Now-Again Records

Serge Week, Day Two: Le Pacha OST – “Requiem Pour Un Con”

Serge Gainsbourg with Michel Colombier: “Requeim Pour Un Con.”

From the 7” OST to Le Pacha, a Jean Gabin film noir best known in America for the “impromptu” “Requeim Pour Un Con” music video contained within. After hearing about the scene for years, I finally tracked down a VHS copy of the film while in Paris in early 2001 and watched it at a friend’s flat in the Montemartre. The scene was worth the hassle. Serge, surrounded by his natty combo – including a potential witness to the murder of Gabin’s partner – steps up to the mic and, smoking his signature Gitanes cigarette, belts out this proto-rap number. Gabin and his cohorts gaze at Gainsbourg through the engineer’s double paned windows in the control room. His index finger is colored yellow as a mummy’s from his habit, he embellishes each pause with a calculated throw of his head, and, all the while, you get the sense that Gainsbourg realized just how important this throwaway scene was. “C’est bonne, Serge,” calls the engineer, at the end of the scene. “Voila.” Serge walks out of the recording room, and into the history books.

Requiem Pour Un Con: A Week Dedicated To Serge Gainsbourg

If you’re a regular here, you’re probably aware of Egon’s semi-regular column at NPR, Funk Archaeology.

Every once in a while, he composes an update that NPR – in their all-power – can’t get the rights to post. Thus, his recent pieces on French icon Serge Gainsbourg went unpublished. We hadn’t updated our Picks section in a while, so we figured we’d give it a go here.

So for the next week, it’s one piece on one Serge Gainsbourg song with one mp3 every day. Read Egon’s introduction here.

Egon’s Year End Wrap Up At NPR: Best African Reissues of 2009

Check out ten African reissues you may have missed at NPR. There were so many, from the Ghana Special comp on Sound Way Records to a reissue of Ofege, from our Picks section. While we’re at it, you can grab an extra mp3 there… So check it out, dig into some of the Zambian and Nigerian sounds we’ll be reissuing next year, and support some of the fine labels represented in the list as you’re doing your Christmas shopping.

Link: Egon’s Top Ten African Reissues at NPR.org.

Benin’s Godfather Of Funk – El Rego

Listen: “El Rego – Dis Moi Oui”

Link to Egon’s NPR piece here.

Though Benin’s 60s and 70s recording scene certainly rivaled that of neighboring Ghana and Nigeria, the European compilers that helped make Nigeria’s Fela Kuti and Ghana’s K.Frimpong (relative) household names have only recently rediscovered the country’s musical heroes.

The earliest benefactors of this resurgence were the inspiring Orchestre Poly Rythmo de Cotonou, whose numerous LPs and 45s offer a funky oeuvre hard to match in West Africa. But the man that Samy Ben Redjeb, producer of the top-notch compilation African Scream Contest Raw & Psychedelic Afro Sounds From Benin & Togo 70s and Legends of Benin credits with kick starting Benin’s funk, or jerk, movement, and whom Poly Rythmo bandleader Melome Clement cites as a direct influence on his ensemble’s sound, has remained a footnote.

Perhaps this is because Theophile Do Rego, better known as El Rego, et Ses Commandos released their groundbreaking tunes on the easily disposed 7” format. With a series of songs now compiled on Analog Africa’s trawls through the Beninois 60s and 70s scenes, and a rumored Voodoofunk/Daptone compilation forthcoming, we can only hope that El Rego’s other killers soon see the light of day.

Above: El Rego et Ses Commandos greeting Miriam Makeba at the Cotonou Airport, circa 1973

Gospel Storytellers – There Is A God Somewhere (Champ Records, early 80s)

Listen: “Rich Man, Poor Man.”

Andrew Wartts, based in Bloomington, Illinois, recorded his landmark gospel album There Is A God Somewhere album in the early 1980s and released it on the small Champ imprint based in Nashville, Tennessee. It took funk archivists years to discover this gem, but it’s a timely resurface. Wartts sound – a mixture of soulful, funky, melancholic yet celebratory exhortations to the Lord – belies the music’s age. In a time when most contemporary-leaning Gospel acts were moving towards the “boogie” sounds of then-pop stars such as Prince and Rick James, Wartts stood firm in his commitment to James Brown style funk. As an example, check out “Peter And John,” a quirky riff on “Give It Up, Turn It Loose.” Turning around neatly in 4/4, the rhythm section chooses to skirt, rather than emphasize, “the one.” The result is a slightly off putting, but wholly original entry into the Gospel-Funk archives.