It´s cold cold cold all of a sudden, with snow and ice and windchill factors all in the mix, so we´ll try make this 43rd edition of Wild Weekend as heartwarming as we possibly can. So put another log on the fire, pour a stiff drink and enjoy this six pack of fine fine tunes, while virtually travelling from Japan to Jamaica, from the deep south to the far north, and back again. Have a hot one.
We´ll start off in the land of the rising sun with a hot psych track from Love Live Life +1, a shortlived soulful super session group based around organist Hiro Yanagida and guitar wizard Kimio Mizutani. Did these guys listen to Sly´s Family Stone a lot? You bet. From
Love Will Make A Better You (´71), one of the best trips in the Japrock canon. Next we take a plane to Jamaica, where Freddie McKay meets us at Kingston airport. He recorded this beauty for Leonard Chin´s mighty
Santic label in the early seventies. And is that Augustus Pablo perhaps, leading it all in on melodica? Sure is.
Love Live Life +1 - Facts About It All MP3
Freddie McKay - I´m A Free Man MP3
Two weeks ago we featured a Swamp Dogg produced soul scorcher by ZZ Hill here, and now it´s Doris Duke´s turn. I just can´t get enough of I´m A Loser, an exemplary collection of her recording sessions with Jerry Williams Jr, better known as the Dogg. Take an earful of If She´s Your Wife (Who Am I) and you´ll definitely understand why. Onward to the freaky part of Montreal now, where we encounter Poney P, Mingo L´Indien and Bobo Boutin, better known as Les Georges Leningrad. Their Track Georges Five is, to say the least, quite a confrontational piece of dissonant post postpunk. Love it or hate it, but do try it out I beg you. You´ve probably never heard anything like it.
Doris Duke - If She´s Your Wife (Who Am I) MP3
Les Georges Leningrad - Track Georges Five MP3
"Arithmetic arithmetock, turn the hands back on the clock..." That can only be Tom Waits of course, with the jazzy title track from
Alice (´02). Hot news: early next year will see the release of a book called
Hard Ground, documenting the plight of the homeless in poems by Waits and photo´s by Michael O´Brien. Better start saving up. And we´ll call it a day with an intense piece of blues recorded back in ´59 in Angola State Prison, Louisiana. Robert ´Guitar´ Welch, who was behind bars there together with legendary bluesman Robert Pete Williams, fears they´ll send him straight to the hot seat. "Wonder why they´ll execute a man at the one o´clock hour at night? The current is much stronger, people turn off all the lights..."
Tom Waits - Alice MP3
Guitar Welch - Electric Chair Blues MP3
