Caribbeana Esoterica #3: Fungi

It's great that we're searching for life on other planets, but there's so many places right here on planet Earth that we know nothing about. Ever heard of fungi music?

Named after a native dish, not fungus, this British Virgin Island style (pronounced "FOON-jee") is somewhat of a throwback to classic '50s style calypso - it's got more of a laid-back feel, with more emphasis on lyrical cleverness and storytelling. It's performed on banjos and ukulele, with low-key percussion (e.g. triangle, bongos, calabash or squash) adding toe-tapping African dance rhythms. Today's two albums show two different approaches to fungi.

Elmore Stoutt's album features some spoken-word introductions giving you the historical/cultural context behind the folks songs (he is an educator, after all, with a school named after him). But amidst all the funny, sunny fun there's a odd song that seems to suggest that Princess Di was murdered. Huh? An amusingly risque song about Bill Clinton, however, restores the topical subjects to a more down-to-earth level.
If Stoutt seems like grandpa casually spinning tales, The Lashing Dogs sound like his younger rowdy grandkids. Tho still playing trad fungi - no electronics, no rapping - the furiously-strummed banjo and vigorous percussion (rock that triangle!) boost up the energy level. Oddities still pop in tho, like "Only The Gotter," a cranky political tirade with such poor rhymes that it almost sounds like a song-poem, and "Where The Men Dem Gone," which questions modern males' masculinity, even claiming that this situation has led to St. Thomas Island's dramatic increase in lesbianism! Otherwise, it's all rum-drenched groovers designed to "nice up de party." "No Excuse" is a particular favorite - apart from the irresistible music, we get a lesson on the B.V.I. legal system. "Ignorance is no excuse for de law!"
Elmore Stoutt - The Fungi Master "Welcome To The B.V.I."
The Lashing Dogs "What A Difference"

Strange Interlude

By request, here's a re-up of a 1961 album recorded by Lew Davies & his Orchestra for Enoch Light's Command Records label called "Strange Interlude." Unlike your usual Command stereophonic hi-fi upbeat gimmickry, this one's low-key, creepy.  Songs like "The Witching Hour," "Old Devil Moon" and "In A Mist" live up to the odd mood suggested by their titles. Unusual instruments like the theremin, Ondioline (an early electronic keyboard) and hammered dulcimers were featured. After finding it in the dollar bin of a used record store, I played the heck out of it. I had never heard an album quite like it before.

Lew Davies & his Orchestra "Strange Interlude"

Side 1
Riders in the Sky
Strange Interlude
In a Mist
Gone with the Wind  
Wild Goose
Intermezzo
Side 2
Old Devil Moon  
Ebb Tide
The Riddle Song
The Witching Hour
Laura
Spellbound

The Hathaway Family Plot

Toy instruments, theremins, vuvuzelas, mandolins, kitchen utensils, instruments I never heard of (Otamatones? Psalteries?) join keyboards and percussion to create a fantastic home-brew internet giveaway that is finally out today - today! - courtesy of WMRecordings.

I received an advance copy of this album by Buffalo, New York's The Hathaway Family Plot a month or so ago and have been steadily diggin' it ever since. Every track is a new adventure: the Residential guitars of the opener back a distraught, distorted vocal, the suitably noisy "Noise Complaint" followed by lovely vibraphone lounge, Fripp-esque guitar drones, vocals that sound like The Chipmunks being put thru a meat grinder, R2D2-ish electronics, and general assorted buzzes, whistles, and throbbing drums. The song "Home" is a moving, evocative electronic meditation. The last track is the only non-original, a Sparklehorse cover featuring a forlorn toy piano plunking away at lost childhood memories.

