The February 2nd, 2016 edition of Generoso and Lily’s Bovine Ska and Rocksteady that contained a twenty-years-in-the-making spotlight on Charlie Moo’s MOO’S LABEL began with the smooth sounds of the rocksteady duo and Ewan and Denver’s cut on Jolly in 1967, “I Want You So Bad” and ended that first set with another rocksteady duet featuring a young Phil Pratt teaming up with Ken Boothe on Caltone in 1968 with “Sweet Song For My Baby.” We followed that first set up with another set of rare rocksteady before going into our weekly mento set that began with the voice of Alerth Bedasse and his cut for Chin’s in 1956, “Calypso Pepperpot.” To get you ready for the Moo’s Label spotlight we ended the first hour with a rollicking set of Jamaican rhythm and blues beginning with The Mellowlarks cut that came out on Coxsone All Stars label in 1960, “No More Wedding.” When that set ended, we started our long overdue spotlight of the Moo’s label.
Given the name of this show, we’ve wanted to have this spotlight for a few years now, and after plenty of searching and scouting, we’ve finally gathered enough tracks to present the Moo’s label spotlight.
During the thriving era of Jamaican Rhythm and Blues, many shop owners took a crack at the recording business. Labels sprung up as quickly as they ceased to exist, but many managed to capture the earliest sounds of some of Jamaica’s soon to be superstars and such was the case with Charlie Moo’s label. According to Prince Buster, Charlie Moo owned an ice cream parlor at the corner of Orange and North Street. This parlor was a popular meeting spot in the heart of a lot of musical activity. This humble parlor would soon transform into the Beverley’s Record Store when Leslie Kong and Charlie Moo became business partners, but Moo would only produce records himself for two years. We began with an artist who was essential during the early Jamaican Rhythm and Blues period and who recorded three tracks for Charlie Moo, Lloyd Clarke. This is his earliest cut for the Moo’s label, “60 years,” from 1961.
Beginning the second set is vocalist Owen Gray, who was already an established star during the Jamaican Rhythm and Blues period, having cut many important singles for Coxsone Dodd’s Worldisc label, including “On the Beach,” the very first Jamaican track to mention a sound system. He only cut this one track, “Time Will Tell,” for Charlie Moo, but would eventually cut many more for Charlie’s business partner, Leslie Kong and his Beverley’s label.
One of the more amazing experiences that Lily and I made had our recent visit to Rome was a visit to Cinecitta, the famed Italian movie studio that was built by Mussolini in the late 1930s to save the fading film industry which not only produced propaganda films during the early years of fascism, but also created many popular narrative films, including those of directors such as Raffaello Matarazzo. Unfortunately, the studios were bombed during the final months of World War Two, the damaged buildings and sets became home to thousand of displaced refugees for a few years before being revived as a functioning production studio during the Neo-Realist period. This Neo-Realist era would subsequently turn into the golden age of Cinecitta with the rise of Italian directors, Frederico Fellini, and Bernardo Bertolucci. as well as the studios becoming the place to shoot sword and sandal films by not only Italian auteurs but also famed American directors like Joseph L. Mankiewicz who shot his epic, Cleopatra which starred Elizabeth Taylor there in 1963.
As the 1960s rolled on, the studios began to crank out numerous Italian or spaghetti westerns. a fact that shouldn’t be lost on anyone who reads this blog as I have reviewed several rare titles within the genre over the last few years. What I did not know until visiting Cinecitta is that many of these films are not revered in Italy as they have been deemed too colonial in their message by a predominance of Italian film goers. That message of the antiquated perception of these titles was made quite clear during our tour of Cinecitta, though the museum still chose to honor this genre with an impressive, albeit smallish portion of their museum. Long gone were the western town sets that littered the lots of the studio, they were demolished in the 1980s to make way for the construction of sets depicting ancient Rome which were needed for a new generation of sword and sandal films like HBO’s 2004 series Rome. This fact being somewhatbizarre to me as the spaghetti western was originally the genre that took sword and sandal out of Italian mainstream popularity. Lily and I were still thrilled to see their spaghetti western exhibit which had a film tribute to the genre, Clint Eastwood’s actual poncho from Sergio Leone’s classic, For A Few Dollars More, and a few rare film posters strew around the western saloon edifice for effect. One such poster was that of a rarely seen 1975 spaghetti that surprisingly was directed by horror master Lucio Fulci (The Beyond, Zombie) that caught Lily’s eye, Four Of The Apocalypse. I was also intrigued and immediately went online to pick up a copy through the folks at Blue Underground who had it waiting for us when we returned from Italy.
