GLOBAL A GO-GO

February 18, 2011

Dengue Fever, Serge Gainsbourg, Sergent Garcia, Shaolin Afronauts

REVIEW: Here’s a nice assortment of new singles from forthcoming albums, all well worth your attention. Leading off are Cambodian-American psych-rockers Dengue Fever. The song continues where “Tiger Phone Card” from their last record left off – a relationship story told via tag-team male-female vocals.

Next up is a previously unreleased recording by Serge Gainsbourg; it’s one of his most famous and frequently-covered songs, originally written for (and banned from) the 1975 Eurovision contest, but no previous recordings of him singing it have been released.

French-Spanish multicultural rocker Sergent Garcia (pictured above with his band) has never gotten much attention in the USA, but Cumbancha Records intends to change that with these two strong and entertaining songs that combine salsa and cumbia with hip hop and dancehall.

The Shaolin Afronauts (best band name of the year?) are a new Australian group who play Afrobeat in a highly funk-inflected manner, very much like the Budos Band – these two songs really cook.

REVIEWER: Bill Lupoletti

February 17, 2011

Program February 18, 2011

It's hard to believe that something, anything that Serge Gainsbourg ever recorded hasn't yet been released. But here we are in 2011, and the world has a hertofore unheard Gainsbourg track -- it's his demo of "Comme Un Boomerang," banned from the 1975 Eurovision contest.

So, brand-new (after a fashion) music from Serge Gainsbourg this week on Global A Go-Go. Also this week: an unusual assortment of Brazilian songs, jazzy and funky Balkan brass, and some young lions of Afrobeat.

Click "Read More" for today's tracklist; click here for a podcast of today's program:

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/49556

The complete catalog of Global A Go-Go podcasts is here:

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/series/Global+A+Go-Go

Charts February 13, 2011

February 10, 2011

Program February 11, 2011

Dengue Fever (pictured above), everybody's favorite Cambodian-American psych-rock band, has a brand-new single and you can hear it on this week's edition of Global A Go-Go. In fact, you can download yourself a copy right now for free, right here:

http://t.opsp.in/PJ4U

Also on this week's show, I'll play a half-hour of the music of one of the major figures in Central American Garifuna music, Aurelio Martinez of Honduras. You'll hear a couple of tracks from his wonderful new album Laru Beya, plus material from earlier in his still-young career.

In addition, music new and old from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and a thoroughly surprising cover of "Thriller" by American bandleader Fred Ho -- sort of Michael Jackson meets Shaun Of The Dead and Reverend Billy's Church of Stop Shopping.

Click "Read More" for today's tracklist; click here for a podcast of today's program:

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/49381

The complete catalog of Global A Go-Go podcasts is here:

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/series/Global+A+Go-Go

Charts February 6, 2011

February 4, 2011

Mamadou Diabate | Courage

ARTIST: Mamadou Diabate

TITLE: Courage

LABEL: World Village

REVIEW: 36 year old Mamadou Diabate comes from a lineage of Malian kora players – his father N’fa is an important musician and his cousin Toumani is probably the world’s best known kora player. Mamadou now lives in Durham, North Carolina and this is fourth CD – his previous outing, Douga Mansa, won a Grammy award in the Best Traditional World Music Album category. Here he returns to Bamako but shifts his focus to mostly original compositions for a quintet with balaphone (wooden tuned percussion), ngoni (the African proto-banjo), bass violin and calabash (percussion instrument made out of a gourd). The music is squarely in the West African Mande tradition, but there are plenty of modern touches – relatively short songs and direct improvisations, propulsive and almost funky rhythms. There have been a number of fine recordings in the vein of might be called Malian neo-traditional music and this is an excellent addition to that catalog, well worth the attention of any fan of African music.

REVIEWER: Bill Lupoletti
RECOMMENDED TRACKS: 2 4 7 9

Fred Ho And The Green Monster Big Band | Year Of The Tiger

ARTIST: Fred Ho And The Green Monster Big Band

TITLE: Year Of The Tiger

LABEL: Innova

REVIEW: Fred Ho is a veteran bandleader, composer and baritone saxophonist whose music combines what seem like wildly disparate interests – free jazz, funky brass bands, Chinese traditional music, radical politics and popular culture. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, but in Ho’s hands the results are typically compelling, accessible to a wide audience and come with a leavening of good humor that was once a staple of “serious” jazz. That’s certainly the case here, especially when Ho and the Green Monsters take on the music of Michael Jackson (tracks 2, 3 and 4) and Jimi Hendrix (5 and 6). Ho is really at his best on “Thriller” (track 4), where new lyrics turn Jackson’s hit into a sci-fi nightmare about commercialism and zombies, and “Purple Haze” (track 6), re-imagining Hendrix’s classic via The Matrix and Noam Chomsky. It may not make sense on paper, but when you hear it you’ll be rocking out and laughing at the same time. This stuff is way beyond category and absolutely worth hearing.

REVIEWER: Bill Lupoletti
RECOMMENDED TRACKS: 4 5 6

Vinicius Cantuaria & Bill Frisell | Lagrimas Mexicanas

ARTIST: Vinicius Cantuaria & Bill Frisell

TITLE: Lagrimas Mexicanas

LABEL: eOne Music

REVIEW: Vinicius Cantuaria is a New York City-based Brazilian singer-songwriter-guitarist-percussionist whose unique music straddles the worlds of MPB (Brazilian popular music), jazz and the downtown New York scene. Here he’s in a collaborative duo with Bill Frisell, one of the great jazz musicians of the current era and a man with an equally wide range of interests – the two previously worked together in Frisell’s excellent band The Intercontinentals. Neither musician occupies new ground here – rather they meet at the midpoint of their interests on some tuneful material that emphasizes Cantuaria’s expressive singing and Frisell’s beautiful guitar melodies and loops. Not a breakthrough recording on the order of Frisell’s Have A Little Faith or Nashville, but a high-quality outing that’s pleasing on the surface and reveals additional depth on further listening, like the best Brazilian pop music.

