portrait of this blog's author - by Stephen Blackman 2008

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

VOLUME II! | FBSVW Random Artists : The Dead Lovers Frye Days, Waco Brothers, Julie Rhodes

FBSVW - Random Artist Sampler #2

FBSVW - Random Artist Sampler #2
Soundboard Recordings @192
 
 Frye Days - SXSW artist-mixtape
Julie Rhodes - Bound-to-Meet-The Devil - B sides
The Dead Lovers - Supernormal-Superstar
Waco Brothers - Receiver-ep
 

The Dead Lovers - One More Time


Waco Brothers - Receiver | Audiotree Live


Julie Rhodes - Key Won’t Fit My Door (live)

Remembering Dr. John (November 20, 1941 – June 6, 2019)

 


Mac Rebennack was nearing 30 when he transformed himself into Dr John and released Gris Gris: he had already packed a lifetime’s worth of musical experience and incident into his 27 years. His father’s connections as a record store owner in New Orleans’ Third Ward enabled him to sneak into local recording sessions: by 13, he was a professional musician, playing organ in strip clubs in the Third Quarter and performing with Professor Longhair, a local pioneer whose blend of blues, boogie-woogie and Afro-Cuban rhythms, Rebennack would later claim, “put the funk into music”.
By 16, he was a session guitarist and occasional producer, working out of Cosimo Studios and playing in a succession of bands. He even had a local solo hit in 1959, a brooding Bo Diddley knock-off called Storm Warning, but Rebennack was also trouble: his career as a guitarist was ended when his finger was injured by a gunshot at a gig in Jackson in 1960; he became a heroin addict and dealer; he was involved in running a brothel. In 1963, he was sentenced to two years for drug offences, and on release shifted operations to Los Angeles, where a contingent of exiled New Orleans musicians – led by arranger Harold Battiste – were making headway as session players.
Rebennack became a member of the most revered Hollywood session group of all, the Wrecking Crew, playing with everyone from Sonny and Cher to Frank Zappa, but professed himself dissatisfied and homesick. Pining for New Orleans, he created the character of Dr John, loosely based on the legend of a 19th-century Senegalese freed slave turned New Orleans voodoo king, the music inspired by the disparate sounds Rebennack had heard at a spiritualist church in the Lower Ninth Ward. Here, he claimed, “Hindus and Buddhists, Jews, Christians, Masons, even voodoos” all worshipped together. He initially developed the idea for singer and actor Ronnie Barron, but when Barron balked, Rebennack took on the role, surrounding himself with fellow New Orleans expats and recording Gris Gris in late 1967.
Alexis Petridis / The Guardian

Don's Tunes reminds us . . . . . 




So whatcha gonna do if someone shoots you in the finger? Why drop the guitar and take up piano of course!
From the good doctor’s how to play boogie woogie video!

Dr John (Mac Rebennack ) - Swannee River Boogie

This one’s For Kostas! A Greek Indie Pop band from the 80s!




The Jaywalkers - (You Can’t Be) Happy all the Time (1987)

"Something completely new to me - wonderful C86 style Greek indie pop from the 80s - think Close Lobsters or June Brides, maybe.” Guess I’m Dumb

New to me too! 

Maybe we can be happy all the time! ? Its really warm in Greece and Kostas from Urbanaspirines is contemplating going down the beach! We should all join him!!!

THE LAST SACRIFICE - DANGEROUS MINDS | Review by Paul Gallagher

We haven’t featured anything from Dangerous Minds for white some time but today they have posted a doozie well worth a read the background real life story that inspired the Wicker Man film!
Read on and follow the links to Dangerous Minds to complete the story!


DANGEROUS MINDS



Scene: Lower Quinton in South Warwickshire, England. Population 493. A quiet village, settled in its ways, where everyone knows each other and strangers are not welcome—or so it seems.

On the morning of Saint Valentine’s Day 1945, Charles Walton a seventy-four-year-old farm laborer left his home at Lower Quinton to begin his day’s work. Walton was employed by Alfred Potter at Firs Farm. He was tasked with cutting down hedges at a field on the slope of Meon Hill. It was a cold morning. Mist slowly dispersed as the sun warmed the land. There had been a bad harvest in the previous year, it was hoped this summer would bring a better yield.

Potter later claimed he saw Walton working in his short sleeves at around lunchtime. He said Walton had an hour’s worth of hedge still to trim. He watched as Walton hacked away at the branches with his trouncing hook.

When Walton’s adopted niece Edith Walton returned from her work that night, she was surprised to find her uncle not yet home. Edith knew Walton did not like working late as he suffered from arthritis. She decided to go and look for her uncle. She enlisted the help of a neighbor, Harry Beasley, and the farmer Alfred Potter.

Climbing up Meon Hill, the three discovered Walton’s body. He had been brutally murdered. His trouncing hook was embedded in his neck. His blood soaked the ground. A pitchfork had been thrust through his head, puncturing eye and cheek. His trousers were undone. His shirt and jacket open. A large cross had been carved on his chest. It was later said natterjack toads were placed around his body. Walton’s death looked like a ritual sacrifice.

