Members Weekly Music Recommendations-Dec. 3

[thebes]

December, bitter cold acomin, time to let thehair grow a little tonger to protect those frosted earslobes. Speaking of which let's travel back to the end of the big hair days, 1979 to be exact when the Funk movement was nearing the end of it's glory days.

Bootsey's Rubber Band, "This Boot is Made For Fonk'N", pfunk, lp.

One of the offshoots of the Geroge Clinton, P-funk team, Bootsy and his gand relesed about four albums. A mixture of R&B, disco and that special funk flavor, the boys are in typically spaceship earth rare form on this one. Produced by Star-Mon and Dr. Funkenstein recording values are only so-so but that funk spirit lives on. Also comes with it's own 8 page comic coloring book and several songs were written by G. Clinton himself. Give it a whirl. It'll put some groove back into your step.

So what do you have to share this week?

[germerikan]

My tip this week

Sunrise Avenue - On the way to wonderland

4 guys playing straight forward rock from Finland (Talk about cold). Good music, good lyrics and the singers voice while not "pure" is very interesting and easy to listen to. Forever yours and Fariytale gone bad are the 2 most known songs (here in germany) but the rest of the album is also good.

Ran

[oldbuckster]

Well, I guess I've stalled long enough, time to ramble a few words about disc 1 of Clapton's Guitar Fest., so I guess I'll get this out of the way...

Clapton's Guitar festival 2007 ......... Disc 1 .................... DVD ........

I have been all pumped-up about disc two, and it's time to watch disc 1 a couple of times. Well, it starts of pretty good, Sonny Landreth is pretty good, worth a watch, then EC does a song with him, then comes John McLaughin, I have never liked John, probably, never will, there is just something about his playing I just don't like, but he is good, and he has an awesome band, then out comes Doyle Bramhall II for a couple of songs, he is also very good, and a gifted guitarist, then in my opinion, the fun begins, Susan Tedeschi with her husbands band, the Derek Trucks Band, Susan good as she always is, a regional hit around here, her talent is no secret in the North Country. Then she stays on stage with Derek's band and the rip apart "Anyday", what an awesome performance of that song, wow, I'm standing for that one, DAM, what a good band Derek has assembled, hard act to follow, but Robert Randolph pulled it off, then out comes Mr. Smooth himself, Robert Cray. This guy is just as smooth as silk, he can run the neck of his fender like no other, what a player, and that honey-smooth voice of his, he was born to sing the Blues. The Cray Band backs up Jimmie Vaughan, Hubert Sumlin, B.B. King for a set of songs. Then the country boys sneak in, just let me throw this out there, I DONOT LIKE Vince Gill, but that ol' Boy is one talented guy. He never fails to shock me, he can play, and he can sing, he does it all, always does great songs at these type of events, then out comes Albert Lee, that lad is quick, then every body's favorite, Sherly Crow, and ending the show this night , Mr. Willie Nelson ..............

I thought this to be a good disc also, little here I didn't like ........ Derek Trucks Band, great job, have to reconsider my original thoughts on the lad. He should bring his wife into the band, that would be a killer group .............. I am very happy with the purchase of this set, it was worth the wait ....... The Festival really is about the Guitar, and the way people play it .................... Hat's Off to Johnny Winter ...... Hard to Believe he's still with us ....... The man has alot of medical issues ..............

[callmeishmael]

It is difficult to say which disc I like best. Both have some excellent songs which make the expense worthwhile. I was very pleased with the Derek Trucks Band. It was espically fun to see Derek come alive with emotion when playing with Johnny Winter. He was obviously a Winter fan, as am I. I don't know what other issues Johnny has, but last time I saw him, he had to have a guy on each arm lead him to a chair to play. I thought "well he's blown it". I found out later he had just had hip replacement surgery. On the disc, his walk offstage brought another cheer from the audience. It was fun to watch. I liked the B.B. cut, even though he forgot where he was in the song. He was cookin'. Just don't tell your wife "as long as I'm paying the bills, I'm paying the cost to be the boss", unless she knows you were just singing a song!

