Mining the Audio Motherlode, Volume 150

 

Give the Drummer Some's
Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere

Here we are at Motherlode #150 and it doesn't feel a day over 100. Strange to think that when we started this weekly column, your ol' miner still lived in Brooklyn, and he still had a damn job. Surely by now he's adjusted to life in the Steel City, but if he could just get someone to pay him to scour 600+ music blogs for the best free music online, he'd be well on his way toward delivering another 150 weeks of sonic spelunkery.

No worries, friends. As long as there are sites where music is presented thoughtfully and with reverence—like the exceptional African music blog Worldservice (see our lead item, below)—producing this survey will continue to be as richly rewarding as it was back in January 2009. 

 

    
Alhaja Hassanah Waziri  ~  "Oghena Iruduna"
(Blog: Worldservice)

Smooth as Corduroy
"I am puzzled about the adjective used to describe the voice of Alhaja Hassanah Waziri. "Velvet"?? Unless it is meant as a clever alternative to "rough" or "rough-edged," I am at loss for the source of this label. Maybe it is a cultural thing."  (Description by Wrldserv, at Worldservice) 

Ethel Waters | Lucille Hegamin | Mamie Smith | Edith Wilson | etc.
(Blog: Crazy Blues)

Crazy Good
If 1920s and '30s blues and early jazz floats your boat, get a load of the armada being assembled at the brand-new old-music blog Crazy Blues. The site offers nothing in the way of descriptive verbiage, but the sheer tonnage of the MP3 dump is something to behold, er be heard. You'd better start snarfing up the tracks now because if you get behind here, you may never catch up.

 

Various  ~  "Because You're Funky"
(Blog: It's Coming Out of Your Speaker)

Words Fail
"This is an all instrumental late '60s early '70s slab of grooving funk, r&b and a little rock 'n roll thrown in for good measure. Some songs are straight up James Brown proto funk, some are more Booker T. & The MGs grooving rock and a couple wouldn't be out of place on a Cramps record! Sure the horns can be a little out of tune and the playing is sometimes a tad "loose" but these bands were obscurities for the most part that put out a couple of singles and disappeared back into the void."  (Review left at Amazon)

 

Bridget St. John  ~  "Hello Again: A Collection of Rare Tracks"
(Blog: Dirty Funky Situation)

Sweet!
"Simply put, St. John doesn't come within bow-and-arrow range of Sandy Denny or Maddy Prior. She favors a low, slightly husky delivery that sometimes brings to mind what Marianne Faithfull might have sounded like in the late 1970s had Faithfull's voice lowered naturally, instead of being ravaged." (Description by Richie Unterberger at All Music)

"What an imbecilic, irrelevant comment by Richie Unterberger."  (Doug Schulkind)

 

Kazuhiko Katoh  ~  "Super Gas"
(Blog: The Vault ~ / ~ Japanese Music Junkies Unite)

Muy Sabroso!
"Good and varied hippie?-Folkpop/psychpop item with some tracks with close harmony vocal arrangements. This chosen track is a rather lullaby song with the guitar in a somewhat hippie-raga-mode, including a harmonium drone and some handclaps."  (From a description on the Japan acid folk pages at Psychemusic.org)

 

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Comments

[icastico]

Some I've been enjoying...

http://creepscanner.blogspot.com/2012/01/organisation-tone-float.html

http://crudcrud.blogspot.com/2011/12/el-ritmo-inconfundible-de-columbia.html

And the latest from aboombong:
http://aboombong.bandcamp.com/album/admixture

[Christopher I]

That Kazuhiko Katoh album is a classic--some really great psych/folk with unforgettable vocals. The third track 'Mahouni Kakatta Asa' has an enchanting rhythm...