Of Gigs And Gigabytes

The communication breakdown continues. I now have a new PC but they forgot to deliver the new monitor, which is needed as the old one is not compatible. In addition, my external storage drive appears to have been corrupted somehow and is denying me access to some of my music and most of my photos. All very irritating.

To soothe my soul I have been enjoying some live music, with three gigs in the last five days. Life at the moment is a mixture of gigs-a-go-go and gigabytes-a-gone-gone.

First up last Friday was a solo set by Bruce Cockburn at a barely half-full Shepherds Bush Empire. The low turnout was a shame but the fact the cheap seats were over £40 probably had a lot to do with it - I was only there because I had wangled a discount ticket. Bruce himself was very good and the set was a nice mix of old favourites and tracks from his recent album "O Sun O Moon".

Sunday afternoon was spent in trendy Clerkenwell at a free festival in a little local park. There were several acts on the bill but we were only there for the headliner, the great Wreckless Eric. Another solo set, he was excellent as always, mixing tracks mostly taken from his new album "Leisureland" and its predecessor "Transience" (2019) with a selection of expletive-laden anecdotes that I am sure were appreciated by the small children and dog show contestants in the audience.

It wasn't just small children and dogs though. Among the celebrities in the crowd were Spizz Energi, Gaye Advert, Helen McCookeryBook and Old Bob from Tenpole Tudor. It truly was a night of a thousand stars,

By last night we had made our way from trendy Clerkenwell to drizzly Dalston for another open air gig, this time by the Madalitso Band from Malawi. Undoubtedly the finest table-based band I have ever seen, they score highly on most other criteria as well. I would recommend catching them if you can, you are sure to leave with a smile on your face.

I will save the audio clip of the Madalitso Band until our delayed African Odyssey reaches Malawi, but here are one each from Bruce and Eric. Both were highlights of their respective sets. Bruce's track comes from "Big Circumstance" (1989), Eric's from "Transcience". 

Readers of a delicate disposition should note that Eric's track includes blasphemy and obscenity, in one case in the same image.

"If A Tree Falls" - Bruce Cockburn

"Creepy People (In The Middle Of The Night)" - Wreckless Eric

Dead Or Dusty

An update on the IT situation reported in my previous post. Despite installing a new hard drive and numerous attempted restores, resets and reboots, doctors have declared the old desktop PC officially dead.

A new one is on order and should be up and running early next week, but until it is I won't know how much of my music on iTunes (which is where I construct the posts) has made it through. If it hasn't then posts that require planning like the African Odyssey series may be further delayed.

In happier news, I'm off on holiday at the end of next week (New York - a mixture of NYC and the rural idyll upstate where my fab cousin lives). So one way or the other what passes for normal service here is not likely to resume until mid-September.

In the meantime we will continue with the hopefully short-lived series of forgotten sounds found on my storage drive. The two criteria are: the 'date accessed' must be at least ten years old, and if you were to ask me if I had ever heard of these acts I would say "no".

Today we have delved into the S folder, and to very good effect I think. Some of these will definitely be moving up to the A List when everything is working again. In order, we have vintage sounds from Peru and Haiti, something from the 1971 solo album by the former lead singer of Black Cat Bones, and Mick Jones from Foreigner before he was Mick Jones from Foreigner (and even before he was Mick Jones from Spooky Tooth).

"Guayaba" - La Sonora de Lucho Macedo

"Controleur" - Webert Sicot

"Always Another Train" - Brian Short

"I Know" - The State Of Micky & Tommy

Also found in the S folder, Southeast Engine. They don't meet the "who they?" test but they are here because I have a ticket to see their former member William Matheny while I'm in NYC. More on that in due course no doubt.

Rare And Retrievable

The hard drive on my desktop died over the weekend. A replacement is on its way but until repairs have been completed much of my digital music collection is inaccessible, and all the downloaded stuff on my external storage drive can only be played one track at a time on my laptop's media player.

Being a gurning fool I have decided to see this as an opportunity rather than the enormous pain in the arse that it really is. For my own listening pleasure I have been grooving to some old CDs I have not listened to in years, using the primitive technology of a portable radio/CD player. And I'm going to try a similar approach here.

For today's post I have been digging around in the gloomier corners of the storage drive finding things to bring blinking into the light. The two criteria I have applied are that the 'date accessed' must be at least ten years old, and that if you had asked me whether I had heard of these acts I would have said "no". 

