Update

I'm still alive! Unfortunately the last few months have been very involved, between classes and music I've been making a point of treasuring my isolationary time. Posts will be, as they have been (for entirely too long now), sporadic. I'll try to make a point of throwing out the kind of thing that keeps this blog on your rss feed (or at least keeps bringing you back to check on it).

I first heard this when I was 17, which was after I'd gotten my first car. This is one of the two defining songs of the time when I drove a car. I really miss driving when I listen to this one.

DL it, pop it on cdr, tape, whatever you use to play music in your car. Flip it on on the interstate and enjoy the feeling of pressing that pedal down as far as it'll go.

floor it

McCarthy - Banking, Violence, and the Inner Life Today

McCarthy - Banking, Violence, and the Inner Life Today (1990)

Here's something out of left field for you. McCarthy is probably best known today for being the indie pop band where Tim Gane & Laetetia Sadier of Stereolab met, or something like that. It's been on my mind lately since getting that Un-Kommunity tape from NLFM blog (linked in a previous post). Perhaps my favorite indie-twee group of the late 80s era, McCarthy combined polished pop tunes with clever, biting lyrics and a heavy anti-Thatcher/pro-Labour bent. Anti-capitalism is always ++ in my book, but they also touch on gay rights, sexism, and pretty much everything else a proper young socialist ought to care about. First track on the album is my favorite:

Number Girl - Urban Guitar Sayonara (single)

Got a few things coming up. I've been adding my old mp3s to my itunes thing since I shifted over to mac after my PC finally broke, so I've had some old things come up again. Let's call it a retro phase. Track 1 on the B side of this single was the first bit I ever heard from this band, back when I was 15. I was in a (bit of a crap) punk band, and it was a bit of a revelation for me. Fell in love with the rest of Number Girl's discography not long after, but Sentimental Girl's Violent Joke remains a touchstone of my musical evolution. The first time I ever identified with something in a language I didn't understand.


And here I am, ten years later and running a rave disco world music blog. Please give it a chance. (BTW their final live DVD easily ranks among the top 5 live concert videos I've ever seen)

Number Girl - Urban Guitar Sayonara (single) (1998)


(off their prime album Sappukei: this single blew me away, that album made me a fan)

D.D.A.A. - La Famille Des Saltimbanques

D.D.A.A. - La Famille Des Saltimbanques (1984)

One of the jewels of my meager cassette collection here. Includes scans of the packaging and all that. I'll leave the rest up to this short bit off the WFMU blog.

I've raved about DDAA elsewhere on this blog, and also addressed the fact that several of their best releases were cassette-only. La Famille des Saltimbanques was released in a beautiful custom package by the Italian ADN label in 1984, and is among my personal top three DDAA recordings, along with their masterpiece, the Ronsard LP (1988) and their first full-length album, Action and Japanese Demonstration (1982). DDAA's songs have a relentlessly human quality, an emotional intensity that I find lacking in much of the post-punk avant-garde, having more in common with Can or Amon Düül than with DDAA contemporaries like Nurse With Wound and P16.D4. The two lengthy songs that make up most of Face 2 of this tape are mindbending excursions of plodding percussion and monolithic distorted guitar.

This is certainly one of the more rockist outings for DDAA, heavy on the bass and the screaming guitar. I've chopped this rip up into the songs as listed on the packaging, if you'd rather get sidelong rips or grab it from a different source, WFMU has sidelong rips and this blog has their own rips as well. Quality might be better from them, I haven't checked. Tape's a bit spotty at points on my copy, ravages of age and all (can you believe it's really been 25 years since this came out? so much more interesting than most of what's coming out now)

V-Effect - Stop Those Songs

V-Effect - Stop Those Songs! (1983)

This is my personal rip from my copy, one of those 'this looks neat let me check it on the old demo turntable' thrift store buys. Mutant Sounds posted this about three years ago but took it down because some label said they were going to re-release it. Since they never did (so far as I can tell), here it is again. I'll knock it down when someone links me to a press on forced exposure or wherever.

V-Effect straddle the no-wave and downtown scenes, though I imagine they didn't see it that way. The downtown people probably didn't see it that way either, since Mori is still with that downtown set and none of the people involved with this record seem to have kept an explicit presence within the "downtown scene" (or anywhere else I can find). Background established, this is... well... likely an album unlike anything you've heard before. Somewhere between no-wave and post-punk, free jazz and actual revolutionary sentiment. Call and response, self-taught sax squeal, analog clap pads on mic stands to add to the drummers' repertoire, thoroughly DIY and anti-capitalist.

This is what w-burg hipster bullshit should be right now. Enjoy.



first your feet... then your back... then your mind... then heart attack...

Mandrill - Mandrill Is...

Mandrill - Mandrill Is... (1972)

Wild funk, fucked fusion, acid soul. This record easily places among the most impressive achievements of the era, ranging from Sly-style soul-funk (Ape is High), JBs doling out the hard-edge shit (Git it All), to straight up acid narrative tracks (the eminently samplable Universal Rhythms) and psych ballads (Central Park). Hell, forget Universal Rhythms, the whole album is chock full of great breaks and instrumental compositions worthy of breaking out the old MPC. This record is certainly a production of its' time, but only more amazing for it. Honestly, best suited to headphones and a couple of rips rather than dropping at a party. There's a lot here to enjoy, give it your best attention & enjoy.

I have this LP, but as I recall this particular rip was one I found on a now defunct blog (that one with four different interconnected blogs I can't remember the name of anymore). The quality is roughly equal to my own rips, but starting in the next week or two I'll finally have myself set up once again to rip records. I've got a grip of house singles, a couple of mix records, and a few LPs. Added to that, I've spent the last few days getting my old MP3 collection transferred from my several old hard drives to my new dual 1.5tb external mirror raid setup, so I've got a few hundred tidbits to share. Stay tuned...