Released in 1975 when the western was fading out of vogue for the less costly to produce Eurocrime film, Four Of The Apocalypse was banned in several countries on its initial release because of, you guessed it, the graphic violence and sadistic cruelty that mark many a subsequent Fulci film and although the violence is fairly disturbing at points that should not dissuade you from seeing a very personal and at times, emotionally complex late spaghetti western. No stranger to the western genre after two successful adaptations of Jack London’s White Fang in 1973 and 1974, Fulci drew from two well-known 19th century short stories from famed western writer Bret Harte, The Outcasts Of Poker Flats and in the last third of the film, Fulci uses Harte’s heartwarming tale, The Luck Of Roaring Camp. Our film begins with gambler Stubby Preston (an extremely well-coiffed Fabio Testi) as he arrives via coach to the rollicking gold town of Salt Flats with a plan to bust the town’s casino to only be met by the town’s sheriff, who immediately locks up Stubby in the town pokey with a pregnant hooker named Bunny (Lynne Frederick), the town drunk, Clem (Michael J. Pollard, the wheel man from Bonnie and Clyde) and Bud (Harry Baird), an African American man who does not have all of his marbles. The four quickly bond in the cell and are soon shuffled out of town by the apathetic sheriff when vigilantes decide to do on a murderous coup.
The quartet are cast out upon a wagon but are not at odds with one another. Sure, there is sometime acrimonious sexual tension between Stubby and Bunny, and Clem is savagely jonesing for a drink but all in all our protagonists have accepted their roles as outcasts and are supportive of one another as they travel onward. Our group soon stumbles upon a well-meaning wagon train of religious crusaders who distill of bit of homespun wisdom on our misfit travelers but after a few words and a meal, they all go their separate ways. Juxtaposing the harmony is the sudden jarring inclusion of Chaco (Thomas Milian) a vile Charlie Mansonesque killer, complete with tattoos fashioned under his eyes, who seems to unable to move an inch without killing something in his way and whether that target is a wild animal or the lawmen that are following Chaco, they are doomed to die and in the case of one sheriff, he is brutally tortured and mutilated before dying. Following the carnage, there is a scene that seems to be pulled from Jodorowsky’s psychedelic western El Topo, when Chaco feeds our four misfits some peyote but a trippy voyage does not follow as indeed this Chaco is bad news for everyone he touches and this moment of letting their guard down will cost our broken heroes dearly. Even though the four escape death through the hands of Chaco, they are more damaged than ever before and must make their way to safety with a wounded member on a stretcher and a soon to be delivering Bunny. They will walk through blazing heat and snow, landing in a ghost town before an eventual visit to an all male mining camp which provides some of the most hopeful moments in Four Of The Apocalypse, moments that are directly pulled from the pages of Harte’s whimsical story, The Luck Of Roaring Camp.
Beautifully lensed by cinematographer Sergio Salvati, and a folksy score that is more McCabe and Mrs. Miller than Morricone, Four Of The Apocalypse consistently strives to be a cut above the later Italian westerns of that period. All of our leads put in fine performances with special notice going to Milian who completely embodies the horror within the maniacal Chaco. Milian is absolutely terrifying and gobbles up screen time whenever he appears in the film. As for the well-noted graphic violence that Fulci employs in Four Of The Apocalypse, it does in fact hurt the film to the extent that it goes beyond what is necessary to amplify Thomas Milian’s performance as Chaco. It is almost like Fulci felt the need to add the red stuff because be believed that the character of Chaco wasn’t compelling/dreadful enough to be the target of the viewer’s ire. Milian’s psycho method-acting driven performance is definitely enough to make you burn with hatred against Chaco and thus audiences could’ve been spared the extra cruelty that is more off-putting than emotionally effecting.
Regardless of the extemporaneous violence, I would still would place Fulci’s Four Of The Apocalypse along with Enzo G. Castellari’s 1976 masterpiece, Keoma as one of the best examples of a late-era Italian western. Though these films may not be seen as high art in preset day Italy, to me they still resonate as having a brave originality that most American westerns of the same era never possessed.