There is an obvious risk, which is that if they made no impression on me at the time I downloaded them it may be because they aren't especially memorable. But let's give it a go. Here are three acts I dredged out of the G (for Goggins) folder. See what you think.

"Hey Katy Hey! " - Alex Gruenberg

"I've Been Losing" - The Ghost Hotel

"Wheatfields" - Jon Gant

If you like Jon Gant or The Ghost Hotel they have Bandcamp pages (just click on their names). In Mr Gant's case some things are available on a 'name your price' basis. Jon is still going strong, and is quite prodigious, with his latest album released last December. 

There have been no releases from The Ghost Hotel for ten years but judging by their Facebook page they are still sort of together and doing the occasional gig. Look out for them if you're in Perth (Australia).

A search for Alex Gruenberg reveals that he became lead singer of Best Behavior - also on Bandcamp - but they haven't released anything since 2017. After that the trail goes cold.

Let's finish off with another, better known, G from the folder.

Ernie's African Odyssey Pt 13 - Côte d'Ivoire

On with our African Odyssey, and after a couple of weeks where it was a struggle to find five artists to represent their countries Côte d'Ivoire presents a different challenge. If all the music I have from there was laid end to end it would nearly cover the floor of the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro, the largest church in the world, built to glorify Félix Houphouët-Boigny (and, to a lesser extent, God). 

I could easily have filled the post with nothing but Mandatory African Reggae without any drop off in quality. Indeed, MAR's own Alpha Blondy is probably the best known Ivorian artist globally. But I have left him out on the grounds that a sophisticated bunch like you will have his stuff already. Instead we are treating you all to Ismaël Isaac for the audio and Tiken Jah Fakoly for the video. "Joe Bleck" comes from Ismaël's 1996 album "Treich Feeling". Both are top notch dudes in their own right and both are still going strong.

Between 2015 and 2020 Mr Isaac was married to our next artist, the great Aicha Koné, making them briefly the power couple of the Ivorian music scene. Ms Koné has a familiar origin story. Her parents forbade her from pursuing a musical career so she ran away from home and enrolled at the National Institute of the Arts in Abidjan. She released her first album in 1981 and like her ex-husband is still active. Today's track is from her 2006 album "Farafina Miria". 

Not long after Ms Koné got started the Ivorian music scene lost one of its greats, Ernesto Djédjé. He died in 1983 aged only 35, officially from an untreated ulcer although there are claims of suspicious circumstances. Mr Djédjé pioneered a musical style he called ziglibithy, and as you will hear it is a decidedly funky thing.

"Zadie Bobo" can be found on an excellent compilation album called "Ivory Coast Soul" released by the Hot Casa label. For some reason it is not available on their Bandcamp page but you can pick up Volume 2 (which is almost as good). If you then skip over to Analog Africa's page you can find an EP of other recordings by Ernesto.

There are a number of styles of pop music that have developed in Côte d'Ivoire over the last thirty years that bear the influence of Ernesto and his fellow pioneers. Ziglibithy begat zouglou in the 1990s, then zouglou had its head turned by flashy DJs and begat coupé-décalé. 

The best known act from that scene are Magic System, who have had numerous top ten hits in France, but for the audio I have opted for "Souzana", the 2004 smash by Erickson Le Zoulou. Like Magic System, Mr Le Zoulou was one of the first wave of coupé-décalé stars; sadly, like Ernesto Djédjé, he left us way too soon, passing away in 2020 at just 41.

We round off the audio selection with someone I was lucky enough to see live back in 2011, Dobet Gnahoré. On that tour Ms Gnahoré was mainly promoting her 2009 album "Djekpa La You", from which this track comes, and also her 2010 collaboration with India.Arie which won her a Grammy - the first, and I think only, Ivorian artist to do so. Somewhere there is a photo of the two of us after the gig - I'll spare you that, but here is one I took on the night.

"Joe Bleck" - Ismaël Isaac

"Bembalisso" - Aïcha Koné

"Zadie Bobo" - Ernesto Djédjé 

"Souzana" - Erickson Le Zoulou

"Côte d'Ivoire" - Dobet Gnahoré

O Vanessa Where Art Thou?

I dug out my copy of Vanessa & The O's "La Ballade d'O" for the first time in a while the other day. It seems like only yesterday they were being pushed as the next big thing, but it is actually getting on for nearly 20 years. What happened?

Future big thingness seems unlikely at this point, at least for the O's. Vanessa has been keeping herself busy with Allez Pop! and the like but there has only been one further album from the O's, and that was ten years ago ("Stories For Watering Skies"). Never mind, we'll always have "La Ballade d'O".

