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Monday, December 31, 2007
WHAT TIME IS IT?
The Jive Five
Beltone : 1962
Available on: Our True Story
Ace : 1991
[Buy It]
I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TIME IT WAS
Roland Kirk Quartet
Mercury : 1962
Available on: Rahsaan: The Complete Mercury Recordings
Polygram : 1990
[Buy It]
TIME FOR EVERYTHING
Ed Pauling & The Exciters
Federal : 1965
Available on: The "5" Royales : Catch That Teardrop : The Best of the Home of the Blues 1950-1954 Sessions (Plus the Complete Federal & Savoy Recordings of El Pauling & Royal Abbit)
Ace : 2007
[Buy It]
PLEASE SEND ME SOMEONE TO LOVE
Percy Mayfield
Specialty : 1950
Available on: Poet of The Blues
Specialty : 1990
[Buy It]
PLEASE SEND ME SOMEONE TO LOVE
James Booker
Keyboard King of New Orleans
c. 1976 (JSP Reissue : 2005)
[Buy It]
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE
The "5" Royales
Federal : 1960
Available on: Catch That Teardrop : The Best of the Home of the Blues 1950-1954 Sessions (Plus the Complete Federal & Savoy Recordings of El Pauling & Royal Abbit)
Ace : 2007
[Buy It]
I CRIED ALL NIGHT LONG
Harvey Sims
Art Rosenbaum Field Recording : 1991
The Art of Field Recording Vol. 1
Dust to Digital : 2007
[Buy It]
TO LOVE SOMEONE (WHO DON'T LOVE YOU)
The Kaldirons
Twinight : 1970
Available on: Eccentric Soul: Twinight's Midnight Rotation
Numero Group : 2007
[Buy It]
HAPPY NEW YEAR, BABY
The Johnny Otis Orchestra
Excelsior : 1947
[Buy It]
MEADOWLANDS
Nancy Jacobs & Her Sisters
Quality : 1955
Available on: The History of Township Music
Wrasse : 2001
[Buy It]
YOU'RE ALL I NEED TO GET BY (TAKE 2)
Aretha Franklin
Atlantic : 1970
Available on: Rare & Unreleased Recordings from The Golden Reign of The Queen of Soul
Atlantic : 2007
[Buy It]
HAPPY NEW YEAR
Lightnin' Hopkins
Decca : 1963
Available on: Blue Yule: Christmas Blues and R&B Classics
Rhino : 1991
[Buy It]
THIS TIME ANOTHER YEAR YOU MAY BE GONE
Rev. Edward Claybor
Vocalion : 1928
Available on: American Primitive vol. 1: Raw Pre-War Gospel (1926-36)
Revenant : 1997
[Buy It]
NOBODY'S BUSINESS
Joe Harris & Kid West
Available on: Field Recordings, vol. 5: Louisiana, Texas, Bahamas 1933-1940
Document : 1998
[Buy It]
The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears. ~W.H. Auden
NEW YEAR'S PARTY
Blowfly
Weird World 12" : 1980
Available on: The Worst of Blowfly
Hot : 1996
[Buy It]
Happy new year to you and yours, from Ben, Brian, James, Joanna, Alex, and the extended Moistworks family!
AULD LANG SYNE
Jimi Hendrix
Live @ The Fillmore : January 1, 1970
Courtesy of: WFMU's Beware of the Blog
[Unreleased]Labels: african, alex, blues, doo-wop, gospel, holidays, jazz, rhythm and blues, soul
posted by Alex
LINK |
Monday, June 11, 2007
SUMMERTIME
Rahsaan Roland Kirk
Boogie Woogie String Along For Real
Warner Bros : 1977
[Out of Print]
Thanks, perhaps, to the immense popularity of Moistworks dot com, people come up to Ben, Brian, James, Joanna and me all the time: Rank strangers, but they ask us, have we been ignoring you? Or, how do hydroelectric dams work? Or, what have you been listening to? Strangers: I can't speak for Ben, Brian, James, or Joanna (actually, I can speak for Joanna - she's been listening to the Zombies non-stop for the past 18 months or so) - but I've been listening to this spider web of a song: Rahsaan Roland Kirk, in New York, post-stroke, in 1977. From his last recording session.
A SAD SAD SONG
Charles Crawford
Hy-Sign : 1973
Available on: Shreveport Southern Soul: The Murco Story
Kent : 2000
[Buy It]
Stranger, here's something else you'll like: Sir Shambling's Deep Soul Heaven. Countless 45s, annotated, indexed, transferred to MP3, and free to each and every one of you. I downloaded everything - then the iPod and I had a lovely candlelit evening all to ourselves. It's where I found Charles Crawford's "Sad, Sad Song," which also happens to be the only song Charles Crawford recorded. Too bad, no?
