At The Edge

Public Service Announcement: If you wish to vote on the best sporting pun in a song title but have not yet done so, the deadline is tomorrow (Saturday November 22). Details of who you can vote for and how to do it can be found here.

We now return to our scheduled broadcast. 

Earlier in the week I went to an exhibition called 'Children Of Albion' by Ben Edge at the Fitzrovia Chapel, which as the name suggests is located in London's fashionable Fitzrovia. It runs until 26 November and if you get a chance to visit I would heartily recommend doing so. I have loads more photos on Flickr which I hope might tempt you to go.

Actually it is worth popping in to the chapel if you are in the area even when there aren't any exhibitions on. Apparently inspired by Byzantine architecture its charms could not be described as understated. Here's a bit of the ceiling:

The exhibition itself draws on the traditional stories and rituals of the British Isles and William Blake's vision of Albion, the ancient spirit of Britain that is currently asleep but can be reawakened through AI the power of art and imagination.

The centrepiece is the painting that gives the exhibition its name which brilliantly weaves together all sorts of references ancient, modern and in between, but I enjoyed all the paintings. A particular favourite was 'The Dorset Ooser' which features artefacts and activities from the part of Dorset in which I used to live - the eponymous mask from Melbury Osmond, the Cerne Abbas Giant and the now banned tradition of Teddy Rowe's Band from Sherborne. 

The painting in the final photo is called 'John Barleycorn Must Die', which prompted me to dig out Traffic's excellent album of the same name when I got home. Here's a couple of tracks from that and two other decent versions of the song.

"John Barleycorn" - Traffic

"Every Mother's Son" - Traffic

Old Penny, New Penny

Some of you may occasionally have wondered about the identity the handsome gentleman at the top right of the page. Some of you may have not. I'm going to tell you anyway. Its Penny Penny.

When I started this blog way back in 2009 I had a mission to bring Tsonga Disco music to the masses. Tsonga Disco was a contemporary take on the traditional music of the Tsonga or Shangaan people who can be found mostly in the Limpopo Province in the north east of South Africa and in southern Mozambique.

Between the mid 1990s and mid 2000s Penny Penny (Papa Penny to his many fans) was the undisputed king of Tsonga Disco but by the time I started featuring his music here he had largely given up on recording and was spending most of his time in local politics, helping to improve living conditions and infrastructure in his home town of Giyani.

In the mid 2010s my old pal Mr. Awesome Tapes From Africa reissued a couple of his albums from the 1990s to moderate acclaim. This seemed to prompt Papa Penny to revive his showbiz career. He turned up as a celebrity judge on a TV talent show, launched his own reality series and in 2019 started releasing new albums after a gap of ten years. His most recent album is "Sesi Va Rosie" which came out in 2023 and we have a couple of selections for you.

He hasn't given up the politics though. Quite the opposite. Last year he became an MP representing the main opposition party in the national parliament. His performance as a politician has not received the same universal praise given to his musical performances. But I say no to the naysayers and all power to Papa Polymath!

"Sesi Va Rosie" - Penny Penny

"Xirilo" - Penny Penny

We finish off with a couple of videos featuring Papa Penny's hit "Milandu Bhe" - first the original from 1994 and then a remake from a couple of years ago with current pop sensation and follow Tsonga star Makhadzi. Her brand new album is the similarly titled "Sesi Ka Rose". Coincidence?  I think not. 

Pun Fun 1: The Contenders

Ladies and gentlemen, its the moment that you've all been waiting for. Voting is now open in the inaugural Pun Fun competition.

Readers were challenged to come up with a sports related pun in a song title. Ten brave souls did so, to whom many thanks. I added in one of my own to turn it up to 11 in Spinal Tap style.

Voting is open to anyone not just those of you who entered (but if you did enter please don't vote for yourself - you won't be given any points if you do). Even the bots from Singapore are free to join in as long as they don't spoil their ballots by demanding puns about dragon boat racing.

Let me know your top three in order of preference. I will then award 5 points for your first choice, 3 for second and 1 for third and we will see where we end up.

You can either submit your votes in the comments section or email them to leggies27@hotmail.co.uk if you prefer to preserve the sanctity of the secret ballot. The deadline is next Saturday (22 November) and we'll announce the results a week today.

Here are the contenders, listed alphabetically by artist. 

1. 'Walk Like A Wrestling Man' - The Bangles
2. 'Maiden Heaven' - Be Bop Deluxe
3. 'Lacrosse The Universe' - The Beatles
4. 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Darts Club Band' - The Beatles
5. 'Scrum Love' - Bob Marler & The Wailers
6. 'Clubthumping' - Chumbawumba
7. 'Croquet Fred' - Errol Dunkley
8. 'Satan Rejected My Goal' - Morrissey
9. 'Can't Stand Luge-ing You' - The Police
10. 'The Boy With Willie Thorne In His Side' - The Smiths
11. 'I Kabaddi Anything But My Love' - The Stylistics

Good luck everyone. Dillinger, the disguised Duran Duran and I all have our fingers crossed that you will do well.

