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Pukerua Bay boy

Retired PR hack / public servant, dog walker, nature lover, dharma student, community builder. I live in a small village in a small country on the edge of a big ocean.

Music

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    The Sensational Alex Harvey Band (SAHB)

    🎵I’ve been listening to several Sensational Alex Harvey Band albums over the past few days and now I can truthfully say I understand what all the fuss was about.

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    What is hip?

    🎵What is hip? Tower of Power, that’s what.

    Tower Of Power - What Is Hip? (Chicago 1977)

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    Burning Spear - Marcus Garvey

    🎵This was the first Burning Spear album I bought. It’s also very devout and hard-core Rastafarian. Also very political, given it’s a homage to Marcus Garvey, who was a Jamaican political leader dedicated to the ‘Back to Africa’ movement. An anti-colonialist, he was also fairly controversial in the company he kept (the KKK) and being an anti-socialist, despite being a trade unionist.

    However, the Rastafarians liked the back to Africa aspects of his politics and regarded him as a prophet who predicted the crowning of Haile Selassie (aka The Lion Of Juda) in Ethiopia.

    Cover of Burning Spear record Marcus Garvey. The picture shows two figures holding spears. The title Marcus Garvey is written along the bottom of the picture and Burning Spear's name is diagonally at the top.
    Cover of the Burning Spear record 'Marcus Garvey', released in December 1975.
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    Useful algorithms

    I don’t generally like online algorithms that decide for you what you want to see (Facebook and Twitter, I’m looking at you). But I find the radio one Tidal plays once your playlist or album has finished to be a very good stab at what I want to keep on listening to. I can let them run for hours without getting bored. I’ve got a contemporary jazz one going now. There’s a bit of repetition, but I can live with that.

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    White English rock band hints at reformation; critics in a lather

    🎵Or are they? The band, I mean, not the critics; they’re wetting themselves with excitement about the possibility.

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    I’ve just been listening to a couple of old Jeff Beck albums, ‘Blow By Blow’ and ‘Wired’. I’d forgotten how jazz rock they were. Wired, in particular, has a real Mahavishnu Orchestra influence with Jan Hammer and Narada Micheal Walden playing on it.

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    Max Romeo - War Ina Babylon

    What’s on the turntable at the moment? Max Romeo’s ‘War Ina Babylon’. It’s from 1976 when much of his music was still social comment and ‘conscious’.

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    Linton Kwesi Johnson

    Dread Beat an’ Blood was one of the first reggae records I bought. I’m sure I bought it the year it came out (1978).

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    Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard

    🎵It’s been a long time since I listened to this, and like many of my old records, it’s hard to understand why I left it so long.

    It’s quirky and engaging. Jazzy and a bit sad in places.

    Record cover of the album 'Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard' by Robert Wyatt. The image is a painting of a man and woman in the foreground wearing masks and holding mirrors, with trees strung with laundry in the background.
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    Danish choir Ungklang

    🎵We spent a very pleasant hour in the middle of the day today at a concert by Ungklang, a Danish choir here for the World Choral Games.

    The group consists of nine young women who are all graduates of the DR Girls Choir. They did well at the Choral Games, winning first place in the Youth category, a gold medal in the sacred choral music a cappella category, and the highest points of any choir in any category.

    They sang a mixture of Danish and English songs, including one by Agnes Obel, who I’m a big fan of.

    If you ever get a chance to hear them, don’t miss out. Beautiful singing.