Madshoe's Musicology

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The Groundhogs - Hogs In Wolf's Clothing 1998

The Groundhogs were not British blues at their most creative; nor were they British blues at their most generic. They were emblematic of some of the genre's most visible strengths and weaknesses. They were prone to jam too long on basic riffs, they couldn't hold a candle to American blues singers in terms of vocal presence, and their songwriting wasn't so hot. On the other hand, they did sometimes stretch the form in unexpected ways, usually at the hands of their creative force, guitarist/songwriter/vocalist T.S. (Tony) McPhee. For a while they were also extremely popular in Britain, landing three albums in that country's Top Ten in the early '70s.

The Groundhogs' roots actually stretch back to the mid-'60s, when McPhee helped form the group, naming it after a John Lee Hooker song (the band was also known briefly as John Lee's Groundhogs). In fact, The Groundhogs would back Hooker himself on some of the blues singer's mid-'60s British shows, and also on an obscure LP. They also recorded a few of their very own obscure singles with a much more prominent R&B/soul influence than their later work.

In 1966, The Groundhogs evolved into Herbal Mixture, which (as if you couldn't guess from the name) had more of a psychedelic flavor than a blues one. Their sole single, "Machines," would actually appear on psychedelic rarity compilations decades later. The Groundhogs/Herbal Mixture singles, along with some unreleased material, has been compiled on a reissue CD on Distortions.

McPhee was always at the very least an impressive guitarist, and a very versatile one, accomplished in electric, acoustic, and slide styles. Who Will Save the World? The Mighty Groundhogs! (1972), their last Top Ten entry, saw McPhee straying further from blues territory into somewhat progressive realms, even adding some Mellotron and harmonium (though the results were not wholly unsuccessful). The Groundhogs never became well-known in the U.S., where somewhat similar groups like Ten Years After were much bigger. Although McPhee and the band have meant little in commercial or critical terms in their native country since the early '70s, they've remained active as a touring and recording unit since then, playing to a small following in the U.K. and EuropeThe Groundhogs' power trio setup, as well as McPhee's vaguely Jack Bruce-like vocals, bore a passing resemblance to the sound pioneered by Cream. They were blunter and less inventive than Cream, but often strained against the limitations of conventional 12-bar blues with twisting riffs and unexpected grinding chord changes. McPhee's lyrics, particularly on Thank Christ for the Bomb, were murky, sullen anti-establishment statements that were often difficult to decipher, both in meaning and actual content. They played it straighter on the less sophisticated follow-up, Split, which succumbed to some of the period's blues-hard rock indulgences, favoring riffs and flash over substance.After Herbal Mixture folded, McPhee had a stint with the John Dummer Blues Band before re-forming The Groundhogs in the late '60s at the instigation of United Artists A&R man Andrew Lauder. Initially a quartet (bassist Pete Cruickshank also remained from the original Groundhogs lineup), they'd stripped down to a trio by the time of their commercial breakthrough, Thank Christ for the Bomb, which made the U.K. Top Ten in 1970. AMG.

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Omar - There's Nothing Like This 1990

Designated by many as the father of British neo-soul (though his impact extends over to U.S. shores as well),singer/songwriter/producer Omar began as one of the U.K.'s most promising R&B hopefuls with his early-'90s international hit "There's Nothing Like This." However, unintentionally avoiding pop stardom, he chose never to compromise his artistic credibility, and because of that, people like India.Arie, Erykah Badu, Angie Stone, Gilles Peterson, and his biggest idol, Stevie Wonder, have all endorsed him as personal fans (with the prior three naming him as an influence). Although he gets thrown into the R&B category, Omar has no real definitive boundaries. In interesting new ways with each album, he has molded soul and urban music to fit his wide variety of influences, including ragga, hip-hop, funk, jazz-pop, rock, and Latin/Caribbean dance. Despite the lack of chart success, his original techniques have garnered him a strong legion of followers in the U.K. and a devoted fan base in diverse regions across the world.

Born October 14, 1968, in London but raised in Canterbury, Omar Lye-Fook couldn't escape the call to music even he tried. His father, Byron Lye-Fook, was a studio musician and drummer who had done work for reggae greats Bob Marley and Horace Andy, as well as the Rolling Stones. At age five, Omar was already learning how to play the drums. During his grade school years, he completed formal training in piano, trumpet/coronet, and other percussion instruments, but he also taught himself to play the bass, emulating Level 42 guitarist Mark King. As a part of various brass, jazz, and percussion ensembles, the young prodigy had performed in Italy, Brazil, and the U.S. before turning 15 years old. By the time he was a student at the prestigious Guildhall School of Music in London, he was too tempted in pursuing a professional career and left after one year. Recording for his father's Kongo label, Omar debuted in 1985 with the single "Mr. Postman" at age 16. With Kongo following up with a series of buzz-worthy white labels throughout the late '80s, Omar's favorable reception continued to grow because of his classic yet updated soul approach, which was years before neo-soul became an acknowledged subgenre.