We started the January 26th. 2016 episode of Generoso and Lily’s Bovine Ska and Rocksteady with two sets of dynamite rare ska beginning with The Spanishtown Ska Beats on the Soulsville Center Label in 1965 doing the original version of the song that Keith and Tex made famous, “Stop That Train.” A mento set followed which ended with the Sugar Belly Combo and their flying bamboo saxophone version of the classic mento of “Rucumbine” which was released on Studio One in 1966. We ended the first hour with a long set of early reggae that started with a version to version excursion of the Mediators 1970 hit on Success, “When You Go To A Party.” After that set we began our half hour spotlight of the TEEM LABEL…
Born Patrick Lloyd Francis, Jah Lloyd, who was also known as Jah Lion and Jah Ali, was introduced to the growing music industry in Kingston when he moved from his hometown of St. Catherine to Trench Town at the age of 12. Early in his recording career, he was a founding member of The Eagles. However, he would not stay with the group, and Francis joined strengths with Fitzroy Bunny Simpson to form The Mediators (sometimes noted as The Meditators). The group recorded for Coxsone Dodd, but Francis found a place with Rupie Edwards, who not only recorded the duo but also gave Francis a job as a salesman for the Success label and record shop. After working for Success for two years, Francis knew many of the key players in the record industry, and when he himself wanted to record again, he approached Lee Scratch Perry. Inspired by the rise of deejays, particularly Big Youth, Francis decided to toast over records rather than sing for the Upsetter label. After recording a few tracks for Lee Scratch Perry, Francis decided to open up his Teem label with his brother Vincent where he would produce other artists and release some of his own recordings as well.
Francis’s former singing partner, Bunny Simpson re-entered his life, this time with his new group The Diamonds. At this point, they had recorded for Stranger Cole and Derrick Harriot, but at Teem, they scored a big hit with “Shame and Pride.” Francis introduced The Diamonds to Joseph “JoJo” Hoo-Kim, who produced them at Channel One, where the group, who eventually became known as The Mighty Diamonds, rose to great success.
The Deranged Road Film That Is Lee Man-hee’s The Road To Sampo
Before reading any review of the 1975 film, The Road To Sampo, one must first gain an appreciation for the film’s director, Lee Man-hee, who holds the dubious distinction of being the first South Korean director to be arrested for violating his country’s National Security Law.
By 1965, Lee, an awarded Korean War veteran himself, had become the godfather of the post-war government funded, anti-Communist war film with such popular efforts as 1963’s YMS-504 Of The Navy and Marines Are Gone when he set out to make The Seven Female POWs which depicts a North Korean officer who, while transporting seven female South Korean nurse prisoners, kills a unit of allied Chinese soldiers who attempt to rape the women. The North Korean officer then convinces his unit defect to South Korea to avoid possible court martial from his superiors. Upon seeing the full film, censors imprisoned director Lee as they felt that The Seven Female POWs humanized the North Koreans while simultaneously showing the American soldiers as unsympathetic. Lee was subsequently released on probation after the South Korean film community protested his arrest but as part of his probation agreement, Lee was forced to edit over forty minutes of the final cut which made the final film virtually incomprehensible that led to the first negative reviews of his career. The arrest did damage Lee’s reputation, but he still ended up directing some thirty six films in the following ten years before his untimely death at the age forty five in 1975 during the editing of his counterculture road film, The Road To Sampo.
It should be noted that similar to American actor Robert Mitchum’s 1948 scandalous arrest for marijuana possession, which temporarily forced the actor out of contention for glamorous films into a career where he took more salacious roles like Harry Powell in Night Of The Hunter and Max Cady in Cape Fear, the Lee Man-hee’s arrest opened the director up to more experimental methods and themes away from the traditional filmmaking that marked his early career. What then followed in 1966 were Lee’s The Water Mill and Late Autumn: two groundbreaking and critically heralded films that depicted a never before seen open eroticism with the latter effort, Late Autumn being shot using a minimally written script that relied more on improvisation than scripting to create a film of palpable sensuality. In 1974, after almost a decade of pushing the creative envelope and with his health waning, Lee began to direct the iconic film, The Road To Sampo, which incorporated his desire for experimentation with bold sexuality along with his wry social commentary during one of the darkest eras in South Korean cinema.
