One of the best new bands I came across during my recent trip to the UK was the eight-member, London-based outfit, Ibibio Sound Machine. I picked up the band’s eponymously named debut album, which was released earlier this year on vinyl with an MP3 download included in the package, at Piccadilly Records in Manchester while I was trawling the racks and listening to some of my selections. I was very taken with the single released from the album, Let’s Dance (Yak Inek Unek). Soundway Records, better known for its reissue compilations, is the band’s label.
Fronted by British/Nigerian singer Eno Williams, the band was originally set up by producers Max Grunhard, Leon Brichard and Benji Bouton, who recorded the basic tracks before adding the guitar skills of Ghanaian Alfred Kari Bannerman from the band Konkoma and Brazilian percussionist Anselmo Netto, before Williams added the vocals.
Singer Williams wrote much of the lyrical content of the songs, which was based on the folk stories her family told her in the Ibibio language in Nigeria when she was a child. The electro sound the band has produced is certainly a 21st century mix, but it also harks back to West African highlife, disco and Afro-funk. The label website says Ibibio Sound Machine produces music in which they “combine elements of West African highlife, disco, post punk & psychedelic electro soul”, although I’m not sure what the last of these terms actually means.
There are some outstanding tracks on the album. The opening track, Voice Of The Bird (Uyio Inuen) is a haunting, gospel-tinged number that showcases Williams’ deep voice, as does the delightful Afro-soul song, Got To Move, Got To Get Out! (Ana Nkpong Nwuro). In between these more reflective tracks, there are some thumping dance tracks like I’m Running (Yak Inek Unek), the hit single Let’s Dance and, my favourite, The Talking Fish, the latter a glorious melange of fat bass, punchy brass and Afro-funk.
A terrific debut album from a band that seems to reflect not only its African roots but also the mixed up ethnic melting pot that is London today.
Is it really 60 years since Elvis Presley gave birth to rock ‘n’ roll? On the Graceland website there is the following notice: “On July 5, 1954, Elvis walked into Sun Studio in Memphis and recorded That’s All Right with guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black. DJ Dewey Phillips played the song on July 8 on WHBQ radio and the switchboard lit up. Rock ‘n’ roll was born and the music world changed forever.” Elvis would revolutionise not only the recording and music industry, he also changed the way the US considered its young people, its youth.
Before Elvis, the first post-WWII music craze was the “bobby-soxers” who followed acts like Frank Sinatra. The young girls who swooned over crooners like Sinatra were dancing to music played by adults for them. But when Elvis burst on the scene, he was a teenager playing to teenagers. You could say that Elvis invented the teenager (with a little help from all that disposable income filling people’s wallets from the post-war economic boom).
I made a pilgrimage to Memphis and on to Graceland on Elvis Presley Boulevard in 1981. You couldn’t go into the house at that time, so we had to peer through the gate. There was a nice guitar-shaped swimming pool, I remember. It wasn’t the house that caught my attention though, it was the strip of Elvis souvenir shops across the road that was the real star. Every kind of toy, trinket, doll, sticker, candy, hat, sunglasses, concert posters, T-shirts, rhinestone suits, Elvis wigs and more was on display, all neoned and glittered up. It was a cornucopia of Elvis commodities. To this day I still regret not buying a Love Me Tender, Love Me Do Elvis wristwatch for $12.99 (420 baht) that I saw there.
As the song goes, “The blues had a baby and they called it rock ‘n’ roll.” Happy 60th, keep on rocking.
Johnny Winter dead at 70
Blues music fans will be saddened to learn that Texas guitar legend and multi-Grammy Award winner, Johnny Winter has passed away, while on a tour of Switzerland, at the age of 70. Winter and his brother Edgar were pioneers of the blues rock style of playing in the 1960s.
Johnny was known for his fretboard wizardry and was an astute producer. He teamed up with R&B icon Muddy Waters in 1977 to produce Hard Again and his uncanny ability to recreate Water’s sound from the 50s on this album and two more that followed — I’m Ready and King Bee, along with a best-selling live album raised Water’s profile internationally and gave the R&B legend his long overdue financial success.
This columnist can be contacted at clewley.john@gmail.com.