I like Crossroads 2004 better, but there are killer performances on the 2007 discs.

Long live The Illustrated Man.

[Steve_L]

Lee Morgan's Sidewinder

Classic, accessible, pure, simple, brilliant, spiritual jazz. A must for any serious jazz collection and a great early addition for the new jazz collector.

[seti]

Shapeshifter sent me some Lee Morgan CDs a while back. Good stuff.

I am still jamming on lots old ethiopean jazz. One of my favorite collections is the Ethiopiques. Lots of samples to listen to here http://www.emusic.com/lists/showlist.html?lid=200884

The aim of the Ethiopiques series, directed by Françis Falceto, is to
highlight two missknown periods of the Ethiopian modern music. The
story is starting by a love affair betwen this man and the music of
Amha records, the main private label of Ethiopia in the 60's. This
label and this treasures had been dislocated by the DERG dictatorial
government. Since 1991 and its fall, the ethiopian music rebirth.



The main body of Ethiopian records was produced in less than one
decade: All in all, just under 500 45s and around 30 Lp albums. Ahma
Eshèté, creator of the Amha Records label , was the driving force
behind this brief creative burst and one of the main founders of
movement which swept the Ethiopian scene during the end of the rule of
the Emperor Haile Sellassie. In six years (1969-1975), Ahma issued 103
two tittle 45s and a dozen Lps, mostly containing pieces previously
released as singles: in all, around 250 titles. Records had of course
been distribued in Ethiopia before this period. The first going all the
way back to 1908, were recorded on the initiative of Italian occupation
(1935-1941), 248 songs were recorded on the initiative of Italian
researchers and Saleh Ahmed Kékiya, a weathly Erritrean merchant living
in in Addis Ababa. A few years after the liberation , an imperial
decree (30 july 1948) granted a monopoly aver the production and
records to Agher Feqer Mahber, literraly, "The love of Country
association" which was in fact the first Ethiopian National Theatre.
Hence 78-rpm records celebrated Haile Sellasie's 1955 jubilee, followed
by a few 45s in the mid 1960's. Until then, all these recordings were
dedicated exclusively to traditionnal music.

Modern Ethiopian music, however had been emerging since the Liberation,
even though all cultural activities tok place under government control.
Espacially music, which had no other outlet than the bands of the
imperial Body Guard, the Army, the Police, the Municipality or the
Haile Sellassie I Theatre. Alongside these institutions' brass bands
and other military music groups, jazz and light music ensembles began
to spring up , led by foreign instructors like Austrian Franz
Zelwecker and most notably Nersès Nalbandian, an Armenian living in
Ethiopia since the 1930's, who became a key figure in modern Ethiopian
music.

As in the rest of the world, for Ethiopia the sixties were the years of
ultimate postwar modernity. They began in violence with the failled
"coup d'état"of december 1960. The imperial body guard, as weel as many
of the musicians who made up its band were heavily imlplicated. After
this warning shot had been sounded, the ageing monarch compromised,
displaying an increasingly progressive approach. Capital and only
metropolis of a very centralised empire , soon to become the
internationnal showcase of non-alignment and of African unity, Addis
Ababa distilled the very essence of modernist audacity. Music and its
enjoyment were part and parcel of the spirit . Armenian merchant Garbis
Haygazian had begun to import one of the emblems of modernity , the
reel-to-reel tape recorder . He also struck upon the idea of recording
the foremost official band s and their star vocalists and selling the
tape. At first a very private affair involving only the high nobility
and Ethiopians of considerable wealth, these makeshift juke boxes soon
spread to the burgeonings bars and cabarets which drew members of all
social classes. As everywhere, a flourishing nightlife marked this
period of intense emancipation. Numerousous hotels and nightclubs
opened, showcasing their own bands, initially recruited from the
official ensembles-landing many musicians in hot water-and went on to
found the first independant bands, the logical result of so much
rampant liberalisation . For once in tune with the world, Swinging
Addis sported the daring uniform of the period: wide leg or bell-vottom
trousers, skinny ties, afro or beehive hairdos, miniskirts and even the
pill. It was in this heady, end of empire context that Amha Eshèté,
amodern and enterprising young man (he was 24 years old in 1969), very
logically decided to start his own record company. And in so doing to
defy the 1948 imperial edict.