Released a year after French director Bertrand Blier’s revolutionary anti-establishment road film Les Valseuses, The Road To Sampo similarly takes a pairof lost male protagonists through their homeland’s countryside where they engage in a myriad of rudderless, soul-searching situations through an economically depleted era where they soon encounter an equally lost woman whom they decide to take in on their adventures. The essential difference with Lee’s film is that the woman becomes the catalyst of change for our two men who are not only looking for good times and quick cash like our “heroes” in Les Valseuses but also for some sense of stability and place in a South Korea which at the time was growing but also still reeling from years of war.
Young-dal is a wandering construction worker wandering aimlessly through the snow covered landscape looking for work until he meets the middle-aged Jeong, who has just spent a dozen years behind bars and now only seeks to return to his hometown of Sampo, a seaside town that Jeong describes as abandoned during the winter. The pair begins their journey together, and soon they descend down a hill to a small village where they grab a meal and listen to the proprietor’s lament of being understaffed as her waitress slipped away without her knowledge but with her purse which contained a lot of money. The desperate proprietor offers Young-dal and Jeong substantial money to find her runaway waitress, and, as they are without a cent, they decide to take the job, and after a short search they discover their waitress, a frantic, hostile, but brightly clad young woman named Baek-hwa who claims to have not stolen any money despite bragging about her former bosses’ purse which she has in her possession. Our men quickly realize that Baek-hwa carries more sadness than a potential for profit so they soon become a trio and head out towards Sampo.
Drawing further comparison to Les Valseuses, except with the gender roles reversed, our Baek-hwa is a fountain of overt sexuality. Baek-hwa wears the mantle of a prostitute with pride and boasts of her exploits as well as a proclivity to become undressed around Jeong and Young-dal who exhibit no sexual aggression towards her. Jeong left an eight year old daughter in Sampo before his ten years in jail, so he becomes an almost father figure to Baek-hwa, and Young-dal brags of his days as a successful street vendor of rat poison but suggests that his wife may have died from accidentally ingesting the poison that he sold. Needless to say, Young-dal is in no way looking for a woman and wishes to just work until he gets on his feet, which means that Baek-hwa’s endless sexual innuendos towards him mean virtually nothing as they travel onward.
Their intentionally loosely connected exploits include a hilarious scene where the three, who have not eaten in days, visit a village and crash a funeral in hopes of getting a meal, but they are discovered when Baek-hwa gets plastered and begins to sing and dance, much to the chagrin of the actual mourners who turn violent as they are there to grieve. In another scene, Baek-hwa leaves the group to work in a brothel but becomes violent when the johns start to assume that she is there for a sexual tryst. The three seem always out of their element and become a sad reminder of a 197os South Korea which was full of post-war homelessness and run by a harsh government that was rapidly trying to build an infrastructure but in the process is also leaving many who cannot move with the pace behind. Baek-hwa, Jeong, and Young-dal are hopelessly out of synch with the real world, so as the narrative moves forward, the film goes from comedy to heartbreaking melancholy as you begin to see their time together coming to an end as there is no place for them. Director Lee gets wonderful performances from our leads, especially Suk Mun, who played Baek-hwa and starred in the director’s last three films. Suk’s performance is beautifully textured as she creates the emotional framework for a young woman who can be alternately hysterically gleeful as she is vengeful while eminently real and vulnerable.
The Road To Sampo Complete Film w English Subs
In 2015, Suk Mun returned to acting in Jong-Teol Baek’s award-winning film, The Beauty Inside after a forty year absence during which time she only starred in one film post Lee Man-hee’s passing. As for director Lee, his entire body of work was screened at the 2005 Pusan International Film Festival that occurred on the thirtieth anniversary of his passing. That festival sparked a national resurgence of his catalog. and an long-overdue appreciation for a director who took his moment of government produced strife in 1965 and turned it into an daring collection of work.
This dish is one that I decided to make in honor of my dear friends living on the East Coast this January. This tasty Northern Italian soup has a creaminess and a smoke to it that has little to do with dairy and nothing to do with any meat. No crazy ingredients here as the creaminess comes from the cannellini beans and the smoke coming from the toasted breadcrumbs and nuts. Total prep and cooking time is about an hour so I hope you will come back to this dish anytime you need need a fast, inexpensive soup to eat on these cold winter days.
