Ofege IV: How Do You Feel

Okay... 2007's got like 30 minutes left; let's see if I can squeeze in one last entry before 2008 and close out the Ofege series with the fourth album, 1978's How Do You Feel.

I've often wondered why this album is rarely mentioned in discussions of Ofege... I guess a lot of people just don't know it exists. But I wouldn't be surprised to find that some degree of rockist snobbery were involved; you know, the "Disco Sucks" variety, the kind that makes heads snicker at BLO's latter albums like Bulky Backside.

But such was the tide of the times; 1978 was a world away from 1973 and even in America, black bands like Funkadelic and the Ohio Players that had erstwhile purveyed raggedly funky rock were shifting their output exclusively towards slicker, more dancefloor-oriented material. As Melvin said to me, "the fuzzbox was out of fashion."

A few weeks ago, I enjoyed a brief chat with Ofege bassist Paul Alade. I found him to be a very charming and affable fellow with a markedly philosophical perspective on his days of pop stardom. He swiftly rejected the suggestion that How Do You Feel? represented the band searching for a new sound or trying to fit in, asserting that it was "just us being us."

Interestingly, Alade confirmed my earlier suspicions that the sound of the second album, Last of the Origins was a record company-mandated attempt to steer the band in a more polished, mainstream direction ("To them, we were just some stupid kids," he snorted) and recalled Higher Plane Breeze as a return to the roots, free from label manipulation. The difference in sound from their earlier recordings he attributed to the band's burgeoning maturity and changes in their musical environment.

"Right back to Try and Love," Alade explained. "if you listen to any of our records, you can hear our influences... You can tell what we were listening to at the time, whether it was Santana and jimi Hendrix, or Osibisa... Sly & the Family Stone and everything else.

"By the time you get to How Do You Feel, we're really still doing the same thing, playing our same sound, but also absorbing some of the other things that were happening at the time. Like the disco sounds you hear on the record. And reggae was a big thing happening at the time. But when you listen to songs like 'World at Peace' and 'Frustration,' that's just the basic, roots Ofege sound."

Judging from a song like "Bomp Your Booty," I'm going to guess that they were listening to Kool & the Gang and Ohio Players. Probably some Akie Deen stuff too, as evidenced by the soca-ish intro of "Check It Out," which leads into a lean, angular groove that sounds like it was ripped from Jake Sollo's late-70s playbook (as do, unfortunately, the disco hoots). Sollo himself--recently having partaken in Kiki Gyan's mutiny from Osibisa--plays lead guitar on the album.

The Ofege lineup here is pared down to its core: M-Ike on drums, Paul on bass, Melvin on rhythm guitar ("Today, we probably would do everything by ourselves," Alade reflects. "But back then you needed to hire extra guys to play live").

As on Higher Plane Breeze, Robert Bailey, late of Osibisa, mans the keys; another Osibisa insurgent, Kofi Ayivor, aids on the congas; and the synth textures of Francis Monkman, last heard on Last of the Origins, are back again.

I forgot to ask Alade about the identity of "Majek," who produced the last two Ofege albums, but I must say I like the job he did on them. As much as I love the rugged stonerism of Try and Love, the Ofege songs I return to most are the more melodic groovers like "H.P.B." and this album's "Take Your Mind Away" that employ the acute guitar attack in service of fluid danceability. The title track is a sexy rub-a-dub killer, too, perfect for win'ing yuh waist pon the gyal or bwoy of your choice!

How Do You Feel does project interesting new directions for the band, but we would never discover whence those paths would lead, as after this LP, Ofege was no more.

I asked Paul Alade if they went into How Do You Feel knowing that it was going to be the final album.

"No, not at all," he replied. "We would have liked to keep going... When we were in school, we all lived in different parts of the country, but every summer we would try to get together and [record an album]. By the time of How Do You Feel, school was over, and we just went in different directions. The three of us were able to come together to make this album, but after that Ike went to school in England, and then I left to England too for a while, then to the States. And I've been here ever since."

Melvin Noks released two seldom-heard solo albums as Melvin Ukachi, Evolution (1982) and Ofege as One (1984) before packing it in.

They all admit to missing it, though, and they're all down to put the band back together... but only if they can get a fair deal this time. So if anybody out there has the wherewithal to make that happen, wouldn't it be cool to be able to write another chapter of this story in 2008?

(There's a little surface noise on this record, y'all... Especially on side B. One thing I have definitely got to do in 2008 is invest in a vacuum vinyl cleaner!)

Happy new year, everybody!

