BLO: Step Three

(that pic is kinda messed up, ain't it? i'll have to fix it later)

With the release of their third album (their second for the year 1975), the three members of BLO were riding high. Flush with success, the trio celebrated by featuring for the first time on one of their LP covers. Poised on the roof of a sleek red coupe, garbed in body-hugging synthetic fabric finery, they appear affluent, confident, and--an appellative one would hesitate before applying to the earthy Afro-hippies of Chapter One and Phase 2--pretty fucking fly. Their seating positions spell out the name of their band, left to right: B for Berkley, L for Laolu, O for...

Wait a minute... That's not Odumosu on the cover.

And it's not just the cover; a glance at the sleeve notes confirms that Mike Odumosu does not appear anywhere on this record. In his stead, we find Biddy Wright, the nimble multi-instrumentalist who around the same period was starting to work with the Lijadu Sisters, producing for them clean and lean funk, rock and reggae tracks remarkable for their precision-tooled craftsmanship and light tinge of camp.

A stylistic chameleon, Adeniyi "Biddy" Wright had cut his teeth as the leader of the popular Lagos highlife combo Wura Fadaka in the nineteen sixties before shifting base to London after the war. There, inspired by the Osibisa phenomenon, he formed an Afro-rock band called Akido, which he led on bass and vocals.

(Six Degrees of Ginger Baker Fun Fact! The band also featured Ghanaian percussionist Niimoi "Speedy" Acquaye, who had played in the original Air Force!)

Akido's self-titled 1972 album was produced by Ronnie Lane, the bassist of The Faces (being, of course, the legendary English lad-rock band whose lineup also included Rod Stewart and future Rolling Stone Ron Wood, not the Nigerian band of the same name).

Disenchanted with the effect Rod the Mod's growing idol status exerted upon the band's musical direction, Lane quit The Faces in 1973 and formed the country-rock outfit Slim Chance, in which Wright played bass.

(Many Ronnie Lane fan histories erroneously refer to the musician who replaced original Slim Chance bassist Chrissie Stewart as "Buddy Wright" or "Buddy White," but that is indeed Biddy Wright on Lane's Anymore for Anymore album even though he does not appear in the band photos.)

Wright--billed on Step Three as "Biddy O'Wright (get it? "O'Wright"? so it's still a B-L-O album?)--not only subs for Odumosu on bass, but also contributes alto and soprano sax and the horn arrangements, with his frequent collaborators Tunde Williams and Johny Wood handling trumpet and organ/piano respectively.

If Phase 2 edged more towards funkiness than the psychedelia of Chapter One, Step Three pretty much jettisons all the trappings of "rock" altogether. Berkley Jones, who in addition to playing 1st and 2nd guitars and Moog, writes all the songs (except for Akins' wonderfully loose-limbed "Gotta Get Me A Better Head"), has clearly been digging Sly Stone and blaxploitation funk, and it's reflected in the lyrics and arrangements.

While there's not a formal production credit listed on the album other than the "Guest engineer and producer" accorded to Keith Whiting, who remixed the album at Decca Studios, London after the raw tracks were recorded at Decca's Lagos facility, it's not hard to imagine Wright's involvement having a significant influence on the sound of this record. Consistent with Wright's light-fingered production style, it was by far the most relaxed of BLO's albums to date. Even the very title of the album exudes laidbackness. While Chapter One suggested solemn ceremony and Phase 2 rigorous procedural, Step Three connoted an informal, organic move in a natural direction. The trio is easygoing and spontaneous, cheerfully flubbing lines on the Cymande-influenced "Hypocrisy" and sounding like they're improvising lyrics as they go along on "Don't Pull This From Under Me"; despite the crispness of the production, there's a demo-like quality to the album (And, in fact, "Mind Walk" was re-recorded as "Move Up" on the following year's Phase IV.) (Update: You can listen to some snippets from that album here, btw)

But the question remains: Where was Mike Odumosu during the making of this record? I used to wonder that myself until last week, when a possible answer smacked me in the face while I was digging at Looney Tunes Records on Boylston Street.

There I was, going through the O's in the Soul section, wondering why I couldn't find a copy of the first Original Dr. Buzzard's Savannah Band album (maybe because the band was actually called "Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band," genius?) when I saw this LP that I hadn't seen in years:



Osibisa's 1976 Ojah Awake, with the band also making their cover debut in lieu of Roger Dean's proggy fantasyscapes.

See the dude in all red, next to the guy with the hat and boots? That's Mike Odumosu. (Hat and boots is Kiki Gyan, we will talk about him later.)

