Freddie Roach – My People (Soul People)
Freddie Roach – Mas Que Nada
Freddie Roach – Prince Street

Here on record store day it makes good sense to post up something bought in a local independent record store. Action Records, sometimes also known as As The Record Turns, is a largely hidden gem of a record store tucked away in Hollywood, actually literally on Hollywood Blvd. The handful of times I’ve been there’s always been records that I’ve never seen before just casually hanging out all over the place. Kevin the owner knows the quality and worth of his records and the price for many of them surely gives average record buyers sticker shock, but there are good deals to be made here just not jackpot deals, more like you get a $100 record for $50. Two things I especially like about Kevin and this store. One, sometimes the really expensive price tag on the record cut down to 1/2, and two, sometimes after you buy some records he’ll just throw in some additional records. In fact everytime I have gone, some of the records I wanted to buy but didn’t have enough money for ended up coming home with me because of magnanimity of the owner (as I mentioned here with the LP from Arnold Bean, this record was better than the ones I paid money for!).

This record from Freddie Roach was not one of those freebies, it was a record that I got significantly less than the price tag and is an example of the quality of material at this store. Freddie Roach didn’t make to much of a splash in an organ field dominated by Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, Shirley Scott, Groove Holmes and others, but he was a player with great great feeling, and is maybe my favorite out of that bunch.

My People was one of Roach’s last records for Prestige (he’d also cut some thoroughly enjoyable records on Blue Note), which is really unfortunate because it is recorded just as things get funky and I would have loved to have gotten more music from Freddie Roach out of that period of time.   We do get a little bit of that soulful funky jazz here, especially in the opener, “Prince Street,” a track dedicated to what Roach describes as the “soul center” of Newark, N.J., and on “I’m On My Way”.  There’s also a bit of funk in one of the better versions of “Mas Que Nada” that I’ve heard.  I like especially Eddie Wright’s guitar on this piece, it should seem a bit out of place, but it amps up grittier elements that aren’t normally hanging around this classic track. 

The most interesting song is the title track, “My People (Soul People),” which is a mostly standard blues, but features Freddie Roach doing some spoken word bits and singing with great soul. It’s a great example of the rising tide of black consciousness that was starting to find it’s expression more and more in African-American music in the 1960s.  Roach takes things a step further with the liner notes, where he lays out a surprising deconstruction (at least on a jazz album’s liner notes in 1967) of the word “Freedom” link true freedom to economic self-determination.  

Sounds like Brother Roach could have been teaching Sociology classes!  Unfortunately, this was more or less his last album, his career never really took off, and I don’t know if anyone has written much about what happened to Freddie Roach in the years since.  Perhaps I’ll have to figure that story out, but for now, we have the music…music that I wouldn’t have and you wouldn’t get a chance to listen to without independent record stores, so please SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL INDEPENDENT RECORD STORES!!!

Cheers,

Michael

Asha Bhonsle & Suresh Wadkar – Yeh Hawa Yey Fiza
Asha Bhonsle – O Babuaa Yeh Mahua
Suresh Wadkar – Aye Zindagi Gale Lagaa Le

Back in early March Records LA set many local DJ’s diggin’ hearts aflame with several boxes of choice LPs and 45s from India. Just like the fool I am, when the message went out that the records had arrived, I did not go in for quick visit. Time was just too tight that Friday. Later on someone posted a thank you to Scott with a youtube clip of “Yeh Hawa” from this LP, the soundtrack to the film Sadma, released in 1983. I instantly recognized the song as the sample for one of my fave songs of 2010, Gonjasufi’s “Sheep” and just as instantly cursed myself for not getting to the store when all these LPs arrived (apparently there were multiple copies of Sadma, and reasonably priced for the top-shelf quality at $35). After a couple of weeks obsessising about my loss, I was however able to secure a copy of this LP for myself via a UK dealer on Ebay and now I get to share it with you.

Sadma is a 1983 remake of a film from a few years earlier. Most of the footage is the same, with some newly recorded songs and dance numbers, but the story is the same.  A young woman has an accident and loses her memory, somehow gets sold to a brothel where she meets a shy dude who takes her in and they fall in love, only to be separated when she regains her memory (thus forgetting all about him) and returns to her old life.  A tragic yet appealingly over-the-top story, as all good Bollywood films are. The music was composed by Ilaiyaraaja (sometimes his name is spelled Illaraja, which you have to admit sounds like just the perfect Indian Rapper/Producer name) and features a couple of serious stars of India music in vocalists Asha Bhonsle and Suresh Wadkar. “Yeh Hawa Yey Fiza” was the main reason I obsessed about this record, it’s such a face-melting, bewilderingly fantastic track that I don’t even know how to describe it. Lush and dreamy then bomb ass funky with all kinds of minor deviations along the way. Hearing the original and understanding the ways that Gaslamp Killer chopped it up, extended a few bits and looped others to match the narrative from Gonjasufi just makes me appreciate “Sheep” even more.