You will need for ingredients: One half head of cabbage, 1/3 cup of cashew or pine nuts, one half of a small Italian roll, four cups of vegetable broth, one pound can of cannellini beans, two sprigs of fresh rosemary, four cloves of garlic, one cup of olive oil, salt and pepper (grated romano is up to you as a topping).
Please let us know how yours turns out and stay warm this winter.
Love, Generoso
Music: Georg Philipp Telemann’s Viola Concerto, TWV 51:G9
After last week’s reggae-heavy spotlight on Willie Francis’ LITTLE WILLIE LABEL, we decided to take this week’s spotlight on the Bovine Ska back to the ska and rocksteady with the JONTOM LABEL, which features tracks from one of our favorite producers, Phil Pratt. That spotlight begins about halfway through the program, so before that, you will hear some reggae, mento, and ska.
To start off the show, we presented a reggae version to version, with the original “Afrikaan Beat” from Lester Sterling and its version, “To The Fields,” from Herman Chin-Loy. In the second set of reggae, we had another version to version matchup with The Bassies “Things A Come Up To Bump” and Sound Dimension’s take on the track, “Black Onion.”
For the mento set 30 minutes into the program, we played one of our favorites, Zach Matalon and the Sonny Bradshaw Quartet’s “Cordelia Brown,” a production from Stanely Motta and his MRS label in 1954. Then, to prepare for the Jontom spotlight, we prepared an extended set of ska showcasing the School Girls’ “Last Time,” Owen & Leon’s “How Many Times,” and Jackie Opel’s triumphant take on the gospel traditional, “Sit Down Servant.”
At the second hour mark, we were happy to finally present an eleven track spotlight on Phil Pratt’s Jontom label.
While we love Phil Pratt for much of his production work in reggae, he got his start as a producer during rocksteady for his own label, Jontom, the subject of our spotlight in this week’s edition of the Bovine Ska and Rocksteady. Born as George Phillips, Pratt moved to England as a teenager to live with his father but returned to Jamaica five years later. Upon his return, he tried to record first for Coxsone Dodd but without success, and when he met Ken Lack, who gave Pratt his stage name when he could not recall his real last name, the two hit it off. Pratt started as a singer for Caltone, and Lack decided to give Pratt his own label to release his own productions, jumpstarting Phil Pratt’s career as a producer. We started off this spotlight with a soul cut from The Uniques titled, “Do Me Good.”
Ken Boothe, who recorded “The One I Love” for Jontom, has an integral role in the creation of Phil Pratt and Ken Lack’s collaboration at Caltone and eventually Jontom. When Phil was trying to work with Coxsone, he met Ken Boothe. Ken introduced him to Roy Shirley, who introduced him to Bunny Lee, and Bunny Lee introduced Pratt to Ken Lack.
To close the show, we had a smooth set of rocksteady that included the ever-so-pretty “Mother Pepper” from Desmond Dekker, “Home, Home, Home” from Derrick Harriott, and “What To Do” from Roy Shirley.
You can listen to our full Bovine Ska and Rocksteady from January 19, 2016 HERE. Subscribe to our show on Mixcloud; it’s FREE, and you’ll get an email every Tuesday when we post a new show.
For all of our listeners on the east coast, we hope this show keeps you warm!!! Please help us and spread the word and repost if you liked the show!
Needless to say that genre of inner city African-American films that were produced in the late 1960s through the 1970s called “blaxpolitation” had its positive and negative aspects. On the negative side, the message inside a morass of poorly made crime films did little in terms of speaking about the experiences of the bulk of African Americans during that time, concentrating on the worst stereotypes of urban life to sell tickets. On the positive side, the countless films that did give a more honest view the African American community, both contemporary and historical, would not have otherwise been made if not for the success of the aforementioned crime films. Films like Gordon Parks’ The Learning Tree and Marton Ritt’s Sounder along with the mini-series creation of Alex Haley’s novel, Roots may not have happened if films centered on the African American experience were not deemed commercially viable by Hollywood standards.