There's a welcome righteous fury at the bill of goods we've been sold that fuels The Hathaway Family Plot, a bitter cynicism at the idea that we are what we buy. There are no "financial crises." There are a handful of people who have set plans in motion to make themselves very, very rich. And they have succeeded. So what if thousands lose their homes and their retirement in the process? Collateral damage. Can't be helped, sorry. Before the recent "housing crisis," there was Enron, junk-bonds, etc., etc. And nothing will change because, as we all know, regulation is socialism. And that leads to eating children in Satanic sacrifices. So shop 'til you drop!

The Hathaway Family Plot "Debt"

Also available courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

Caribbeana Esoterica #2: Junkanoo & Goombay

Continuing our trip around the Caribbean to the other islands (that is, not Jamaica, Cuba, or Trinidad) we sail to The Bahamas. Now I thought that this series would be a way to bring some sunshine to the depths of winter, but actually, our first album today, "Carnival in Paradise" from 1962, begins with "Chippy's Junkanoo Street Carnival," a spellbindingly dark, heavily-echoed track that's all weird noises and panning drums, creating an evil voodoo atmosphere. Pure junkanoo music, like a 1964 Nonesuch album I have called "Junkanoo Drums," is as African as Caribbean music gets, favoring just percussion and singing, with few other instruments. It's the usual party-time calypso-ish stuff, nothing as psychedelic as this track. And yet, it's supposedly a Christmas song!

Didn't think anything could top it, 'til an absolutely deranged woman started singing, and I realized that the second song was almost as mental as the first. Along the way we get some goombay music (more on that later), steel drums, straight-ahead Trinidad-style calypsos, and a tiki bar-ready version of that exotica standard "Yellow Bird." Some familiar songs like "Shame and Scandal" sound fresh here in their new goombay setting. An excellent collection,and one that really sounds like that album cover.
"Carnival in Paradise"

1. Chippy's Junkanoo Champions "Chippy's Junkanoo Street Carnival"
2. The Eloise Trio "Come To The Caribbean"
3. Richie Delamore "Goombay"
4. Lord Cody & Kasavubu "Gin And Coconut Water"
5. Richie Delamore "The Limbo" [killer version of a song also recorded as "Limbo Like Me"]
6. Lionel Latmore "Shame & Scandal"
7. Little Sparrow "The Garrett Bounce"
8. Lionel Latmore "Wings Of A Dove"
9. Ray Shurland "Yellow Bird"
10. Tony Alleyne & The Big Bamboo Orchestra "Junkanoo In Nassau"
11. Ray Shurland "Bahama Lullaby"
George Symonette plays a more typical brand of goombay, the name of both a style native to the Bahamas and the drum used to create it, a big booming thing held between one's legs while seated. Symonette was a popular band leader in the hotels of Nassau, so he had to play some hits - famous Jamaican/Trinidadian calypsos like "Brown Skin Gal" are included on this 1956 album, but there's plenty of local color, too - one track on this album, "Peanuts Plays The Drum," is a fiery demonstration of pure goombay drumming.

George Symonette "Goombay Rhythms"

1. Hold Him Joe
2. Gin and Cocoanut Water
3. The Crow
4. Push Push
5. Peanuts Plays The Drum
6. Doctor
7. Freckles
8. Brown Skin Girl
9. Come Here Liza
10. Wanna Do Nothing All Day
11. Fishing
12. Can't Get No Sweetness Out Of Me

I noticed that my copy of this record is more worn on side two. Side one's plenty fun, what with Symonette's crow impressions and whatnot, but there's some double-entendre tunes on side two that must have been pretty saucy stuff for the '50s. And I'm guessing that's why side two got so much more play. Shame and scandal, indeed.

THIS GUY'S A REAL CUT-UP

I Cut People, the diabolical sound-smashers we first reviewed last year, have a NEW! FREE! download album constructed entirely out of Hollywood movie audio. In true film industry fashion, it's a sequel - last year's "The Inside Story" was a similar attack on Tinseltown, but, unlike most sequels, this one's a little better. It's more funny. Highlights include the title track's Mel Gibson-gone-insane collage, and "Be My Wingman" pulling all your favorite stars out of the closet. Trenchant commentary + laffs = my fave I Cut People release yet.

