Manu - Global Citizen.

Today the legendary Manu Chao will be playing a free concert in Phoenix, Arizona to publicise the state's anti-immigrant policies; policies that have given Phoenix the soubriquet "Capital of Prejudice". As the citizens of the USA merrily make a bonfire of their hard won rights and liberties, in much the same way as we have been doing in the UK, it behoves us all to pause for a moment and think about it. Currently a Federal judge is the only person preventing the implementation of Arizona Senate Bill 1070 and the imposition of police powers more akin to Syria or East Germany (when it existed).

The Western capitalist system is crashing, the exploitation of the developing world is coming home to roost and the extreme right is on the rise, particularly in the southern states of the USA. Good people need to speak out.

If I was anywhere close I'd be there, eating great food, dancing to brilliant music and partying hard for the good cause this represents.

Bambara Mystic Soul

I have a very good friend. His musical taste is impeccable. In fact on many occasions he has introduced me to some blistering rock music that has never crossed my radar. Often we make compilation CDs for each other, laughing at our nerdom and flaunting legality. So last time I thought “here’s a man with taste, he’s going to love this African music”. Weirdly when he thanked me for the compilations he loved the reggae, the disco, the soul but he added “I couldn’t really get my head around the African tracks”. I was stunned. Mind you even my partner murmurs similar thoughts sometimes.

I cannot understand this. Not at all.

For me music, like the human race, originates in Africa. Well the music I like does anyway.

These days I look at a label like Analog Africa in the same way I look at Stax or early Motown, or Young Turks and 4AD. You can trust them. What you hear is always good, and if it doesn’t stroke your palate in the way that thrills it still resonates as interesting music; it makes sense.

Now AA have brought out a new compilation. As usual the boss man Sami Ben Redjeb has scrambled through piles of dusty tapes and archives to find more gems from the 70s, that’s the way he rolls. Then he polishes them up and brings out to all of us. The one thing, though, that continues to perplex me is this; why was the music in this area of the world during the 70s so vital and exhilarating? Was it to do with the early days of independence, before cynicism and sadness kicked in with the corruption that took hold with many of those early political elites?

Whatever it was I wish some of the British bands today could drink deeply from its cup of knowledge.

If you’re wondering where Burkina Faso is, it’s here in a pretty dry part of the world. Yet this corner of the world has brought forth some rich interdependent music where Afro-funk, Afrobeat, Islamic tradition and European sound has been mixed up and represented to us. Wherever you look the music speaks and with the appearance of those crazy Cubans during the Cold War a whole other musical flavour got added to the mix. Mmmmmmmm.

The compilation features Amadou Ballaké heavily, which is understandable given his ubiquitous talents. He appears with l’Orchestre Super Volta and Les 5 Consuls on tracks like Johnny and Baden Djougou, these tracks possess a sense of place to them, the spidery, mesmeric twisting figures with a vocal style that conjours up images of a dry, hot horizon. One of my personal favourites is Mamo Lagbema’s Love, Music and Dance. It has this urgency to it, echoes of the kind of music Kool and the Gang were doing around Spirit of the Boogie or The Chambers Brothers.

Compaore Issouf is another favourite. A scorching groove, almost Farfisa figures and this semi-falsetto voice. This wouldn’t have been out of place in some club playing rare groove.

Overall this album nails it. Makes it. I love it but then I’m biased.

Maybe I’ll try running this past my mate one last time.

This track isn't on the album but shit it's good.

Lost My Way

For someone who once made a living being creative the loss of the creative drive can be likened to the loss of vision or some other sense. Where once lyrics or phrases fell into the consciousness like falling leaves in autumn the mind now resembles the blasted, barren landscape of winter. No birds singing except for the crass snarl of the crow, almost mocking me across this waste land; everything seems pared back to the barest essentials. There is no fat of the land and we live in drought and fear.

I have spent so many nights trying to work out how I arrived in this place. All the obvious reasons seem just that; obvious. Made redundant in 2008 after a decade of the warm embrace of office life, of the to and fro of humour and the ebb and flow of friendships the idea that going back to a singular life did not seem so daunting. But those ten years had caused a shift. Writing had been for specific subjects, the safe cocoon of salary that meant never really calculating hard decisions; these had all been good in some ways but had led to an atrophying of the artist’s feral sense of survival.

I have always walked on the sunlit side of most streets, or at least tried to. As life gathered it dust around me, like a real life Peanuts Pigpen, your light steps become heavier somehow, but the things that are supposed to drag our feet, children and marriage, have brought me nothing but a lightening of the spirit. It is the loss of creativity that weighs heaviest. It erodes away gradually as the weariness of non-recognition starts to grind. In many respects I was lucky, luckier than many, but the late realisation that these companies and corporations that hold and control your copyrights were not prepared to do anything to actually exploit them to your advantage came to late for that burst of desire, of need to express myself through words and music. I found myself emoting into a void.

The release of writing about something tangible was initially wonderful. But like most pleasures in life after a while it dulls the senses and one moves from the joy of the new into the comfort of the mundane. Music played all the time but after a time one couldn’t really differentiate between the good and the merely OK and music became almost wallpaper, after being my all in all. Then nothing.

At first I assumed that finding some form of paid employment would not be too difficult, after all I’d made so many contacts at the magazine, all the PR companies wanted my attention, offered me lunch, invited me places. I’d forgotten this was the music business, I don’t mean that pejoratively, but we live in an ephemeral world where friendships are based upon gain and advancement. Too often the naïve think they are really making some actually bond with another person only to discover that this all evaporates in the heat of departure from the metaphorical stage. You are as popular as your last gig, song, by-line or review. That’s just the way it is (as Bruce Hornsby said).

But the silence and the humiliation of dealing with a benefits system designed to belittle and ignore scrapes another level of thought from your mind; the level that filters vocabulary into lines or sentences. There are moments when you think that the political class is talking about you when they redirect the public’s fear and loathing from this week’s scapegoat to the disabled and sick. The righteous political anger that fed a young band’s output turns inwards and thickens the spirit. All you can do is wait for it to pass.

Finally things start to lighten but what damage has been done? People look at you differently and somehow I feel different. I’ve been asked so many times in the last couple of years to become involved in things of a creative nature but the spirit has been weak. Now the time to start fighting back has arrived. To become involved politically, to find the words of songs and pluck them from the air and to rediscover music, to write again with the freedom of expression that you only have when you have nothing. People died and some of me went with them.

It’s time to rebuild.

The son also rises.

