It’s cold outside, and you’re all cooped up, wherever you are – maybe your posture is different when you sit at work, or maybe you walk just that much quicker to your car or the bus when the day is done. You sit in the hard plastic seats after a mercifully short stay at the bus shelter, and stare at your reflection in the window. Your mind goes back to how wonderful Summer Vacation was, when you visited exotic beaches and slept in a foreign place with tanned foreign bodies. A beautiful woman at the hostel in Lisbon shows you the mixtape her Argentinean boyfriend made her. The taxi driver in Antibes is keen to share his extensive FM bootleg collection he keeps in the glove compartment. The artsy student types at that pub in Oxford taught you the words to a bygone Northern Soul anthem over pints of piss lager. That unlabeled bootleg tape you bought on a whim at the flea market in Naples. The untagged FLAC files your esoteric music forum friends whip at you from across the planet…
These songs are, for you, an oasis away from the polluted orgy of steel and pavement that your bus trudges through. Lurching from stop to stop in rush-hour traffic, your cross-town Via Crucis slowly makes its way out of the city, inching past strip malls and bombed-out big box retailers. Home.
Radio Palma, Jan. 2023: The Lush Interior
Mixed by Sweet Palma in California, Dec. 2022
01. [00:00:00] Woo - Swingtime (1982)
Woo are one of those bands that had a precocious, albeit obscure, beginning. Though the Woo brothers – Mark and Clive Ives – had been making music for themselves since 1972. This partly explains why their debut album, self-released in 1982, reveals a mature sound and vision for the music. The LP seamlessly integrates separate streams of influence, from Jazz and Pop (somewhat simpatico with ensembles like the Penguin Cafe Orchestra or the Durutti Column), to then-nascent New Age, and is lauded as possibly the first folktronica record.
“Swingtime” is an instrumental track, though it is no less lyrical for it than any other piece in this mixtape. Though the piano, synthesizer and electric guitar seem to glide over the whole song, Mark Ives' bass thumps out a steady (if sparse) rhythm for reverb-drenched guitar and keyboard to weave around.
Woo would not release another album until the end of the decade, though they would eventually go on to achieve cult status on par with their DIY contemporaries, the Cleaners from Venus. Unfortunately, subsequent reissues of this LP are based on a highly-degraded copy of the master tapes, perhaps ill-digitized on subpar equipment. For this mixtape, I have sourced a high-fidelity transcription of the original UK issue of the Whichever Way LP.
02. [00:04:17] Serú Girán - No Llores Por Mí, Argentina (Live at Obras Sanitarias, 1982)
While Woo were quietly building their Honky Quiet Storm sound in the UK, Charly García (k), David Lebón (el. g), Pedro Aznar (b) and Oscar Moro (d), had quickly made their supergroup Serú Girán into THE premier rock band in Argentina.
García had long been known as a godfather of Argentine Rock, shepherding his bands Sui Generis and La Máquina de Hacer Pájaros (the Machine for Making Birds) to resounding success despite heavy censorship from first the Justicialist, then the Peronist, then the Military regimes. Lebón had been first a bassist, then a guitar player for several of the bands in the primordial blues ooze before Rock became a mainstream concern in Latin America, gigging and recording with La Pesada, Color Humano and (most familiar to anglophones) Pescado Rabioso. These bands are considered today the foundations of Argentine Rock, but in the late 60s and early 70s, they were seen as venues for agitators and communists. Blues bars were raided by security forces; staff, patrons and musicians were often “disappeared” and never seen again. Oscar Moro, for his part, was also a celebrated Rock pioneer, playing with Los Gatos, at first glance a Beatles knockoff like any other in Latin America - heavy drumming, Farfisa organ, tight harmony, all wrapped in cheap suits and sunglasses - though no less influential in their own country. Since then, he had become a serious session drummer, collaborating with the aforementioned García and Lebon several times as a hired musician.
Pedro Aznar, for his part, was a singular phenomenon in the country by 1982. The band’s bassist was also an accomplished singer and multi-instrumentalist, a musical genius with perfect pitch and a hunger to prove himself one of the finest musicians on the continent, if not the world, all at the age of 23. By the beginning of the year, halfway through recording Serú’s 5th album, he had communicated to the rest of the band his intention to travel to America to study music at Berklee in the Fall term. Though the band searched high and low for a replacement, they decided instead to take a break while Aznar studied, and scheduled a run of farewell shows at the now-hallowed Obras Sanitarias handball stadium in Buenos Aires.
