Golden Oldies Part 2

This is the second part of a two part series in which we raid the 27Leggies vaults and repost some of our early mp3s in order to bring them to a wider audience.

It is also likely to be my last post for a couple of weeks. BA cabin crew permitting, tomorrow I am off to Cape Town for a gathering of Gogginses. While there I will also do my best to track down some more Tsonga Disco to delight you with.

To tide you over, here are five blasts from the past:

• Some groovy psychedelic sounds from Peru.

"Suavecito" - Traffic Sound (1971)

• Some "freakbeat" (as they seem to call it these days) from Lebanon, which became a much covered garage band standard in Turkey. Also one of my favourite singles of all time.

"For Your Information" - The Cedars (1967)

• A bit of old hippy nonsense.

"Cosmic Surfer" - Quintessence (1972)

• A dancefloor filler from the forgotten king of South African soul.

"Freak Out With Botsotso" - Mpharanyana (197?)

• And finally, a treat from the wizard of whistle himself, Roger Whittaker. Our campaign to get him inducted into the International Whistling Hall of Fame never got very far. Maybe we would be more successful if we tried again now that we have a wider and more international readershp. Let me know if you are for it and I will get something organised. Can we do it? In the words of Barack Obama, yes we can.

"Mistral" - Roger Whittaker (1969)

And to finish, here's a real treat for you. Mr Randolph Rose with "La La La Love Song" back in 1975. In German. With a great tie. And a miserable looking woman in a floral dress giving him a rose. How can you fail to love it?


And if you thought that was good, his rendition of "Sylvia's Mutter" isn't. It peaks very early when he trips over his mike cable. This was put on to YouTube by a lady called Jelena. She has left the box in which you are meant to describe the video blank, so all it says is "Click to add a description". I can see why words failed her.


I feel a Randolph Rose season coming on... but you'll have to wait until I'm back. Have fun in the meantime.

Golden Oldies Part 1

When I started this blog in early 2009 the readership was very much about quality not quantity (as opposed to quality and quantity as it is these days). I was lucky if I got more than a handful of visits a day, and most of them were from me checking whether anyone else had wandered by.

Looking back at some of those early posts the other day it occurred to me that there was a lot of good music there that deserved a wider audience. So today and tomorrow I am re-posting a few of those early underground sounds - five per day. Today's selections are:

• Some home-made new wave sounds from Dorset. I went to school with some of the band - including the guitarist Mike Topp, one of the nicest men in rock - and lead singer Simon Barber went on to have minor indie success with The Chesterfields.

"Who Let The Flowers Fall?" - The Act (1981)

• A bit of 1960s British blue-eyed soul.

"The Painter" - Elmer Gantry (1969?)

• Cash sings Costello.

"The Big Light" - Johnny Cash (1987)

• A lost Southern Soul classic (if you want to know more, details are available courtesy of the magnificent Sir Shambling).

"Sunday Afternoon In Memphis" - Steve Dixon (1972)

• And some Teutonic titans of groove.

"Swinging London" - Hazy Osterwald Jet Set (196?)

That's it for today - tomorrow we bring you a Lebanese garage band, some South African funk and three other delights.

To play us out, and apropos of nothing at all, here are Althea and Donna:

Follies

Today we feature Christofolly & the Afro Beat Cookers. Who you ask? Let me elaborate by quoting from the biography page on his website, which I have converted from French to English with the help on Babelfish.

"Born in the Seventies in Lome in Togo, it types since very small on percussions with his friends, thus, they animated birthdays and funeral in company of groups of ballet of the district and around. At 17 years departure of Togo for a long voyage to the meeting of Africa and of its culture which during 13 years will lead it the Benign one to Nigeria and Cameroun, while passing by Ghana, the Dimension d' Ivory, Mali or Burkina Fasso. C is at 30 years it arrives to France to continue its musical adventure".

"Autodidact, the career of Folly is neither secured musicians neither griots nor, its school is that of the street, the practice and listen. Cracked, Manu Dibango, Salif Keita, James Brown, Youssou Ndour as many legends from which it knew to learn lesson and inspiration and who meetings in meetings led to its current project, AfroBeat Cookers".

I hope that clarifies the position. Here are a couple of tracks from Mr Folly's 2009 album "Afro Beat Rolling".

"Tchekoroba" - Christofolly & The Afro Beat Cookers

"Please, Please, Please" - Christofolly & The Afro Beat Cookers

On the subject of follies, here are a couple of moments from "Rock Follies" with Rula, Julie and the other one.

Showband Sunday

Better late than never, this is to mark St. Patrick's Day.

From the late 1950s to the mid 1970s the Irish live music scene was dominated by the showbands who toured the dancehalls playing the hits of the day, the occasional traditional song and - to paraphrase Donny and Marie - a little bit of country and a little bit of rock and roll. Well, quite a lot of country actually.

At the peak of the showband phenomenon in the mid 1960s it is estimated there were as many as 600 of them touring the country. The total population of Ireland in 1970 was just under three million, so that is roughly one showband for every five thousand people. Every small town had a dancehall. I imagine they looked a bit like this but with more hair and wider collars:



There is a three CD compilation called "The Irish Showband Collection", released on Pulse in 1998 and currently available for next to nothing on Amazon. It features all the big names - Joe Dolan and the Drifters, Dickie Rock and the Miami, The Capitol Showband, The Royal Blues and so on.