I can still remember the moment when I first heard Seun Kuti's father, Fela Kuti, for the first time. The track was I.T.T. on the Black President album. It was something of an epiphany comparable with hearing the Velvets, Big Youth or The Ramones for the first time. The very soul of the music exuded protest and anger, before Africa became the cause du jour it woke so many of us to the realities of modern Africa; not the poverty but the corruption, the terror and the nepotism the pervaded so much of African society, and still does.

Ironically, at the time, I.T.T. was the original bastard multi-national, they even won compensation for damage done to their factories in Germany that were bombed by the allies because they were building Focke-Wulf planes for Hitler. They are American. When Fela was recording I.T.T. the company was co-opting African leaders through bribery and corruption, leading the charge of the modern day economic colonialists. Times have not changed though Africa rises and now Seun steps into his father's shoes.

From Africa With Fury: Rise sees Seun Kuti linking up with his father's smooth-cool outfit Egypt 80 and the result is so refreshing that it makes most music around us seem monochrome and flat. Moving at a speedier rate than his old man did, with his laid back Afrobeat horn grooving machine laying down the law, Seun kicks off the dust from the shoes he's stepped into and heads off into our brains at a modern speed. Egypt 80 lock in behind him, horn arrangements flowing and Seun spitting the political lyrics, decrying the filth that crawls over his country, from the generals to the Western businessmen, from the oil companies poisoning their land to the local politicians who let them.


Tracks like African Soldier and Mr Big Thief gives us the setting for this new anger, Slave Masters and Rise speak of the new economic exploitation that exists in the Third World today. As Kuti says: "Nobody wants to stand up for anything, everybody wants to toe the line."

Produced by Eno and John Reynolds (who has worked with Sinéad O'Connor and Natacha Atlas) the album sounds great. Punchy and fine.

Go out and buy it OK.

Look back in disinterest.

Francesca Cassavetti

Just read a piece by one time NME writer Johnny Dee. In it he muses on the declining circulation of music papers and whether or not the internet is the main cause of this drop in readership. After all, as he rightly points out, the average music fan can find all the information they need from various sources on line: gossip, music, reviews, downloads and pictures are all readily available. What isn't available is any discernment, any filtration or any comparisons or introductions to other artists.

Anyone who has grown up with popular music has their own golden age, except for people who are in their musical moment now, most of these memories will be located somewhere around the mid-teens to mid-twenties when for the majority of us music played its most central role in our lives. As we age, and take on different roles in life, father, mother, worker, adult, music remains a constant for many but the hunger to source new sounds and artists recedes. Modern children though have grown up in households (well the ones with music loving parents anyway) where the range of music available will probably span several scenes and genres. My kids grew up with everything from the 60s to now, a major focus on punk, reggae and world music as well as soul, pop and heavy funk.

They hear the stories of music scenes that were found rather than foisted upon them, where word-of-mouth played a bigger role than a tweet or a Facebook posted track; the eternal quest for the "next big thing" (©NME) was not yet upon us - that arrived around 1984 with the rise of the Thatcherite pop era. They heard the records of their parents' youth, The Stones, The Beatles, The Clash, The Stooges; music that sounded different because it was different. It was being made without a map, it was recorded on tape so its sonic presence was different, indefinably different but the difference is there. The artists themselves genuinely offered a different way of living, of seeing the world, because in the UK and the USA at that time society's rules were still governed by a bourgeoisie that had no concept of an individual lifestyle. If you doubt this then check out Julian Temple's film The Filth and The Fury. You will be amazed by some of the talking heads in the film, figures who seem like they're from the 50s rather than the late 70s.

Now we live in a world where the individual's desires and needs are paramount. Not wishing to sound like some relentlessly nostalgic duffer I can't say this is a bad thing. As my teenage son has pointed out many times "these are the best days to be living" in terms of all round comfort and safety. But that said we are increasingly divorced from each other because of the technology that brings us together. Via the computer the youth can access horror, pornography, music and each other without leaving their bedrooms. So how can today's musicians be shocking save for the tired old tedious rubbish of bad boy behaviour. Our musicians have no history; very few reference influences other than bands who were also a mélange of influences. I can't remember who said it but it went something like this: "Talking Heads were influenced by art, by literature, by architecture, they were influenced by James Brown, by George Clinton, Chuck Berry and The Ramones but (Insert name of any band here) are influenced by Talking Heads."

Eric Burdon once said that no-one could be considered a real musician unless they were avid music collectors. Maybe mp3s have changed that, maybe not. To paraphrase Mick Jones' famous quote "Like iPod like brain". If the only music you're open to is like the music you make then you fall into some time loop; that seems to be where we are now. Pop music has always been with us. All of us imagine some golden age where the charts were full of challenging music but the reality is far duller. For every Pistols, Ramones, Suicide, Blur there was a corresponding Gilbert O'Sullivan, Rod Stewart, Bucks Fizz or Renee & Renata. Memory is the great sieve, we shake the dust of the past through it and we're left with the nuggets. But I digress.

Greedy publishing companies increase the cost of their magazines relentlessly as circulations fall they want their profits to rise. Editors come and go as they fail to stem this haemorrhage of readers; there are no Canutes out there. Where once just carrying a copy of the NME, or Melody Maker or Sounds, would define you as a person now we have websites on smartphones - not exactly the same thing.

Yes we have a huge market for festivals and major shows; some argue that this is merely a reflection of society's sense of dislocation, the need to gather together again to connect with like-minded people. Because these huge audiences aren't reflected at the gig going coalface. The Barfly, Fibbers, the smaller Academy venues, they're all struggling to survive because there is no excitement in the live music lower divisions. When a band like, say, The Vaccines appear there's no real time to develop. Because they generate a ripple from the off this soon becomes a tsunami thanks to the web, people become blasé quite quickly and even though the band are snapped up the pressure to deliver something, anything is immediate. No more is it enough to build support, hone a bunch of songs for the first album and deliver something just as real. We need the profits NOW, we need the junkie rush NOW we need something new.

Add to this the post-slacker, post-punk, post-humour attitude, the "everything I have to say is in the songs" kind of view then you get a really boring read. When we are young we need heroes, we need someone to hold in high esteem, someone who makes more sense of the world than our stupid parents who have never lived, never loved and don't understand anything. We used to get that from writers like Charles Shaar Murray, Adrian Thrills, Paul Morley or David Quantick. They moved on, like the bands, and no-one filled their shoes.

A young miner once said something about my band, in the kindest way, towards the end of our career that I think is completely appropriate to say today about our music papers:

"You used to be good - but now you're wank."

At the end of my Teather.

