Alex TLC charity shop on the High Street. It is an old school charity shop; slightly chaotic but run by nice people for a good cause and you can usually find a bargain or two.
So it proved on this occasion. It seems that a local resident has recently woken from a twenty year sleep and decided to offload all the free CDs they got from music magazines before they dozed off.
I came away with a very good haul, the centrepiece of which was six Songlines CDs from 2004/05. I will probably share some of those in due course, but today it is the turn of "Wire Tapper 8" which was given away with the January 2002 edition of The Wire and was also in the haul.
Like most of these sort of compilations 'Wire Tapper 8' is a bit hit and miss but when it hits it hits hard and does so right from the start. The compiler leaps off their stool and unleashes this lethal opening salvo. These are no mere taps, these are hefty wallops.
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