I Cut People "This Is Hollywood"

Vocal critics of the sound collage aesthetic like Steve Albini and Henry Rollins decry the artist's lack of traditional musical methods ("It's not real music!"). But they're missing a crucial point: the media has usually been a one-way avenue - they produce, we consume. This type of sound-collage (200 films were used, in this case) reverses that, chewing up and spitting all the endless hype back out. It's democracy in action, blowing past the gatekeepers, letting anyone with sound editing software in on the information highway. And besides, recycling all that media waste often results in something far more entertaining and profound than the original sources.

Caribbeana Esoterica #1: Spouge

Ahoy, maniacs, and welcome to a new year...of blogging! Which will began the same way last year's ended: with Caribbean music. Even here in L.A. we're suffering from a bad case of weather. Who needs weather, eh? Weather sucks. But this series of posts that we're embarking on today is the feel-good, sunny, party antidote.

Ska? Pshaw! Calypso? Salsa? That stuff's for amateurs. We'll be cruising far beyond Jamaica, Trinidad and Cuba to explore such other exciting rhythms as goombay, punta, boom and chime, and fungi music, among others. No, I'm not making this stuff up. Listening to this awesomely life-affirming music makes me wonder why it's all so unknown. There's a million reggae shows out there - why is the music of other islands ignored? It takes a blog like this one dedicated to the hopelessly obscure to cover 'em.

The all too short-lived spouge music of Barbados is a great example of how to put a unique spin on Afro-Carib rhythms. Listening to this all-killer-no-filler 1973 album makes me realize how cliched and predictable ska and calypso can be, much as I like those styles. The Sam and Dave-like powerful/sweet soul vocal harmonies of The Draytons Two, the intense energy and drive of The Lunar 7 Orchestra (what a great name), the cowbell-driven ka-THUMP-ah, ka-THUMP-ah rhythm, all add up to a ka-ray-zee Caribbean classic.

Aaah, the smell of Raw Spouge

A1		Drink Milk
A2		Tighten Up
A3		Row Boat
A4		Six & Seven Books Of Moses (covering Toots & The Maytalls)
A5		Soul & Inspiration (a Righteous Brothers cover)
B1		Hush Baby
B2		Can't Keep A Good Man Down
B3		I Don't Want To Have To Wait
B4		Too Late
B5		Spouge All The Way

I have another collection of Draytons Two odds-and-ends that I'll be putting up in the near future. So who were these geniuses? No idea. Anyone planning on taking a trip to Barbados, feel free to do some research, won't ya?

A CALYPSO CHRISTMAS IS LIKE SO

Ah, durn, Christmas really got away from me this year. For one thing, Captain Beefheart's death threw me for a loop. I could spend a LOT of time talking about his genius, I could break his albums down one by one, etc., but I don't have to, do I? His legacy has been pretty well examined. Because, believe me, I could yammer on like an Asperger's kid talking about "Star Wars." It would have to wait until the new year, in any case.

And so I have lots of sick, outsider, novelty and whatnot Christmas records sitting by my turntable unrecorded. Wait 'til next year. At least Our Man In Salt Lake, windbag, came thru with:

Esso Trinidad Steelband "Calypso Christmas"

It ranges from mellow tracks for an irie Christmas, to absolutely pulverizing, loud, clangorous rockers. All instrumental, all percussion played on re-purposed oil drums (now this is real metal music, har har!) And with that, I'll see y'all next year after the holiday. The dust blows forward and the dust blows back...

1. SILVER BELLS
2. WINTER WONDERLAND 3. JOY TO THE WORLD
4. COME ALL YE FAITHFUL
5. GLORIA IN EXCELSIS (Angels We Have Heard On High)
6. O HOLY NIGHT 7. MARY'S BOY CHILD
8. HARK! THE HERALD ANGELS SING
9. CHRISTIANS AWAKE

Thanks again, windy!