A spur-of-the-moment decision by the band’s roadies to record the shows on 16-track tape is to thank for the release of No Llores por Mí, Argentina, for decades the only official document of the greatest band in Argentina at the peak of their collective powers. A cathartic, Clash-inspired stomper, the title track is an acerbic open letter to the Argentine bourgeoisie, who were happy enough to dance to “fashionable music”, and whose pastime was to laugh at the “idealists” who were dissatisfied by the state of the country as it careened into the politically-motivated Falklands War later in the year.
03. [00:07:24] Fuzzy Haskins - I Think I Got My Thang Together (12" Version) (1978)
Clarence Eugene “Fuzzy” Haskins was a founding member of The Parliaments, George Clinton’s doo-wop group, starting in the mid-1950s. He managed to hang on for a few decades, up to the mid-70s when contractual disputes with Clinton led to his exile from the group in June, 1977. By this point, The Parliaments' buttoned-down doo-wop crooner look had been supplanted by Sly Stone-style Black Psychedelia (Parliament, Funkadelic), and later by rhinestone-studded Disco verging on Afro-Futurism á la Sun Ra (Parliament-Funkadelic).
Haskins was ostensibly supplanted by the crop of fresh young players that Clinton had hired for P-Funk, such as Bernie Worrell and Bootsy Collins, but examination of the credits for his solo LPs shows that the sides are replete with active P-Funk members (Worrell, Michael Hampton, Garry Shider) as well as other P-Funk alumni (Glen Goins and Jerome Brailey). Perhaps this is because Haskins was still tied to Westbound Records, which never had a huge roster of musicians available to record with him, apart from his old band.
Whatever the circumstances behind Haskins' split from P-Funk, he wasn’t completely off the Mothership. He had jettisoned management and musical direction somewhat, but he managed to retain the gut-busting sense of humor and sexual frankness of his previous band. His cheeky “Okay, bye!” ad-lib at the end of the first verse always gets me to crack a smile.
04. [00:11:21] P.F. Flyer - Rest Easy (1970?)
Between the esoteric name of the album (P.F. Flyer Play Gianchetta Jazz), and the paucity of information surrounding it, it’s very tough to say anything about it. According to an E-Bay listing (archived here), this LP was originally pressed in minute quantities, probably no more than a couple dozen, in the early 1970s by an aspiring dance choreographer named Anthony Gianchetta. The musicians have no other credits to their name, and the back cover copy reveals precious little:
Anthony Gianchetta is a teacher and choreographer operating his own schools in San Francisco and Concord. He has collaborated with a rock group and recorded rock and jazz rhythms which have gained him wide recognition in his own schools as well as in the special classes he coducts in studios around the Bay Area. His style is the result of a long and varied career in the professional theatre.
Gianchetta’s career, obscure as it may be, probably did not include the nerve-curdling fuzz guitar, recorded straight from the pedal, that pervades this LP, or the heavy drumming, or the dour Hammond B3 drone that underscores it all. Per the commenter on the Discogs listing:
He had some ideas about using “hip” rock music for his dance routines, so somehow a group of his pupils got a band together and took up the task. The problem is that they were stoner hippy kids and decided to basically ignore his instructions and jam out this mostly undanceable instrumental psych excursion instead. It seems that everyone was pretty upset with this, but they basically had no choice but to release it as is at that point. It must have been a tiny micro pressing, with most of them probably ending up destroyed or discarded.
05. [00:14:16] Robin Kenyatta - Last Tango in Paris (1973)
Robin Kenyatta made his chops as a Free Jazz flautist and sideman in the mid-to-late-60s, and, like many other Black musicians, moved to Europe to record and perform. When he returned to the States in 1972, he switched gears and hitched his wagon to the rising tide of Jazz-Funk and Fusion. Now signed to Atlantic, Kenyatta first released “Gypsy Man” in 1973, a Creed Taylor-esque Jazz Fusion workout which included Gato Barbieri’s “Last Tango In Paris,” which was fast becoming a contemporary Jazz standard in its own right.
Kenyatta’s flute features prominently throughout the record, punctuated by the evergreen rhythm section of Billy Cobham and Stanley Clarke. Of the innumerable renditions of Barbieri’s “Tango,” this one proves to be dynamic and supremely interesting, but at the same time laid-back and mellow in all the right ways.