. . . . . . . . . .
NOCHE AZUL
Unknown Cuban Orchestra
[Test Pressing for a certain Mr. Madriguera]
Available on: Music of Cuba: 1909 - 1951
Sony : 2000
[Buy It]
MOONLIGHT HIGHLIFE
Dr. Victor Olaiya
Available on : Lagos All Routes
Honest Jon's : 2005
[Buy It]
I've been collecting old Cuban recordings, and - this isn't entirely unrelated - obsessing over Congolese music from the 50s and 60s, and Nigerian and Angolan music from the 60s and 70s. Hoarding it, really, in hopes of dedicating Moistworks to Cuban music, or African music - or bleed-through between the two - for a few weeks, exclusively. But who has the time? So, in lieu of theme weeks, here are two of the loveliest things you'll hear this summer.
. . . . . . . . . .
TOP TEN ROCK
Fuller Todd
King : 1958
Available on: King Rockabilly
Ace : 2001
[Import]
Next up, a kick-ass rockabilly track (which I know next to nothing about - it seems fairly google-proof), one of the best things Willie Colon ever (what's the appropriate cliche here - committed to wax?), and some old, equally google-proof funk from Ohio. Let me know if it gets you through the day.
LA MURGA
Willie Colon & Hector Lavoe
Asalto Navideño
Fania : 1970
[Buy It]
JUNKIE'S HUSTLE
Earth's Delight
Black Forest : 1970 (?)
[Out of Print]Labels: african, alex, cuban, funk, jazz, rockabilly, salsa, soul
posted by Alex
LINK |
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Here's a nice quote about love:
Love: we are those beings who must, at all times, give our all. To be decieved has no real meaning for us, for we act under immense pressure and the object has the sole functionof unleashing this. Thus we are as naive as children when it comes to judging the loved one. Even when a lover only desires flirtation and a touch of sentiment we are so dazzled that we want to give her everything - our very soul. We are ridiculous, but for good reason.
- Robert Musil, Diaries 1899-1944
And a few tracks from the mix cd I'm working on:
I'M STANDING IN THE SHADOWS
The 5 Royals
Todd 7" : 1963
[Criminally Out of Print]
THAT'S HOW I FEEL
The Soul Clan (Solomon Burke, Arthur Conley, Joe Tex, Ben E. King, Don Covay)
Soul Meeting
Atlantic : c. 1968
Available on: Atlantic Unearthed: Soul Brothers
Atlantic : 2006
[Buy It]
WHEN YOU TOUCH ME
The Reigning Sound
Too Much Guitar
In The Bed Records : 2004
[Buy It]
PEGGY
Toots & The Maytals
BMN 7" : 1965
Available on: Pressure Drop The Definitive Collection
Trojan : 2005
[Buy It]
LOVE POTION #9
The Coasters
The Coasters on Broadway
King : 1973
[Even More Criminally Out of Print]/Courtesy of Soul Sides
CRIMSON & CLOVER
The Uniques
Available on: The Best of Slim Smith & The Uniques 1967-1969
Trojan US : 2003
[Buy It]
A TASTE OF HONEY (LIVE)
James Booker
Spiders on the Keys: Live at the Maple Leaf Bar
Rounder : 1993
[Buy It]
(THE LOVE I SAW IN YOU WAS) JUST A MIRAGE
The Uniques
Available on: The Best of Slim Smith & The Uniques 1967-1969
Trojan US : 2003
[Buy It]
SEARCHING THE DESERT FOR THE BLUES
Blind Willie McTell
Available on: The Best of Blind Willie McTell
Yazoo : 2004
[Buy It]
GOODBYE BOOZE
The Delmore Brothers
Available on: Classic Cuts 1933-1941
JSP : 2004
[Buy It]
FUEL FOR LOVE
Wrinkers Experience
Available on : EMI Super Hits
EMI Nigeria : c. the early '70s
[Out of Print]/Also courtesy of Soul Sides
There's no theme yet, except that a few friends are getting married this year, so it's pretty heavy on the love songs. And not all of the squares are in place, but a few of these songs - Crimson & Clover, Love Potion # 9, James Booker's Rachmaninov- flavored Taste of Honey - will make it on by dint of their awesomeness. So this is more or less what I've been walking around in the sunshine listening to. And now, in entirely unrelated (but somewhat more timely) news:
FIDEL CASTRO
Lord Invader
Calypso Travels
Folkways : 1959
[Buy It]Labels: african, alex, bluegrass, blues, calypso, reggae, soul, soul/garage-core
posted by Alex
LINK |
Friday, August 25, 2006
AFRICAN DREAM
Young Tiger
London is The Place For Me 3: Ambrose Adekoya Campbell
Honest Jons Records : 2006
[Buy It]
OMINARA
African Rhythm Brothers
ZOO LAKE
KHAULEZA
Dorothy Masuka
HIGHLIFE PICCADILLY
The African Messengers
London is The Place For Me 4: African Dreams & The Piccadilly Highlife
Honest Johns Records : 2006
[Buy It]
A funny and terrible thing happened on the way to my liver last night. Also. two CDs arrived from Amazon UK:
