These reviews have appeared in the Brighton Insight City News under the title "Collectors' Items". Each month I review one of my favourite CDs fitting the description buried treasure, undiscovered masterpeice, or hidden gem.
T-BONE WALKER - GOOD FEELIN' 1970
There’s a marvelous clip of Chuck Berry jamming with an elegantly dressed crooner on YouTube. The singer seems reluctant to relinquish his gin and tonic when Chuck forces his guitar on him. He eventually plays a few trademark licks and modestly tries to pass the guitar back but Chuck is away with the fairies. The singer is Texas-born guitar pioneer Aaron “T-Bone” Walker who, in the early 1940s, kick-started a musical revolution by becoming the first blues guitarist to go electric. A former tap dancer and master showman T-Bone also did the splits, and was playing guitar with his teeth and behind his back, long before Chuck or Jimi Hendrix. BB King was inspired to take up guitar after hearing T-Bone’s classic Stormy Monday and in trying to emulate his tone said “I came pretty close but never quite got it…it’s like nobody else…that sound of being in heaven”.
T-Bone’s smooth West Coast sound fell out of favour in the ‘60s as America began to embrace rock and roll and soul and like many bluesmen he sought to revive his fortunes in Europe becoming a regular on the blues legend festival circuit. It was during one such sojourn in Paris that he recorded the Grammy award winning Good Feelin’, an album that demonstrated a harder funkier sound and briefly rekindled interest in his music on both sides of the Atlantic before his death in 1975.
Beautifully paced with alternate quick and slow numbers framed by a matching piano solo where T-Bone narrates "I sing nothing but the blues" this really is a "good feelin’" album. Recorded with a band of crack local musicians the music rolls and rumbles, it's urban and soulful, with T-Bone's fluid jazz-tinged lead lines and honeyed vocals superbly complemented by a honking horn section, a chugging bass, and some groovy Hammond organ. This band really cooks and to have been in that smoky Paris basement studio at the exact moment when the brass section burst in at the start of track two must have been something else. Production is crisp and vibrant retaining a raw live edge that helps create an atmosphere of a band grooving together on one of those nights when it just “feels right". Like the man says, it is the blues, but it's so much more.
JOHN MARTYN - GRACE AND DANGER 1980
Maverick jazz-folkie John Martyn’s Grace and Danger is a “break up” album from the same stable as Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks or Marvin Gaye's Hear, My Dear. Best enjoyed, if that’s the word, with a bottle of wine at 3am, such painfully honest expressions of loss, denial, bitterness, and anger, can be strangely cathartic for the broken-hearted listener.
Things are bearable at first. Some People Are Crazy sets the tone with lovely harmonic bass, twinkly electric piano and Martyn rolling his booze and smoke enriched bear’s growl of a voice around his rrrrs. Lookin’ On has a luxurious jazz club atmosphere with gorgeous cymbal laden rhythms, and Johnny Too Bad forewarns of stormy times ahead if our Johnny doesn’t stop behaving badly.
Then the mood takes a serious downturn, beginning with one of the most beautiful love songs ever written, Sweet Little Mystery, where John cries in the night waiting for a letter that never comes. Two heartbreaking pleas for reconciliation follow; both Hurt in Your Heart and Baby Please Come Home do exactly what they say on the tin and all self respect has gone.
So how could she not come back after these passionate declarations of unconditional love? Well, if she’s still listening, the answer lies in the next track where John’s tone becomes defiant (the letter has come and it’s not good news). Hidden deep in the mix he slurs the line “I cheated on the side”. As a rock star on the road for whom “the way I live I’m never on my own”, this can be no surprise, but nevertheless an astonishingly brutal admission to make in public. Anyway, we know by now it’s too late as she is already “in the arms of some new friend”. The final track, which intriguingly has a co-writing credit with his estranged wife (maybe via that letter?), offers some hope; he’s still angry but is on the way to forgetting.
An equally distraught Phil Collins (whose own marriage was to shortly undergo a similar public exorcism on Face Value) lends moral and musical support with some crisp drums and restrained backing vocals. The studio can’t have been much fun but for music this good it was worth it; Grace and Danger will stay with you long after the “hurt in your heart has gone”.