06. [00:18:56] William S. Fischer - Eguntto Batez (It Was A Day) (1972)
Despite being one of Atlantic’s Musical Directors during its late-60s heyday, William S. Fischer is one of the more puzzling enigmas in recent music history. Though prolific in their Home Office, he was obscure to the point of non-existence in the record bins. Prior to this, his only recorded output was on another obscure European label, Embryo. How in the world does such a person, born into poverty in Bolivar County, Mississippi, manage to perfectly integrate Black Psychedelia, traditional Basque melodies, and a Gothic obsession with Witches and Magic? The liner notes are maddeningly opaque, merely giving some context to the last point, explaining some of the history of witches in Euskera, but remaining mum on Fischer and what he was doing in Spain during the Franco era.
In the end, we may never know the Why. According to collectors such as Egon Alapatt, Fischer is incapacitated due to Dementia. Perhaps at some point, a record label will release more gems from his alleged archive, but in the meantime, we must content ourselves with having the object, even if we are missing the context.
07. [00:23:53] The Clientele - Step Into The Light (2005)
The Clientele are one of those bands that seemed to be absolutely everywhere and nowhere during their time in the spotlight. Or, at least, that’s what they seemed to me – the English equivalent of late-aughts, early-teens Indie darlings Real Estate here in America. Having spent the last few years of the 20th century issuing singles from the comfort of their Tascam Portastudio, the Clientele had managed to muster quite a lot of buzz with their first two albums. When the time came to record their follow-up LP, Suburban Light, the band decided to decamp to Walthamstow to cut it at an honest-to-god music studio.
However, despite the slick production and warm sound, the band continues to embody the uncanny feeling of loneliness and alienation that comes with living in detached suburbia, albeit their experience is obviously quite different from mine. Sure, the tasteful string quartet adds a certain airy panache to the trio’s sound, and the soft delivery is a callback to the ethereal pop of Sarah Records, but distinctly flavored by MacLean et al.’s life in the melting pot of North London, and their love for French surrealist poetry.
Obviously I’d like to shrink away from the notion that I’m presenting a fairly popular band like The Clientele as some sort of fresh, new discovery. Their music has never been out of my rotation for very long, and Suburban Light is an album I return to on an almost weekly basis. It’s an album that rewards repeated listens, not necessarily by revealing something new about itself every time, but rather by remaining a supremely pleasant listen… every time.
08. [00:27:44] Sakari Kukko - Huolet Ei Tunnu (Worries Are Not Felt) (1979)
Piirpauke (Karelian for “Racket”) is one of those extremely esoteric European Progressive Rock bands that seem omnipresent in the mid-70s, achieving fame in their native Finland along with other jazz-rock visionaries such as Jukka Tolonen and Eero Koivistoinen. Though I much prefer the music of these latter two, Piirpauke and its leader, Saari Kukko, are important exponents of traditional Finnish music in a non-hokey folkloric setting.
The lyrics for this track are in Sámi, featuring the rich baritone of Lappist vocalist Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, countered by Kukko’s slithering saxophone lines. Some prog rock connoisseurs call this a boring snoozefest, but the careful building of tension between the vocals and saxophone tickles me to no end.
09. [00:31:29] Mario Lavezzi - In Alto Mare (1979)
Mario Lavezzi had been kicking around the Italian music scene since the very early 70s, more or less a contemporary of the better-known Lucio Battisti. Truth be told, I was first familiar with label-mate Loredana Bertè’s cover of “In Alto Mare”, released a year after this original version. Though not much has changed, Lavezzi’s vocal complements the music nicely. The Paisà-chic vibe brings you instantly to the sun-kissed Sorrentine littoral, winding pavement, shaved ice with lemon juice, cheap wine, gelato… the whole nine yards.
10. [00:36:09] Kassav' & Jocelyn Mocka - Doudou (1982)
Kassav' were, by all accounts, a killer band (the Antillean collective’s name is a reference to the lethal levels of cyanide in the Cassava root, expunged only through proper cooking). In the late 80s and early 90s, they rode a wave of increased interest by the Francophone public in pop music from the Outre Mer, like Biguines and Zouks and Gwo Ka rhythms from the Antilles. Formed from the cream of Guadalupeén musicians, they took Parisian clubs by storm and entrenched Caribbean music as THE alternative dance music in opposition to the then-nascent (and much less sophisticated) Euro-Disco/HiNRG scene.
