Listen: “Menelik Wossenachew – Chereka”

Link: Egon’s NPR piece here.

We record collectors of the hip hop generation first discovered the music of Ethiopia’s Mulatu Astatke in the early 1990s, when dealers at the legendary Roosevelt Hotel Record Convention in Manhattan peddled copies of Mulatu of Ethiopia, released on the small Worthy imprint, for princely sums due to its then unknown drum break, rife for the sampler. Those of us entranced by the other worldly sounds of the Ethiopian qenet system fused with Western funk and jazz, searched in vain for other albums that sounded like this masterpiece until Francois Falcetto released Ehiopiques Vol. 4 , a compilation of the two supremely rare albums Astatke released on the Ethiopian Amha label.

Through Falcettos series, Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers movie (built around Astatke’s Amha recordings) and Astatke’s recent live appearances, many Westerners previously unfamiliar with the transfixing beauty of 70s Ethiopian fusion have opened their ears. But we’re still waiting for someone to compile releases from the small Kaifa label and Phillip’s Ethiopian subsidiary. We present a smattering of them here and hope that someone goes back and negotiates the release of these works.

Above – Menelik Wossenachew’s “Chereka,” written and arranged with Girma Beyene and released on Amha Records in the early 1970s.

I attended Vanderbilt, University in Nashville, Tennessee because I knew that I’d be able to spend my spare time searching for rare records in a city where competition was nil. Well, that’s not exactly true, but let’s just say that with the knowledge I’d received from a great many teachers in the Northeast, I felt uniquely equipped to search out regionally released 45s by the likes of Joe Lee in 1997 – while the rest of the city’s young record buying populace seemed stuck on the Power of Zeus drums or Bob James One.

There were so many places to get the goods: the rarer of the two issues of The Cult’s The Mail Must Go Through literally fell into my hands in Phonoluxe. Private pressed (we didn’t call ’em that back then, but whatever) rural rock records with decidedly awesome covers of Average White Band tunes stacked up against the first Bo-Sound 45s I’d ever seen at the Great Escape on Broadway.

But the spot of spots was Lawrence Brothers Record Store, in downtown Nashville. Next to venerable country repository Ernest Tubbs, near the juke joints and the barbecue stands, stood this library of 45s and LPs by soul, funk, bluegrass, rock, country and jazz artists. The story went, as I recall, that Daddy Lawrence bought the building in the early 1960s and filled it up with whatever goods he could find. As record stores and distributors went out of business, he filled up the basement and upper two floors with boxes upon boxes of dead-stock vinyl. The store front contained bin after bin chock full of 45s, each with a location number penciled on a dividing card. If you found something you liked, there was a good chance that there were hundreds more copies upstairs.

Thus, by the time Paul Lawrence took over the store’s day to day operations with his brother Ted and wife Paulette, and he lowered the price of each 45 to three dollars a piece, we didn’t hesitate to buy hundreds of copies of James K-Nine’s “Live It Up” on Federal – right around the time that Dante Carfagna got his first copy and called the drummer “Mr. SP 1200,” if I remember correctly. Dozens of Kay Robinson’s “The Lord Will Make A Way Some How” came down from upstairs, alongside a copy or two of then-rarity like the Overnight Low on Deluxe.

Too bad we didn’t have the taste to search out a record like The Mixed Feelings on United – I’m sure it was there.

I tried everything to convince the Lawrence brothers to let me upstairs. I just knew I’d find the goods: Billy Ball on King, David Matthews’ LP on People… But try as I did (I ever offered to intern for free one summer, just for access upstairs, to search for records I’d pay cash for), the answer always came back as a polite “no.”

So I left, moved out to California, visited the shop every time I was back in town to check in on the family and buy a random stock James Brown 45 or two, and never failed to remind Paul that I’d love to make it upstairs some day.

Well, turns out on one of my two year hiatuses from the city that a few people cracked the code and got on up. The stories came back about the half dozen Grodeck Whipperjenny LPs that had come down. I felt vindicated! It was time to go back to the city, to finally see what the upper floors held.