Omar never received the type of promotion that he expected when joining RCA's roster, and so he parted ways with the label, finding himself on the French-based Naïve Records. Stating influences of soundtrack compositions and Latin jazz, he had much more personal space to work with on the 2000 effort Best by Far, indulging in his signature string and horn arrangements. However, a long period of inactivity ensued following the 2000 recording, although he did appear on U.S. rapper Common's Electric Circus LP in 2004. During that time, Omar constructed his own studio and established the record label Blunt Music. At this point in his career, he felt more independent than ever before, and with extreme satisfaction he released his sixth studio album, Sing (If You Want It), in 2006. Both U.S. (Common, Angie Stone) and U.K. artists (Rodney P, Estelle) paid homage to Omar, recording guest vocals for the album, but his crowning achievement was obtaining the Stevie Wonder duet "Feeling You," a song that Wonder apparently promised him 15 years earlier. Omar's brother, hip-hop/reggae producer Scratch Professor, also contributed, offering more drum-kicking rhythms for the dancefloor. At the end of the year, the Urban Music Awards, which acknowledge urban music artists around the globe, finally gave Omar his long, overdue praise, bestowing upon him the Best Neo-Soul Act and Outstanding Achievement Awards. A lengthy break from music followed. He got involved with acting, and in 2012, his recording career was acknowledged once more when he was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire. The next year, he released The Man on the Shanachie label with guest appearances from Caron Wheeler and Pino Palladino"There's Nothing Like This" first broke out in 1990. It peaked in the U.K.'s Top 20 the following year and remained on top of the R&B and dance charts for several weeks. This was at a time when acid jazz and house were the dominant urban forms in Britain. The soulful ballad got Omar signed to pioneering disc jockey Gilles Peterson's Talkin' Loud imprint. He recorded the albums There's Nothing Like This (1990), which was compiled from his earlier Kongo recordings, and Music (1992), a more mature outing, both in terms as a musician and a singer. (On some of these earlier recordings, he is credited as Omar Hammer, derived from his stepfather's last name.) For his following two albums, For Pleasure (1994) and This Is Not a Love Song(1997), he moved on to major-label RCA. The former had him in the studio with ex-Motown songwriters and producers Leon Ware and Lamont Dozier, who were both fans of his music. But on the latter album, keyboardist/producer David Frank (Chaka Khan, Phil Collins, Christina Aguilera, and his own group,the System) took the reins of the album's direction. AMG.

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The Blow Monkeys - Springtime for the World 1990

Give the Blow Monkeys credit for not running aground on the rocks of house music; it would have been all too easy for stylish frontman Dr. Robert to follow his fellow dapper U.K. socialist Paul Weller along the same club-hopping path that helped sink Weller's Style Council. With that said, however, the final Blow Monkeys album had problems of its own, as the group's usual lush blue-eyed soul was weakened on Springtime for the World with some unnecessary audio collages and exotic worldbeat touches. "La Passionara," which set Spanish guitar to a very familiar hip-hop breakbeat, is the best example, but the near-instrumental "Be Not Afraid," with its wailing ethnic vocal, is another head-scratcher. Such digressions are set into stronger relief by the title track, one of the group's best-ever singles. Atop an appropriately huge and busy sonic backdrop -- including gospel-ish singers, orchestration, and pounding drums -- Dr. Robert croons a paean to a better day, offering one of his frequent messages of solidarity with gay listeners -- "Just because you swing a different way/Doesn't mean that we're like night and day" -- and singing it all like he means it. That concluded the Blow Monkeys' career, save for assorted best-ofs, and Dr. Robert would follow Weller into the solo arena, while also playing bass with him occasionally. AMG.

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Dona Inah - Olha quem chega 2008

Born in São Paulo, Dona Inah surrounded herself with music since very young girl. With less than twenty years, was singing on the radio in the fifties. Among orchestras, dances, clubs and nightclubs, had no time to doubt his own talent.
In 2005, after half a century of persistence, TIM received the Award of Brazilian music, at age 70, in the category "Revelation", with the album "Divine Samba Meu" (2004). Walked the world, toured throughout Brazil, Morocco surprised and charmed Europe.
Today, experiencing the euphoria of the release of their third album, "Source of emotion" (2013). Enjoy. Thanks to Thiago França http://thiagofrancaoficial.blogspot.com.br/

