Truth crushed to earth will rise again

And because Comb & Razor is the truth (and I mean the whole and the nothing-but): STILL WE RISE!

Okay, I'm getting some Maya Angelou in my William Cullen Bryant, but I'm pretty sure you all get the gist of it: We're back!

Why did we go away in the first place, though? Man... I can't even give you a straight answer. Life catches up with you sometimes. As you all know, I had just returned from an extended sojourn in Nigeria and there were a lot of odds and ends in my personal life that had to be attended to. Also, a few experiences I had in Nigeria made me feel ambivalent about continuing to do this.

(For example, if you look through the archives here, you might notice all posts on a certain Mr. William Onyeabor have been crossed out. There is a reason for that. I won't get into details right now but let's just say that that man damn near killed my spirit.)

Actually, you might have noticed that pretty much ALL the old links on this blog are now dead. That's a bummer, I know... I had some trouble renewing my hosting subscription while I was away so my service was interrupted, pulling the plug on all the links. That was a big part of why I stepped away, really... The idea of renewing all the links was just overwhelming and I contemplated just starting the blog from scratch somewhere else.

But hey... this page is home. This is where we've had so many good times, and I'm not going to be chased out of here that easily! So pardon the dust while I try to get things back to shape around here... You might have to bear with some Divshare links for a while (if they stop suspending my account, that is!).

Of course, another reason for the long hiatus is that I've just been busy. Among other things, my time has been taken up by my decision to throw my hat into the record industry. (Which I am sure we will all agree was a very wise move to make now in the second decade of the twenty-first century, as the imminent death of the industry is forecast on a daily basis. I'm having fun, though!) So although I am sure most of you are already aware of it, allow me formally debut my fine record label, COMB & RAZOR SOUND.

I'm quite aware that fewer and fewer people these days buy records or CD or any other kind of physical media, but the goal of Comb & Razor Sound is to create packages that hopefully you will feel are worthy of your hard-earned pfennig. I'm talking about dope music, packaged with loads of information and photos and other stuff related to the world that produced the music you're listening to. I'm talking about stuff you can put on your shelf or display on your coffee table so you can look all cultured in front of your friends.

We already did a vinyl-only "pre-release" of sorts on the first compilation but it comes out officially on... *looks at calendar* Wait a minute... It comes out on May 17th. That's today, isn't it? How serendipitous is that?

You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to make a separate post about that in a little bit...

In the meantime, enjoy this video I uploaded like six months ago and planned to post before everything went pear-shaped:

Check it, I'm blowing up on Facebook.

I'm a private person, so I have no interest in throwing wide the gates on my personal life, supplying the world with that much-needed minute-to-minute update on my mood and ephemeral thoughts or announcing the details of my lunch. As such, while I've been an early adopter of pretty much all the social networking sites as they've come out, I've generally had little use for them beyond keeping in touch with (while still maintaining a respectable distance from) a few high school friends and Internet acquaintances and occasionally trading a few yucks while watching award shows or some other trivial mess on TV.

I never understood the speculation that these sites would eventually become the future of all communication, eventually supplanting email, newspapers, magazines, blogs and even the more intelligent message boards; in fact, I actively resented such an idea. I still smh at the thought that something like a well-articulated, multi-dimensional album review could so easily become superfluous and obsolete amidst a torrent of hastily-ejaculated, 150-character blurbs.

(Wait... Did I just type "smh"?)

But on the real... I'm starting to get the appeal. Through a somewhat serendipitous series of events, my Facebook page has over the past few days become a rather exciting hotbed of activity. Short version: I posted a few vintage Nigerian music photos as a lark, but the comments section on them soon went completely mad with all sorts of people posting memories and stories and with several veteran musicians like Tee Mac (AfroCollection, Tee Mac Connection), Jerri Jheto (The Mebusas, Ozziddi), Micro Mike (The Sunflowers and "The Black Mirrors"), Soga Benson and Skidd Ikemefuna (Grotto), Gboyega Adelaja and others chiming in to share interesting tales from their careers and commune with peers they've not spoken to in aeons.