This past week, as I walked in to the store alongside Georges Sulmner, the ex-NYC collector who opened up my eyes to indie-released funk 45s when I was 19, and my college buddy Ben Nichols, I felt Ted’s notable absence. Normally, he’d greet me with a hug and barrage of questions, in his inimitable drawl, about the record business, David Axelrod, and all things new under the California sun. Paul filled me in: Ted developed a rare form of blood cancer, but he was on the mend. And he’d stopped smoking, cold turkey.

“And how many copies of that Coasters On Broadway record you still holding on to, young man?”

Thinking of the grey hairs in my bears – and teasing Paul on his shock of white hair – we made our way upstairs. “Forget the basement, mostly country down there,” Paul called out as we made our way into the “Employees Only” section of the store.

Georges had been through the upper two levels before, and he’d reported some decent finds. We started out strong with a couple promising 45s laid at the front of the third floor: some random disco rap 45 from the early 80s on a southern label, and a boogie ballad by a previously unknown Nashville group from 1979. Down the rows we went, talking about “the way things used to be,” reminiscing over the days when boxes of David Robinson’s “I’m A Carpenter” were a kitchen sink away in the humid attic of Eddie 3 Way in New Orleans. When Ye Olde Clocke Shoppe still stood in Concorde, North Carolina and heavy pieces sat at the top of each box, next to Mason Jars still smelling of recently consumed moonshine.

But it was hot, humid and dirty up there. The tar from the roof leaked in neat strands and pooled on the top shelves of records. Every box was labeled with a bin card, it seemed, which corresponded to a section in the racks downstairs. Had we seen these before? I kept my eye on the IRDA sleeves, hoping that this would be the day that I’d pull that Mixed Feelings. It’s the hope that drives a record collector minute by minute, hour by hour, under duress, through the dark, dirty must in search of the one that might yet get away.

About an hour in, Georges left to DJ an event. Ben and I soldiered on. Down to the second floor I went, past the decrepit bathroom that obviously hadn’t been used in forty years, into the dark – and slightly cooler – rows that housed simply too many cut outs on Janus and custom country 45s that masqueraded as possible funk finds.

After another hour, I decided it was time to pack it in. Back upstairs, I passed a stack of boxes of Little Royal LPs (the alternate second press, at least) and threw a couple in my stack. I went past the stack of Gaston 45s and grabbed a handful. That would do it, I suppose. Then Ben passed me a record on Country Disco – a wild, country version of “Do You Think I’m Sexy,” complete with a swirling moog. The novelty of finding a record that mixed the country music that pervaded the boxes we were sifting through and hinted at the funk we so desperately serarched for seemed as high a point as we’d get on this trip. We made our way downstairs.

Paul was as accommodating as ever, throwing in the 60s era Hermitage postcards and empty Coke bottles I found for free, and charging much less for our small stacks than he should have. He sent his regards to my parents; I gave my love to his wife and wishes for a speedy recovery to Ted. It was as bittersweet an experience as I’ve ever had in a record store and as I walked out, glancing at the tin tiles on the ceiling and feeling the same fondness I’d felt for them the first time I walked in, nearly twelve years ago, and I wondered if I’d ever be back.

Listen: “Auld Lang Syne.”

I can’t front. When it comes to Korean Christmas records, my man Cut Chemist has me beat. He returned from Seoul earlier this year with some insane Christmas Carol record that contained possibly the funkiest track I’ve ever heard on a Korean record (Though my man Jason up in Toronto has been hipping me to some that sound incredible in their own rights, I haven’t heard ‘em yet).

But I had to get up in the Christmas mix myself (I was getting tired of playing the James Brown Soulful Christmas album and David Axelrod’s Messiah around the folks’ place every December) so I bought the He 5’s Merry Christmas Psychedelic Sound for Xmas ‘07 rotation.

I do love the He 5’s later incarnation, the He 6. Their first three records under that name are amongst my favorite Korean “group sound” psychedelic albums, and their cover of the Rare Earth’s “Get Ready” is probably my favorite Korean track at this moment. But this record, seemingly their first (?) is quite the novelty: all Christmas songs (a la “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”), done in an instrumental, garagey psychedelic fashion, just “acceptable” enough for the ears of aging hippies to play at your parent’s house on Christmas morning… But their cover of “Jingle Bells” morphs, about a minute and a half into the track, into a ten minute freak out cover of “In A Gadda Da Vida” and, after the drum break, wails into “Paint It Black.” The returns to “Jingle Bells” again. Yikes.