"Big Score" - Dillinger

Ernie's El Dorado Part 9 - Ecuador

Public Service Announcement: If any of you are thinking of entering the exciting competition to come up with the best sporting pun in a song title but have not yet done so, the deadline is tomorrow. Details of what to do and how to do it can be found here.

We now return to our scheduled broadcast. 

Its stop #9 on our tour of the Americas and the start of what might be a tricky stretch. No disrespect intended to the many fine musicians in the E-H countries of Latin America but I have struggled to accumulate the same quantity of music that I did on previous tours and earlier and later stops on this one. That said, there are still lots of goodies as this visit to Ecuador will hopefully demonstrate.   

Ecuador is one of those countries that I know less about than I probably should - the Galapagos, the Andes, Quito, Cuenca, the fact that Panama stole the credit for the straw hat that originated in Ecuador, and that is about it. But after reading about it for this post I have added it to my list of places to try to visit. It sounds interesting and varied, to use the travel guide cliche.

Interesting and varied can also be used to describe the music of Polibio Mayorga who with his trusty moog bestrode the local music scene like a colossus back in the 1960s and 1970s. As Wikipedia notes: "at one point Mayorga was so dominant in the Ecuadorian music charts that he started releasing music under pseudonyms, to give the illusion of variety".

Today's track is attributed to one such pseudonym, Ángel Y Su Banda, and comes from 'their' only album, "Te Invito A Mi Casa". That album isn't on Bandcamp but lots of his records are. The Analog Africa compilation "Ecuatoriana - El Universo Paralelo de Polibio Mayorga" would be a good place to start.

Another compilation you might want to check out is "Juyungo" which puts the spotlight on the Afro-Indigenous culture of the province of Esmeraldas. I was going to make a clever remark contrasting the beauty of Esmeraldas with the Quasimodo that is Quito, but it would be neither fair nor funny so I won't. Instead I'll just direct you to Papá Roncón.

If those two compilations whet your appetite then why not head over to Musicoteca Ecuador's page and admire their back catalogue. There are one minute extracts from 7" singles there which cost US $45 to post to the UK - I declined - but there some albums available for download as well. One such is "El Diablo Ocioso" by Diabluma's Brass Band. I kept it simple and went with the title track.

Bandcamp won't help you with Boddega, an ever so slightly psychedelic ensemble that came ambling out of Guayaquil in 1971 and hung around until the end of the decade. The selected track comes from an EP they released in 1974. I have no idea how it got to me from there. 

Also mildly psychedelic but much more modern is the track by H.O. & Los Bicivoladores, who was extremely prodigious between 2012 and 2020 - putting out nearly 40 releases in eight years - before seemingly finding something better to do with his time. This is a cover version of a song by Chilean folk singer Pedro Messone and you can find it on his self-explanatory album "Covers".

Next up we have Maria Usbeck, a singer-songwriter who is originally from Quito but is now living in Brooklyn. She started her career as the lead singer of the goth-lite Selebrities before going solo in 2014. This track is from her debut album "Amparo", her latest came out in April.

We're mixing old and new next with Paramo Cumbie who in 2019 gave us their dubbed up take on popular local music styles like bomba on the their EP "Magic Runa", and who can lead us seamlessly into this episode's MAR selection. That comes from Yuhuarsonicos and its taken from their 2011 album "Real". 

"El Comité" - Ángel Y Su Banda (Polibio Mayorga)

"Sanjuanito Chachi" - Papá Roncón

"El Diablo Ocioso" - Diabluma's Brass Band

"Muñequita de Porcelana" - Boddega

"Solitario" - H.O. & Los Bicivoladores

"Moai Y Yo" - Maria Usbeck

"Dub Healing Bomba" - Paramo Cumbie

"Amor Verdadero" - Yuhuarsonicos

Now on to the videos. In case Rol or any of his cancel culture crusaders read this I would like to make it clear that the first video is included despite not because of all the ladies wearing T-shirts with 'Sexy' written on the front. I felt that the presence of a hooded shirtless executioner in the TV studio justified its inclusion in the public interest. 

More Gigs-A-Go-Go

So I went to a couple of gigs last week, one in a church and one on a boat. That's just the way it is these days.