So, deciding I'd take part in this grand pantomime we call democratic politics in Great (sic) Britain I decided to write to my local MP, Ms Sarah Teather.

Now though I didn't vote for her, so my conscience is clear, I did vote as I really do believe in the democratic process. I also have a laughable naivety in that I sort of imagine that when a political party goes "we pledge to oppose tuition fess, no seriously, we really do. Hey why are you laughing at me over there? No, really, we really hate tuition fees" I sort of imagine that they'd want to keep their word.

Particularly when they are a minority party who's percentage of the vote was inflated by students flocking to their cause; but hey, that's just me.

So working on the principle, as expounded by Hilary Clinton, that if you vote, regardless of who you vote for, you are entitled to full representation and to have your opinions valued and your problems helped, I contacted Ms Teather regarding the rather impressive volte face her party, the Liberal Democrats, has recently made in the policy of university tuition fees. I wasn't particularly surprised or impressed with her response.

Now one of the major points with their standing-on-our-heads routine that I can't get my head around is how a debt of £27,000 is fairer than a debt of £9,000. When you factor in the extra debt of around £10,000 for the maintenance load that brings it up to 37 versus 19 (thousands that is, wake up at the back). So under this much fairer than that dreadful system that the last government had a young student skipping through life with nary a care in the world will happily leave university with the much fairer debt of a FUCKING HUGE SUM OF £37,000, which should please them no end rather than the crushing, unfair debt of £19,000. So can we start from there?

One of the reasons these new extortionate fees have been introduced, apart from wanting to dissuade scum from bettering themselves obviously, was to scythe through university funding. Lest we forget this bunch of posh boy no-hopers keep reminding us that none of this is ideological it's because in bailing out their chums in the city the country suddenly found itself well broke innit. So deep cuts have to be made in funding for education and universities will have to be funded by fee paying students. OK? Well.......

According to Ms Teather:

 "Under the new system every graduate will pay back less per month than is currently the case. Furthermore, the poorest 25% will pay less overall than under the current system and only the top earning 40% of students will pay back what they borrowed in full"

Great. So 60% of people will never be able to pay back their debts. For their entire working life they'll have this huge millstone around their neck, impacting on their credit rating, ability to get a mortgage or just a normal loan. Add to this the fact that the universities won't be getting their money. Who has to pay these fees then? The tax payers? What is the point of loading all this stress onto young folks if, at the end of it all, the tab will be getting picked up by the rest of us?

Now currently they reckon that 36% of young people go to university so by my reckoning that means that 14.4% of young people will be paying for our university system under these plans. Well that's really going to ensure that everything turns out fine.

So next time a LibDem politician climbs onto a soap box near you and makes any promises bear in mind that these promises are all negotiable; that is negotiable if you're a scum sucking Tory apologist desperate for a seat at the top table. I hope they enjoy their moment in the sun because I think, come the next election, they will go the way of the dodo.

Next week I'll be discussing how the LibDems helped take away some school money from kids and then created a system whereby these kids will now have to go begging to their schools for any help.

I sign of with another quote from the egalitarian Ms Teather:

"Please be assured that I am committed to the establishment of a fair and progressive system for funding higher education, which enables more people to access higher education"

Oh really?

Angola Fresh.

Whenever I listen to one of Analog Africa’s astonishing compilations I am reminded of the scene in the Third Man where Harry Lime draws a historical (though inaccurate) comparison between the creativity engendered by upheaval and conflict to that of a peaceful environment:

“In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

This springs to mind far more with their most recent release Angola Soundtrack: The Unique Sound of Luanda 1968-1976.

The people of Angola have lived with conflict, from their war of independence through the years of a brutal civil war, for the last fifty years. Their country, potentially one of the richest in Africa, has been a pawn in the Cold War and a victim of political violence that claimed the lives of millions including one of the artists that appears on this compilation, David Zé.

Though these particular recordings were made in an eight year period, the last seven years of colonial rule and the first year of civil war, they show the artistic fertility that lay there in a society struggling to claim its right to self-government. The performers, like their Czech brethren during the last days of Communism, became vehicles for spreading the word and being a touchstone for defining the essence of being Angolan. As you listen to this album you marvel at the dexterity, imagination and beauty contained within it.

From Mamukueno’s opening, Rei do Palhetinho, that lilts and swoops in its story of wine drinking and the shimmering glory of Os Kiezos’ Congolese influenced Comboio you feast upon a music that lived in a world of influence, influences that came not only from the Blues but from the rhumbas of Havana and Kinshasa, from the psychedelic guitar playing that was making inroads in the West and from the meringue rhythms and Latin percussion; it was a mix that makes the sound of the Sixties pop bands seem pale and insipid, in fact most of the current acts peddling their retread R&B or indielandfillrocknroll fall by the wayside.

Like their modern day equivalents, Buraka Son Sistema, the music is sucked in, absorbed and made better.

This album, which you should buy by the way, continues Analog Africa’s run of home runs. Each one smacks the competition out of the park. That they mostly sprung from societies that were in a state of flux, or upheaval, says much for the resilience of Africans and their strength of spirit. This album came out in November but like a classic novel or a beautiful painting it will never age; it doesn’t have to be bought at the moment of release, it wears no meat dress.

I haven’t gone through each act on this compilation because it just sounds like a train spotter reporting on their day at the station, but I will leave you with something about David Zé.

In May 1977, while London was in the grip of punk, factions within the MPLA mounted a coup against the leader Aghostino Neto. The MPLA was at the time a Marxist-Leninist party and, as tends to be the case, was subject to all the factionalism and conspiracies that come with that territory (see anything about the Spanish Civil War). The attempt was led by the 8th Brigade of FAPLA (Forças Armadas Populares de Libertação de Angola); it failed, thanks to the intervention of Cuban troops, and the aftermath was bloody. Neto used the coup as an excuse to do some house clearing. In fact tens of thousands of Angolans were rounded up, summarily tried, executed and buried in mass graves. David Zé, at the time a serving soldier in FAPLA was one of them. Like Stalin and so many other shitty tyrants the world over Neto had no regard for the damage he did and the swathe he cut through Angola’s future.



This song by Zé isn’t on this compilation but in it he sings “on the day I die, do not cry for me, do not think of me”. Now maybe people can.

Political ranting.

Thanks to Steve Bell - please don't sue me!

OK, so I am a political person, I am left wing and I think a society is best served through taxation and funding; so that's my manifesto out of the way up front so if you have a problem with that I suggest you stop reading now and go back to exploiting the poor and sick or whatever it is that right wing folk do in their spare time.