Such was the situation of Ossie Davis, who was fresh off the immense commercial success of his second feature, the urban crime film, Cotton Comes To Harlem, in 1970. Davis set out to direct a film version of Houston-born playwright J.E. Franklin’s celebrated 1969 work, Black Girl, which was first produced that same year for WGBH, Boston’s public television station, and then run as an off-Broadway play in 1971. The film version of Black Girl centers on several generations of women in a family living in a small house located in the Venice Beach neighborhood of Los Angeles. The “black girl” of the title is Billie Jean (Peggy Pettitt), a seventeen year old who dreams of becoming a ballerina but who, for now, must be content with dancing at her local bar for tips while suffering the jeers from her two half-sisters and her mother. Her mother, who most everyone calls Mama Rosie (Louise Stubbs), gave birth to Billie Jean from a second husband after her first husband Earl (Brock Peters) left the family, leaving Rosie alone to raise their daughters, Norma (Gloria Edwards) and Ruth Ann (Lorette Greene). Also crammed in this tiny house are Rosie’s mother, Mu Dear (Claudia McNeil) and her live-in boyfriend from church, Herbert (Kent Martin), leaving young Billie Jean with only a small makeshift bedroom between the kitchen and the living room to practice her dancing. Unfortunately, Billie Jean’s aspirations come to a halt when Norma and Ruth Ann blab to Mama Rosie about Billie Jean’s dancing at a gin joint and dropping out of high school.
In the midst of all of this tension, Earl shows back up to the house in a new Cadillac, waving around a wad of cash, which is most likely acquired through some illegal activity and dispenses a bit of it along with a reminder as to why he left in the first place. A key moment here is when Mama Rosie suggests that Billie Jean should receive some of Earl’s gift to the family, but Earl doesn’t accept her as his own because he did not sire her and reacts with resistance to this suggestion. Billie Jean takes Earl’s initial hesitance as an insult and refuses the cash but is encouraged to take it by Mama Rosie, which speaks volumes as to Mama Rosie’s current feelings towards the raw deal she feels that she has received in having Billie Jean, her only child with a different (and unmentioned) father. Earl suggests a reconciliation with Mama Rosie, but her heart is hard at this point and closed to such things.
Making the situation worse is that Billie Jean, Norma, and Ruth Ann are constantly reminded of the real apple of their mother’s eye, the much lighter-skin colored Netta (Leslie Uggams), a boarder whom Mama Rosie took in when Netta’s mother (a silent Ruby Dee) lost her mind. Netta is far away at college doing her best but still draws the hatred of the three sisters in the house due to their mother’s clear appreciation of Netta over them, Mama Rosie’s actual flesh and blood. Soon, Netta comes home for a Mother’s Day visit, but after years of torment from Mama Rosie, Norma and Ruth Ann begin twisting Billie Jean’s mind against Netta, claiming that Netta is coming to take Billie Jean’s hovel of a room upon graduation. This sets up a tense third act where the well-intentioned Netta will walk into a buzz saw that is Mama Rosie’s three daughters.
Davis’ loose direction allows for some truly unpredictable moments, and thus the actors’ performances come through far above the plot. Gloria Edwards leads the charge here as she brings a real ferocity to her character of Norma, and the final third has a level of realistic tension that is borderline unbearable. Though the film is set around Billie Jean, Peggy Pettitt has to play with a mostly, silent, brooding character but does the most with her, especially again in the third act. Louise Stubbs is excellent throughout and paints Mama Rosie as a woman who is capable of great joy, as seen through her loving scenes with Earl, but is also someone filled with such an intense loathing of all who exist around her due to the mistakes she has made throughout her life. In the end Black Girl takes advantage of its poor socioeconomic confined setting to show you several generations of one family existing under one roof so that you can closely contrast the different attitudes based on age and skin tone. That amount of people from different eras living on top of one another soon becomes a story of missed opportunities, contempt, and the soul-crushing ability that a family can possess in destroying the dreams of those whom they are supposed to love and encourage to grow so that they can eventually leave the home for good.
Original 1972 Trailer For Black Girl
I, for one, am glad that despite its fostering of negative stereotypes, Cotton Comes To Harlem gave Ossie Davis the clout to make a film version of Black Girl. Though the advertising had to give the audience a false impression that they were about to see a blaxploitation crime film, Black Girl is an uncompromised and deeply personal story of an African-American family who is just trying to get over despite the pain they continue to cause to each another, addressing a perspective that was rarely discussed or seen in media during its time.
