Dive into sin, let's plug the synth: here comes an infinite subject for astonishment, one of the most outsider items dedicated to modular synths. It is beautiful. The woman is happy. The sounds are brilliant. Ravel would have been proud.
The complete identity of credited composer Fred Miller never got revealed.
Covering, remixing, recycling: the whole story of indonesian dangdut is inhabited by these elements in a frenetical way. Being in itself an original adaptation and upgrade of traditionnal elements into a pop format, it developped in the 80's an industrial interest in adapting an impressive amount of foreign sources and western billboard hits to local sound and instrumentation.
One of the biggest indo hit, Kopi Dangdut("Coffee Dangdut"), and its 90s version by Campur Dki is actually an adaptation of venezuelian Hugo Blanco's "Moliendo Cafe", a 1961 #1 hit in Argentina. Remaining absolutely unknown in Europe, this version also became a success in Japan, probably due to the work and reputation of producer Makoto Kubota, member of Sandii & Sunsetz, probably responsible of the tr-808 catchy miami-style inserts.
Although the local songs' fate is quite the same (don't expect to ever overview the countless versions of Mabuk Janda) this habit dangdut has to cover international hits sometimes lead to amazing cheerfull high realms of nonsense, like this "Hotel California" version that brings us very far away from the american landscapes and atmosphere, also thanks to an amazing accent.
(check the amazing Journey of dangdut database for similar more or less successfull cover attempts)
Nowadays, the recent trancy dangdut / dugem club production, keeping alive that commercial pop tradition, looks like a steam factory declination of a few beats and loops exactly in the same way as baile funk or reggaeton. More than covers, these tunes are related to a certain piracy remix tradition quite common in a club field: here again, foreign hits get inserted and mashed-up into the local groove, as you will notice in those examples, one latin hit adaptation alongside another tune including a huge sample you'll easily recognize ...
Composer, stage director, comedian & virtuoso pianist, Ziad Rahbani son of Libanese pop superstar Fairuz & Assi Al-Rahbani is both an iconic & controversial figure in Middle Estern countries. Appart from his contribution to many succes of his mother is the man behind many remarquable scores for various Libanese, Egyptian movies...
While digging for rare soundtracks from the man (a post should follow soon), I felt on that record compiling rearranged instrumental tracks from the Lebanses diva. There's not much more to say, anyway those of you dear readers familiar with the likes of Vladimir Cosma or Francois De Roubaix should highly enjoy the songs posted above.
He probably can be considered as the most most misunderstood french artist, hated by many for the irritating pervasiveness of his commercial works, a supeficial tree that hides the forest of a long-lasting and peculiar production. Ben Vautier is way more than a cute sentence on the workbook of a college girl, or that quaint character cheering up gallery owners who forgot who is their uncle: through more than 50 years of carrer, from his early performances to the letterings he's famous for, he declared a humoristic, radical yet paradoxal war against ego in art, often in a jubilant bad faith. He was there for Nouveau Réalisme, Fluxus and later Figuration libre, started web production in 1996 through website and newsletters, in a constant production bulimia questionning fundamental topics such as identity, popular and wise cultures, or self-representation. And sex.
In summer 2008, he started pulishing various songs on his website, for a short period of time: childish outsider blues, with obsessive vocals à la Dubuffet layered on stolen instrumentals, I still wonder why he suddenly stopped such a fancy-full activity. May he know that us, pleased listeners, hope to hear more as soon as possible.
Symbolically, for my first post on this blog, I wanted to let you ear one of my favorite outsider singer: Tiny Tim, a tall man with long black (or sometime red) hairs, white make up on his face, motley suit and a ukulele. Every of these details made him a very special characters, not to mention his high falsetto voice and his very polite manners.
