Earthquakes

First, a plug for a good cause. As you know, the Haitian earthquake last month has resulted in one of the most dreadful humanitarian disasters in recent years. While the magnitude of what has happened may seem completely overwhelming, if we all make a small contribution then cumulatively it begins to have a positive effect.

One way to help would be by buying "Make The Load Lighter", a compilation issued by the good folks at Dromedary Records on which all money raised goes directly to Vwa Ayiti (Voice of Haiti) for earthquake relief. The album featuring sixteen indie bands, including The Mommyheads whose track is featured below. If you like it - or even if you don't - why not buy the album?

"Spiders" - The Mommyheads

You would have thought the Haitian earthquake would be bad enough to be getting on with, but then yesterday Chile took a bad hit as well. Let's hope the aftermath of that one isn't anything like as bad.

At the risk of trivialising things, here are a couple of gems from the small but vibrant Chilean psychedelic scene of the late 1960s. Both are from 1967 and the first is available on the Latin American volume of the excellent "Love, Peace and Poetry" series which, like all the other volumes, is pretty much indispensable for fans of global psych.

"Oscar Wilde" - Los Vidrios Quebrados

"F.M. Y Cia" - Los Mac's

Moving on a little, one of the biggest Chilean bands of the 1970s was Los Jaivas, who mixed prog and traditional sounds (I can hear you groaning already). Here they are wigging out at Machu Picchu in 1981.

Why Kansas City?

Good news on the new music front. The beard-loving, black pudding-hating troubadour Otis Gibbs has a new album out. Called "Joe Hill's Ashes", it won't be available in shops until May but you can download it now from his website. I strongly recommend that you do.

On the basis of a quick first listen this morning I reckon it will prove to be a worthy successor to past triumphs such as "One Day Our Whispers" and "Grandpa Walked A Picketline". I will try to do a proper review after a couple more listens - you lucky things! - but for now I'm going to veer off at a tangent.

One of the tracks on Otis's new album is called "Kansas City". This got me thinking about how many songs I know with Kansas City in the title, starting with "Oklahoma!" and endless versions of the Leiber & Stoller song, then picking up "Kansas City Southern" by Dillard & Clark and so on and so on. What is it about this city of less than 500,000 people that has inspired such a disproportionate number of songs?

Here is Otis's contribution to the canon, along with a couple of old favourites:

"Kansas City" - Otis Gibbs (from "Joe Hill's Ashes", 2010)

"The Eternal Kansas City" - Van Morrison (from "A Period Of Transition", 1977)

"Kansas City Morning" - Katy Moffatt (from "Kissin' In The California Sun", 1978)

And then of course there is the band Kansas. Normally I treat all that prog and AOR naffness with the disdain it deserves, but I do have a soft spot for "Leftoverture" and "Point Of Know Return". I used to listen to them a lot when I was about 14, and at that age it is easy to mistake the incomprehensible for the intellectual. Here are the lads in their pomp:

The Mama Of Didadi

Nahawa Doumbia is a female singer from Mali. I had never heard of her until recently when I got hold of a CD called "Reggae Times in Africa" which featured one of her tracks, "Banani" - which I posted last month. This whetted my appetite, and I managed to track down a few of her albums on eMusic.

Her musical style is apparently primarily built around Didadi, a rhythm from the Wassoulou region in Mali. According to the write up about her on the Harmony Ridge Music website, her family tried unsuccessfully to prevent her performing on stage by "resorting to the magical powers of blacksmiths". Clearly the magical blacksmiths of Mali are a waning force - either that or they know a good thing when they hear it and so didn't try very hard to stop her.

Here are a couple of tracks from her 1990 album "Nyama Toutou":

"Sinzin" - Nahawa Doumbia

"Sigi Sele" - Nahawa Doumbia

And here she is with an "unplugged" version of "Banani", which is where I came in:

It's Thommo Time!!

The Southbank Centre announced yesterday that Richard Thompson is going to curate this year's Meltdown in June. If you don't know it, Meltdown is a two week festival of music and other arts selected by a guest curator, usually a musician. Previous curators include the likes of Robert Wyatt, Scott Walker and Lee "Scratch" Perry. Mostly it is a series of stand-alone concerts but usually the curator makes a guest appearance at a few of them. Richard Thompson is a particular favourite of mine, so I am really looking forward to seeing who will be in the line-up and who he will be playing with.

I first saw Richard in concert (with Linda) at the Cambridge Folk Festival in 1980, so this Summer I will clock up thirty years of Thompson watching. There have been many memorable moments during that time - a storming rendition of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" backed by Fairport Convention and the Roy Wood Big Band at Cropredy in 1995 springs immediately to mind - and a fair amount of guitar heroics. But many of the best gigs were those that featured just him and his acoustic guitar.