Our show started with two sets of rare ska beginning with Llans Thelwell and His Celestials and their 1964 cut for Federal, Mughead Ska! We ended the second set with a classic from the trombone of Don Drummond on Beverleys, Dragon Weapon. After a mento set featuring a tune from the queen of mento, Louise Bennett Hol’ M Joe on Folkways. We ended the first hour with a reggae set that contained a version to version of the Curtis Mayfield classic, Give Me Your Love from the Superfly soundtrack. 1973’s Super Soul from Junior Soul and Superfly from I-Roy from 1974. We then went into our Little Willie label spotlight.
Born in South Manchester, Jamaica, Willie Francis began his career in the Jamaican music industry as a singer in ska. After recording for Prince Buster in the late 60s under the name of Francis, by the time early reggae arrived, Willie opened up the Little Willie Record Label, where he released his own recordings as an artist and as a producer for other musicians. Operating from Francis’s record store on Orange Street, the Little Willie Records label, sometimes called Little Willie Karate Dance Records for the dancer on the label art, released quite a few great reggae cuts that we’re excited to share with you tonight.
Of the artists who stopped by Little Willie, Max Romeo went to the label to record Maccabee Version, which indeed uses the melody of “Good King Wenceslas” and intended to criticize the King James translation of the bible. Searching in the Hills was the debut recording for Calvin Scott, who Willie discovered as a teenager. Willie traveled to Rocky Point, Clarendon to record a group named the Rockydonians. Calvin was the brother-in-law of one of the members, so he hung around them. When the group arrived to the studio, they did not record for Willie; instead Calvin did. Almost ten years later, Calvin would emerge as the artist Cocoa Tea, who has continued to record reggae and has also been quite an influence on dancehall.
You can listen to our full Bovine Ska and Rocksteady from January 12th, 2016 HERE. Subscribe to our show on Mixcloud; it’s FREE, and you’ll get an email every Tuesday when we post a new show.
Happy December!!! Please help us and spread the word and repost if you liked the show! Repost anywhere you see fit.
As I finished writing this review, we were informed that David Bowie has passed away. Bowie was part of the concert featured in Nicolas Roeg’s documentary, but he was omitted from the film. Right now, I wish that he had been included, as there could never have been enough footage of David Bowie.
Last week’s entry into Lost In The 1970s With Generoso Blog featured a review of German director Stefan Paul’s 1979 concert film Reggae By Bus, which documented the 2nd edition of the now defunct Reggae Sunsplash Music Festival, which took place in Montego Bay back in year the film was released. As Jamaican music has always been near and dear to me, it was an unequivocal thrill to have finally have seen Paul’s film; though modestly shot with capable sound quality, Reggae By Bus successfully captures not only the music and energy of the event itself but of the community surrounding the festival and their thoughts on the importance of national music of Jamaica. So while I am still basking in the glow of that concert film, I thought to find Glastonbury Fayre, the only concert film directed by one of my all time favorite filmmakers and cinematographers, Nicolas Roeg, and although I am not a fan of most folk rock, I was curious to see what Roeg would come up with for an overall view of the event.
Glastonbury Fayre like Reggae By Bus chronicles the performers and goings on of the second incarnation of a world-renowned music event, the still going strong Glastonbury Festival, which continues to draw over 100,000 people a year to its southwest England location in Somerset. Going into Roeg’s film, I did have two overriding emotions: my love of Roeg’s body of work and what I would expect to be a brilliantly lensed film and my general disdain for the hypocrisy lying underneath the “free love and peace” concert events of the late 1960s/1970s. If that last statement seems unnecessarily caustic, you don’t need to look any further than the 1969 concert at Altamont that featured The Rolling Stones to get a picture of a group of people looking for flower power but instead getting open brutality. From members of Jefferson Airplane being assaulted on stage to the subsequent murder of an attendee, the violence at the Altamont Festival lead many to view that event as the definite cultural end of the peace movement that started in the 1960s.