This strange man had a huge succes in 1968, when he reached #17 in the us chart with a cover of “Tip toe through the tulip” (a hit from 1929). At that time, he was one of the musical sensation of the moment, used to go on every talk show, therefore became unfortunately the required idiot US television always needs for a brief period. He also appeared on a xmas recording from the Beatles, doin’ a cover of “Nowhere man”. For his very big concert in the Royal Albert hall in London, la creme de la creme of the english music scene was in the audience to see the man. After this brief period of glory, he continued to produce a few records, without success, though. And at the end of this contract with the label Reprise, he was broke and had to come back to his parents' house. His carreer went wrong until he died in 1996 : he recorded and played when he could and for a confidential audience only.
With his parents
His first period was the finest, according to the three albums he made for Reprise, but most of his records are interesting. This “one hit wonder” was known only for one song: a big injustice for a man who was a living memory of pop music, a human juke box who knew more than 1000 song: like a modern trobador, he could play at any moment a song wherever he was with the ukulele that he used to carry on a shopping bag. He only recorded cover songs, but always in his own peculiar style: here come four tunes an introduction to his childish and beautiful universe.
Syrian born producer & musician Henri Debs played a major role in the 60's & 70's French Carribean music scene. Raised in a record shop-owning family, he is known as the first middle east oriental interpreter of creol music & proclaimed himself the new Antillean music savior:
"Disques Debs sauveur de la musique antillaise. Si on la défend de nos jours c'est que Debs l'a sauvée jadis"
Here on a Baden Powell cover, along with singing partener Serge Cristophe with whom he recorded several 7" singles & LP's...
To end comes a latin infused track with insane & chanting scat from martiniquean pianist Marius Cultier. Depsite the fact Cultier never reached popularity, he was the first artist to employ the "ZOUK" term. At last, I sincerily advice you not to start with the only cd rendition entitled "morceaux choisis vol. 1" which disppointed me quite much as more versed on the jazz virtuoso side of the artist.
---------------------------------------------------------------- > Read First Part (Philogene Astasie & Kassav) > Read Second Part (Les Vikings & Eric Cosaque) ----------------------------------------------------------------
"My Dear Fans, Now that we are back in contact, As a gift from me to you, please check below for 3 free music downloads from my new album, "Lost Opera... Found," which will be released in 2010. Kimera, with love"
Know it and spread the word: the four-octave range grandiosa diva is generously back in full force. Since she decided to retire from the public lights of show business after the (luckily solved) kidnapping affair of her daughter Melodie in 1987, she never lost her love for music, though. And if it sounds more or less quite the same, it also sounds definitely as good as it used to.
The man behind the sound of the original 1984 million-selling album was John Fiddy, producer and major figure of library music with his Sonoton catalogue.
Blamed and almost criminalized at the time by most of classical music lovers, although it was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, the product of his laboratory may now appear in many ways as stunning as the woman's make-up creations and sense of costume or scenography: epic, colourfull, extatic. As an eighties upgrade of Walter Murphy's disco king work, it is of course also close to the fields of Rondo Venezziano (although Gian Piero Reverberi was composing and not covering). From whom, in case you didn't notice, Daft Punk copied as usual everything.
He was the man of one song, but what a song! Bobby Hebb wrote SUNNY in 1963, twice shocked by the murder of Bob Kennedy, and two days later, of his own brother. It's one of the most covered song in the recording history: Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye, James Brown, Stevie Wonder and among french singers: Eddy Mitchell, Richard Anthony, Christophe Willem etc. ...
Bobby Hebb - Sunny (1965)
Boney M - Sunny (1976)
Ella Fitzgerald and Tom Jones - Sunny (1970)
Dusty Springfield - Sunny (1967)
------------------------------------------------------------------------- I like very much this cover, so Italo saxo lounge !
Story is, just after releasing the Ptose's tape material compilation, Loic from the Chocomix team came after me & submitted the idea for a whole record entirely dedicated to the Napoleon XIV song, asking contomporean artists to pay tribute. Due to complications (lack of organisation, gigs to come, others projects etc) the idea went away...