It's been a lot of fun and I have to admit that I'm almost tempted to give up on this blog and shift operations to Facebook fulltime (I said "almost")! The only problem is that tending to the increased traffic on my Facebook account--processing an endless stream of new friend requests, moderating comments, replying to inquiries, tagging photos--has become pretty much a 24-hour job... At first I tried to herd it towards my Comb & Razor Sound group page but I found that it took away some of the interactivity as Facebook (ridiculously) does not notify group members--or even the group admin--when content on group pages is updated.

So I'd say just go to my (fairly impersonal) "personal" page and check out the "Random" album in the Photos tab, as well as the Videos tab where I have been posting some content as well. Also, scan the past few days' entries on the Wall as there have been some interesting discussions there, too. While I have tagged this post "shameless self-promotion," it's really not about that at all... I'm not trying to become a Facebook star or anything; I just feel there's been some pretty cool interaction going on there and I suspect some of you might want to join in.

If I'm right in thinking this, then go to Comb Razor on Facebook.



ps. I *might* soon be migrating this blog to Wordpress, so prepare to change your bookmarks, okay?

C&R on PRI

Some of y'all might know that I wrote the liner notes for Soundway Records' The World Ends: Afro Rock and Psychedelia in 1970s Nigeria. For that reason, Public Radio International's Global Hit program thought I might be a good person to chat with a little about the cultural context that informed the music.

Listen HERE.

Another Harry Mosco video

Still mega-busy, fam... Transmission will re-commence soon.

In the meantime, check out this vid and enjoy the light-skinned gal's consistent overacting/dancing.

A couple of 1980s videos for the weekend

I've been slacking on the blog lately partly because I've been busy working on Now Again Records' upcoming Nigerian fuzz funk compilation and partly because I've been having trouble with my FTP since I've been back. The latter is also the reason my sparse updates have relied upon YouTube links, and I hope to resolve the issue soon and start getting some mp3s back up here. In the meantime, though, here are some more videos.

While the blog was on hiatus during my sojourn in Nigeria, I received a number of emails from a particularly insistent reader who wanted to me post the music videos of the 1980s kiddie-pop star, Yvonne Maha. Now as I've mentioned a few times in the past, it is nigh impossible to find pre-1990 music videos in Nigeria because at most television stations, if the humongous U-matic and Quad tapes on which they were stored that were not dubbed over with new content, they were thrown out wholesale to make room for new hardware. So I made no promises to find these videos, but I pledged to do my best.

As it turns out, the best I could do was to unearth this clip of Yvonne Maha appearing on The Bala Miller Show in 1983. I'd like to think that this also will at least partially please my girl Kelechi who requested some Bala Miller. (Don't worry, Kay; I'll be putting up some more Miller stuff a little later.)



Also, here is a 1981 promo (that's what we called music videos way back in the day) for Harry "Mr. Funkees" Mosco's Sugar Cane Baby, during his London period. The color's a bit messed up but that's because whoever digitized it didn't adjust the hue. It's still fun to watch, especially for its evocation of that innocent era when the music video was such a new invention and most performers had no inkling of how to comport their bodies or their faces in them. I mean, look at Harry's awkward shuffling, the band's hammy pretend-playing and the unabashed scenery chewing by the light-skinneded singer gal! I swear, she did that in all the videos Harry shot for this album (I remember there being three or four of them), even the ballad!

One Pound No Balance

It appears a lot of people enjoyed the clip from "The Stephen Osita Osadebe Show" I posted last week and want to see more.*

So here's some more.



I'm still posting these short clips on YouTube just for the sake of continuity (plus, somewhere deep down inside I probably want to be a YouTube star) but I'll soon start putting up longer versions on Dailymotion.

*What I found interesting though is that the clip of the much more obscure Golden Sounds I uploaded to YouTube on the same day has received well over two times the number of views of the Osadebe video--thanks probably to the World Cup-fueled renewed interest in "Zangalewa"/"Waka Waka." I really hope the Golden Sounds can harness this attention into a strong comeback!

Africa's true anthem?

I realize that it's been out for a while now but I heard Shakira's World Cup song "Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)" for the first time just the other day when she performed it at the kick-off concert.



While I usually like Shakira, I found this song to be pretty bland. But then again, that's probably exactly what you want from a would-be international anthem of this sort: enough of a catchy melody to stick in the world's collective memory but ultimately featureless enough that people of all nationalities, colors and creeds can project themselves into it.