The film does begin positively with the bassist of Kingdom Come wishing Arthur Brown a happy birthday onstage, a lovely moment for the artist whom many consider one of the pioneers of shock rock. Shortly thereafter, the event’s organizer Michael Eavis speaks directly into the camera as he explains the story of how he came up with the idea of producing the first concert, The Pilton Festival, as it was called before changing its name to the Glastonbury Fair and then finally to the Glastonbury Festival. You then see the masses of the hippy nation descend on the lush green of the fields with painted faces and instruments in hand whilst crews begin to construct the pyramid styled stage that would become the hallmark of the festival for years to come–a truly trippy sight indeed as its Egyptian-themed shape glows with a blue internal light.
As for the music, Terry Reid armed with a fantastic mixed race band of musicians (needs to be mentioned as the event itself is intensely Caucasian) pounds out a scorching version of “Dean” whilst the camera pans through the audience as the crowd gets freakier and more naked with each drum beat. There is some more random hippiness when suddenly the absolutely stunning sounds of Ashley Hutchings’ bass fuels a number played by his group, Fairport Convention. Still active to this day, Fairport Convention delivers one of the finest performances of the film. Once their number ends, though, it’s back to the drum circles and Big Bambu sized joints until an interesting meeting with a African-English Christian minister who explains his happiness with the peaceful attitude of the event. The minister’s positive report makes it fairly clear at this point that the event would not be mired in the same ugliness that had ended so many events in the states. In fact, the appearance and acceptance of a multitude of different faiths being practiced during the film clearly delineate Glastonbury from its American festival counterparts. You see a proper Anglican minister performing a small Sunday service for a crowd of somber ticket buyers whilst the Guru Maharaj speaks to thousands of flopsy mopsy dancing potential Hare Krishna recruits, which is soon followed by Arthur Brown as he ignites a few crosses for a theatrical Satantic ritual after a tune or two. Let’s just say that there is enough polytheism at the Glastonbury Fayre to make the Book of John burst into flames but at least the different tribes are all getting along.
The overall selection of music for the film surpassed my expectations, though I would’ve appreciated the omission of American folk singer Melanie and her crying and downright vicious vocal style. I imagine that some of the selections were made due to rights issues as other artists who performed at the festival such as David Bowie, Hawkwind, Brinsley Schwartz, and Pink Fairies did not make it into the final cut of the film. The final performance by Steve Winwood’s Traffic doing a an off-rhythm version of Winwood’s own hit with The Spencer Davis Group, “Gimme Some Lovin,” was a fitting end to the frenetic musical goings on at Glastonbury.
Glastonbury Fayre Trailer
One would expect that a Nicolas Roeg shot film would possess a dazzling visual style, and there are many moments that bear out Roeg’s daring camerawork, but the cinematography does vacillate between gorgeous and simply competent, which struck me as odd. I did a bit of research here and found out that although Roeg gets the credit as director, he walked away from the project after just a few days of shooting. The story goes that Roeg arrived with several cameramen in tow and shot a decent amount of film but was called away to work on his film Walkabout. An amateur cameraman, Peter Neal, gathered Roeg’s footage and blended it with the 16mm film shot by other amateurs. Though visually inconsistent, this randomness in style and quality does add to the raw energy of the event. Glastonbury Fayre stands as an important document in terms of seeing the genesis of an enduring music festival that scarcely resembles its humble origins now.
Bollito di Carne translates into “Meat Boil” and although I am using extremely pretty beef short rib for this recipe, I left the recipe as “meat” because you can use this process with pork as well. Trust me it will be delicious. The key to this dish is the boil that the aromatics get prior to adding your meat and vegetables and the subsequent cooking of the meat that is extremely slow which guarantees an almost butter texture and flavor that runs through each bite and to make things better, you will end up with a fantastic broth as well. Total prep to plate should be about three hours but there is little prep involved.
You will need: Two pounds of sliced (1/2 inch thick) beef short rib (my favorite), 4 potatoes, 3 carrots, 4 stalks of celery (preferably with the leaves on still), thyme, parsley, salt, pepper, parsley, a bay leaf, crushed red pepper. You’ll also need at least a four quart stockpot for all of the magic to happen in one place. As always, thanks for checking this out and please let me know how yours turned out.
Love,
Generoso
Music: Georg Philipp Telemann’s Trio Sonata in A minor
LILY & GENEROSO 4EVER! 