Can't hardly be mad at Odumosu for jumping at the chance to play with the biggest Afro-rock group of the day, can ya? Ojah Awake was coincidentally Osibisa's most successful album (yielding monster hits "The Coffee Song" and "Dance the Body Music") and also their last major smash. I'm not too versed in the band's history after this point, so I don't know for sure whether Odumosu's tenure with them was temporary or a more long-term arrangement. (Allmusic.com tells me that he remained with them through 1977 at least, but they get sketchy after that.)


However, I don't think Mike Odumosu ever fully returned to BLO. He appeared on the cover of Phase IV and received a vocal credit as well, but the bass duties on that album were fulfilled by Celestine Nyam, and by this time, BLO had found their new "O" anyway: velvet-voiced soul singer and keyboardist Otu Udofa, who went by the nom de disque Lemmy Jackson. At the time he met Berkley and Laolu, he was hustling session gigs in London; within the next five years, Lemmy Jackson would become the most important and influential producer in Nigerian pop music.

(Or did Jackson officially join the band on their sixth album, 1980's Bulky Backside? I don't know... He's on the cover of Phase IV, too. The chronology gets a bit confusing here... The Phases 1972-1982 sleeve features a collage of clippings from tabloids such as The Punch and Lagos Weekend, but they're not presented in any real timeline. What I can glean from the montage, though, is that apparently, after Phase IV--or maybe even after Step Three--BLO essentially broke up for a few years. During that time, Berkley and Laolu studied screenwriting and sound production in London, and then they met Lemmy Jackson, who encouraged them to put the band back together.)

(One fairly bizarre clipping has Berkley, Laolu and Lemmy returning to Lagos after a long absence, arriving at the Punch offices and attracting much attention due to their presence of their latest bandmember... Pamela Obermeyer. Yes, Rocky Horror Picture Show fans... I do mean that Pamela Obermeyer. For you RHPS virgins...



She's the Transylvanian with the afro and the skull & crossbones tiara. The only sista in the clip. You can't miss her.)

Oh well... One of these days, I'm gonna have to ask the very cool (and rather hot) Ms. May to ask her dad to clear up the exact sequence of events.

But hey, I've talked enough for now. Might as well give you the music.

>DOWNLOAD STEP THREE!<

BLO: Phase 2

Pay attention, class. Once again, let's consult our Ginger Baker DVD (We will probably end up doing this at least two more times, depending on whether I ever get around to doing those features of the Lijadu Sisters and Twins Seven Seven).



The pale, orange-bearded fellow battering the already-battered drumset in the above clip is Peter Edward "Ginger" Baker, an English rock musician best known as a member of the supergroup Cream.

The gentleman in the black shirt, sitting on the floor in front of Baker's kit, playing an African drum with sticks is Laolu Akintobi a.k.a. Laolu Akins, drummer in Lagos rock band Afrocollection.

The guy with the exposed chest and the chain around his neck, shredding on guitar and making goofy rock faces is Berkley "Ike" Jones of the Afrocollection.

The diminutive chap wrecking shit on the keys is Joni Haastrup, leader of the band Monomono.

I can't identify the other individuals in the room with any certainty, but they're not all that important to the story, anyway.

Ginger Baker had long avowed an interest in African music. In fact, his drum-pounding on Cream's biggest hit, "Sunshine of Your Love" has sometimes been described by critics as "neo-African." (Baker later confessed that the inspiration behind the "heavy on the one" drum pattern on that record was not Africa per se, but rather the "OOM-pah-pah-pah-OOM-pah-pah-pah" rhythm that characterized the drums of the Injuns in old cowboy movies.) Baker decided to study African music firsthand and traveled to Nigeria twice between 1970 and 1971. During these expeditions, he jammed with local musicians, including Twins Seven Seven, Fela Ransome-Kuti, percussionist Remi Kabaka and Joni Haastrup (the latter two he took back to England to play in the second iteration of his Airforce band. He also had the pleasure of sharing the stage with a band called The Clusters.

The Clusters had been one of the longest-running and most popular of the schoolboy highlife-cum-rock & roll bands of the mid- to late 1960s. Laolu Akins had been the band's drummer from the get-go, but Berkley Jones had only recently joined (as an Igbo, Jones had been in Biafra during the war, himself playing drums in a band called The Figures). Also joining the band after the war were Haastrup and bassist Mike "Gbenga" Odumosu. The Clusters' management was intent on gathering the tightest collection of musicians possible in order to compete with Geraldo Pino & His Heartbeats, who were still dominating Lagos and intimidating all the musicians within city limits.

At the same time, Swiss-Nigerian flautist Tee Mac, inspired by the success of Afro-rock band Osibisa wanted to put together a new African supergroup to tour Europe. He stole Akins, Jones and Odumosu, and along with the twin sisters Taiwo and Kehinde Lijadu, he formed the Afrocollection.

Enter Ginger Baker.