Around 2005 and a bit earlier, I, can remember for a WFMU post compiling the 21 versions of the song, I'm not able to give you any link as it seems to be broken. Consider those two following posts as some kind of re up!
Also spending crazy time digging for music from around the globe I've been long fantasming on arabic, cumbia related or soukous maybe etc "Take Me Away" covers. Has anybody heard for such exercise ?
In 1966 Teddy & Darrel released a whole album (These Are the Hits, You Silly Savage!!!!) of limp-voiced, gay satiric novelties starring "Strangers In The Night" "These Boots Are Made For" & "They Are Coming To Take Me Away" music covers".
> The entirety of Teddy & Darrel music was rerelased some time ago on the "Here's Queer To The Core!" comp (Quick Nuts Rds) > Some more Teddy & Parrel Music can be found on the "Queer Noises" compilation (Trikont record label)
This is it: best "Take Me Away" cover ever ! Best apocalyptic party song ever too !
Jello Biaffra plus Ministry's members (including its brainchild Al Jourgensen) team up for insane & devastating music action.
> As taken from Lard's second record (The Last Tempatation of Reid) and released on Jello's very own label Alternative Tentacles (yes the one which gave us Wesley Willis)
When he released They're coming to take me away in 1966, I'm not sure Jerry Samuels necessarely knew it would turn into a massive hit. He probably could imagine even less that this track would be covered afterwards by a bunch of various french irresponsible dudes, among many others.
Apart from its direct content, I wonder how much the track's posterity may be due to the fact that the song is based on a beat / flow principle: striking, and easy to appropriate. Besides, most of author rights society accepting only melodies and lyrics to register a track as an intellectual property, therefore it is highly possible that Jerry Samuels never heard about many of the the countless cover versions of his hit, neither received any specific royalties...
On the controversy attributing sometimes the track's paternity to Kim Fowley, this one replied in a Chronicart interview that Samuels was actually the author and composer. But also that he, Fowley, did a few live shows under the name and mask of Napoleon XIV, as Samuels decided he was too old to appear on stage anymore.
Many of us heard the song made by Jean-Pierre Massiera under the alias Basile in 1968, but its link to Napoleon XIV is often reduced to a small credit line. In this version, the surface of the track remains intact, but the lyrics and content in itself have nothing to do with the original schyzophrenic monologue, as he transfers the song in the field of a farmer and his cow surprised by the arrival of UFOs.
Finders Keepers and Mucho Gusto Rds recently had a huge resonsability in bringing Massiera back to the lights of fame, and if you didn't get them already, their reissues are a must-have.
Hugely frenchy big band (mock-heroic elements + wigs and makeup), in some ways close to the Orchestre du Splendid, Au Bonheur des dames did on its side a song on the topic of stuttering, actually also a pretext for various wordplays, in a close-to-cumbia version due to effects that sounds strangely modern for 1988 (avalaible on cd since a 2006 reissue).
C'est tout pour aujourd'hui, but Arc de Triomphe will continue the story with a second volume soon, à suivre...
Very first post (in a sery of ?) dedicated to Chutney Music ! Most of you familiar with Trintad & Tobago but especially Guyana music may have noticed for fast paced "Bollywood influenced songs" mixed with Carribean carnival vibe, the whole sung in Hindi. Well that's the way i got in touch first and fall in love with Chutney...
> For further infos, better check the Wiki page which is pretty complete.
Kanchan started her career singing with Music Directors Kalyanji - Anandji (elder brothers of Babla) in the early 1970's and recorded many hit songs. At that time Babla was working as a music assistant and backing musician too for his brothers duet. I believe Babla & Kanchan met on the Qurbani movie on which to which they both participated.
Kanchan’s love for Live shows resulted in her teaming up with Babla (whith whome she'll married). Due to the band's huge success and continuous tours, they kept away from the Hindi film industry a long time to focuse on the Orchestra. The duo devised the now famous "Disco Dandiya" genre and became real superstars in the West Indies but not also and gained popularity too in the Netherlands, England, US & India too.