To properly appreciate the showbands I suppose you really had to be there, and to be honest a lot of the recordings haven't worn well. But in amongst the dull ballads and pedestrian country tunes there are some real pop gems:

"I Get So Excited" - The Real McCoy (1968)

"Our Love Will Go On" - Butch Moore & The Capitol Showband (1965)

"Land Of Gingerbread" - Gregory & The Cadets (1967)

And there are some that are just bizarre, like this rendition of "Football Crazy" in which the renowned Irish commentator Michael O'Hehir pretends to commentate on a Gaelic football match between the stars of the showband scene.

"Showball Crazy" - The Hoedowners (1966)

Some of the showbands struggled on into the 1980s and beyond, but judging by this clip of the once mighty Miami Showband it would really have been a kindness if someone had stopped them. It is embarrassing for them and embarrassing for us. And you would never have seen Dickie Rock with a mullet and a keytar.

Carpets!

I have just got back from a whistle-stop 36 hour visit to Vilnius in Lithuania. I had hoped to go hunting for some Lithuanian music but a combination of work and the excellent hospitality of my hosts meant I did not get the chance. Is that a collective sign of relief I hear?

Instead here a couple of tunes about carpets I picked up in Brussels earlier in the year - one from a flea market, and the other from Musicanova, the shop that specialises in Congolese CDs.

From the flea market comes a tatty 1971 single by Marc Hamilton from Quebec. The A-side, "Comme J'Ai Toujours Envie D'Aimer", is a pretty boring pop song - and a big hit in France and elsewhere - but the B-side is much more interesting. Apologies about the poor sound quality.

"Tapis Magique" (Magic Carpet) - Marc Hamilton

The second carpet song comes from King Kester Emeneya's 2002 CD, "Nouvel Ordre".

"Tapis Rouge" (Red Carpet) - King Kester Emeneya

I could not find any clips of carpet-based tunes on YouTube, so here instead are some young people cutting a rug.



Which is by way of warming you up for tomorrow's special feature - Showband Sunday!!!

Ladies 3: Catherine Howe

We interrupt our normal programming to deal with a request. Normally I don't let such things get in the way of my editorial integrity, but on this occasion I couldn't refuse. So this blast from the past goes out to Mrs J, in memory of Auntie Nonie. But the rest of you should feel free to sing along as well.

"Paper Roses" - The Kaye Sisters

Back to the plan for today, which is to highlight the work of Catherine Howe, an underrated and for many years overlooked British singer-singwriter from the 1970s. Fortunately for all of us she has been rediscovered in the last few years with the result that most of her albums are now relatively easily tracked down.

Catherine was born in Yorkshire in 1950 and started her entertainment career as an actress, including a stint in Patrick Troughton era Doctor Who. She released her first album, "What A Beautiful Place", in 1971 and it is a classic of its kind. It was re-released on Numero in 2006. Here's the opening track:

"Up North" - Catherine Howe (1971)

"What A Beautiful Place" did not attract a lot of attention at the time and her record company then went bust, so one way or another it was three years before she got another opportunity to record. She released two albums on RCA, "Harry" (1974) and "Silent Mother Nature" (1976), which were re-released on a single CD by BGO in 2007. "Harry" was the bigger hit but personally I much prefer "Silent Mother Nature". Here's the final track:

"You Make Me" - Catherine Howe (1976)

There was one more album, "Dragonfly Days", released on Ariola in 1978 and not currently available as far as I know. Then that was it until 2006 when, partly encouraged by the renewed interest in her, Catherine released a CD called "Princelet Street", named after the street in Spitalifields in London where her great-grandmother was raised. This was of great interest to me, not only because it was her comeback but because Princelet Street is about five minutes walk from where I live. The view on the album cover is very familiar to me.

"Princelet Street" was available via Catherine's website but appears to have sold out for the moment. However it is still available as a download on iTunes along with all the other albums apart from "Dragonfly Days".

That was where I had planned to end this post. But while checking on Amazon to see which albums were still available I was surprised and delighted to discover that just last week she released a new EP with Vo Fletcher. It is called "Going Home" and features this Fleet Foxes's cover:

"White Winter Hymnal" - Catherine Howe and Vo Fletcher (2010)

Frustratingly it turns out they did a free gig to promote the EP literally around the corner from me a couple of weeks ago and I knew nothing about it. However they have recorded a full album which is due out in April, so hopefully they will be doing some more gigs then.

In the meantime, here is a recent clip of them doing "Lucy Snowe", a song first recorded on "Silent Mother Nature". That is Ric Sanders of Fairport Convention on the fiddle.

Ladies 2: Mariem Hassan

Back by popular demand, here is the fabulous Mariem Hassan, the diva of the dispossessed people of the Western Sahara.

Today's selections come from her new CD, "Shouka". There is a lot of great stuff on there, and "Alu Ummi" is pretty much guaranteed a place on my end of year "best of" list regardless of whatever else may come along in between times.

"Alu Ummi" - Mariem Hassan

"Ala Ahd Shaid" - Mariem Hassan

And speaking of divas: