Brainbox: Down Man
From 7″ (Imperial, 1969. Also available on Very Best Album Ever.
Laxmikant Pyarelel: Ali Baba Ali Baba
From Jeed Aur Jeene Do OST (EMI, 1982)
Rudolph Johnson: Diswa
From Spring Rain (Black Jazz, 1971).
Sometimes, I’ll upload songs to my server because I plan to write a post about them but inevitably…I forget and they just linger there like forgotten orphans. I was recently dumping old songs off the server and came upon a bunch that I had neglected so I decided to just pool them all into a single posting.
We start with “Down Man” by the group Brainbox, a late ’60s rock outfit from Amsterdam (“Down Man” was their first single). Awesome, driving beat with heavy drums and that ripping guitar. Kax Lux’s vocals could be tighter but as an ex-member of a group called The Screamers, you figure he’s a bit better at wailing than crooning. This comes off a comp of what I can only assume to be Dutch rock from the late ’60s.
Next up – “Ali Baba Ali Baba,” a Bollywood soundtrack song from the movie Jeed Aur Jeene Do. I’m absolutely not much of a Bollywood collector – not because I don’t like it…it’s just a massive genre to learn about and I haven’t spent the time doing my homework. This is one of a handful I own but at least the song it boasts is pretty damn cool: a bit funky, a bit rocked out, some disco touches for real. The production quality sounds at least a decade before 1982 but as my friend Egon points out (who’s part Indian himself), Indian recording sound runs about 10 years behind, therefore, early ’80s music has that early ’70s feel.
Lastly (for today’s installment), it’s “Diswa,” one of my favorite songs off the Black Jazz label. There’s something about the soulful swing on this that reminds me a lot of John Klemmer’s “Free Soul,” probably because both Johnson and Klemmer are saxophonists and while too much sax can be a bit cheesy, I don’t “Diswa” abuses that at all. I’ve never played this out but I imagine that it’d be one solid dancefloor groover.
chatter