Volumes III and IV of the awesome London is The Place For Me series, which is put out by UK's Honest Jons Records, and more or less unavailable here, and consists of British recordings of expat Africans and West Indians. Vol. III is devoted to Nigerian Ambrose Adekoya Campbell, the West African Rhythm Brothers, the Nigerian Union Rhythm Group, and - you get the idea.. Vol. IV mixes Africans - Dorothy Masuka, The African Messengers, etc. - with calypsonians like Young Tiger and Lord Kitchener. I'd tell you more, but really, I'm in no shape for it. So enjoy, and check in next week for the triumphant return of Megan Matthews, tracks from the forthcoming and hotly anticipated Modern Times LP, and dope rhymes from Ice Cube, Da Lench Mob, and the Coup. In the meantime, from the liner notes:Singing in 1954 as Young Tiger, George Browne also invoked Afro-Caribbean tradition. In African Dream, he imagines his own triumphant return in the motherland, met by crowds with a fatted calf, and the ceremonial performance of a shango song - commonly known as Oken Karange - about prosperity and the coming of Ogun... His account is rueful, rapturous, and tongue in cheek, in equal measure, before the dream is rudely interrupted by the pressures of everyday iving in London, and Young Tiger finds himself half-asleep singing Oken Karange to his irate landlord.
"I picked up the original Yoruba chant from the shango churchesm tgere were four, in my neighborhood in Laventille, in the early 30s. Sometimes a feast in these tents would last for several days. They had three drums... three musical pitches - the comgo, the oumele (with two sticks, like a kettle drum), and the bass drum. Many, many songs, hymns you might call them, sometimes monotonous, building till someone got the power, then they might pass out, speaking in a different way, the spirits got them, a great spectacle. I used to think it was gibberish until I sang Karange once at a party in London. A Nigerian understoof what I was saying. An eye-opener for me." Labels: african, alex
posted by Alex
LINK |
Friday, August 04, 2006
MBUBE
Miriam Makeba
Miriam Makeba
RCA : 1960
Available on: Africa
Novus : 1991
[Buy It]
MBUBE
Solomon Linda's Original Evening Birds
Gallotone : 1939
Available on: Mbube Roots: Zulu Choral Music from South Africa, 1930's-1960's
Rounder : 1990
[Buy It]
MBUBE [ALTERNATE TAKE]
Solomon Linda's Original Evening Birds
Gallotone : 1939
Available on: Secret Museum of Mankind : Ethnic Music Classics 1925-1948 vol. 4
Yazoo : 1997
[Buy It]
I've been listening to "Mbube" - the Miriam Makeba version you'll find above - for something like four months now - sometimes once every few days; sometimes many times in a row. The first time around, it hooked me at 1:14, when Makeba starts swimming against the current, and floored me at 1:36, where Makeba sings something which, I don't know how to describe it. You people should send us money for it, and we'll make sure to forward it to Makeba.
Which is pretty much happened with Solomon Linda's original, recorded almost seventy years ago, for the princely sum of 10 shillings. It, too, is amazing, and so's the backstory, sorted out a few years ago by intrepid Afrikaner Rian Malen - it's a tale worth telling, and can read it yourself, as a pdf, here. FYI: It's a long article, so here's 1% of it, as summarized by Microsoft Word:Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds cut several songs under Motsieloa's direction, but the one we're interested in was called "Mbube", Zulu for "the lion", recorded at their second session, in 1939/"Can an all-white group sing songs from Negro culture?"/The answer, of course, lay in the song that Seeger called "Wimoweh"/ Solomon Linda didn't even get a contract/As the song found its fans, money started rolling in/Solomon Linda was entitled to nothing. That's a bit unkind to Seeger, who does seem to have sent Linda a thousand dollar thank you note for the song, which he recorded as one of the Weavers, singing the Zulu uyimbube ("you're a lion") phonetically, as "Wimoweh". No, the real villain here was Paul Campbell, aka Howie Richmond, who copyrighted the song under an alias, as was common practice back in the day. (Malan informs us that, at around the same time, Tin Pan Alley publishers managed to copyright "Greensleeves," "John Henry," "Michael, Roy Your Boat Ashore," "The Battle Hymn of The Republic," and India's national anthem.) Really, it's a good article - you should send us money for it; we'll make sure it gets to Malan.