What I am finding so stunning about the current government is the speed with which they are ditching all their promises and pledges made prior to the election last May. Now I know that every political party betrays its promises at some stage but we usually get at least a year before they go snake eyed and shifty but this shower really take the biscuit. I mean we all knew there were economic problems; however you wish to colour it the bankers drove our country over a cliff and then asked us to pay them for the pleasure. Now the Tories amongst you will splutter in that fat-lipped dribbly way that they do and go "ah yes but Labour spent all the money so had nothing in reserve to pay us, er I mean the financial system, when it all went tits up" and I would say HAH, you are an arse!

When Labour came into power in 1997 we really were a third world country. The 18 years of Tory misrule had left our infrastructure ruined, our hospitals broken and our state education system derelict. All the money that had been earned from North Sea Oil had been spent on tax cuts that favoured the rich, our heavy industries had been destroyed along with the rich communities they had supported and we had become a nation that knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. Then came Blair.

Blair broke promises. He also illegally invaded another country. Gordon Brown was derided by the suave Blair but he, more than any other man, actually made a difference in the face of the financial tsunami that swept the West's economic system. He threw money at it; he kept people in jobs, in their houses and hopeful and we voted him out of office. Now we have The Coalition.

Like an 80s comedy double act (The Management) Cleggy and Cammy promised everything we wanted. Hell the LibDems went so far as to sign pledges that they wouldn't raise tuition fees, the Tories swore that they wouldn't axe Child Benefit or any other universal benefits and, hey, here we are less than six months after the election and these boys are bailing. Bastards.

They cheerfully sell the lie about university fees as something that makes a real difference to people's earnings citing that on average a graduate earns £100k more over their working life than a non-graduate. Hmmmm, so that works out at roughly two and a half grand a year more; but wait, if you have debts of £30k (like my daughter will have) then that reduces the figure somewhat and my son may well end up with debts of fifty or sixty grand, which seems a pretty shitty return; particularly if you add interest to this. Now if you are an average earner, like most of the population, your kids will be means tested for the loans! These are loans for fuck's sake. If you get a median salary then the chances are your kids get a reduced loan. If you are pleasantly rich this doesn't matter and if you are poor it doesn't matter but if, like the majority of us, you are neither hot nor cold Cable will spew you forth.

Now all of us middle class people don't read The Daily Mail and we don't vote Tory. Loads voted LibDem. Well that worked out for you didn't it you stupid muesli swilling morons in your open toed sandals and inane bad dancing at your suburban parties.

Now don't ever tell me that voting never changes anything because right now you're about to get your arses reamed by Toryboys with LibDem strap-ons.

Been a long time.....

Returned to the blog today to find it encrusted with dust and cobwebs. Somewhere along the line I lost the impetus to write, started thinking that I had nothing to say, sank into a grey depression, not really a depression more a long wet afternoon of the soul (Alfred Prufrock springs to mind) and finally I span off the road. Then came Cameron and Clegg and gradually my anger rose until, finally, I would appear to have rediscovered my mojo.

Musically things are looking back to move forward. It was my birthday recently and my son and my partner both gave me albums that have long been out of my collection. What is it about rediscovering music that lights you up again? The saddest thing about it though was that both albums still tower over much of the contemporary musical landscape, and I don't say this as a "in my day we made proper music" sense but more out of sadness. There is a freedom and experimentation in these records that seems to be absent today. Considering that they were both released through major labels it is scary to think that they would probably stand no chance in today's world of focus groups and decision by committee. Record labels should look to those reasons, rather than blaming kids downloading music, for their sales decline. Anyway.....

The first album was The Man Machine by Kraftwerk. First released in 1978 this work of electronic genius has yet to be surpassed. Featuring tracks like The Robots, The Man Machine and Metropolis it posits a vision of the future that is here. Its cold electronically generated sounds have an unbearably beautiful quality to them. Maybe because they were originally recorded onto analogue tape prior to digitisation but the depth of the sound, its richness of timbre if you will, is absent in so much electronic music of today. The album also contains The Model; if ever a song has been written that sonically represents the cold and soulless world of the catwalk this is it.

The second gift was Television's Marquee Moon. Released in 1977 it represents perfectly the intelligence and imagination at work in the New York punk scene, though quite how they ended up being lumped into punk still amazes me. That said, at the time we needed a short-hand to describe groups that had broken away from the confines of rock as it was, and now how it has become. These days punk seems to mean anything that sounds shouty and a bit angry, but not really that angry. Compare today's take on punk with what was available then: Talking Heads, Television, Richard Hell, Blondie and over here The Clash playing with imagery, The Buzzcocks, The Pop Group, Magazine, Siouxsie. These weren't bands who saw salvation in traditional song structure. For me Marquee Moon represents one of the greatest guitar albums ever made. The songs, with the strangled yelps of Tom Verlaine, were different beasts from what we were safe with. They offered a vision of the future, as much as Kraftwerk did with their Teutonic ice sculptures, and a different path, away from the classis 12 bar verse chorus verse chorus that modern music still clings to. I can't really begin to describe the exhilaration that I still feel as the opening notes to the title song kick in.

However I am still listening to new stuff. The Ninja Tune XX two disc compilation is a great snapshot of cutting edge urban music from one of Britain's most delicious labels. All sorts of good things are available on this huge spread. From The Bug to Roots Manuva and Toddla T to Eskmo. The label's founders Coldcut even turn up. Coldcut were responsible for one of rap's greatest moments, the remix of Eric B & Rakim's Paid In Full that introduced Ofrah Haza to a thirsty public.

This compilation is the final word in where it's at right now.

I also got sent the new Keziah Jones track, Lagos vs London, remixed by the estimable Gilles Peterson. I'm not usually much of a fan of KJ as I have found his music falls between stools but this track, and in particular the remix, shows a way forward for Jones that offers him a chance to break out of the confines of his former approach. More of this please sir.

Anyway, back to where I started. The Coalition is upon us populated by people who think £50k a year is an average salary and that the employment wastelands, where the only work on offer is call centres or lap dancing clubs, will somehow burst into bloom and flourish as they force poor people into desperation. The difference between this lot and Thatcher was that Thatcher made sure the Police got paid so when it came to breaking strikers heads they did so with enthusiasm; the C&C Shit Factory are cutting police numbers and pay, making them pay for their training and generally fucking everybody around. So when the angry poor come crashing down Whitehall who they gonna call? Murdoch?