Then, immediately after, the He 5 play “Auld Lang Syne” for about two minutes before they, in the words of my boy Cut, “go at it like Billy Ball” and introduce their band. In broken English. With a drum break to boot. I once read a Korean website review the record and say: “Last track is influenced by black music like from James Brown etc.. very ‘black’ and funky.” Uh, yeah. It makes no sense but they’re really going for it. I like this one almost as much as Shin Jung Hyun’s cover of “Funky Broadway” on his (what else) In A Gadda Da Vida album.

Listen: “LaHorse.”

I shall not attempt to edit Mssr. Gainsbourg’s biography into a sentence or two, as that wouldn’t do the French genius justice. If you’re interested, there is a decent (and the only English language) bio by Sylvie Simmons you might want to check entitled A Fistful of Gitanes. Rather, I’ll start by saying that there was a time when Serge’s proto-rap classic “Requiem Pour Un Con” completely twisted my generations’ wig back. Some of us, myself included, heard it first by watching the Jean Gabin-venue Le Pacha, the late ’60s neo-noir that featured a mini music video of a pea-coated, chain-smoking Serge breathing his way through the song.

Well, in those pre-eBay days, we all thought that if we were ever able to get ahold of a copy of the picture sleeve 7-inch OST to Le Pacha, our Serge collections would be complete. We all already owned copies of Histoire De Melody Nelson, you know? How mistaken we were.

I’ll never forget the phone call from The Heliocentrics’ Malcolm Catto when he asked me if I’d ever heard of this promo-only 7-inch “La Horse.” Of course I hadn’t, and he went on to describe in vivid detail this track, composed by Serge and his long time arranging partner Jean-Claude Vannier that stood not only as one of Serge’s best instrumental releases, but also his rarest. The record was released by Serge’s publishing company, Hortensia, around the time of the release of the film, as a promotional-only item to be given to theater goers.

A few years and missteps later (including one in a Parisian flea market, when the Euro was worth about a dollar, when the going rate for the record was about 900 E), I finally scored a copy from a collector based in, of all places, Oxnard. This one hasn’t left my box in years, and I DJ it out constantly. The banjo break is a bit hokey, but whatever – the film, another Gabin feature, took place in the countryside, so I guess Serge was just shouting out the hicks. Who cares? It follows one incredible drum break, doesn’t it?

Oh, one last thing: that cover is a “paste on…”

Márconi Notaro
No Sub Reino Dos Metazoarios
Discos Rozenblit, Brasil 1973

With all of those who started shouting “private press only” after Shadow named an album after those American self-starters who took their recorded destiny into their own hands, consider this: as hard as it might have been to record, press and distribute your very own wax capsule in America in the early ’70s (and as rare, and good, many of them are), doing the same under Brasil’s military dictatorship was markedly more difficult. And releasing a psychedelic, fuzz and effects drenched opus with revolutionary musings disguised within double entendres? Next to impossible.

You’d want this one in your collection if it contained just one good track within its beautifully packaged gatefold cover. That this album screams perfection from start to finish just adds to its legendary status. The brainchild of poet Márconi Notaro, alongside his friends and compatriots Lula Cortes and Ze Ramalho (the men behind perhaps the most legendary of Brasil’s private-pressed albums, 1975’s awesome Paebiru), this album contains what can only be described as Brasilian ragas played with the Portuguese guitar and Lula’s own invention, the Tricordio; improvised passages so fluid you’d swear they were scored; psychedelic-funk jams about staying true to one’s origins; and, throughout, Notaro’s complex yet approachable poetry, sung by the poet himself.

The highlight of the album, if there is just one: Notaro’s improvised “Nao Tenho Imaginacao Pra Mudar De Mulher (I Don’t Have The Imagination to Change Wives),” a gorgeously melancholic piece that, when one sees it transcribed (gotta thank my lovely girlfriend for that), is nearly impossible to imagine as having flowed directly from the mind of one of the most underrated Brasilian poet/composers.

(Time-Lag Records, based in Portland, Maine, just reissued this album through Lula and Notaro’s daughter. Pick it up and support – if we’re lucky, perhaps they’ll reissue one of his impossibly rare books of poetry next).