Their records are defintely emblematic for chutney's third wave artists, to follow precursors such as Sundar Popo and older ones (a post to come for S.P. next). Emancipating from religious & family themes lyrics but also introducing modern music elements especially thanks to the like of fascinating and versatile composer Babbla.
Extra joint from Babla (solo), this time more on the disco side. Opening track taken from the amazing "Disco Sensation" LP covering Hindi film hits in a Dandiya way but also containing personnal compositions ( there is a bootleg rerelease going around). MUST BUY !!
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Appart from having collaborated with both his elder brothers, Babla has also been composing a large amount of obscure music scores and sung in many of them too. But obviously i'm not owning any of them.
To end properly the post comes at last a dreamy & Larry Levan'esque music collage based on Babla's Disco Dandia's records, from friend & Hindi music freak Rocky Rock.
The most thrilling thing regarding Hong Kong's mighty Xper Xr, could be to discover along interviews how much his intensive practice of musical dumbness may actually challenge all the Deuleuze, Derrida, and Heidegger quotations he's sprinkling on a crust of Prince's Purple Rain.
Let's consider his own instructive post-situ views for the classy french magazine Revue et corrigée in 2001:
"Once upon a time, in an obscure county of this obscure world, there was a kid playing obscure guitar to become a rockstar. It happend that after four years practicing electric guitar, and a little bit of drums, something was reveald to him: what he was calling music then could actually be summarized in few words: basic melodies, sterling virtuosity and pretty face (and maybe our hero actually didn't have any of this in his possession. But nevermind)."
"Nowadays artists don't have the mind configuration to criticize the commercial system's holy trinity: Music - Lifestyle - Image, and these mechanics working nights and days to produce what we don't want, but always end up buying." (...) I wasn't conscious that my music could contain any irony, but if it is the case, it's only to justify and appropriate the critic I'm criticizing, the copies I'm copying."
"The ultimate goal of our civilisation is to turn everything into something popular. Everything that can be named must be labelised under the banner of fashion: fashion doesn't follow any principle, fashion is what is to become something else. We can then hear techno music, or indie pop that incorporated noise without being disturbed at all. Is it sonic pollution, or the ultimate form of fascim in times of peace?"
Aside from these fascinating considerations set aside the glamorous skills of a guy able to cover such thing as Maximum Overdrive, Xper Xr is also mythically known for another very specific activity: driving dragsters. Wow.
The well titled " ... .. . .... .." in entirely made of billboard hits transcriptions for a chinese traditionnal orchestra. However, it strongly looks like people were recorded separatly, unable to hear each other, and almost discovering the scores for the first time, everything being afterwards edited alltogether to get the expected result.
Indeed, record finally contains some of the all-time best versions of songs such as Right on Time, S'Express, and other fundamental classics.
Lün Hsiao Shuai, earlier piece in his discography, is a more solo, pleasantly junk and stimulatingly chaotic album also containing live elements recorded on radio Aligre.
While some connexions might occasionally be found with Negativland, V/Vm, or some of the things produced by Yoshihide Otomo / Yamantaka Eye, the result remains hugely haunted by personal obsessions, as proven by this Santana guitar karaoke unique overdub.
For those who caught this stunning Cd-r among the Bimbo Tower's recommendations, the huge shock lead to an understandable thirst for more informations related to this hungarian oddity.
Dolly Rambo, also well-known as Madam X-Otic, looks like a very strange character surounded by a team of fellow activists supporting her management on the way to fame. An enthusiasming fan club is open, and you can also find various videos cumulating a surprisingly consequent amount of visits, maybe due to various exciting TV appearances in Hungary.
First time I saw the guns of André Robillard was probably more than 20 years ago at Musée de l'Art Brut in Lausanne, something I kept a strong memory of through the years, although I was only a child then.
It was a huge surprise in 2002 to discover that the man didn't only produce objects, but also a crude, guttural and highly personal music.