All Down The Line

Last night I finally got round to watching the documentary that had been shown in the Imagine slot on BBC1 about the recording of Exile On Main Street. It featured a lot of footage that had been shot for Cocksucker Blues along with other bits and pieces from home movies and stills shot by a lucky French photographer, Dominic Tarlé, who had turned up initially to shoot some pictures of Keith and Anita and ended up moving in for six months (in the doc he used the almost Bill Clinton defence of I never took drugs really!). As a historical record it was great but as a snapshot of a band at its most chaotic and brilliant it was better.

Watching it with a mixture of voyeuristic delight, similar to watching a YouTube clip of a car crash, and jealousy, in the sense that you wished you'd been there, I was taken with the darkness of it all. The complete and utter feeling of plunging towards night that was evoked, even though the doc was heavily censored; no Gram Parsons, Ian Stewart or very little reference to the destruction that was left in the wake of four months or so surrounded by junk dealers. But God it looked like the place you wanted to be. Like engineer Andy Johns said, he was twenty one and there was no other place anyone wanted to be. You just wondered how the hell they pulled it all together.

For me Exile remains the last word in rock albums, in fact it finished a quartet of Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers; these four albums made all future rock albums redundant; and this come from someone who recorded albums with a rock punk, albeit punk. It made all future Stones albums redundant as well. After Exile they never made another complete piece of work. We can all point to tracks we loved from later albums but there is nothing left to be said. People just didn't make records like those anymore, they had nothing left to say and the whole drug fuelled careering into disaster so epitomised by Keith Richards became sad sorry fan-copy activity when done by Johnny Thunders, Stiv and Dee Dee (all people I love). Richards opened a door into a whole period of hassle for the rest of the band as he waded in the waters of opiate; but at least he sort of kept it together unlike so many others who followed in his wake.

For me these times became a watershed moment in rock music. Rock had to change but so many bands only wanted to be The Stones. They based their look, their chops and their drug intake on the blueprint drawn up by Mick 'n Keef never thinking that new roads need laying. Even punk bands descended into the same errors that so many R&B rock outfits had, getting feather cuts, emulating their heroes but never quite cutting it in the same way. The fact is most of them thought that the drugs needed to come first instead of the music; for all his intake Richards never lost sight of the music.

It also helped to be really really rich with hangers on who want to sort it all out for you.

So now they've remastered and re-released Exile again, adding extra tracks that have been added to in modern studios. I'm sure it's great but I'm not going to bother. For me the album was complete, I don't need extra versions or songs that didn't make the finished album. I got a remastered version a couple of years back and I play it every other week but I still miss the scratch that was on my vinyl copy, right in the middle of Just Want To See His Face. I love the strained sound quality the record has, the sense of sweat and confusion.

Everytime I hear it it triggers memories for me of all night sessions and my own out of control times. Much as I still love and buy music no modern records offer me the same sense of being there as so many albums of that period can do. Within a few years of Exile's release SSL mixing desks came into prominence and with it the end of bleed through. Every track was gated and compressed. Those background sounds, those loose asides that peppered records of that time disappeared and then Fairlight and Pro-tools finished the job. There are still bands out there who deliver a sense of being in a gang but it's never on the record. It has all been so cleaned up.

Exile is the last word of fabulous decadence. The end of days for rock as an idea, a force for bigger ideas. No other band could have done this over four albums; from Street Fighting Man through Gimme Shelter and Moonlight Mile to the last fading note of Soul Survivor there's a body of work that others can only dream of. Resplendent in ragged glory, dropped chords and loose harmony they offer us a defining moment.

The Kings are dead, we're a Coffee Republic now.

Mambo Loco, damn right!

As everyone and his brother has said already "Wow this is on Analog Africa and they usually do brilliant African compilations and such and this one is Latin music!" Well, yeah; and you know what? This is grade A amazing.

Now I must declare a big love for Colombian music in its many forms, and I'm not such a scholar that I can name them all but there's a good piece here on Analog's blog that gives you a better background to Anibal and his music than I can. That said it appears that Colombian music lends itself to modern ears, and in many instances to modern remix techniques or re-interpretation, and Mambo Loco is no exception.

Stick this disc on and from the off you are launched into a swirling storm of rhythm and groove that is just so insistent and immediate that it is impossible to remain unaffected; as far as I'm concerned that's a sign of a rockin' record. The problem is when you try to describe this kind of music to someone invariably it's a fail.

"So, what's it like then?"

Weeeeeelllll, he plays accordian.

"Oh, like The Furies?"

Er....no. It kicks up lot more dust and passion than that.

"What? Like country music?"

A bit.

"Garth Brooks?"

NO!! Look it's like comparing the Sex Pistols to Yes, or Keith Richards to Cliff Richard. It's hard edged, it sprang from rough soil and flowered further in the scene created by the early narco-culture that grew in Colombia along with the drug trade from the 60s on. It has power and pride and speaks to your soul in a way that makes you want to drink beer, dance and have sex. Everything good music should do.

Velasquez is living proof that the best art comes from turbulent times and places. Like another one of Colombia's heroes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Anibal is a one off.

More than a clown.

I never knew Malcolm McLaren. Like so many of my generation I certainly knew who he was but I never met the man. To be honest over the years his "I am punk" mantra wore a little thin but now that he has died I find myself thinking, yeah, I guess you had a much bigger hand in it than most of us; and not just punk.

I tend to agree with Jon Savage's take on Malcolm in that 1977 was a mess, something would have happened, but if McLaren hadn't been involved it would have all been a bit depressing, more like Britpop; two good bands and a lot of Shed Sevens. McLaren brought an intellectual spark to the whole moment with his talk of Situationists, admittedly most of the youth who avidly gobbled up his tricks had no real concept of what Situationists stood for, and his embrace of new ideas left many floundering. His partnership with Vivienne Westwood gave punk the fashion edge that most music movements lack. The clothes helped form the movement even if few could afford to buy them; they still showed the way forward and stamped a vision in all our heads. Clothes became a statement in themselves and I still remember the shock in suburbia of walking into pubs with straight leg trousers, it was enough to get you beaten up and many of us were thanks to the hysteria that was whipped up around us by the sick-fuckery of the tabloid press. McLaren's antics served to pour petrol on the fire of a Britain locked into mediocrity and greyness, a country that still remains terrified of its youth to this day.

Punk was so much more than just the music. There was a complete upheaval in design and pecking orders. Suddenly people in their twenties were no longer prepared to wait until an opening appeared that would allow them a junior assistant position, they just went out and did it. Older executives, across the board, were caught unaware and scrabbled around for anyone or anything that understood this change and in the confusion a lot of second rate rubbish came through with the real talent but the catalyst was Talcy Malcy, giggling and capering about like some mad Pied Piper as London clawed its way out of a hole. Then he got bored and moved on.

