In Order To Dance

I could have sworn blind I posted this a few years back but, honestly, it appears not.

What an oversight, since it is bloody marvellous (as I was reminded when it popped up on Shuffle tonight).

They're from Paris you know.

Mais oui.

Tom & Joyce - 'Para Bailar' (2002)

Can't Hide Love

This weather's confusing me - I'm all black jeans and boots one minute and shorts and sandals the next. Even the reggae's not the same when the temperature drops. I continue to be, nonetheless, in a funky-vibey-jazzy-dubby mood; no not those guitars, they're too noisy and crude.

I've discovered Putney Library, and it's coming up with the goods.

Carmen McRae - 'Can't Hide Love' (1974)

Friday Reggae # 24

Flippin' 'eck this is a sexy record.

I need a man
You need a woman
Come on get yourself some
Don't refrain

Sorry I'm late. Blogger #fail !

Barbara Jones - 'Come And Get Some' (1975)

Liberdade

From this compilation, which I bought half my lifetime ago.

A piece of music I've liked so much for so long I can't believe I haven't posted it before.

Existiu
Um el dorado negro no Brasil

Gilberto Gil - 'Quilombo' (1984)

[Based on a true story]

Friday Reggae # 23

It's much compiled and very pop-famous, so I'm sure you've already got it, but I'm proudly computerising the original 45 here, snapped up just this afternoon from my currently high-yielding local charity shop for 50p.

Mainstream UK radio largely refused to play reggae records in the early 70s, so desperate-for-airplay labels (in)famously put strings on them. These get pretty close to being a bit much for me on the 'B' side, but on the 'A' the strength of the arrangement and loveliness of Mr Holt's vocal more than neutralise their effect, in my humble.

I've started drinking early tonight because of the stress of having two young male pussycats in the house who lost their cojones today.

Hold on in there boys.

John Holt - 'Help Me Make It Through The Night' (1974)
John Holt - 'Tell Me Why' (1974)

Sock It To Me, Baby

How many times could I listen to this in a single day? Hundreds. Especially for that bit at 1:33.

And Ms Ally'll have it on 45, I shouldn't wonder.

Phyllis Dillon - 'Perfidia' (1967)

Jùjú For Your May

This was a fun, unusual, thing to find in my local charity shop on Saturday, still in the cellophane, just a quid. It's the US edition (the UK cover, which I well remember from that heady time when all the hipsters were digging African music, looked like this); it has a little red $7.49 price tag from Strawberries Records on it. I wonder how it wound up in SW14?

Jùjú for your May, baby.

King Sunny Adé & His African Beats - 'Tolongo' (1983)

Soul Thursday

Sometimes, when there is much malarkey abroad and blether in the air, a person needs some old soul in their ears to drown the nonsense out.

Roscoe Robinson - 'That's Enough' (1966)

[One of Paul Weller's Desert Island Discs, as it goes].

Good Funkin' Friday

The Menahan Street Band are some Dap Kings with assorted groovy Daptone label mates - they're on, amongst other things, those records by Lee Fields, one of which you may have heard here before. I was going to post their single 'The Wolf', a slinky groover that was in the lovely batch of freebies that came to me straight outta Brooklyn this time last year courtesy Jon @ The Vinyl District, but I think this is even better.

If I was so-minded I'd say it was a 'sultry funk-soul workout perfectly pitched for a hot night in the city, with a boss break at 2:08'.

Some hip-hopper should sample it! Oh wait, some hip-hopper has.

Sweet.

Have a funky pagan festival of fertility.

The Menahan Street Band - 'Make The Road By Walking' (2008)

Blog

25C forecast for London today but we're day tripping to the coast for some fresh sea air. It felt like the Mediterranean in June in Kew Gardens yesterday with only the bluebells, the many many bluebells, blowing April's cover.

On Monday I saw a Millennium Falcon in a skip in Chiswick and clearly if I was a half-decent blogger or tweeter I'd have taken a pic. I thought of fishing it out, but it had taken a direct hit to the left wing, so I let it be.

And I think we'll be seeing just how many Miyazaki films we can watch this week.

California Wives - 'Tokyo' (2011)

Friday Reggae # 22

It's been a hard day's week.

But now I and I's on Easter Hols.

I want the finest wines available to humanity, and I want them here, and I want them now.

Big Youth - 'Cool Breeze' (1972)

A Polyphonic Spree

The story goes that the London musical crowd of 1567 was in a spin over Ecce beatam lucem, a choral work for 40 individual voices by Allessandro Striggio. At the time there was competition between English and Continental music publishers. The Duke of Norfolk issued a challenge to English musicians to better the Italian effort and the result was Spem in Alium by Thomas Tallis.