He is a great songwriter and a great guitarist, so obviously you are getting three cover versions, two of them "live and unplugged". All three are Scottish traditional songs, and he does a great job on them.

"Bogie's Bonnie Belle (live)" - Richard Thompson

"Bonnie St. Johnstone (live)" - Richard Thompson

"Mingulay Boat Song" - Richard Thompson

And especially for my mate Buxton, here he is doing "1952 Vincent Black Lightning":

Huge In Hunstanton

Like a lot of you, I imagine, I have a list of songs that I am trying to track down. Some of them have been on there for years, mostly things that I heard on the radio in my youth, or that I used to have on vinyl before I scaled back my collection (and immediately regretted doing so).

Every now and then I am able to scratch one off the list - rarely have I been as happy as I was a few years ago when I finally tracked down a copy of "Halfway Hotel" by Voyager in a junk shop in Kalk Bay in South Africa - but there is a hard core that remain elusive.

None more so than "Baby I'm A U-Boat" by The Fire Hydrant Men Featuring The Fabulous Fezettes. Released in 1984 on a 12" EP called "Music From The East Zone", featuring assorted Norwich bands, I used to have it on a cassette of random tracks recorded off John Peel shows which went the way of all flesh very quickly (but that's what happened when you used Winfield cassettes - Woolworth's Own Brand).

If by any miracle there is anyone out there who has a copy of "Baby I'm A U-Boat" they could send me I would be eternally in their debt*. But until that happens we will have to make do a couple of songs with FHMFTFF**'s 1985 album "Missed It By That Much!".

* The same goes for "Locked Out" by The Chefs, "In France" by Lord Melody and "Daytime Nighttime" by Joy Unlimited. Greedy I know, but you get nothing if you don't ask

** I doubt they were ever referred to by this acronym but I couldn't summon the enthusiasm to type the name out in full again when I am going to have to do it twice more anyway.

"Mayday In Moscow" - The Fire Hydrant Men Featuring The Fabulous Fezettes

"99 Years In Sing-Sing" - The Fire Hydrant Men Featuring The Fabulous Fezettes

Somewhat to my amazement I have managed to find a video of the gang in action. As they explain, this is "Chopper Squad"


FIRE HYDRANT MEN - CHOPPER SQUAD

Ladies

The other day I posted a number of different versions of "Love Is Strange", which has resulted in an almost unprecedented number of visits to my humble site. Now obviously my integrity is everything to me and I would never consider "selling out", but at the same time it is always nice to be wanted. So today comes a craven and probably doomed attempt to repeat the trick, but with something marginally less mainstream.

Here are three versions of Fela Kuti's "Lady" for you too enjoy - Fela's 13 minute original and a couple of Afro-Jazz renditions from South Africa and Ghana. I knew Hugh Masekela's version before ever hearing the original and for that reason it is probably still my favourite, but I would not turn my nose up at any of them.

"Lady" - Fela Kuti (from "Shakara", 1972)

"Lady" - Hugh Masekela (from "Waiting For The Rain", 1985)

"African Woman" - Blay Ambolley (from "African Jazz, 2001)

And on a similar theme:



To be honest the highlight of that clip is the woman in the background cadging a fag towards the end (for the benefit of our American readers, "cadging a fag" simply means borrowing a cigarette - fear not)

Zengue Fever

"Is Zengue the new Tsonga Disco?" - that is the question on the lips of all of us here at Leggies HQ. As for the answer, only time will tell.

I was in Musicanova in Brussels the other week when my eye was caught by this CD:

It took me a while to work out that the Jack Palance referred to was not the notorious Hollywood tough guy but, presumably, the rather dapper dude with the stick. But by then I was sufficiently intrigued by the promise of "Zengue full option" to buy the CD anyway.

The CD is from Cameroon and, from what little information I have been able to find on the Web, zengue is a variant on makossa which first started in the mid 1990s. I assume from the reference to "The Best Soukouss" that it is a mix of traditional Cameroonian makossa and Congolese soukous, but if anyone knows more please share.

The CD features six tracks each from Jack Palance (probably not the name his parents gave him) and D.J. Ballas (likewise). Here is one apiece:

"Kibinda - Dance" - Jack Palance

"Tomba" - D.J. Ballas

As a bonus, here is a nifty little ditty from Mighty Sparrow inspired by the original Jack Palance:

"Jack Palance" - Mighty Sparrow

Back to the zengue to finish. Here is Mpande Star with his very own "Zengue Militaire". It is really rather jolly.