He may never have had the same commercial, or personal, success that he enjoyed with punk but from where I was standing the things he did later were far more interesting. Of course loads of us knew early rap and hip hop but it was McLaren who constructed something different and wonderful out of it. Duck Rock remains one of the best albums made in modern music and brought so many different strands to our ears; his use of South African music mixed in with New York beats showed how music shouldn't be held in some cryogenic chamber to be revered by strokey-chinned world music buffs endlessly debating whether something was authentic or not. It cried LOOK AT ME YOU FUCKTARDS, look at this we are living breathing laughing fucking drinking musicians and we celebrate the dance. Then he did it to opera.

McLaren was the first swallow of summer. He arrived with something invariably long before anyone else was ready for it, like Vogueing or whatever, and then months later somebody else would rock up with an inferior version and by then Malcolm had moved on.

Now he has moved on again. Unfortunately, right now, Britain needs someone like him more than ever as our country stumbles around trying to choose between various characterless nonentities, with a popular culture held by the throat by a music industry so terrified of the future they are trying to relive the past and a design culture that merely recycles old ideas and claims they are being ironic. Ironic as in Alanis Morrisette, not ironic at all.

We have no more heroes.

I listen to the radio....

So Mark Thompson, the Director General of the British Broadcasting Service, has just announced his plans for the future of the BBC. These proposed changes are “rooted in a clear vision of what the BBC exists to do.” He asserts, at the start of his confused and badly written article in The Guardian, that the BBC’s mission is to “inform, educate and entertain audiences”. So why these particular closures?

One reason that is worth considering is that Mark Thompson doesn’t really like music. Maybe he doesn’t quite understand it, or is unable to put it into any kind of cultural context; after all his background is purely news and current affairs. Not that that in itself is a bad thing but if your entire world view is governed by a focus on news to the exclusion of all other cultural outlets then it does pose a problem.

The rising public anger at the announcement of the planned closures has been led, in the main, by listeners and supporters of 6Music. This should come as no surprise really. The demographic for the average 6Music listener indicates a pretty attractive group for any broadcaster but the problem is there is nowhere else for these listeners to go so of course they will be enraged that the only outlet for music they like is to be closed by a man who appears to have no idea what constitutes contemporary music; and here lies the crux of the matter.

Some have argued that Mr Thompson needed to announce these changes in anticipation of an incoming Conservative government that will be in greater thrall, if that is possible, than the current government to Rupert Murdoch. Red in tooth and claw free marketers, populated in the main by men (invariably men) who enjoyed no real experience of teenage years (pace Cameron & Osborne allegedly) so have no concept of music other than pop music they danced badly to at Young Conservative dances. These people see music, like racial minorities, teenagers and workers, as all the same.

In 2008 the UK music industry was worth £3.6bn, and that’s a whole lot of money. These revenues are generated by musicians playing live, recording music that people with disposable incomes want to go and see. They range from outfits like Slow Club or Tuung through to major artists like Gorillaz and Radiohead. Pop plays a part as well, JLS, Cheryl Cole and other TV created stars all add to the mix; but don’t pretend that these artists are anything other than fictional constructs for the downloaded disposable age. The role music plays in people’s lives is determined by intelligence and creativity. Pop music is, and always will be, a momentary soundtrack to our daily lives but will never hold sway in our memory the way that the poet artist will.

It is argued that the BBC is doing things that could easily be done by the commercial sector. That is an utter bare faced lie. If the BBC was not setting the pace then the commercial sector, as always, would fall back upon lowest common denominator programming. Radio 1 is often held up by those with no idea about how the music industry works as a prime example of “something the private sector could do better”. Unfortunately this is not the case. A quick glance at the playlists for Radio 1 and, say, Capital FM in London should illustrate this point. Radio 1 plays and exposes new pop acts, as well as rock and R&B artists, whereas Capital plays what is already broken and commercially successful; for instance the Black Eyed Peas feature on both their A and C lists. If Radio 1 was privatised then the UK music industry can kiss goodbye to a vehicle for breaking new acts. Commercial radio is all about advertising.

Now on to 6Music. There is no radio station playing the kind of music that 6Music plays, anywhere in this country. They play music for people who maintain a connection with the kind of music that speaks to them of their lives and experiences. People like Thompson cannot see or understand this concept because, though they may pay lip service to “real” music, jazz or classical, anything played on music radio is deemed to be pop. They claim Katherine Jenkins is an opera singer when she has never appeared in an opera, she sings showtunes or their equivalent. If you apply that criteria to drama then Shakespeare carries no more weight than Coronation Street – and those folk who claim that if Shakespeare was alive today he’d be writing for Eastenders are simply wrong – and How Hot Is My Daughter carries as much power as Life!

A part of the BBC’s remit is to stimulate creativity and cultural excellence; doing away with an outlet for creativity and cultural excellence is not the way forward. We are lying to ourselves if we think otherwise. For those of you who seem to believe that the magical private sector will fill this gap then I despair for your gullibility and ignorance. The commercial sector has had this opportunity and has fallen short. Take a look at 6Music’s playlist compared to XFM. The 6Music playlist is drawn from a wide range of labels, many of whom are small independent companies who have no other outlets for exposure; XFM’s playlist in drawn, in the main, from major labels, which is not surprising given who pays for the advertising.

One of the things this country can take pride in is our music industry. Since The Beatles and The Stones kicked it all off we have consistently produced bands, and acts, who have pushed forward the boundaries of music that the rest of the world has struggled to reach. Innovative bands from other countries are usually recognised first in the UK (Kings of Leon, Air, The Velvet Underground) having been played by DJs of the stature of John Peel or Gideon Coe. For many of us the first time we heard acts like Big Youth or Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou were on shows by those two stalwarts of radio. Once they’ve gone we will never get shows like those back again.

Save music: save 6Music.

So long.

When we are weary and in need of strength,
When we are lost and sick at heart,
We remember him.

When we have a joy we long to share,
When we have decisions that are hard to make,
We remember him.

At the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter,
At the opening of the buds and in the rebirth of spring,
We remember him.

At the blueness of the skies and in the warmth of the summer,
At the rustling of the leaves and in the beauty of the autumn,
We remember him.

At the rising of the sun and its setting,
We remember him.

It is with great sadness.

On Wednesday the 3rd of February 2010 at roughly 2.45pm my Dad died.