Another version says that Tallis wrote the 40 part motet for the 40th birthday of Queen Elizabeth I in 1573. The choice of text, from the Book of Judith, may have been to flatter the Queen, comparing her to the heroic Judith.

But even that may not be the truth. The strictly Catholic Tallis may have written Spem to honour the Catholic Queen Mary, in defiance of the Protestant Queen Elizabeth.

Whatever the truth, Spem is Alium is one of the treasures of Elizabethan English music. It is scored for 40 individual voices, divided into eight choirs of five voices each. The opening theme weaves its way through the eight choirs one by one, until all 40 voices come together in a climax at the 40th bar.

[Good Music Guide]

It is blow-your-socks-off good. 

[davy h]

The Choir Of King's College, Cambridge (conductor: David Willcocks) - Tallis: 'Spem In Alium' (1965)

Friday (Kinda) Nugget

This sunny Dawning Of The Age Of Aquarius pop beauty isn't, as far as I know, on any of the Nuggets records - but could be, easily.

It niftily completes our week of similar things (did it reach 22C in London today?) and is further notable for at least two reasons...

1. It culminates in an absolutely shameless rip-off of the 'God Only Knows' outro harmonies

2. Its composer went on to be rather Important and Marvellous.

*nips to fridge for cold one as narrative tension builds*

Strawberry Children - 'Love Years Coming' (1967)

Midweek Nugget

21 degrees in London today, who'da thunk it. Here's another Nugget, then...

'Mind Excursion' by New York's Tradewinds shows how even (presumably) straight groups co-opted the trend by utilizing a suggestive title that, in actuality, encouraged a positive physical adventure rather than a headtrip.

(sleeve notes)

Unable to fund a Grand Tour at present, I'm going to see if I can get any kind of 'head trip' going on some cheap Pinot from the supermarket.

The Tradewinds - 'Mind Excursion' (1966)

Monday Nugget

Seems at this time of year (in fact, to the day) I feel the urge to dig out the Nuggets comps.

I don't do this consciously.

There's just a Spring in the air and West Coast garage pop on the turntable connection.

'Girl I've Got News For You' easily sounds like it could have been a Top Ten smash by the Grassroots (and was in fact produced by Grassroots producer Steve Barri), but the performance is by Cherokee, aka The Robbs. The Robbs are best known for their 1966 regional hit 'Race With The Wind' and for being regulars on the 'Where The Action Is' TV show. As the 60s spilled into the 70s the group's name was changed to Cherokee. These days the Robb Brothers can be found operating Cherokee Studios, one of Hollywood's top recording complexes.

(from the original 1985 sleeve notes)

I love this!

Cherokee - 'Girl, I've Got News For You' (1971)

Yeah Baby

Those little uhs she puts in early on; the staccato rhythm; that picture on the gatefold sleeve. I found all this rather 'stimulating' when I was fifteen.

Mind, I lived in Paignton.

It didn't take much.

Diana Ross - 'Now That You're Gone' (1980)

Static & Silence

The author of The Ghost Of Electricity blog is busy. The Harriet default has been activated. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

The Smiling Hour

Since you're here again I think it's fair to assume there isn't a musically-prejudiced bone in your body.

But just in case I say 'Azymuth' and you think: 'Oh noooohhh Mr H! Synthy noodly 80s jazz-funky? Not for me!' may I assure you that this is...

chilled
acoustic*
authentically Brazilian

and very unfeasibly-warm-March-evening-in-London-Town-with-a-cold-San Miguel-ey.

Hey! You're welcome!

Mine's a large one!

Azymuth - 'Salto Das Sete Quedas (Cascade Of The Seven Falls)' (1982)

*OK, there's a bit of synth at the end. And an electric keyboard all the way through. In fact...Oh bugger it.

Vernal

Bill Evans Trio - 'It Might As Well Be Spring' (1962)

Friday Reggae # 21

David Emmanuel aka Smiley Culture (10 February 1963 – 15 March 2011)

As Kippers put it succinctly in a Tweet this week, it is the cruellest of ironies that a man famous for this record should die in what look to be deeply suspicious circumstances during a police 'drugs raid'.

What a sad, sad end.

Here's to happier times with a witty pioneer of British reggae/ragga MCing.

Smiley Culture - 'Cockney Translation' (1984)

Soft Southern Jessie

Last night I dreamt I walked the streets of my old home town. Not as it is now, with its lar-dee-dar shops for the lar-dee-dar yachting types who've taken the place over and priced the locals out; as it was when I was small - a real place with real shops: the bakery on the corner with the girl called Wendy my Mum knew, Mr Shillabeer's butchers where he'd pull coins and sometimes, miraculously, eggs, from behind my ear, Pillar's the toy shop with its window stuffed full of Dinky cars and Belli's the tobacconist by the bus stop home where my Dad would buy his tins of St Bruno.