What I found interesting about it was that the catchy part was an adaptation of a makossa song I remembered well from my youth: "Zangalewa," by the perennial Cameroonian national band, The Golden Sounds:



(The part Shakira bites occurs at 7:33, by the way)

I really didn't know anything about The Golden Sounds when the song was first released in 1986--I'm not sure I even realized they were Cameroonian at the time. (What I really remember is the video activating my long-running interest in the history of minstrel-style comedy in Africa.) I didn't understand the Fang lyrics, so I had no idea they were singing about rowdy army recruits in colonial-era Cameroons and I don't think most Nigerian kids did either as they sang that zamina mina refrain as a stepping cadence during school march-past exhibitions and sporting events.

We definitely didn't know the extent to which the song had become a sensation all across the continent and even beyond, as it quickly became something of a standard on the champeta circuit and other African music-influenced scenes in Shakira's native Colombia. In 1988, it became a merengue hit when the all-female Las Chicas del Can from the Dominican Republic revamped it as "El Negro No Puede":



Las Chicas' "El Negro No Puede" seems to have directly inspired 1989's "El Negro No Puede (Waka Waka)" by the Dutch-Surinamese group Trafassi



and then you have the version by Dutch-Surinamese Beatmachine (featuring Trafassi's Edgar "Bugru" Burgos)



But while "Zangalewa" continues to exert its influence across South America, it's far from forgotten back home in Africa, as demonstrated by "Zamouna" from 2008, by Didier Awadi of the pioneering Senegalese hip-hop group Positive Black Soul:



Of course, I am far from the first to break the story behind "Waka Waka"; in fact, since Shakira's record dropped there's been a mini-Wimoweh-style shitstorm surrounding the song and the credit/royalties owed to the Golden Sounds. Apparently, steps are being taken to compensate the Sounds and the publicity has spurred the band (who disbanded, I think, in the early 2000s) to start contemplating a comeback. This is particularly good news to me, because underneath the buffoonery they were a pretty wicked performing outfit, as seen here in this snippet from their set at FESTAC '77 in Lagos:



What the whole "Waka Waka" story really leaves me thinking about, though, is the possibility that "Zangalewa" could be the most influential modern pop song from Africa, and more so than the oft-cited "Sweet Mother", it might be the true anthem of Africa. Which makes it all the more fitting that Shakira evoked it for this momentous event of the World Cup holding in Africa, doesn't it?

Yep... This time's for Africa!

The Stephen Osita Osadebe Show - "Osondi Owendi"

It's extremely rare to encounter live performance footage of Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe because like many musicians of his generation he guarded his music and his image jealously. He turned down most invitations to play on television and demanded exorbitant sums for the rights to film him in performance. However, in the early 1980s NTA 10 Lagos finally convinced the Doctor of Hypertension to do a weekly television half-hour show.

The program took the format of a live-in-studio Osadebe concert--no skits, no guest stars, no interviews, no chit-chat, no frills. Osadebe and the band would just perform two or three songs straight. The only variation would be when Chief would step off stage to let one of the other band members lead while he danced in the wings.

Here is an early rendition of the now-classic "Osondi Owendi." It's actually a bit longer than this but I had to get it to fit in at under 10 minutes in order to upload it on YouTube.

Hi

Would you believe me if I told you that the reason this page hasn't been updated in, oh, half a year is because I forgot my Blogger password?

It's actually true, you know... I've tried logging in several times over the past few months but I lost my key to my own blog and I eventually had to reset my Google password, which was no easy feat! But here I am... Feels a bit weird though; it's been like forever, hasn't it?

Anyway, I appreciate all the emails expressing curiosity, concern and even anger at my absence. I've been a bit busy so I haven't been able to reply all of them, but for those of you who didn't know, I've been in Nigeria for a while now doing some of this




And this





And a whole bunch of other stuff I'll tell you about later... Hopefully things will get pretty interesting around With Comb & Razorville in the next few months. Look for the blog to reactivate sometime in March; I need to get my act together a bit.

In the meantime, give me a shout in the comments if you care to... I miss interacting with you all!

(er... That's if my readership has not altogether evaporated by now...)

The Roots of Nigerian Rap!

Imagine the imagination of one useless small boy the other day... Just because I said that I'm not feeling most of the contemporary hip-hop coming out of Nigeria right now (though I'm happy for its success), this guy had the audacity to tell me that I just don't understand hip-hop and I need to take the time to go and study the history of the music and culture!