"Bagatelle" - Vanessa & The O's 

"NY Hotel" - Vanessa & The O's 

PS After writing the meagre paragraphs above I discovered that Khayem did an Imaginary Compilation Album on Vanessa a few years back, so I suggest you direct any follow-up questions to him as he is more likely to know the answer. For example, he would know whether it is true that the O's were so called because Vanessa is an avid supporter of Leyton Orient FC.

Reggae Cymraeg Gorfodol

It is time for some Reggae Cymraeg Gorfodol (Mandatory Welsh Reggae).

Who better to provide it than that stalwart of the Welsh music scene, Geraint Jarman - a man who has had some reggae in his repertoire since the 1970s. In all that time he has never succumbed to the temptation to change his surname to Jahman, for which we should all be grateful.

The first track comes from his 1998 album "Eilydd Na Ddefnyddiwyd", the second is from a single that he released last year. You can find the single on the Ankst Musik site on Bandcamp, which I would encourage you to explore further while you are there. There are lots of interesting Welsh language new releases and reissues.

"Rheda Dy Ruthr Nefol Ras" - Geraint Jarman

"Gweld y Miwsig" - Geraint Jarman

 

This still might be my all time favourite slice of RCG/ MWR though. 

 

Ernie's African Odyssey Pt 12 - Congo

From Comoros to Congo, or the Republic of the Congo as it is officially called. The country is also sometimes referred to as Congo-Brazzaville to distinguish it from its burly neighbour to the east, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC for short). 

Musically there is a lot of cross-pollination between the two countries - perhaps not surprising when the two capitals (Brazzaville and Kinshasa) are five miles apart, separated only by the Congo river. The soukous sound that originated in Kinshasa is also very popular over the water, and the musicians from the two countries often team up.

Our first act is a good example. Loketo were a Brazzaville band led by the great Aurlus Mabélé, who sadly died in 2020 of a combination of cancer and Covid-19, but the man who provided the sparkling guitar work was Diblo Dibla from Kisangani in DRC. Today's selection comes from their 1988 album "Trouble" and was requested (and very kindly provided) by The Inimitable George.

In case you found Loketo a little mellow, we will turn things up a notch with Extra Musica. The original line-up were all-conquering between 1993 and 1998 before they split due to musical differences - some of them wanted the guitars to be sparkling and the others wanted them to be very sparkling. 

For a while there were two versions of the band, Extra Musica Zangul (led by the main man Roga Roga) and Extra Music International. In time the Zangul version triumphed and reverted to the original name. It is them that provide today's tune, the title track from their 2004 album. 

Rounding off our soukous selection is Tchico, or Tchico Tchicaya to give him his full name. Perhaps I should call him Mr Tchicaya so you don't confuse him with Chico. Mr T is one of a number of artists we will meet in our travels who get referred to as the Golden Voice of Africa. Today's track comes from his 1983 album "La Voix D'Or D'Afrique" on which he asserts his claim to the title. 

If you like this track - and why wouldn't you - you might want to pop over to Global Groove where the mighty Moos has recently shared Mr Tchicaya's "Special 1990" album. For anyone who enjoys African and Latin music of a certain vintage (mostly 1970s to 1990s), Moos is the main man.  

For our last two choices we have two very different takes on the more traditional sounds of the Congo. The first is from Papa Kourand who is a master of the sanza, a traditional thumb piano which is very similar to the Zimbabwean mbira, and a fine singer as well. This track comes from his 2012 album "Tout Restera Ici-Bas" which you can find on Bandcamp.

Les Mamans du Congo are an all-female collective set up in 2018 by singer and percussionist Gladys Samba to revive the old lullabies of the Congo. Some bright spark had the idea of teaming them up with French electronic and hip-hop producer Rrobin and the result was an excellent eponymous album that came out in 2020. You can pick up a copy on Bandcamp, and while you are there you can pre-order their new album "Ya Mizolé" which comes out in October. I have.

"Pour Toujours" - Loketo

"Obligatoire" - Extra Musica

"Loango" - Tchico

"Pointe Noire" - Papa Kourand

"Meki" - Les Mamans du Congo & Rrobin

And now the videos. Special thanks to Jah Thiano for bringing the MAR. Apologies for the ropey quality of the Les Ry-Co Jazz video but I really wanted to include them as they are considered the founding fathers of modern Congolese music and this was the only one I could find.