Myriam Makeba - Comme Une Symphone D'Amour

Myriam Makeba - Comme Une Symphone D'Amour (1979/89)

Here's a change of pace from the recent spate of synth music. Myriam Makeba was, as it happens, married to the great Hugh Maskela, a few of whose albums I posted over the summer. If you liked those, you'll find this just as agreeable. Otherwise, I doubt anyone can help themselves from falling for the woman known as Mama Afrika. For some background I'll just toss out some Wikipedia.

Makeba then travelled to London where she met Harry Belafonte, who assisted her in gaining entry to and fame in the United States. She released many of her most famous hits there including "Pata Pata", "The Click Song" ("Qongqothwane" in Xhosa), and "Malaika". In 1966, Makeba received the Grammy Award for Best Folk Recording together with Harry Belafonte for An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba. The album dealt with the political plight of black South Africans under apartheid.

She discovered that her South African passport was revoked when she tried to return there in 1960 for her mother's funeral. In 1963, after testifying against apartheid before the United Nations, her South African citizenship and her right to return to the country were revoked. She has had nine passports, [3] and was granted honorary citizenship of ten countries.[4]

Her marriage to Trinidadian civil rights activist and Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee leader Stokely Carmichael in 1968 caused controversy in the United States, and her record deals and tours were cancelled. As a result of this, the couple moved to Guinea, where they became close with President Ahmed Sékou Touré and his wife.[5] Makeba separated from Carmichael in 1973, and continued to perform primarily in Africa, South America and Europe. She was one of the African and Afro-American entertainers at the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman held in Zaïre. Makeba also served as a Guinean delegate to the United Nations, for which she won the Dag Hammarskjöld Peace Prize in 1986.

This is the 1989 CD re-release of this album (best of?) featuring 5 bonus tracks including "The Click Song" as mentioned above. It dips between pop, jazz, and traditional numbers in french, english, and xhosa. Wonderful album, here's some youtube vids as a preview for those unacquainted with the 'Mistress of African Song'.



African Convention (on this record)

(Fun tidbit: The Lion Cries seems to have been 'covered'/ripped-off by Paul Simon on Graceland. Guess it wasn't just Ladysmith Black Mambazo then.)

VA - Han-Ichi Independents

Alright, up today we have one of the gems of my tape collection. It's been posted elsewhere in various forms (actually having trouble figuring out where I found it in the first place, come to think of it), but this rip is from my copy of the original cassette. It remains in raw, full-side v0 mp3 form, since I don't think cutting it up into 'tracks' makes any sense. Have a listen and you'll see what I mean.

This release was a recap/medley of live performances for a 1983 Japanese Anarchist festival. Features bands such as A*MUSIK, Skeleton Crew (Fred Frith/Tom Cora), Remedy Control, and at least one or two noteworthy Japanese-name acts who I can't seem to remember and I'm having a surprisingly difficult time digging up the other blogs that have posted this in the past (I BELIEVE one of them is Zuno Keisatsu but I can't read Japanese at all). If anyone wants to translate the cover in the comments, there's a larger copy of the scan in the file. Anyway, I'm hoping to start varying up the posts from my increasingly regular dance single rips, so look for more like this in the future. Enjoy.

VA - Han-Ichi Independents (1983)

A.R. & Machines - AR IV

A.R. & Machines - AR IV

I just realized that I mentioned AR & Machines in the GAM post without giving any context. I think this is out of print, not sure, not adhering to my own rules too well I suppose. This is, truly, one of the greatest krautrock albums ever pressed to wax. My copy is a rip from a cd rerelease/boot from a few years ago. It's a level beyond Neu!, something like Can gone truly 60s-style psychedelic. Achim Reichel was a german pop artist, a singer and guitarist who was sucked up into the hippie movement. He built a system of tape echo effects which allowed him to compose songs which have never been duplicated, surround sound in 1970. Compositions which are frankly unlike anything else I've ever heard, and provide a tremendous inspiration to my own efforts as a guitarist and producer. This album is like nothing else produced before or since. Listen to it on headphones.

When the acid wore off and the money ran out in the late 70s, Reichel went back to disappointingly bland pop productions. Shame if you ask me, and I've no doubt you'll agree once you've heard this.

Hugh Masekela - Colonial Man & I Am Not Afraid

Hugh Masekela - Colonial Man (1976)
Hugh Masekela - I Am Not Afraid (1974)

rip from a friend, thanks utefan69

as per-

Two classic albums from south african bandleader/trumpeter Hugh Masekela, both from his 'funk' period in the early to mid seventies. 'I am not afraid' is great all around but is especially notable for being the first time he recorded 'Stimela,' a song he'd re-record at least a dozen times afterward. This is the shortest version I've been able to find, and one of the best. Some of his later live renditions of this one would push the twenty minute mark. Also notable on this lp is his interpretation of 'night in tunisia' and basically the entire second side. Probably my favorite album of his.

'Colonial Man' is a groovy anti-imperialist concept album released during the bicentennial year with some kickass cover art and some even better tunes. All of the songs on the lp- except for the Isley Brothers cover- deal with exploration or colonialism in one way or another, but the ideology never gets in the way of the groove. My favorite is probably 'whitch doctor,' which re-tells the story of Stanley's search for Livingstone over some spooky chants and slick guitar and horn arrangements.

you'll want to unrar these to individual folders

The Sandals - Endless Summer

The Sandals - Endless Summer (1966)

This one was a request from my new roommate, once he heard I had a setup to rip vinyl he pulled this out (with a few other lps) and asked me to hook him up. He'd never been able to find a copy on any other medium and a quick googling confirms this. Classic soundtrack to the classic surf movie.