One of the freshest emerging trends in post-Woodstock rock music was the Third World-influenced rock of bands like Osibisa, Santana and The Wailers; when Ginger Baker stepped into Lagos for the thrd time, he was keen on the idea of forming an African rock outfit, and with its lineup including his Clusters buddies, Tee Mac's Afrocollection looked like just the band to fit the bill.

Baker took the Afrocolletion (minus Tee Mac) and renamed them Salt. They made their debut at Fela's Afro-Spot in the summer of 1972, took the stage at the Olympic Jazz Festival in Munich and then toured Europe, the US and Canada. It's not known why this group never recorded an album, but at the end of the Salt tour in late 1972, the Lijadu Sisters left to put togeter their own band, Joni Haastrup went off with Monomono and Berkley Jones, Mike Odumosu and Laolu Akins joined forces to form BLO.

In Africa, popular entertainment had traditionally revolved around orchestras, and bands were usually large, cumbersome affairs--the idea of a lean African power trio was very new, very sexy, very modern. Akins, Odumosu and Jones definitely had the chop to carry a band on their own, and with the new multitrack recording technology, they were positioned as the band to lift Nigerian rock beyond the semi-hacky garage realm in which it had heretofore been situated.

BLO's debut album, Chapter One, was released in 1973. (I know I said in the last post that it was 1972. It wasn't. It was 1973. My bad. I'll go back and fix that post later.) Even before one even took the record out of its sleeve, its high-minded intentions were announced by the sleeve's abstract artwork and gatefold design. I'm assuming you've heard the record yourself by now, so I'm not going to waste too much wordage talking about what it sounds like. As is the case with Ofege, I wish the singing was better, but as a band they are miles ahead of the impishly charming Ofege, offering some pretty solid songs and interesting uses of the studio. Not to mention, of course, the fact that as instrumentalists, they just straight tear shit up.

In 1975, the band got into the studio to record the followup, Phase 2, produced by the three members of the band. The tone on this album is funkier than the straight acid-rock of Chapter One; Friday Pozo aids Laolu on the congas, and Joni Haastrup contributes organ to all the tracks, except for track 1 (the self-introductory "BLO") on which the electric piano is played by Segun Bucknor.

Here's what the band's manager Tony Amadi had to say in the notes on the back of the album:

THE MAKING OF BLO

Here comes 'BLO Phase Two', the follow-up album to 'BLO Chapter One' by the raving rock trio = Berkley, Laolu and Odumosu.

Utilizing organ and electric piano for tighter effect, Africa's first trio are into a freshivating polyrhythmic funk that is richly embellished in sophistication - and bound to generate mass appeal.

The introductory tune is the musical expression of BLO, written by bassist Mike Odumosu: B for 'funky guitar', L for 'thunder drumming' and O for 'smoothy bass' and the back-up music spells just that.

Laolu comes up with 'Its gonna be a good day' where some of the funkiest guitar solos of the album are unleashed. "Native Doctor" is the lengthy masterpiece of mixed tempo by Berkley Jones which plodes on for more than seven minutes.

The diversity of BLO music is expressed in full on side two and you sure are into a party time where you can dance yourself out (if you wish).

"Do it you'll like it" by Berkley sets in pace, followed by Mike's emotional love song "Don't take her away from me" to the cool and bluesy "Whole lot of shit", then the finale - Laolu's thunderous native yoruba beat called "ATIDE" which means that BLO have arrived, musically of course.

Phase Two was recorded in 9 sessions of 12 hours each from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. It was so strenous that on the 9th session Engineer Emma Akpabio decided to go on strike "because of too many worries by BLO" whose drive for perfection remain unmatched.



>DOWNLOAD IT!<

(I'll probably edit this post later to improve grammar, facts, and formatting.)

Some of the information in this entry was pulled from Max Reinhardt's interview with Laolu Akins for the Strut records compilation BLO - Phases: 1972-1982.

Update 060307: I replaced the Ginger Baker Air Force "Early in the Morning" clip with a long, less dreary one of the band playing "Sunshine of Your Love."

I wanna BLO your mind

Damn, am I so tired this evening that I have resorted to that lowest of all humor forms, the pun?

Anyway, I'm not gonna talk too much tonight... I'll just post the music and give some backstory on it tomorrow.



The band is BLO. The album is Chapter One. The year is 1973.

>DOWNLOAD IT!<

Next morning: Aargh! Just realized I accidentally set the file to "private"! That's fixed now.

Double aargh!: And now I find that I ballsed up the track numbering and the artwork attached to some of the tracks.

Rest assured that the track order is correct and that there are only 8 tracks on this LP rather than 17. The artwork issue (for those who are inclined to care about such) may be remedied by copying/dragging the above album cover and installing it in place of the Step Three cover that might accompany a few of the tracks.