The church is St. John on Bethnal Green, which is literally down the end of my road here in swinging London. I've seen some memorable gigs over the years by the likes of Lonnie Holley, Gwynifer Raymond and a large man in a little black dress intoning the words to "Boys" by Sabrina while accompanying himself on the cello.

This one was pretty memorable too. We were there to see RÓIS, an Irish musician who caused a bit of a stir last year with their album "MO LÉAN" which combined traditional keening songs with electronics and a helping hand from Lankum producer John 'Spud' Murphy.

RÓIS arrived in their trademark black veil and matching outfit and performed some songs from the hit album and its predecessor "UISCE AGUS BEAN" (its all capitals I'm afraid), which I quite enjoyed.

After a while they left the stage while the support act Harry Hennessy and the drummer (both also veiled) filled in for a bit until RÓIS returned resplendent in red to express the fervent hope that we liked their new direction. I didn't. It consisted of some disco bangers, a couple of drippy MOR duets with Harry and a proggy power ballad. Despite that it was a fun night.

Not as much fun as Saturday though which was when I paid my first visit to Theatreship, a converted cargo ship moored near Canary Wharf. Its an excellent little venue and I will definitely be returning in the future.

The occasion was one of a series of shows billed as the 'Legendary Folk Instrument Series' in which living folkies prise instruments from the cold hands of dead folkies and play tunes on them. The instrument on this occasion was one of John Renbourn's guitars, built by Martin to his own specification.

We were treated to some fine finger-picking by Dariush Kanani, Daniel Burne and Jules Smith but that wasn't really why I was there. The main attraction for me was the chance to see the excellent Angeline Morrison live. She didn't disappoint.

Accompanied by Mr Kanani on the famed guitar, Ms Morrison treated us to a set of songs taken from the two mid 1960s albums by the African-American folk singer Dorris Henderson on which she was accompanied by John Renbourn. The two of them did Dorris and John justice.

Here's a track from RÓIS back when she was still clad in black not red, an original by Angeline Morrison that gives me a lump in the throat ever time I listen to it and a song from "Watch The Stars" that was probably the highlight of the set on Saturday.

"Oh Lovely Appearance Of Death" - RÓIS

"Unknown African Boy (d. 1830) (live)" - Angeline Morrison

"There's Anger In This Land" - Dorris Henderson with John Renbourn

I couldn't find any clips of Dorris Henderson unfortunately but here are the rest of them.  

Single Song Sunday

The series returns after a well-earned summer break and I think it may have caught the sun because there are several things about this edition that are not quite right.

The first is that it is all reggae - does that mean none or all of them count as an MRV? I don't know. The second is that technically the ten tracks below are not a single song. Most of them have the same rhythm track as the original record but a few just sample its most distinctive feature. But Single Plinky Plonk Sunday sounded a bit silly.

The original is "My Conversation", released in 1968 by The Uniques, then consisting of the sublime Slim Smith on lead vocals with Lloyd Charmers and Jimmy Riley on harmonies. There are some decent straightforward covers out there by the likes of Delroy Wilson but I have not included any because, frankly, what would be the point? The Uniques were given that name for a reason.

Instead we will skip forward to 1974 when Bunny Lee, who produced the original record, sold the rhythm track to Rupie Edwards who used it as the basis of one of the first ever single 'riddim' albums, "Yamaha Skank". Shorty The President represents them today. There have been several trillion 'riddim' albums since but very few as good as this one.

After that the 'plinky plonk' motif became ubiquitous for a while. The good folks at Riddimguide have identified well over a hundred examples and I suspect their list is far from complete. I won't go through the rest of the tracks one by one but they are in chronological order with two more from the 1970s, four from the 1980s and Beres from the 1990s.

King Tubby's dub version comes last because as far as I can tell it was not officially released until 1996 on a compilation called "King Tubby's Meets Scientist In A World Of Dub". The following year it appeared as a bonus track on a reissue of his 1975 classic album "Dub From The Roots" so my guess is that it is a mid-1970s cut.

I'll shut up now and hand over to the mighty Slim and the rest of the plonkers plinkers.

"My Conversation" - The Uniques

"President Mash Up The Resident" - Shorty The President

"Barnabus Collins" - Lone Ranger

"Cricket Lovely Cricket" - Jah Thomas

"Jah Forgive Them" - Leroy Smart

"Rocking To The A-Class Champion" - Johnny Clarke

"Its Good To Have The Feeling You're The Best" - Tippa Irie

"Don't Ease Up" - Eccleton Jarrett

"Hey Girl" - Beres Hammond & Josey Wales

"Conversation Dub" - King Tubby

Pun Fun 1: The Theme

As Monday's suggestion for a new competition got such an enthusiastic response (rather too enthusiastic in some quarters) I thought I may as well strike while the iron is hot. We'll see how the first one goes and if it proves popular enough we'll do one a month.