Before all that, however, Kassav' were simply a hard-working band trying their hardest to gain a toehold in the French music industry while such a thing was still financially feasible, and to leave a permanent mark on it. Before long, demand for Kassav’s music in the Metropole and Outre Mer became so great that the band was soon backing its own members on solo albums, the first of which appears to be featuring bassist Jocelyn Mocka.
11. [00:41:57] Kano - Baby Not Tonight (1981)
Kano had found latent success by the 2010s due to the inclusion of the (absolutely fantastic, impeccably-produced) “Can’t Hold Back (Your Loving)" in Grand Theft Auto V on fictional San Andrean airwaves. When Luciano Ninzatti (g), Stefano Pulga (synth) and Matteo Bonsanto shacked up at the inauspiciously-named General Recording Sound Studios in Milan in late ‘79, all they had in mind was total domination on the dancefloor. Their production company, Fulltime, would eventually prove itself a mainstay of Italo Disco, an important forum for the dissemination of criminally-catchy Disco music sung in more-or-less passable English by any random guido who could hold a note. Within that field, Kano distinguished themselves by crafting intricate, multi-layered backing tracks and leveraging their combined experience working with lesser materials and facilities, to compete with Giorgio Moroder and his disciples in West Germany and France.
Kano, their project with Caribbean vocalist Glen White, matured after their first LP became a massive crossover success, gaining traction across European and American dancefloors. Their second effort, New York Cake, lowered the tempo somewhat from a HiNRG frenzy to a more manageable BPM, to great effect. “Baby Not Tonight” thoughtfully provides a mellow, restrained backing to Glen White’s fantastic vocal performance.
12. [00:48:38] Joe Pass - Not Fade Away (1966)
For jazz purists, the less is said about this Joe Pass LP, the better. Though critics write it off as a money-grab LP recorded at a very low point in the guitarist’s life as he struggled with heroin addiction, it actually came some years since Pass graduated from the controversial addiction treatment-cum-cult Synanon. Most of the material suffers from aimless noodling despite the ostensibly clear remit: tarted-up post-bop covers of Rolling Stones songs… and yet, the single compelling cut from it is this nearly-unrecognizable (but for the final bars of Pass’s solo) cover of Not Fade Away.
13. [00:51:11] Takeru Muraoka & His New Group - Lady Boogie (1978)
There’s not much to say about this snippet of Japanese fusion. It sounds nice and it certainly does the job of segue-ing between the previous and the following tracks, but it’s really nothing too special.
14. [00:51:52] Peter Hunnigale & The Night Flight Band - Be My Lady (1986)
Street Soul and Lovers Rock would certainly have suffered, had Peter Hunnigale never graced the stage. Be My Lady was Hunnigale(sometimes rendered “Hunningale”)’s first single on his newly-formed Street Vibes label, a small-time independent concern managed with British Reggae producer Fitzroy “Wizard” Blake, primarily a vehicle for his collaborations with Hunnigale. (parenthetically, I think it’s of paramount importance to point out the terrific design for their labels – a teal illustration of a couple of dreadlocked fellows whipping the shit out of their BMW series 4. Wonderful stuff.)
Hunnigale found some success as a singer in Britain, and, while he is widely appreciated by the Black community there, he seems to be a complete unknown outside the UK or Jamaica, except, of course, in Record Freak circles. Be My Lady is a fantastic slow ballad, one of those tracks you play to get the dancefloor to calm down a little, to slow to a measured Lovers Rock shuffle and catch their breath. Perhaps to gaze into your partner’s eyes and seeing something truly beautiful there.
15. [00:55:50] Gert Thrue - Cepheus (1977)
Recorded on the cheap in a single afternoon, Gert Thrue’s Sound Painted Pictures Of Cosmic Love is a weird little outlier in Kosmische Musik. First of all, it was recorded in Denmark, by a semi-reclusive Prog Rock obsessive, in a converted barn. Thrue’s focus was the Hammond Organ, whose psychedelic washes of chords are particularly forward on this LP, most of which was improvised on the spot due to lack of time to practice the pieces. While side A of the LP, the 18-minute title track, suffers from being so obtuse and opaque at first listen, the second side opens up and becomes a beautiful trio of Alice Coltrane-esque tunes that manages to be lush and spare at the same time.