The song's been covered (in ascending evolutionary order) by Barry Manilow, R.E.M., Jimmy Cliff, and this talking donkey. The best-known version was released in 1961, by a Brooklyn doo-wop group called The Tokens, who turned one of Linda's improvised phrases (which you'll hear at the end of the first Linda recording, above, but not in the unreleased third take, posted below it) into the main theme. We're not posting the Tokens version, or ones by the Weavers or the Kingston Trio, because (a) they're easy to find and (b) anodyne. Instead, here's Alex Chilton's cover, recorded in the course of a long radio interview Chilton gave in support of Like Flies on Sherbert (an album you can read more about here) - and introduced as "one by the token blacks." It's a big-ish file, because I've also included Chilton's performances of two songs from Flies: Roy Orbison's "I've Had It", and the Carter Family's "No More The Moon Shines on Lorena," along with studio chatter involving Christmas trees and Brian Eno:
WIMOWEH
Alex Chilton & Friends
Unreleased Radio Performance
Austin, Tx : 1978
[Send us money; we'll make sure it gets to Chilton]
Stay tuned for more township music - and more Miriam Makeba - in weeks to come. And send money. We promise not to mention The Lion King.Labels: african, alex
posted by Alex
LINK |
Thursday, June 22, 2006
MONA KI NGI XICA
MUIMBO UA SABALU
Bonga
Angola 72
Reissued on: Tinder Records : 1997
[Buy It]
Sometimes I get lonely and I feel sorry for myself. But then I remember Barbra Streisand's nose. My mom would use this nose to make a point: "You see how Streisand never got that nose fixed? She's not crazy. She's not going to take a chance and get her voice screwed up. So she's stuck with that nose. What are you gonna do?"
Point taken, mom. And so, with this in mind, I accept a certain degree of loneliness as an essential condition of my life. Lonely is my engine, the secret behind everything I do. Lonely makes me dress up to go to the library, but it lets me find an Ideal Friend inside a hardback cover. Lonely makes me talk to random people on the street, but it's why I know so many people, so many stories. Lonely makes me a magpie for wonderful, irrelevant things, and that makes me a person I like to be.
The trick is to make the lonely work for you. Lonely is a rupture with the world you're in, but if you use it well, it's also a door to other places, other lives.
I first heard Bonga in 1996. I was living alone for the first time since I'd left home and loving it. I had a sunny studio apartment near the lake that I couldn't really afford - not so fancy, I just couldn't afford much. I started work at 3, so I spent my mornings reading and writing, surrounded by the glow of hardwood floors. I couldn't afford CDs either, so I'd tape stuff off of college radio, diligently recording playlists for future reference. WNUR had this world music show, Continental Drift, that was so good I actually called in with a pledge during the inevitable fund-raising drive. I don't remember what I was doing when they played "Mona Ki Ngi Xica," or "The Child I Am Leaving Behind," but I remember I stopped and sat and listened. I put that song on the first mix tape I made in bulk, one of those crappy tape-to-tape-to-tape jobs I sent out to a handful of friends. At least one of those tapes is still kicking around; my college roommate stumbled across it when packing for a recent move. He'll tell you, it's a weird tape: Thinking Fellers and Funkadelic and Marian Anderson. And Bonga.
Bonga Kwenda recorded Angola 72 in Rotterdam; he'd been exiled for his affiliation with the anti-colonial insurgency, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola. The album was banned in his homeland, offensive to Portuguese sensibilities on two counts: its lyrics described the desperate poverty of Angolans under colonial rule and its music contained coded shout-outs to Angolan national pride. Bonga's band back home was called Kisseuia, or "poor people's suffering." He wrote songs based on the traditional semba style, the ancestor or close cousin of Brazilian samba (depending on your read of the circular genealogy of Afro-Latin music). He included Angolan instruments like the dizanka, a bamboo-scraper-type beat-keeper that reminds me of the fish. Wait, is that what it's called, the fish? You can hear it in this song:
RIGHT ON
Marvin Gaye
What's Going On
Motown : 1971
[Buy It]
I don't know the lyrics to "Mona Ki Ngi Xica" - it's sung in Kimbundu - but the emotion needs no translation: the plaintive guitars, the throaty hum, Bonga's husky cries, all speak anguished accusation. In 1974, a coup in Portugal brought down the colonial government; in 1975, a newly independent Angola imploded into a 27-year civil war that left the country in ruins. For many Africans, especially Bonga's fellow exiles in Europe, Angola 72 and the follow-up, Angola 74, became landmarks in time, music made in an explosive moment and instantly imbued with history (see Marvin Gaye, op cit).