JAMES BROWN - IN THE JUNGLE GROOVE 1986 (1969-71)
In my younger days after an evening of dancing to the most exciting music I had ever heard I asked a more enlightened fellow reveller which was the best James Brown album to buy (in a career spanning over 50 years, that ended last Christmas Day, there were nearly 100 so at the time there were probably about 67 to choose from!). In the Jungle Groove, he said, without hesitating.
Don’t expect any ballads, easy listening, or the hit singles, this double album length CD, recently reissued with a bonus track, collects together ten extended funk jams recorded between 1969 and 1971. With their raw energy and improvised feel, these vital studio recordings encapsulate not only the intensity of Brown’s live performances, but also his volatile off stage existence during this period. Brown was a hard task master and in March 1969 his regular backing band walked out; luckily for musical history not before recording the famous Funky Drummer, with its infectious and oft sampled rhythm. The version here features alternate sax, guitar, drum, and stabbing organ solos by Brown himself, over a gorgeous groove that goes on forever (actually 9 minutes; indeed all the tracks on this album are so hypnotic and persistent, they each feel like twice their actual length).
Even more energetic is Give It Up or Turnit a Loose featuring a new band allegedly commissioned to perform a gig with two hours notice and no rehearsal. Unfamiliarity doesn’t show as the song kicks off with a muted guitar riff before the funky drummer (Clyde Stubblefield remained from the original band) comes crashing in and the new “JBs” deliver a high octane slab of chunk funk with Brown extolling “Ain’t it funky now!”.
And it just keeps on coming - peaking with the stupendous, foot tapping, head nodding, body popping and simply exhausting Talkin’ Loud and Sayin’ Nothing where the band lock into another fast and furious, horn honking groove as tight as one of their leader’s latter day waist bands, and guaranteed to get your party cooking.
Several years ago I saw James Brown at Stanmer Park. He was well past his best by then but just occasionally there were moments where the band touched the jungle groove and I was back in that nightclub again.
BELLE AND SEBASTIAN - THE BOY WITH THE ARAB STRAP 1998
Who are Belle and Sebastian? What is an Arab Strap and why is the man on the cover impaled on a nasty looking wooden stake? These and other questions may have crossed the minds of the audience when, in the wake of their rather lovely third album The Boy with the Arab Strap, the previously secretive and unassuming Glaswegian 8-piece incongruously beat off the likes of Billie and Steps to take the best newcomer award at the 1999 Brits.
Offering a gentle alternative to the rampant Oasis and Blur dominated lad culture of mid-90s Britpop, Belle and Sebastian (borrowing their name from a cute 70s children’s TV series about a boy and his dog in the French Alps) shunned publicity and acquired cult status largely through word of mouth. Building on the delicate songwriting of their first two albums The Boy with the Arab Strap adds orchestration whilst essentially retaining a low-fi core of fragile vocals backed by acoustic guitar, piano and soft snare one-twos, throughout a dozen catchy pop songs of nostalgia, adolescence, inadequacy, innocence, longing, desire, endless childhood summers, and odes to the joys of generally lazing around.
But this is no ordinary disposable pop; It Could Have Been a Brilliant Career starts the album with the line “He had a stroke at the age of 24”, and we immediately realise these are not songs you’re likely to be singing around the campfire this summer despite the accessibility of the simple nursery rhyme like melodies. The wistful and sometimes surreal lyrics will appeal to fans of Morrissey or Nick Drake, and conjure romantic images of colourfully dressed bohemians reading French poetry outside North Laine coffee houses on a sunny day. But then again Seymour Stein, recounting the band’s rejection of overtures from the wonderfully named real life major label boss, is far closer to the sound of latter day Velvet Underground than Greenwich Village.
After googling
“arab strap” I noticed singer Stuart Murdoch mischievously changes the lyrics in the infectious hand clapping title
tune to “You were laid on your back, with the boy from the Arab Strap”, a nod to fellow Scotch indie-band named after
said item of bedroom-wear. I’ve yet to learn the story behind the cover picture,
if any, despite posting a question on the band’s website; probably just
students fooling about.