“Aye Zindagi Gale Lagaa Le” has a similar schizophrenic structure, perfect for the manic pace of Bollywood dance numbers and yeilding lots of suprising sounds (my favorite is when the strings and drums hit about 1:30 in…dyno-mite!). “O Babuaa Yeh Mahua” maintains a basic structure throughout with drums that seem to match the strange seemingly Native American inspired fantasy dance number (one of the few songs that remains the same between Sadma and the original film).

Surprisingly this is the first Bollywood record that I’ve actually owned, though I’ve been a fan of the music from 1970s & 1980s India for years and years and a former partner in crime Soul Marcosa runs an excellent Monthly featuring many of these sounds, Masala Beat Club. I’ve always wondered how closely the composers work with the film makers, if the music is composed first and then they try to creatively represent it in the film, or if they start with the dance sequences then figure out the music. Actually watching the opening of Sadma which features “Yeh Hawa” it seems like the music comes first then they work on the dance pieces…it’s the only way I can make sense of that meditative dude chanting in the middle of the beach (and the song) admist all the revelry.

Also, FYI…Scott at Records LA just got in another batch of rare LPs from India, (including a Bollywood version of Herbie Hancock’s Rock-It!?!?) it might be a good time to check it all out…Record Store Day is after all only a week away.

Cheers,

Michael

Lafayette Afro Rock Band – Hihache
Lafayette Afro Rock Band – Azeta
Lafayette Afro Rock Band – Nicky

Picked this up a little while ago on a trip to San Diego. I’d never seen a copyof this one before and so even though the condition was pretty bad, I figured that it was worth the relative cost, especially since it has one of my all time favorite drum breaks, “Hihache.” Everybody seems to think the Lafayette Afro Rock Band were originally from France, but they actually had their roots in NY.

Lafayette played some pretty heavy funk, laced with with some African influences (which probably explains how they made it onto Editions Makossa) but it wasn’t until they made the move to Paris that they found a bit of popularity. Stardom really escaped them until Hip-Hop DJs started playing and later on sampling their work.

“Hihache” from this EP has been sampled by a few and easy to see why, you don’t get many drum breaks that are this funky, this long and this clean from this period. I also love that cowbell that comes in just as the other instruments start to lay down the full rhythm. I’ve also posted a couple of other tracks from this EP, basically the ones that don’t actually skip. I’m sure some day I’ll run into a better copy, but since these are the tracks I actually dig from it, I might just hold on to this one…there is a special charm to crackling vinyl.

Cheers,

Michael

Rastus – Sailin’ Easy
Rastus – Black Cat (live)
Rastus – Multi-Colored Taxicab

As I’ve mentioned here before, one of the things I look for when I’m digging for new sounds in the rock aisle are bands with horn sections. When I saw this record that boasted a 5 piece horn section, I was pretty much sold, but held back just to see if I could find any info about the band and their sound. A single youtube clip for “Sailin’ Easy” was all I needed to swing back around and pick up this double LP, the debut for the band Rastus.

Rastus were a 9 piece band out of the Cleveland area that had a very Tower of Power meets Chicago kind of vibe. They appear to have released a second LP after this, but I can only vouch for this one. “Sailin’ Easy” was one of my favorite discoveries diggin’ in the crates last year, with it’s punchy horns and cymbal crashes during the marching band meets b-boy styled opening and breakdowns.  In addition to the sound I just love the sentiment as the lead singer and the band rap about “Livin’ Life Without a Care.”  “Rap” is a pretty appropriate term here, because a lot of the delivery and the braggadocio of the lyrics has more than just a bit of proto-Hip-Hop in it.  I have no idea if it would go over well, but I’d love to drop the needle on this song at Funky Sole or some place where B-boys & B-girls really get down.

Of the group’s two versions of Brian Auger’s “Black Cat” I’ve chosen to post the live one, since this one includes a pretty tasty and clean live drum break (though it does go a bit too long, but hey drummers…what can you do?) the final selection is a strange number called “Multi-Colored Taxicab” that seems like it’s a metaphor for something else, but at the same time could be just a straight up (and rather rare) ode to taxicabs. Though it hasn’t been updated in a couple of years it appears there’s a website that fills in the blanks on Rastus and is worth a check out if you dig the sounds.

Cheers,

Michael