Despite contentions by Captain Atfanu Mèkonnen, administrators of both
the Haile Sellassie I Theater and Agher Feqer Mahber, of absolute
control over all Ethiopian recording output and even importation of
foreign records, this extravangly absurd and anachronic measure could
not go on. Thoughout the year 1970, the national press reported the
controversies and unrest sown in Ethiopian society by the younger
generation. The emperor, who had the last word on everything, probably
assessed the seriousness of the conflict ande decided to let those
determined youths have their way. All this healthy turmoil was brutally
extinguished in 1974 by the fall of the Emperor and the arrival of a
particularly brutal military junta. The golden era's days were
numbered, and the country would soon wake up to a new regime of
repression. Curfews put an end to any nightlife. No one could could
have imagined that this would go on uninterrupted for 18 long years
until the fall of the dictatorship. Like every sector of social life,
Ethiopian music music was almost totally extinguished. Record
production plummeted disppearing completely in 1978.



As in many domains, the fall of the dictatoship "The Derg" in may 1991
sounded the call for a great renewal in Ethiopian music . After 18
years of unremitting glaciation, the curfew was asbolished in 1992.
Once again Ethiopians could take back the night, nerve centre of
musical life. And they didn't do things half way. The situation
reversed immediately during the first heady month after the Derg's
fall. Addis Ababa in particular, was seized with entrepreneurial
hysteria. The music merchant werre no exception. A multitude of
restaurants, nightclubs and hotel opened, all imitating western style
fun to attract rich Ethiopians and westerners . But the most
interisting phenomenon for fans of Ethiopian music remains the
incredible flowering of azmaribéts. They sprang up by the dozens
(hundreds??) thoughout the capital, but centred in two areas of
prelidections: Kazentchis and Yohannès Sefer (also called Datsun sefer
because local bars owner were the first to swan about in japonese
cars). Simple bars or converted villa dinning rooms, dingy closets at
the back of a courtyard or down a back alley , all you nedded was 40 to
250 square feet) a few stools, a counter with wisky and beer, and one
two six or seven musicians who took turns playing in and there you had
it.

Originally wandering minstrels , sharp tongued peddlers who roamed the
old Abyssinian countysyde, many azmaris more or less settled down after
founding of Addis Ababa just over a century ago. As weel informed as
the next guy, the cleverest of them quickly understood that they should
set up their own businesses and take a cut on the drinks, instead of
getting by on tips earned singing their way from one bar and tedjbét
(taverns serving tedj the local meal) to another. One can even wonder
whether the oxymoron azmaribeh literrally "house of an azmari" self
contradictory since the azmari is fundamentally itinerant-took root
during this recent period, with the growing number of cabarets.

[thebes]

I really like the Ethiopian jazz Seti was kind enough to send me. Haven't forgotten you Seti. I'll have a review once I work all the way through the various cd's. Also picked up over 300 lps at the same time so my listening habits have been a bit conflicted lately.

[seti]

I really like the Ethiopian jazz Seti was kind enough to send me. Haven't forgotten you Seti. I'll have a review once I work all the way through the various cd's. Also picked up over 300 lps at the same time so my listening habits have been a bit conflicted lately.

Cool. Eeek review I'm scared That Ethiopiques is vol4 of a 20 volume set. If there was a box set I'd buy it. That package was an earfull/brainfull I sent so take your time. Some of it is good frame of reference music even if you don't like it you have something to compare. Nothing better than too much new music to check out.