VELVET UNDERGROUND - LOADED 1970
Much less celebrated than their famous banana covered debut, Loaded is often dismissed by diehard fans as not sounding like Velvet Underground. Indeed by then mentor Andy Warhol and his out of tune chanteuse Nico had both moved on, and drummer Moe Tucker was on maternity leave. John Cale, responsible for much of the band’s avant-garde edge with his electric viola thrashings, had also left following musical differences with Lou Reed who was now ready to write pop songs in response to the new record company’s request for an album “loaded” with hits.
The change in style is evident immediately on “Who Loves the Sun” which is so reminiscent of the hippie pop coming out of California in the late 60s (and ironically the complete antithesis of early VU) that somewhere there must be kaleidoscope video footage of the band performing this single in flower shirts standing on circular podiums. The next three songs roll into each other almost indistinguishably; each a classic of efficient straight forward rock with infectious hooks and great lyrics: Sweet Jane (arguably Reed’s greatest ever song); Rock and Roll (“her life was saved by Rock and Roll!”); and Cool it Down (“she’s got the power, to love me by the hour!”). The first half ends with the anthemic New Age that builds gradually to a thrilling singalong climax of “something’s got a hold of me, but I don’t know what”. The power subsides slightly on “side two” with the country rocker Lonesome Cowboy Bill, a pretty ballad I Found a Reason, and Train Round the Bend which is more characteristic of the Velvets’ earlier sound with Reed yearning for a return to the neon lights of the city. Again the half ends with a stadium-like anthem, the beautiful epic Oh! Sweet Nuthin with multi-instrumentalist Doug Yule’s lovely bass lines, and his brother Billy’s scatter gun drumming.
What is
most evident throughout Loaded, and in
contrast with the more primitive quality of their earlier recordings, is this
band can really play. But despite containing some of Reed’s greatest
compositions the hits did not materialise. Frustrated by elusive commercial
success the leader of one of the most decadent bands in history bailed out and
went home to live with his parents, before re-emerging a couple of years later to
solo superstardom.
BAKA BEYOND - THE MEETING POOL 1995
The much maligned term “world music” is entirely apt for Baka Beyond’s The Meeting Pool which records the coming together of a wealth of musical cultures. The group take their name from the Baka rainforest people of Cameroon with whom band leader Martin Cradick struck up a fruitful musical partnership following a visit to the region in 1992. Field recordings provide much of the music’s African flavour (indeed the Baka people share writing credits and royalties are channelled into local development projects). With studio contributions from other African and European master musicians Cradick has created an intoxicating Afro-Celtic stew.
This multicultural infusion is most obvious on Meeting of Tribes; a traditional Cornish reel is played on Turkish and Arabic instruments, with African drumming and a didgeridoo drone! Its East meets West, North and South, modern and ancient; an organic melting pot of a dish that should taste overdone but is surprisingly delicious. The understated but constantly hypnotic percussion and Cradick’s careful use of samples together with his circular guitar patterns preserve continuity throughout such myriad shifts in style. Furthermore unlike some less sincere world music dance projects that seem to do little more than paste some banging modern beats over traditional instruments The Meeting Pool is authentic and subtle (only in the final remix track are the traditional drums replaced with more electronic Western dance beats).
This wonderfully atmospheric album simply drips with water; from the lush green packaging to the ambient rainforest noises, the distant voices and laughter, the shakers and rain sticks, and the clatter of wooden percussion that permeates throughout each track. The upbeat opening Woosi hypnotises with an African guitar loop and Baka chanting. The gentle Ancestor’s Voice ebbs and flows before merging seamlessly into a tribute to the River Lupé via wonderfully evocative water slapping. Ohureo is a beautiful Gallic lullaby with Paddy Le Mercier’s violin soaring to the heights. Despite the Irish influences his rootsy fiddle playing is far more Scarlet Rivera (as most celebrated on Bob Dylan’s classic Desire album) than Riverdance. On Journey the Frenchman also plays flute over another infectious groove laid down by Senegalese percussionist Sagar N’Gom. The quiet Ndaweh’s Dream highlights yet another exotic instrument, this time a ngombi (forest harp), before the rousing finale Booma Lena.
© 2007 Jon Edgell