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Taj Mahal - Mkutano 2005

One of the most prominent figures in late 20th century blues, singer/multi-instrumentalist Taj Mahal played an enormous role in revitalizing and preserving traditional acoustic blues. Not content to stay within that realm, Mahal soon broadened his approach, taking a musicologist's interest in a multitude of folk and roots music from around the world -- reggae and other Caribbean folk, jazz, gospel, R&B, zydeco, various West African styles, Latin, even Hawaiian. The African-derived heritage of most of those forms allowed Mahal to explore his own ethnicity from a global perspective and to present the blues as part of a wider musical context. Yet while he dabbled in many different genres, he never strayed too far from his laid-back country blues foundation. Blues purists naturally didn't have much use for Mahal's music, and according to some of his other detractors, his multi-ethnic fusions sometimes came off as indulgent, or overly self-conscious and academic. Still, Mahal's concept was vindicated in the '90s, when a cadre of young bluesmen began to follow his lead -- both acoustic revivalists (Keb' Mo', Guy Davis) and eclectic bohemians (Corey Harris, Alvin Youngblood Hart). Taj Mahal was born Henry St. Clair Fredericks in New York on May 17, 1942. His parents -- his father a jazz pianist/composer/arranger of Jamaican descent, his mother a schoolteacher from South Carolina who sang gospel -- moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, when he was quite young, and while growing up there, he often listened to music from around the world on his father's short-wave radio. He particularly loved the blues -- both acoustic and electric -- and early rock & rollers like Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. While studying agriculture and animal husbandry at the University of Massachusetts, he adopted the musical alias Taj Mahal (an idea that came to him in a dream) and formed Taj Mahal & the Elektras, who played around the area during the early '60s. After graduating, Mahal moved to Los Angeles in 1964 and, after making his name on the local folk-blues scene, formed the Rising Sons with guitaristRy Cooder. The group signed to Columbia and released one single, but the label didn't quite know what to make of their forward-looking blend of Americana, which anticipated a number of roots rock fusions that would take shape in the next few years; as such, the album they recorded sat on the shelves, unreleased until 1992.

Mahal continued to record for Columbia through 1976, upon which point he switched to Warner Bros.; he recorded three albums for that label, all in 1977 (including a soundtrack for the film Brothers). Changing musical climates, however, were decreasing interest in Mahal's work and he spent much of the '80s off record, eventually moving to Hawaii to immerse himself in another musical tradition. Mahal returned in 1987 with Taj, an album issued by Gramavision that explored this new interest; the following year, he inaugurated a string of successful, well-received children's albums withShake Sugaree. The next few years brought a variety of side projects, including a musical score for the lost Langston Hughes/Zora Neale Hurstonplay Mule Bone that earned Mahal a Grammy nomination in 1991.Frustrated, Mahal left the group and wound up staying with Columbia as a solo artist. His self-titled debut was released in early 1968 and its stripped-down approach to vintage blues sounds made it unlike virtually anything else on the blues scene at the time. It came to be regarded as a classic of the '60s blues revival, as did its follow-up, Natch'l Blues. The half-electric, half-acoustic double-LP set Giant Step followed in 1969, and taken together, those three records built Mahal's reputation as an authentic yet unique modern-day bluesman, gaining wide exposure and leading to collaborations or tours with a wide variety of prominent rockers and bluesmen. During the early '70s, Mahal's musical adventurousness began to take hold; 1971'sHappy Just to Be Like I Am heralded his fascination with Caribbean rhythms and the following year's double-live set, The Real Thing, added a New Orleans-flavored tuba section to several tunes. In 1973, Mahal branched out into movie soundtrack work with his compositions for Sounder, and the following year he recorded his most reggae-heavy outing, Mo' Roots.

The same year marked Mahal's full-fledged return to regular recording and touring, kicked off with the first of a series of well-received albums on the Private Music label, Like Never Before. Follow-ups, such as Dancing the Blues (1993) and Phantom Blues (1996), drifted into more rock, pop, and R&B-flavored territory; in 1997, Mahal won a Grammy for Señor Blues. Meanwhile, he undertook a number of small-label side projects that constituted some of his most ambitious forays into world music. Released in 1995, Mumtaz Mahal teamed him with classical Indian musicians; 1998'sSacred Island was recorded with his new Hula Blues Band, exploring Hawaiian music in greater depth; 1999's Kulanjan was a duo performance with Malian kora player Toumani Diabaté. Maestro appeared in 2008, boasting an array of all-star guests: Diabaté, Angélique Kidjo, Ziggy Marley, Los Lobos, Jack Johnson, and Ben Harper. AMG.

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Snakefinger - Greener Postures 1980

English avant-guitarist Philip Charles Lithman, aka Snakefinger, began an association with the Residents in 1969, before the group even had that name. the Residents co-produced his two albums with Snakefinger. Greener Postures was originally released in 1980. This is the peculiar and unique material of a cult guitarist extraordinaire. Each song is a quirky island in a sea of sonic oddity. The gamut on Greener Postures runs from the edgy depression ballad "Living in Vain" to "I Come From an Island" with an oppressive beat and stark message that could come fromthe Residents' The Mole Show. A listen to this album forces consideration of his immense contribution to the Residents' sound. AMG.