As I explained then, the competition is to see who can come up with the best worst pun in a song title on a specific theme. I set the theme, you submit your song titles, I collate them all into a list for you to vote on and then publish the final 'chart' and announce the winner. 

Before announcing the first theme I will make an undoubtedly futile attempt to establish some ground rules. Here goes:

• Only one entry per person. We can review this restriction for future challenges if we only get a small number of entries but we'll stick with it for now.

• Please send your entries via email to leggies27@hotmail.co.uk rather than put them in the comment section below. All entries on the voting form will be anonymised in order to reduce the risk of partisan voting.

• Any reader can vote, you don't need to have submitted an entry to do so (similar to the Eurovision final when all the eliminated countries still get to have a say in the outcome).

• And finally, please don't: vote for yourself; attempt to get other entries disqualified on a technicality; or complain loudly that your fellow voters are idiots if you don't win. These are all things that happened when I used to do this live. Also don't object if a group of Finnish tourists at the next table ask what is going on and I let them vote as well (covered by the previous rule). 

With all that out of the way it is time to announce the theme for the inaugural Pun Fun (official theme tune: "Pun Fun D'Amour" by Manhattan Transfer - I considered "Pun Fun (Go For It)" by Wham! but rejected the idea because it would have meant rhyming 'fun' with 'fun' in the opening line).

We believe in healthy bodies as well as healthy minds here at 27Leggies, so the theme is: 

SPORTS AND SPORTING EQUIPMENT

Please get your entries to me by Saturday 15 November. The list of runners and riders will be published the following Monday.

You might want to look at this list of officially recognised sports to get you started - although perhaps don't pick a pun about vovinam or galli-danda if you want to attract a lot of votes. 

Or you might prefer just to listen to these songs which may or may not be about cricket. There will be another one on Sunday but for different reasons.

"Cricket On The Moon" - Lee "Scratch" Perry

"When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease" - Roy Harper

The Basin Brims Over

The good folks at Basin Rock records - the pride of Todmorden - have a fairly small but highly refined catalogue which includes albums by the likes of Jim Ghedi, Nadia Reid and Aoife Nessa Frances.

They currently have a limited period special offer on, with all albums except those released this year available for £5 on CD or £10 on vinyl. They don't specify how limited the period is, and it may turn out to last for several years like the DHS sales, but I was not taking any chances. Two CDs have been added to my collection and I may go back for more.

First in the basket was one that was been on my wish list for some time, Johanna Samuels' 2021 album "Excelsior!". The Basin Rock blurb says: "With a special knack for balancing bright pop melodies with a drifting sense of melancholy, ‘Excelsior!’ is a tender and honest document of the importance of companionship above all else". Ernie says: I like.

It was swiftly followed by "Not Even Happiness", the 2017 album by Julie Byrne. The Basin Rock blurb says: "Julie Byrne’s second album adds atmospheric instrumentation and electronic flourishes to her unusual guitar tunings and fingerpicked melodies, moving the songs from the front-porch into subtle anthemia". Ernie says: "I refer the Honourable Member to my earlier answer".

"The Middle" - Johanna Samuels

"Morning Dove" - Julie Byrne

Anyone For Pun Fun?

Good morning all. I'm looking for some feedback from you today. 

Inspired by the likes of Rol and John Medd with their fiendish quizzes and photo challenges I am thinking of introducing an interactive feature to the blog, but because it will rely on having enough people taking part to make it work I thought I would sound you out first.

The idea is to resuscitate a competition I used to organise for my work colleagues way back when I still worked in an office. It seemed to go down quite well then but that may mostly be because it provided an excuse for a few drinks after work, something that would obviously be missing from an online version. 

The competition would be to see who can come up with the best pun in a song title. How it would work is that I would set a theme, you would each submit one entry fitting that theme, I would compile them all for you to vote on and the winner will receive universal acclaim (or derision from embittered losers). 

In the old days they would also receive a prize in the form of a terrible CD from a charity shop, like this one by a group of German urologists full of tunes about urinary tract infections, prostates and the like (this is real). I'll try to think of something equally bad for an online version.

To be clear, we would not be looking for songs that are really about the theme as with Rol's Saturday Snapshots quiz but ones you have pimped for the ride. For example, we had a fish theme and the entries included delights such as "Trout" by Tears For Fears, "Promised You a Mackerel" by Simple Minds and - mainly for the artist's name - "Sole Man" by Salmon Dave. 

Hopefully that gives you the general idea. If you would like to join in let me know in the comments and if enough people are interested we'll kick things off later in the month.

In the meantime, feel free to sing along with these hits.