My guy... I was repping hip-hop in Naija before most of these kids out there were even a warm glow spreading across their dad's groin region. And I should mention that this was way before rappin' was by any stretch considered "cool" in Nigeria. Yo, where's my man Deinma? Where's Koko? Molo, do you hear me? Remember how we were ridiculed by our peers? Remember how when we would bust rhymes in the staircase, everybody thought we were stupid (and not stupid fresh)? Remember when the verb "rapping" because synonymous with talking idiotic nonsense? Remember how they told us that rap was a passing fad that went out with breakdancing and that we were just too retarded to see that it wasn't going to last?

Ha! Who's laughing NOW, suckers?

Today in Nigeria, hip-hop is the music that revitalized the country's near-moribund music scene and is considered "the voice of the generation" but I want to give props to the first generation of Nigerian hip-hoppers who built this city. So me and my peeps at AfricanHiphop.com have collaborated on this lesson on the first decade of rap music in Nigeria.

CHECK IT OUT HERE. CLASS IS IN SESSION.

(Big ups to my girl Ivory Dome, by the way)

MJ love Suzuki

What was up with the odd double-wink, though?

Two mixes for Sunday night

On the real, I haven't felt much like writing anything since, y'know... the whole thing with MJ and everything, but I just thought I'd share this great mix of J5 and early Michael solo stuff, courtesy of DJ Jaycee (who I don't know, but someone sent this mix to me on the day the news broke, and it kinda got me over).

DJ Jaycee presents Michael Jackson: The Soulful Years

1. Intro
2. Sugar Daddy
3. ABC (Jaycee's '86 Ultrasound Mix)
4. It's Great To Be Here
5. Jaycee Wants You Back
6. My Girl
7. I Wanna Be Where You Are
8. Dancing Machine
9. Dance In Peace Dilla! (Detroit Style)
10. Mama's Pearl
11. The Boogie Man Interlude
12. Can You Remember
13. Ready Or Not (Here I Come)
14. Never Can Say Goodbye
15. If I Don't Love You This Way
16. I'll Be There
17. My Cherie Amour
18. I Don't Know Why I Love You
19. Born To Love You
20. Don't Say Good Bye Again
21. The Love You Save
22. Ben
23. All I Do Is Think Of You
24. I Am Love Ft. Jermaine
25. Call On Me
26. Ain't No Sunshine
27. Dear Michael
28. Everybody's Somebody's Fool
29. Got To Be There
30. Maybe Tomorrow
31. La La La (Means I Love You)
32. People Make The World Go Round
33. With A Child's Heart
34. What Up Khrysis
35. 2-4-6-8
36. Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing
37. If I Have To Move A Mountain

If mourning Mike ain't your bag (or even if it is), I suggest you check out this wicked selection of Nigerian rock and funk by old friend Obafunkie jR, courtesy of new friend Mr. Wonderful of the Nuts to Soup podcast:

NUTS TO SOUP presents OBA TI DE (THE KING HAS ARRIVED)

As can be expected from Obafunkie, it's some nice stuff!

Everybody wanna be like Mike

1958-2009

Damn man.

I mean, just...

Damn.

A fuckin' era ends.

Between Farrah Fawcett and now this, it's like today's the day that all the pop culture icons of my formative life are being snuffed before my eyes.

Journey to Luna

The photo above was grabbed from this video of Fela Ransome-Kuti performing at the famous Luna Nite Club in Calabar in 1971. I don't think I ever went to Luna; I was still in primary school during the club's glory days and even when I came of age, it wasn't really the kind of establishment I would frequent. For one thing, it was located in a slightly unsavory neck of the woods: the "Old Calabar" precinct that is now known as "Calabar South" and is today--as it was then--legendary for its rough characters. Among my middle-class stratum, we sometimes called this area "Target," a synecdoche referring to Target Street, one of the more rugged byways in that quarter of town. ("Target" was also an allusion to what an interloper might as well have his back wandering around that neighborhood after dark.) If someone owed you money or was messing with you, commissioning some thugs from "Target" to help you settle the score usually got the message across that you meant business.