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V.A. - An Autumn Almanac 15 Songs in The Spirit of Ray Davies (Uncut - Magazine) 2010

An interesting collection of songs that came together thru the Uncut Magazine, as a tribute to Ray Davies. Enjoy.

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Bob Mould - Silver Age 2012

Perhaps writing his autobiography put Bob Mould in a nostalgic mood, as The Silver Age -- arriving roughly a year after See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody, co-written by Michael Azerrad -- surges forth with a molten, melodic energy unheard in Mould's music since the days of Sugar. It's no coincidence Mould introduced The Silver Age by performing Copper Blue in its entirety during a series of summer concerts in 2012: it is the forefather of this roaring blast of overdriven pop. Once again working in a power trio format -- here supported by bassist Jason Narducy and drummer Jon Wurster -- Mould sounds liberated, eschewing any of the lingering sensitivity and fragility that echoed through parts of 2009's Life and Times, an otherwise powerful guitar pop record. Here, there's nothing but finely sculpted muscle, with even the handful of slower cuts--"Steam of Hercules," the closing "First Time Joy" -- grinding with precise purpose. Mostly, The Silver Age bursts forth with relentless momentum, alternating between such nervy, coiled explosions of energy as "The Descent" and the classic power pop of "Round the City Square." Mould's songwriting is lean and tuneful, as is the music itself. This may hearken back to Sugar, but isn't a complacent trip down memory lane: this is a king rightfully reclaiming his dominion. AMG.

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Calvin Russell - Crossroad 2001

Calvin Russell was the real deal, an authentic Texas-born cowboy whose face was a trail of hard-earned lines, proof of the rough mileage he'd put on his body in the years following his birth in 1948 in Austin. For someone who likes Texas and Russell's brand of country music, the act of researching his life and misadventures can often be challenging given that much of the information printed about the singing American cowboy -- including Russell's stint in jail -- is in French. Sometimes it's in another European language. Significant writeups in the language of his birthplace occur far less often, and that's because Russell found his greatest success, professionally and personally, far from home. He was a business owner and the proprietor of a Swiss nightclub, and his wife was Swiss. A good percentage of his albums were recorded in Europe.

The singer/songwriter was one of nine children born to his working-class parents, Red and Daisy. The family lived on an unpaved road, not far from the town's wrecking yard. His mom was a waitress in the same little café where his dad did the cooking. Calvin Russell, their fourth child, spent his youth putting together hot rod cars. Before he turned 13, he'd discovered the guitar. Within a year, Russell was playing with an outfit called the Cavemen. A wild time during his teens brought him to the attention of local authorities, who sent him to juvenile detention and, later, prison. At one point in the mid-'80s, he did time in a Mexican jail, where he spent his nights on a cold concrete floor. Upon his release, he headed back to his hometown, where his condition didn't improve much. He made his bed outdoors, in the small area beneath a house, in the dirt. Russell took to the open road on a motorcycle and began to write his songs in the Texas hill country.

By 1985, he had a single to his credit. Thanks to a chance meeting with record company executive Patrick Mathe four years later at Austin's Continental Club, Russell landed a contract with the French company that would release many of his albums, New Rose Records. Russell later went on to sign with Sony after New Rose Records folded. New Rose's release ofRussell's A Crack in Time album in 1990 caused a stir for the artist, and he started picking up quite a bit of attention. He went on to play festivals in Europe alongside such artists as the Kinks and Little Village. More albums followed from New Rose. Le Voyageur (1993) is a recording of live shows performed by Russell in such French cities as Rennes and Paris. When the record company was sinking and its assets frozen in bankruptcy proceedings, Russell was very close to having his career tied up in the company's legal woes. Dick Rivers, who had a career decades earlier in pop, rescued Russell when he purchased the singer/songwriter's contract. Soon, Sony foundRussell and stepped into the picture.

However, the remainder of the '90s and the first decade of the new millennium found a prolific Russell releasing a number of albums on both European and American independent labels far from the majors; his recordings included Dream of the Dog (1995), Calvin Russell (1997), This Is My Life (1998), Sam (1999), Crossroad (2000), Rebel Radio (2002), A Man in Full (2004), In Spite of It All (2005), Unrepentant (2007), Dawg Eat Dawg(2009), and Contrabendo (2011). Between recording dates, Russell could still be heard singing in the hideaway bars of Austin, preferring low-key gigs where he sang his own songs and lesser-known works from the traditional repertoire. Calvin Russell was 62 years old when he died of liver cancer on April 3, 2011 in Garfield, Texas. AMG.

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