Tuesday, March 30, 2004
glisten globally: Week Three
Today's music comes from "The Elder", saxophone colossus Manu Dibango.
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Funky, blazin', smooth and astonishing. Manu's seventy these days, but don't let that fool you.
Purchase "Wakafrica" from Amazon
This is a perennial bargain bin haunter and I'll be damned if I know why. A great album of duets with Keita, Ladysmith, King Sunny Ade (who's a helluva live performer, let me tell ya), Youssou N'Dour, Peter Gabriel, and Sinead O'Connor. If you see it for a song, go get it.
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Manu's Bio
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Salif Keita Bio
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This has had the hell sampled out of it. I wouldn't even include it here, but would you believe it's difficult to find this classic version? The "best of" CD has a somewhat less smoky and heavier produced version.
Top Twenty Singles material, f'rshure.
Purchase "Soul Makossa" the album (unfortunately at import prices) from Amazon or you could find the watered down version on "The Very Best of Manu Dibango: Afrosouljazz" which is STILL worth it, if only for "Abele Dance".
Damn, that's hot.
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The story of "Soul Makossa", along with Manu's court time with MJ.
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"Soul Makossa": Thirty(One) Years Ago
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All this and he raps! Sounds a bit like KRS-1, methinks.
A tetch overdone for my taste, but pretty dirrrty all the same.
Purchase "Polysonik" from Amazon
Don't know much about this one.
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The official (and flashed out) site
Pretty, but can you find a way in? I can't.
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Manu's AMP profile
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Great dancehall jazz.
The moan he lets out at 1:43 cracks me up.
Purchase "Africadelic: The Best of Manu Dibango" (again, import prices) from Amazon
Probably the superior of the two best of's. But no "Abele"? Wha'?
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A selected discography
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A modest French Manu fansite
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clicky
Yet MORE Musicblog Revolutionaries:
FakeID has a whole buncha remixes and original tracks and a funky robot.
What more do you want?
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Sniff around NintendoExtreme until you get to the Music page and you'll find a slew of great game soundtracks for yer perusal.
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My god, there's DOZENS of Spinal Tap clips and tracks on this site.
Who NEEDS this stuff?
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Broadcasts from Planet Blarg LOOKS great, but for some reason I can't download the tracks. Is it just me or is this something to do with livejournal?
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The Box.
Oh my. Yes, please.
Hip hop heads rejoice.
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"Why pay for shitty quality live bootleg recordings when you can download them for free !!" Hard to argue with that logic, especially when Bootleg offers such a comprehensive index of concert sets. Sniff about; there's plenty that leads to cold dinner but there's a number of hot live links.
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Elliot Smith and Jawbox at Unfinished. Plenty of interesting 'ritin, too.
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Dinbot's (abandoned looking) site has got a buncha, er, offbeat mashups.
The 50cent/Devo "Whipsta" alone is worth the price of admission.
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spiffy
Mo' Dap, mo' dap, mo' dap from:
Corante, bringin' ya tech news you can use; Incoming Signals (soon to be sidebarred) and growabrain who both bring rough and ready and wondrous clicky f'allyall'sasses; The Red Toque, offering some nice abstract photography (I particularly like this Mondrian style window); somedisco, who also pointed me to the worst album review ever ("The neuroses, the psychoses, the self-harrowing, the black holes for eyes, the endless tiredness, the Hadean promenades, the unashamed puncturing of one’s darkest innards, the perverted abreaction it looses are, themselves, courteous dignities and gracile arts that can be neither imitated nor cloned."); strangefruit; Planing Lakes; Perspective and Jezblog.
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I haven't had time to comment on the March 23rd entry from Popshots until now and on rereading it I have to say I don't really HAVE much of a response. I _kinda_ agree that you might be "funk faking" by posting music without commentary or explanation; I still think that there are ways to make that sort of posting work. Oh, Manchester does a very good job of that by making the music a quite literal soundtrack to the blogging. That seems a reasonable way to "comment", eh?
David sez: "If there is a MUSICBLOG REVOLUTION going on - one that I want to participate in, anyway - it'd be one involving less data-drive malfeasance and more 'seductive writing'," which I clearly agree with and I think is rather nicely put.
The argument against the devil of overaccessibility is one that I think about every day, but my current perspective is that blaming the technology for your lack of self-control (while I _have_ subscribed to this idea) is more than a little disingenuous. Sign o' the times, ya know? You're as hip as you wanna be.
The upshot of Popshot's entry is that he's outta the music sharing genepool. Fair enough, but it's got me to thinking about who SHOULD be in the pool?
Over the next few posts, I'm gonna try to start giving a quickie "My POV" FAQ of Musicbloggin': the essentials of starting a page, who should REALLY consider getting online, how best to maintain your music and how to cultivate an audience.
I'm hardly the guy to do this but I never let that stop me before.
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On a different note, I try to NEVER gush over people linking to me, but I REALLY dig Peabs shit a lot and it was gratifying to find some traffic dribbling in from over there.
Those of you with dangerous senses of humah and a healthy taste for hoisting the celeb petard are hereby ordered to go explore Peabsville. Brother is the new hotness, the old hotness and a side of assgravy.
Schmobvs.