Calabar had a spectrum of nightspots, with Paradise City on Atekong Drive representing the more upscale end and something like Hotel de Moon Rock on Mount Zion Road as the seedier extreme, but Luna was somewhere in the middle: a pleasure pit where you could relax, drink your Star or your Gulder and maybe enjoy some bushmeat--be it the kind that's bound with twine, soaked in tangy sauce and served with roasted plantains, or the variety that you might take back to one of the "chalets" behind the club that could be rented for a 30-minute "short-time" term ("bushmeat" being the local slang for a young woman who is relatively unsophisticated culturally and thus, is presumed to be reasonably available sexually).

If it was dancing you liked to dance, though, the big draw at Luna might have been the Anansa President, Bustic Kingsley Bassey, whose band was resident at the club for years.

Bustic (or Burstic, same pronunciation) was a local legend but never made much of a splash on a national level. Truthfully, he was a bit of a journeyman. While he undoubtedly delivered rousing shows on the Luna stage, I don't think he ever really developed a distinctive sound of his own. The records I have heard from the late 1960s and very early 70s, for instance, capture Bustic performing in a style very reminiscent of Rex Lawson's "New Calabar" danceband highlife.

Commissioner Burstic Kingsley Bassey and His Professional Pioneer Dance Band of Nigeria - "Ntinke Iko Edem"

It would seem, though, that Fela's Luna performance left a significant impression on Bustic because shortly thereafter, he started calling himself the Chief Engineer and plying a heavily Fela-influenced afrobeat style, even mimicking the nuances of the Chief Priest's laid-back, delirious vocal style.

The two tracks below are from the 1975 LP Gossip, when Bustic was still in his deep Fela phase.

Bustic Kingsley Bassey's Anansa Engineers - "Journey to Luna"
Bustic Kingsley Bassey's Anansa Engineers - "Allow Me Talk My Own"

Facts of the Apostles

The Apostles - "Feeling Happy"

I almost forgot to mention: If you are in the market for some firsthand accounts of the 1970s Eastern Nigerian rock scene, then I'd suggest that you check out the podcast by my cousin Dr. Frederick Nwosu a.k.a. "Arthur Freds," who was a keyboardist in several Aba-based bands including The Friimen, The Sweet Unit/Rock of Ages Band, The Vibrations and Jerry Boifriand's Exodus Bolt Junction as well as occasionally sitting in with groups like The Apostles and the Sweet Breeze.

He often recounts some of his experiences in the Aba music scene on his blog and his podcast can be found HERE.

The next show will stream live tomorrow, Monday June 22, at 12 PM (ET) and the subject will be The Apostles.

EDIT: Or actually, it looks like the next episode will be on the Friimen Rock Company... The last episode (which you can listen to at the link above) talked about Apostles, but I thought he was going to continue with that this week.

Saturday highlife (on Sunday)

VARIOUS - SATURDAY HIGHLIFE (PHILIPS WEST AFRICAN RECORDS, 420 021 PE, 196?)

SIDE 1
1. Come Again - Stephen Osadebe and his "Nigeria Sound Makers"
2. Kolowo Lode - Victor Olaiya and his "All Stars"

SIDE 2
1. Ibi Na Bo - Pastor Rex Lawson and his "Mayor's Dance Band"
2. 750 x 20 - Roy Chicago and his "Rhythm Dandies"

Don't you know?

For all you electro-boogie heads, here's a nice nugget from 1984: "Don't You Know?" by Peter Abdul, produced by Odion Iruoje taking a stab at the Dizzy K. sound (note Nkono Teles' presence on keys).

Peter Abdul - "Don't You Know?"

It came from the 80s...

Just a few quick picks today, folks... A random selection of rare pop tracks from the 1980s.


Saint Emmy - "Something Real, Something Good"

Saint Emmy started his career playing with Celestine Ukwu's Philosophers and other bands before going solo in the mid-70s. While he never really achieved major stardom on a national level, he remained a favorite in Eastern Nigeria, particularly in the fertile music scene of Enugu which included luminaries such as Nelly Uchendu, William Onyeabor and Goddy "Mr. Hygrades" Oku. This dubby track from his 1984 LP Good Good Love was recorded at Oku's Godiac Studio, backed by the Comrades Rock Group of Enugu.


