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.
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