I didn't have access to that history or those memories when I first heard the song, but it haunted me. Little by little, I learned new stories - about the song, about Bonga, about Angola.
Maybe eight years after that first hearing, another friend who got the tape I made picked up a copy of Angola 72 on a trip to San Francisco. Hearing Bonga then called up a lost moment in my own history: a rough, disheveled time when it was easy and necessary to imagine a radically different life-to-come. I grew to love another song on the album, "Muimbo Ua Sabalu," about which I can say nothing except, listen.
Hearing Bonga changed my life. It wasn't a conversion experience; I just learned something. And because I had some time on my hands, and because I bothered, the Bonga spread. I even got a little of the Bonga back. Nice, huh?
But thinking about Angola 72 makes me revise my lonely thesis. Maybe lonely isn't quite right. Loneliness is too diffuse. Maybe what I'm really talking about is longing - for home, for a time long past, for a better tomorrow - whatever endlessly deferred dream traps you, arms outstretched, in the infinite present. It's longing that opens the door. It's the door left open, waiting for someone to come home. Lower the arms, shut the door, miss the chance? No, I'm stuck with the longing, I guess. What are you gonna do?
-by Megan MatthewsLabels: african, afro-latin, megan, memoir, world
posted by James
LINK |
Monday, September 12, 2005
THIS HUSTLING WORLD
Gyedu Blay-Ambolley
Booniay!!: A Compilation of West African Funk
Afrodisiac : 2002
[Buy It]
TEZETA
Mahmoud Ahmed
Ethiopiques Volume 7: Erh Mhla Mhla
Buda Musique : 1999
[Buy It]
COFFIN FOR HEAD OF STATE
Fela Kuti
Coffin For Head of State
EMI: 1980
[Buy It]
Part II of Friday's African music post....Labels: african, alex
posted by Alex
LINK |
Friday, September 09, 2005
GOUVERNMENT YA CONGO
Depiano
Ngoma: Souvenir Ya L'independence
P.a.m. : Recorded in 1961
Courtesy of: Benn Loxo du Taccu
[Buy It]
YETESFA TEZETA
Tesfa-Maryam Kidane
Ethiopiques 8: Swinging Addis 1969-1974
Buda Musique : 2002
[Buy It]
PARADISO
Konono No. 1
Congotronics
Crammed Discs : 2005
[Buy It]
KASALEFKUT HULU
Mulatu Astatqe
Ethiopiques 4: Ethio Jazz & Musique Instrumentale, 1969-1974
Buda Musique : 1998
[Buy It]
Heavy traffic, and subsequent bandwith problems, in MW's NYC Bureau: We'll be posting the remaining tracks - by Mahmoud Ahmed, Gyedu Blay-Amboley, and Fela Kuti - on Monday.
I'm running around like a maniac today, so the reply to Joanna's work songs will have to wait a week or so. In the meantime, a few more African tunes to get you through the weekend....Labels: african, alex
posted by Alex
LINK |
Friday, September 02, 2005
I'M GOING BACK TO AFRICA
Lord Invader & His Calypsonians
Trojan Calypso
Trojan : 2002
[Buy It]
HASABE
Ayalew Mesfin
Ethiopiques 8: Swinging Addis
Buda Musique : 2000
[Buy It]
AKOKO BA
Gyedu Blay-Ambolley
Booniay!!: A Compilation of West African Funk
Tornado : 2002
[Buy It]
FLEURETTE AFRICAINE
Duke Ellington, Charlie Mingus, Max Roach
Money Jungle
Blue Note : 1962
[Buy It]
CACHAO'S GUIRO
Cachao
Master Sessions vol. 1
Sony : 1994
[Buy It]
Yeah, that's me, in a skirt, on a rooftop, somewhere in Africa, c. 1974 or so. Thanks to Tom for the photo. Thanks to Alex & Yaron for everything else. Stay tuned for more African music to come.Labels: african, alex
posted by Alex
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