Akin Nathan and the Jubilees - "Oja Ni K'Aiye"

Akin Nathan was a seasoned session saxophonist who featured on several albums but is chiefly known for his tenure with Sonny Okosuns' Ozziddi during the group's most productive period in the 70s and 80s. Nathan's "Jubilees" on this 1980 solo outing include drummer Moses "Mosco" Egbe, guitarist Nelson Tackie, keyboard player Johnnie Woode Olimah and bassist Vincent Toko--all fellow members of Ozziddi.


Robo Arigo - "Them Crazy"

Robo Arigo's Sexy Thing album is in my opinion one of the rarest and most rewarding funk LPs of the 1980s. I like the rough and demo-ish quality of it, with his vocals mixed down low throughout to showcase his funky chops. The former Pogo Ltd. multi-instrumentalist went on to establish himself as an Nkono Teles-style super-producer with his Robbosoneex Music Company in Benin.


Racheal Jerry I. and Her Golden Voice '82 - "I Want To Be a Star"

There's a certain earnestness and naivete to Racheal Jerry I.'s "I Want To Be a Star" that I find quite charming. The bio on her album sleeve recounts her struggle to make it in the music business through disappointment and exploitation before finally realizing the dream of cutting an album in Victor Uwaifo's Joromi Recording Studio, accompanied by his Titibiti Kings!

Racheal never really became a star, but her Close to Me was supposedly the first LP produced by a female artiste from Rivers State... so there's that.


Donaldson Maduh Jr. - "Pretty Julie"

You might have heard this one on the last guest session I did over at Boogieheads. I call records like this "Dizzy K as genre"--high-pitched male singers over Afro-electro-disco tracks in the style of popular 80s star Dizzy K. Falola. The name is probably a bit of a misnomer as there were some common denominators to the style: most of these records were either produced by Dizzy K. producer Tony Okoroji, or featured multi-instrumentalist Nkono Teles, who played on most of Dizzy's records. Donaldson's 1986 record was actually produced by part-time Doves member Chuck Lygomm (who also played the guitars, Rhodes and synths) though Okoroji is thanked on the sleeve for "encouragement" and Dizzy K. himself contributes backing vocals.

And finally, another cut in a semi-Dizzy K. mold...


Jombo - "Squeeze Me"

Gorgeous electro-boogie production by Nkono Teles. The singing is pretty dreadful of course, but you got a lot of that in the "private label" period of the 1980s. If the 1960s and 70s were the era of the professional musician and the big, seemingly impenetrable record companies, the 80s were a time when every youth wanted to make a record and if you could beg, borrow or steal enough money you didn't have to worry whether you had the talent or style to impress the suits at the big companies. You just made the trip to Lagos, Enugu or Onitsha and hooked up with a studio wizard like Teles, Jake Sollo or Sol "Tula" Owen, you booked your studio session, they cooked up some hot tracks for you and you did your awkward best over them in the time allotted. You pressed the record up yourself under your own banner, took it back home and got some regional radio and TV play. You got to be a local champion or a big shot at your school for a few months and then faded back into obscurity until twenty-some years later when some blogger cast a hazy spotlight on you once more. Maybe you can't exactly call it a career, but it's... something.

Time for some Actions!

We've talked before about the Warri-based band Aktion (a.k.a. The Aktion Funk Ensemble) which started out as The Actions, one of the "army-entertaining" bands of the immediate post-civil war era. The members of the group included, at various points, leader Lemmy Faith, Essien Akpabio, Ben Alaka, Renny Pearl, Felix "Feladey" Odey and Tony Essien.

One of these days I'll figure out why many bands in the 1970s switched from standard "The" names to placing arbitrary numbers after their monikers, but just as The Heralds became Heralds 7 and The Founders became The Founders 15 (then Foundars 15 and finally Foundars XV), The Actions transformed into Action 13 before arriving at Aktion.

Aktion disbanded in the mid-70s, but the group's name lived on through Action Inn, a hotel Essien Akpabio established in the town of Ikot Ekpene. It was located around Ikot Ekpene-Aba Road, if I recall correctly; when I was in high school at Federal Government College, Ikot Ekpene more adventurous guys than myself would sneak off the school compound to hang out at Action and other joints like SUA International Guest House and drink beer, smoke cigarettes and mingle with ladies of dubious repute.

Ah... Simpler times, man.

The Actions - "Kpokposikposi"