I was there, sat next to the bed and talking aimlessly about stories in the paper. Someone had told me that the last thing to go is the hearing so you have to keep talking, communicating, reaching out and begging them not to go; and then telling them that it’s OK, we can manage now, Mum’s waiting and I want you to be free.

Many would say it was a good death, whatever that means. At home, with his family. But from where I stood there seemed to be so little dignity for this once proud Yorkshireman. Everyone is very kind; everyone is very caring; just as long as you’re staying at home the powers that be are all very happy. It keeps you off the balance sheet. They promise you all the support you need and my brother asks them “is that the case because my little brother is disabled and can’t pick our father up” and they go “oh no problem just pick up the phone and we’ll be there” and you do two hours later to be told “oh we’re all going home now can you call so and so or so and so” but they’re not there either and you weep. You stand and weep and the tears roll down your face and you beg your father to let go and rescue himself from this pain. Then he dies.

And you forgive them.

The house is too quiet so I put on Handel’s Messiah. Not just any old Messiah but Mozart’s arrangement of the Messiah. I’d bought it for him directly from the Huddersfield Choral Society and he had loved it. It was part of our family’s genetic make up. Every Christmas he’d come downstairs in his dressing gown and stuck his vinyl copy on the big stereogram, turned the volume up, grinned and we all new Christmas had started. Now I played it as he lay dying and as the glorious rich tones of Comfort Ye swelled through his flat I could see a peace settle and move across him. I sat there as CD1, the first movement flowed around us and I breathed in the air and held his hand and felt his recognition, his connection to those earlier days surrounded by a younger, less complicated family and with his wife still upstairs in bed; and I knew he was there.

As His Yoke Is Easy faded so did my father. I wanted to believe that he had calmed and lay sleeping. I could see the covers still rising and falling. Couldn’t I?

No.

Daddy’s gone.

A sudden sense of loneliness.

My Dad is dying.

I've sat here, at my keyboard, for nearly an hour trying to think of some different way of starting to write about my current life, to try to find some way of stating the obvious that doesn't looks so harsh and brutal but I can't find the words. These are the only words that come to me. Like some looming, dark and close storm clouds I know that the storm will break over me in the very near future; and I'm terrified.

I shouldn't be, I know. Hell, I'm in my fifties and I have already lost one parent but the idea of becoming the last stop on the road fills me with dread. Until now I have always had this man to turn to, for advice, for consolation, for support. You never stop being a son, a child, until the moment that you are alone. I know my brother must be having similar thoughts and fears, but siblings have a different love, they aren't obliged to bear responsibility, unlike a loving parent who holds true to that unwritten, unspoken contract that you make with you children. Whispered into their ears at birth and in the quiet moments of bedtime reading "I'll always be there"; and they are.

My father is a Yorkshireman, born and raised in Golcar, near Huddersfield. Like so many of his generation it could be argued that the Second World War was a life saver in the sense that it broke the designed path to his future and opened up worlds to him that would never have happened had the madness not fallen over Europe. He left the small village for the wider world, trained in Canada, saw a young Frank Sinatra singing with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in Toronto, posed with his mates atop the Empire State Building, their RAF hats bent and forced into the shape of the cooler looking US Air Force style. In Chicago he saw bluesmen in bars where bartenders avoided asking the 19 year old underage drinkers for ID because they never knew how many would live to drink legally, and my Dad laughing as he told me that they all intentionally wore their uniforms for precisely that reason.

All these stories came out of my father as our lives moved around each other; as the shape of our relationship changed, from child parent interaction into the realms of friends. But I always remain the son, regardless of how many beers we've shared or those unspoken moments of complete understanding when neither of us needed to acknowledge what passed between us. As he grew older I learnt more about the follies of his youth and realised that I had so much more in common with this man than just a quirk of fate. All my life he had seemed born into the role of responsible provider; someone who had provided his family with security and a sense of safety, leavened with humour, but in the main a steady dependable man. It was a shock to be told and to realise that we had a difficult adolescence in common, problems at school, early leaving, confusion as to what to do in life. So many things that put my life into context, that made me comprehend that my own life wasn't some kind of aberration. He had grown into his role, it didn't come naturally and that, for me, was the biggest lesson he has taught me.

Now I'm a father and I'm having those hard times with my own teenage son. He is a gem; bright, amusing, good-looking and very, very funny. But I'm his Dad. Because I'm his Dad I worry that he'll screw up at school, I worry that his social skills will fall apart because he plays too much Xbox. Hardly a day goes by when we don't clash heads over something and I can see in his face the blank assumption that I have been put on this earth solely to make his life as unpleasant as possible, that all the future has to hold for the two of us is an unrelenting period of abrasive love. Then it passes.

My father has the invidious position of being the grandparent. From his lofty love he can see this relationship between my son and I within the context of my life with him. All these roles are being played out again, with different haircuts and trousers, but the script is essentially the same. I am eaten up with a middle class desire to see my child achieve some kind of material comfort and emotional security and, if he holds true with the script, my son sees me as some bourgeois prick who has no idea what life is like at 15; but like my father did for me I am only trying to explain how the world turns and why should he believe me? I just hope that as the time passes he too will see the truth I've arrived at.

My Dad is dying and I can't do anything about it. I can't turn back the progress of this disease that is turning him into a shell of the man he was. I try not to show my distress when I stay with him, as I try to make him eat something or have a drink or as we talk together and he drifts in and out of sleep. All I feel is that I don't want his pain to go on, but I don't want him to go. I just want him to know it's OK. He can go now if he wants because I think I've finally worked out how it works.

I love you Dad.

Nick

Rachid Taha and the Dilemma of Seating

Pic: rockographer.com

Taha's new album, Bonjour, has divided the critics. Actually, to be honest, it has divided me from most (if not all) of the other critics. But more of the new album in the next post. This is all about the live event.

Rachid Taha live is a subject that, generally speaking, most people are in agreement on. Live he is in his element; it's just that pretty much every time this spiritual heir to Joe Strummer appears on a London stage it's in the hallowed halls of seated venues. You could argue that the trade off lies in the quality of the sound against the space to seriously get down to his luscious groove, and the presence of seats didn't seem to impede the dancing feet of the hundreds of beautiful women who can usually be found at this bad boy's concerts.

Unfortunately I missed the opening set from co-headliner Vieux Farka Touré and walked into the cavernous Royal Festival Hall one verse into Taha's opening number, Ila Liqa, taken from Bonjour. Now band wisdom usually advises opening a show with a crowd pleaser, a well known number, that gets the audience behind you from the off. Taha doesn't seem to need this on the evidence of my own eyes; as I walked into the hall it seemed that the entire venue was already on its feet with people cramming down in front of the stage. With a drop of the shoulder and a tip of the hat the band slipped into Shuf and the crowd went nuts.