REVIEWER: Bill Lupoletti
RECOMMENDED TRACKS: 2 4 5

February 3, 2011

Program February 4, 2011

WRIR's 6th annual anniversary party, The Party For The Rest Of Us, gets rolling right after Global A Go-Go wraps up at 7 PM on Friday night. All the info you need is right here:

http://wrir.org/index.php?/blog/entry/2129

To get you warmed up for the party, I'll close the program with a full hour of Club Global A Go-Go -- some of the all-time audience favorites from the first six years of my program, mixed for your dancing and listening pleasure and guaranteed to get you motivated for a big night out, hopefully at the Renaissance Ballroom (107 West Broad Street in Richmond).

I'll turn up the heat slowly in the program's first hour with new releases from Chris Velan and Mamadou Diabate, and classics by Johnny Clegg and the Rail Band, among others.

Click "Read More" for today's tracklist. Click here for a podcast of today's program:

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/49176

The complete catalog of Global A Go-Go podcasts is here:

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/series/Global+A+Go-Go

Charts January 30, 2011

January 27, 2011

Program January 28, 2011

Here in Virginia, George (Macaca) Allen announced this week that he'll try to reclaim a U.S. Senate seat in 2012. Separately, Femi Kuti has a brand-new song where he says "nobody begged you to be senator." I couldn't resist the obvious -- a George Allen - Femi Kuti mash-up, mixed live for you this week on Global A Go-Go.

Also in the way of new music, you'll hear a band from Brooklyn called the Gowanus Reggae And Ska Society (yes, that acronym is GRASS), Afrobeat from Portugal (Terrakota) and England (Ariya Astrobeat Arkestra), and the latest single from the clever French cover band Nouvelle Vague.

Click "Read More" for today's tracklist; click here for a podcast of today's program:

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/48995

The complete catalog of Global A Go-Go podcasts is here:

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/series/Global+A+Go-Go

Gowanus Reggae And Ska Society | G.R.A.S.S. On Fire

ARTIST: Gowanus Reggae And Ska Society (G.R.A.S.S.)

TITLE: G.R.A.S.S. On Fire

LABEL: Mighty Gowanus

REVIEW: I’ve long believed that jazz improvisations on top of a solid, cracking reggae rhythm section sounds great, but it’s just not something I hear often enough. Now comes a new Brooklyn-based band dedicated to just that concept, playing the songs of Bob Marley & The Wailers’ Catch A Fire. Some of the tracks here are a little too sleepy and smooth for my taste. But when the rhythm section gets up a righteous head of steam (as on tracks 1 and 9 and the latter part of track 7) and the soloists cut loose (especially trombonist Mark Miller throughout, and guest guitar-shredder Brad Shepik on 9), that’s when this album delivers everything I want out of a jazz-reggae fusion. It’s nice to see a new generation of musicians working out this concept; I hope they stick with it because they’ve got a good thing going here.

REVIEWER: Bill Lupoletti

RECOMMENDED TRACKS: 1 7 9

Bedouin Soundclash, Chris Velan, Nouvelle Vague

ARTIST | TRACK | LABEL:

Bedouin Soundclash | "Mountain Top" | Nat Geo Music

Chris Velan & Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars | "Inez" | Cumbancha

Nouvelle Vague feat Emily Loizeau | "Ou Veux-Tu Que Je Regarde" | Barclay

REVIEW: Here are three recent international singles, all pop enough to sound great on the radio (especially on many of WRIR’s rock and AAA shows), and none of them has a snowball’s chance in hell of ever being played on an American commercial radio station. And folks wonder why the audience for commercial radio declines every year?

First up is Canadian reggae-rock band Bedouin Soundclash with a song that could have been an outtake from the Police’s Reggatta De Blanc album (that’s a compliment in my book), catchy as hell with just enough skanking rhythm to qualify for the world music section.

Next is Canadian singer-songwriter Chris Velan, who teams up with Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars (he produced their first album) on a breezy, pan-African-influenced track that will remind you of several songs from Paul Simon’s Graceland (also a compliment).

Last comes France’s popular Nouvelle Vague – their new album re-imagines French post-punk hits from the 80’s, and they remake Noir Desir’s 1987 debut single using the lush production and harmonies of Lambchop, a brilliant outside-the-box combination.

REVIEWER: Bill Lupoletti

P.S. Chris Velan's "Inez" can be downloaded for free here: http://inez.chrisvelan.com

January 23, 2011

Charts January 23, 2011

January 18, 2011

Program January 21, 2011

I've been a fan of the Analog Africa label and its enterprising founder Samy Ben Redjeb (pictured above in Benin with a cache of 45s) ever since I picked up on its first title some time toward the end of 2006.

I've learned that you can count on each Analog Africa release to deliver the goods: criminally underheard music (usually previously unreleased in Europe or the USA), high quality production and mastering, vintage photos and intelligent essays in a well-designed package that's well worth owning, with each song fully licensed so the artists receive the royalties they deserve.

This week on Global A Go-Go, the entire program is devoted to Analog Africa's nine-release catalog. I'll play you some of my favorite tracks from each of Samy's projects, with a special emphasis on his latest, Angola Soundtrack: The Unique Sound Of Luanda 1968-1976.

Click "Read More" for today's tracklist; click here for a podcast of today's program:

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/48805

The complete catalog of Global A Go-Go podcasts is here:

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/series/Global+A+Go-Go