Will I be the only one to feel a specific moving drama behind these recordings ? In one hand, it sounds highly infused in the roots of some french folklore, which is usually directly related to a collective function, a community entertainment purpose. But on the other hand, the appropriation by Robillard of these codes is so personal that it turns into an ode to singularity, a brilliant missed attempt to make the neighbors dance. Hopefully, the story teaches us that it finally managed to touch many people's hearts in other jubilant contexts or circumstances.
Released by the french discreet yet often extremely accurate label Inpolysons, jointly with publisher Le Dernier Cri, this item is now sold out, but support Inpolysons and have a look at the rest of the catalogue, including David Fenech, Juicy Panic, Klimperei & many more...
Last but not least, a strongly japanese curiosity to complete this post celebrating those who do it their way. Informations on this record were very hard to collect for a non-japanese speaker like me though. It was sold as being from Hamada Toshikazu, who was described as a a japanese vagrant from Tokyo, but I suspect this could be somehow just a myth or misundestanding.
This untitled album released on OZ discs looks like being his first and only, made of blended recordings, guitar or noise live elements, and what sounds like being kayokyoku karaoke sessions, everything collected by friends in the last years of a fight against cancer. While making researches on it, I had the surprise to discover the name of the amazing Himitsu Hakase credited. Small world... I imagine he was involved in the artwork as often, but probably also somehow on a more deeper level.
I'll actually try to complete this post in coming days if I manage to find more informations. Hard to find item in Europe, but still avalaible through Enban and Bridge Inc. shops for those living in Japan
Two spacey organ cuts which originally came on Adi's 1982 "Popular Movie Melodies From India" LP (covering Bollywood classics). Unfortunatly I wasn't able to recongnize any of them.
"Adi understands the pain and agony of human life. He soothes his patients and brings happiness to young hearts, through his medical background and his extravagant musical talents." (back cover notes)
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Only a little informations are available on the net about the keyboard maestro. Anyway he seems to be part of a small spiritual group named the Zarathushtri community... Playing and accompanying as some sort of music therapeutist he provides rousing music to keep all involved until late hours for jubilee celebrations etc...
I attended my first ufologist diner last week at La Defense. Never saw such a cross-eyed traffic in a cafeteria. The first case was presented by a new age grandpa in white socks, explaining us why this triangle thing upon his car the 5th November of 1990, could not be a B2. I was watching his fuzzy slide show, wondering how satellite imagery had not solved the question of ufos yet. I mean, for better or worse, and I really want to believe in extra terrestrials. Are there too much clouds over Google Earth, who really runs those orbital cameras, and what the hell happened to Major Tom ?
Well, these three covers answer clearly. He encountered a technical problem. Some say that Tom was attacked by aliens, others that David Bowie is an alien himself. The mystery remains unsolved, but let’s hear it.
The Space oddity was first covered in 1971 by Gérard Palaprat, two years after David Bowie. The french translation is more nostalgic, with true pieces of poetry if we include a guy painting rainbows in the sky, and the evocation of the Major’s mother. Tom finally overcomes his home sick, but too late, the ground control turned russian.
The second cover was released in 1974. It’s a parody by a duo of humorists, Los Hermanos Calatrava. This one appears to be the most political, and stands a dramatic dialogue between Tom and Ground Control. I don’t get Spanish but aliens surely do. Anyway you don’t have to be bilingual to hear the crash at the end. They also did a movie remake of E.T. with their feet.
The third one is a chorus of young Canadians calling the lost Major. Their lament is heart breaking and was produced by their teacher, Hans Fenger, in 1976. Some of you have probably heard about the Langley Schools Music Project. They covered songs from the Beach Boys, Neil Diamond, Herman’s Hermits and the Beatles. David Bowie liked their version a lot. This precious recording should be kept on earth and buried very deeply, if we don’t want the Little Grays to compete in colleges and mess with our girls.