Why at 45 am I walking the streets of my early childhood in my sleep? What is the cranky old processor in my brain up to, sifting through this hardly-used stuff on the hard drive? Who knows.

But it reminds me of when my grandad, sat in late summer out the back of the modern house we moved to in the 70s, would talk to me about the Plymouth of his youth, before the bombs fell and the 60s planners finished the job.

That place existed only in his head, and so it is now with mine and me.

I lived in Trumpton and I am a Soft Southern Jessie.

Freddie Phillips - 'Chime And Clock Theme' (featuring Brian Cant, narrator) (1967)
Freddie Phillips - 'Band Concert' (1967)

[vinyl rips from the Music For Pleasure LP]

So Precious, So Sweet

I was noodling about on the internet the other night listening to Lou Reed and something made me Wikipedia his song, so I read inadvertently about this one which, excuse my very great ignorance, I was entirely unaware of before.

Very lovely, in that early 60s 'Patti Page And Lemonade' kind of way.

I needs to get me more doo wop.

The Excellents - 'Coney Island Baby' (1962)

Their nearly-men story here.

A Pop At The 80s

Our occasional series of extended 80s classics builds into a magnificent library your whole family will enjoy.

I've had the song stuck in my head all day so, grim world news rendering it inappropriate or no, there was nothing for it but to dig out the old LP and get computerising; and stone me, this is thirty years old.

Wailin' and skankin' to Bob Marley
Reggae's expanding with Sly and Robbie

------

In the '84 Talking Heads concerts that were filmed for 'Stop Making Sense', the band did this while David Byrne got into his Big Suit.

Ms Weymouth is utterly splendid here. I do like a woman with a bass.

And yes, I would say hello to a little drink, if you're asking.

Tom Tom Club - 'Genius Of Love' (album version) (1981)

See 86

She lives somewhere in China
I think that I'll go out and find her
Just to see if there's a better world for me

*drinks tea*

Shop Assistants - 'Somewhere In China' (1986)

The Smiling Hour

And speaking of songs whose words and melodies run headlong downhill sounding as if at any point they'll fall right over themselves like a small child over bicycle handlebars we present tonight at Davy's Bar two Brazilian legends in sparkling duet - it's the first spring-like Friday post of the year, baby.

Mine's a large one, if you're going.

Antônio Carlos Jobim & Elis Regina - 'Águas de Março' (1974)

I Don't Let Go

I was mocked for having this record. Mocked! 'Today I am a small blue thing' indeed. But 'Marlene On The Wall' was rotation play on the relaunched 'Radio Caroline' all through the night handwriting essays in the crappy house in Turnpike Lane with the ruby-red flock wallpaper and the jetblack cockroaches that skittled through the kitchen at the flick/flick flicker-on of the fluorescent striplight. That headlong rush of words you only get on a song the singer means.

And this.

'I believe right now if I could, I would swallow you whole' ?

Mocked.

This is a davyh vinyl rip.

Suzanne Vega - 'Undertow' (1985)

Jane Russell (June 21st 1921- Feb 28th 2011)

Friday Reggae # 20

I was playing this last week and almost did a double Friday Reggae post I was so struck, once again, by how brilliant it is. But 'No, no davyh,' says I to myself, 'Hold fire till next Friday and let's cap off perhaps a whole week of things punky reggae/reggae in a manner fitting' and so it has come to pass companeros, so it has come to pass.

Celebrating British roots reggae at its finest.

I shall require a beverage, ya kna.

Steel Pulse - 'Ku Klux Klan' (1978)

(Still) Livin' In-A Babylon

@Johnnywas25 (AKA our Simon) set me off on this with his lovely early commuter train iPo #nowlistening Tweets which recently mentioned The Ruts Peel Sessions. I'd only a couple of things by them, the obvious ones, so thought I'd track their Beeb stuff down.

Here's something that neatly extends the punky reggae vibe from the last post, baby.

The Ruts - 'Black Man's Pinch' (Peel session) (1979)

Protest And Survive

This is something I have on an old tape I made from the Peel Show in 1982 or 3, a song like other things I've mentioned here over the years that has burrowed its way into my consciousness when so much else of arguably greater significance has fallen away. It's proven a pig to track down since, online or offline; I didn't even know what it was called for years, then found out it was the B side of the group's first not-quite hit single and fully expected to turn it up in a charity shop, but no dice. The interweb finally came through today.

The band were set for wacky pop image and promo vids (via The Young Ones) from this point on, but I can see why JP fell for this sub-Slits slice of No Nukes punky reggae. So did I.

Amazulu - 'Greenham Time' (1983)