OFEGE - HOW DO YOU FEEL (POLYDOR/PHONOGRAM, 1978, POLP 030)

Paul "B-Tee" Alade - Bass, vocals
Melvin "Karchi" Noks - Main vocals, rhythm guitar
Mike "Ike" Meme- Drums, congas, percussion & vocals
Jake Sollo - Solo guitar
Francis Monkman - Strings & keyboards
Robert Bailey - Keyboards
Kofi Ayivor - Congas
Miranda - Violin
Ann - Vocals

Special thanks to Georgie Mann for spreading his good vibes

All songs composed and arranged by Ofege
Produced by Majek

SIDE A
1. World at Peace
2. Burning Jungle
3. Check It Out
4. Bomp Your Booty
5. Take Your Mind Away

SIDE B
1. How Do You Feel?
2. Ideal Situation
3. Naira Power
4. Nature Queen
5. Frustration

(Pardon the rough cover scan... I'm in a bit of a hurry, but I'll fix it later)

I'll say it again: O F E G E

For a band that was so insanely popular, Ofege seem to have had frustratingly little written about them. They usually garner a cursory mention at best in most books about African pop, they don't get written up in even the most fastidious magazines, they are rarely ever included on compilations of Afro-funk and rock. Until their recent embrace by the psychedelic rock community, Google searches on them barely shored up any significant responses. If not for the persistent, nostalgic (and often contradictory) ramblings of various aging Nigerian hipsters, I might be tempted to believe that their own-time renown was little more than a myth.

The cloud of mystery surrounding Ofege is thickened by the fact that even the sleeve notes on their albums are woefully inadequate in providing us with much knowledge about the band. Even their debut, Try and Love offered only this sparse scrawl on the back on the album to introduce the new band on the scene:

Music for all songs - Meme
Lyrics for all songs - Melvin
Except It's not easy - Alade
Produced and directed by Odion Iruoje
Recording Engineers - Emmanuel Odenusi/Kayode Salami

Thankfully, Ofege's sophomore effort, 1975's The Last of the Origins at least lists the names the musicians on the back. So we learn that Ofege is made up of Paul Alade (bass, vocals), Dapo Olumide (keyboards), Melvin Noks (whose government name I'm told is Melvin Anokuru, though I've also heard him referred to as Melvin Ukachi) (guitar, lead vocals, percussion), M-Ike Meme (drums, vocals, percussion) and Filix Inneh (vocals, gong) (GONG?!?)

Unfortunately, in none of the photos of the band I've ever seen are they they shown playing, or even holding their instruments, so it's hard to correlate the names to any of the faces shown on their album covers.

Anyway, The Last of the Origins. I have no idea what that title is supposed to mean, and I'll admit that this is the Ofege album I listen to least. While Try and Love had the ebullient charm of a bunch of stoned teenagers just rocking out for the funk of it, it seems that Odion Iruoje tried a bit too hard to groom them into a "real" "professional" band.

The album is mixed in a much more balanced fashion than the front-loaded guitaristics of the debut, and there's a lot more emphasis placed on the singing and lyrical content... Which are mostly not that great, despite songwriting contributions by all the band members. The guitar hysterics--the thing that the band does best--in general are pretty much reined in, and oddly enough, Melvin Noks is credited as the rhythm guitarist on this album, with the "1st guitar" credit going to Berkley Jones (of BLO) and "2nd guitar" to Olushoga Benson. To top it all off, after being recorded in Lagos, the tracks were shipped off to Abbey Road where they were remixed and "sweetened" with string synth textures by Francis Monkman of the British proggers Curved Air.

I'm told that this album was released shortly after the boys graduated from St. Gregory's, and I know that some (if not all) of the members went on to attend the University of Lagos. I can only assume that they continued to play as a band there, but study time must have gotten in the way of studio time, because Ofege would not put out another album until 1977's buoyant Higher Plane Breeze (which, hopefully, I will be posting soon).

DOWNLOAD THE LAST OF THE ORIGINS!

Update o5/01/07: Link resurrected.

Ofege. (Need I Say More?)

Probably.

Originally, I had planned to chronologically trace the development of Nigerian pop music from the 1950s and 60s up through the 80s in a series of droll, but carefully thought-out essays. But as it turns out, I'm not feeling too droll at the moment and I have like three overlapping deadlines to make by tomorrow morning, so my concentration is not at the level it could be.

Yet, even as the pressures of life bear down on me, I want to rock.

About this time last year, in the early days of this blog, I posted a song called "Gbe Mi Lo" by a band called Ofege as the mp3 of the day. Quite a few folks dug it and wanted to hear (and know) more. Of course, the first Flashback comp contained two more Ofege songs (both taken from the same LP as "Gbe Mi Lo") so I might as well just give y'all the rest of the album, yeah?

At this point I should mention that the album cover featured at the top of this post is not the album in question... I just posted it because I think it's the coolest-looking of their album covers (which tend to be much less expressive than their music) and the above-pictured longplayer, Higher Plane Breeze, is (I think) their best album, which I have a lot of affection for and I will probably be posting up later. Besides, this photo perfectly encapsulates the band's general stance and style.

Ofege was formed by a bunch of teenage hipsters at the prestigious St. Gregory's College in the Obalende area of Lagos. I believe I previously described them as "a cross between the Bay City Rollers and Santana" or something like that. I also said that I wished that they worked more on their songwriting and singing, but hey... It's clear that for Ofege, songs were largely incidental, little more than excuses to launch into insane, distorted guitar solos. It's also very clear that they smoked a lot of weed.

You are about to listen to their first album, TRY AND LOVE, released in 1974.



DOWNLOAD IT!

Update 06/01/07: The link is re-upped.