Charles Walton was a quiet man. He was feared by some and considered odd by others. It was said he could cast an evil eye which could blight crops and kill cattle. They said he could also talk to animals, tame wild dogs, and call birds from the sky into his hand. This led to the whispered accusation Walton was a witch.

Walton’s murder attracted the attention of the London press. The countryside was a remote, foreign land to those denizens of the city, who tended to view country folk as backward, filled with superstition, strange individuals who practiced pagan rituals and witchcraft.

The local constabulary were baffled by Walton’s murder. Scotland Yard was approached for assistance. On February 16th, Chief Inspector Robert Fabian, the Yard’s most successful detective, was dispatched to solve the crime.

Fabian decided to interview all of the inhabitants of Lower Quinton. However, he found the local residents taciturn and unwilling to cooperate with his investigation. He also discovered the only other murder to have previously taken place in the village had been in 1875 when a young woman Ann Tennant was similarly slaughtered with a pitchfork by a farm laborer James Heywood. Heywood claimed he had killed Tennant because she was a witch who had cast spells against him.

The ritualistic nature of Walton’s murder intrigued academic and Egyptolgist Margaret Murray. She traveled to the village to make her own inquiries. Murray was an expert on the occult and believed Walton’s death was a blood sacrifice carried out by a coven of witches.

Fabian believed he knew the perpetrator of Walton’s murder, but he had insufficient evidence to make an arrest. He returned to London. Walton’s murder remains unsolved to this day.

In 1970, Fabian wrote about Charles Walton’s murder in his memoir The Anatomy of Crime:

"I advise anybody who is tempted at any time to venture into Black Magic, witchcraft, Shamanism – call it what you will – to remember Charles Walton and to think of his death, which was clearly the ghastly climax of a pagan rite."

So begins Rupert Russell‘s excellent documentary film The Last Sacrifice, which examines the events surrounding Charles Walton’s death. The film explains how this bloody murder in 1945 unleashed a new genre called folk horror leading to a slate of films like Plague of the ZombiesThe Blood on Satan’s Claw, and most famously The Wicker Man.


By Paul Gallagher 

READ ON






HUGH MASEKELA - Still Grazing | Zero G Sound

Hugh Masekela - Still Grazing


Released to coincide with Hugh Masekela’s autobiography of the same name, "Still Grazing" picks up the Masekela story from Verve's summary of the best of the MGM albums, "The Lasting Impression of Ooga-Booga", and runs through the "Uni" and "Blue Thumb" material. The 1966 tracks are from "The
Emancipation of Hugh Masekela", where the trumpeter mixes his florid horn calls and vocals with variations of the boogaloo, township jive, soul-jazz, and in Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Felicidade," a slight pinch of bossa nova into a hip, brightly colored cuisine that no one else was attempting at the time. 

As in the MGM days, Masekela is obliged to cover the hit tunes of the day, although "Up, Up, and Away" has more life and jazz licks than those earlier attempts. 1968's "The Promise of a Future" was the real commercial breakthrough - thanks to the out-of-the-blue success of the cowbell-beating "Grazing in the Grass," which improbably rose to the number one slot on Top 40 radio in those enlightened times. That triumphant track would be Masekela's last trip to the Top 40, whereupon he promptly used the exposure to shine a harsh light on what was going on in his homeland ("Gold") and America in 1968 ("Mace and Grenades"). The CD then jumps to a percolating, Echoplexed "Languta" from a 1973 session in Lagos, Nigeria, before concluding with a withering account of the South African coal-mining trains ("Stimela"). 

The package is given extra credibility by the original producer of these tracks, Stewart Levine, who compiled the album and also wrote a fond set of reminiscences. Many of these premonitions of today's world music scene have been gone for decades, and it's good to have at least some of them back in circulation again.  

Tracklist:
  • 1 Child Of The Earth 4:42

    2 Ha Lese Le Di Khanna  6:45

    3 Felicidade 10:12

    4 Up, Up, And Away 5:32

    5 Bajabula Bonke (The Healing Song) 6:29

    6 Grazing In The Grass 2:37

    7 Gold 4:10

    8 Mace And Grenades 3:54

    9 Languta 4:49

    10 Been Such A Long Time 3:59

    11 Stimela (Coaltrain) 6:28




Why you think you have heard Hugh Masakela before . . . . . because you HAVE!
Don’t Go Lose It Baby!

And another from Guess I’m Dumb! | Erik Saint Laurent - Vendredi Mobsède 1967


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Erick Saint Laurent - Vendredi Mobsède (Friday on My Mind) (1967)

"A French version of the Easybeats’ Friday on My Mind? It works. And for me, my Thanksgiving break starts on Friday!


This is great fun! so I Guess I’m Dumb too! [oh you KNOW it! - ED oh DO shut up!]


Song of The Day | Sarah Jane - Listen People [Graham Gouldman] | Guess I’m Dumb

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Sarah Jane - Listen People (1966)

"Sarah Jane released just one single, this hushed, haunting baroque take on a song written by Graham Gouldman (10CC, and many hits of the 60s).” Guess I’m Dumb 

Everybody’s got to lose somebody sometime