As always at Rachid's gigs there's a weird cross-section of London; from stately looking mature Levantines to fabulous beauties dancing like professionals, to bohemian grannies to wild freakin' raver dudes, they are all represented. They would probably be at a Clash gig were they ever to have reformed. That said Rachid is a rock act and he ought to be at the Empire or Brixton Academy, he should be playing somewhere where the sweat drips down the walls and the sound distorts and speaker stacks wobble disconcertingly as a packed pit bounces dangerously. The fact that he can pretty much conjure up this experience in the polite Royal Festival Hall says something about the power of his performance.

Aided and abetted by long term band mates Hakim Hamadouche, Guillaume Rossel, Rachid Belgacem, and Yves Aouizerate with Didier Thery on bass Taha tore the place up. Having seen him whenever I can, whenever he's in London, and being accused of being a too forgiving a fan I can honestly say that Stephan Bertin is the best guitarist I've seen appearing with him. His wild lead playing, behind Belgacem and Rossel's solid percussive groove, reminded me of Material in early-80s New York. It was no surprise to see the young long hair up on the balcony throwing himself around in almost rock-acid house ecstasy as these kings of future punk said how it was to be.

Through Je t'aime Mon Amour into Bent Sahara into a blistering Barra Barra (Black Hawk Down indeed), take a breather for Ecoute-Moi Camarade and on to Ya Rayah the crowd soared and dipped and the ladies went woooooo. I did too. The love flowed. Over the years there has occasionally been an almost Shane MacGowan moment with Taha at times; was he so fucked up that he'd collapse, or just mumble incoherently, would he be able to perform at all? But these days he seems to be happy with the moment and whether he was refreshed or not he was completely in the moment, centre stage and dominating. Slipping between English, French and Arabic depending on his mood or excitement. By the time he brought Vieux Farka Touré back out for Rock the Casbah and a stunning closer Garab, where Farka Touré played blistering guitar over one of rock's tightest rhythm sections, you thought the roof was going to come off.

This isn't world music, this is, like his compatriot Manu Chao, the natural heir to the original punk rock movement when young musicians sought wider roots to the rock music they wanted to play. The purer world music fraternity often dismiss Rachid's version of Rock El Casbah as "turgid" but I think they're mistaken. If reports are correct - read here - then Taha may well have more right to play Casbah than he's given credit for. All I know is that every time he plays he delivers. I have seen many bands over the years but Rachid Taha is in an elite group of maybe four or five in that he continues to offer us a different view.

Thanks for keeping the flame alive.


(The poster of this got the date wrong but check the young guy on the balcony!)

Mark's great talent

Mark and I wrote together a lot. From the start we kind of clicked and his huge musical ability somehow allowewd him to understand my incoherent descriptions of what I heard or meant. He played, wrote and programmed everything so quickly that, for me and many others, working with others always seemed so fucking slow!

This song sums up something. I miss him.

Mark Alexander Smith - one of the greats.

I just found out today that one of my dearest friends, Mark Smith, died yesterday. I cannot begin to say how much this has hurt me and left me feeling bereft and adrift.

I've known Mark for more than twenty five years and in that time we've written songs, produced, played, drank and caroused. For much of it I was the one who did the drinking and carousing being as Mark was never one to drink or whatever. His big vice was cigarettes and coffee and many of his friends worried that these would not be good for him. As yet we don't know if we were right.

Mark was one of the best of us. There will be many times in life when you hear that expression and it will be said as a cliché or as a platitude; in this case it was a true evaluation of the man. He was one of the finest musicians I have ever met or had the honour to play with. He was best known for his prowess on the bass guitar but once you'd spent sometime in a studio with Mark you soon realised that his knowledge of composition, his skill with keyboards and arranging would add a lustre to any run of the mill project. Perhaps the greatest compliment was that if anyone could polish a turd, as the musical saying goes, Mark could.

In his personal life he was self-effacing. Always quick witted and humourous he had an ability to calm any tense situation, smooth over difficulties in recording studios making other singers and players feel that they were really happening, even when they weren't. As a friend he could always be relied upon to offer moral support, good advice and some sensible interjection; he was the first person I told when my wife told me we were having a child. We were in Stockholm at the time working with a dreadful band but it was always good times.

The last time I spoke to Mark was this weekend; after many years of not playing or creating any music I had been persuaded to put something together. I called Mark and asked him if he would be up for trying something a bit different, but still diamond. We had songs we'd written years back that still sound fresh; other friends who were class acts were all up for it, particularly if Mark was involved. Mark was enthusiastic about the idea, and I knew, thanks to him, it stood much more chance of being special. Now I'll never know.

Mark Smith was a very common name for a very uncommon person.

I loved him and I miss him more than I can express.

Rocksteady, hats off to the men!

This album is a soundtrack for a film by Swiss film maker Stascha Bader that looked at the short lived precursor to roots reggae, rocksteady. In some ways it can be compared to Wim Wenders Bueana Vista Social Club in that it revolves around a reunion of major figures from that period. Meeting up in Tuff Gong Studios the veterans re-recorded some of the major songs of the period; sadly some of the artists are no longer rocking so stars of equal stature and ability stepped in to fill the gaps, for example the legendary U Roy fills the gap left by Scotty on a new version of Stop That Train.

Unfortunately I missed the film so I only have the YouTube clip to go on, and this album. As a stand alone piece of music it works; all the favourites are here - You Don't Love Me, The Tide Is High, Rivers of Babylon - which may pose a problem for the real reggae fan being as they will probably have the originals already, in all their raw glory. That said there's space in the world for beautifully realised versions, well recorded and solidly performed. Music buffs will appreciate the high recording quality that has been brought to the project.

Probably lovers of Cuban music found the Buena Vista versions lacking in a certain essence that their scratchy earlier versions possessed but speaking as someone who was never that acquainted with the originals they worked fine for me. This record should have the same effect on people who haven't spent many nights nodding into the bass bins of their youth. In fact some versions stand out; Derrick Morgan's Conquering Ruler and Hopeton Lewis' Take It Easy go down like cold stout on a hot Kingston afternoon and the playing throughout is smooth, as you'd expect with the god-like Ernest Ranglin MDing the project.

If you already have these tracks on various compilations you might not be bothered getting the album, unless you're a completeist, but if you want to know where it all came from and you don't know where to start this is a good place.