Robert Johnson – Cross Road Blues

Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) is among the most famous of Delta blues musicians. His landmark recordings from 1936–1937 display a remarkable combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that have influenced generations of musicians. Johnson’s shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend.

Robert Johnson’s original recordings are definitely not for everyone. I’ll be the first to admit that when I first heard them I was a bit startled by their shockingly raw feel, but I also knew that was precisely what makes them great. This music has such emotional value that it inspires all sorts of musicians to continue to strive to be that real and authentic in their music. If you’re a blues lover, a rock and roller, a soul singer or any type of musician where putting your entire soul out there is your primary concern, than you owe it to yourself to check out these recordings.

I think that to be this honest and this raw in one’s music is really what it is all about. Music is about expressing emotions and conveying those emotions to your audience and making them feel them as well. Robert Johnson’s music is a great example of music that can do just that: convey powerful emotions as openly and as honestly as possible and I think that is what continues to draw new musicians to his music.

Here´s a budget-priced compilaton that serves as a reminder that Johnson recorded some of the most important sides in the history of the blues.

Robert Johnson – Cross Road Blues

Robert Johnson – Cross Road Blues

Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) is among the most famous of Delta blues musicians. His landmark recordings from 1936–1937 display a remarkable combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that have influenced generations of musicians. Johnson’s shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend.

Robert Johnson’s original recordings are definitely not for everyone. I’ll be the first to admit that when I first heard them I was a bit startled by their shockingly raw feel, but I also knew that was precisely what makes them great. This music has such emotional value that it inspires all sorts of musicians to continue to strive to be that real and authentic in their music. If you’re a blues lover, a rock and roller, a soul singer or any type of musician where putting your entire soul out there is your primary concern, than you owe it to yourself to check out these recordings.

I think that to be this honest and this raw in one’s music is really what it is all about. Music is about expressing emotions and conveying those emotions to your audience and making them feel them as well. Robert Johnson’s music is a great example of music that can do just that: convey powerful emotions as openly and as honestly as possible and I think that is what continues to draw new musicians to his music.

Here´s a budget-priced compilaton that serves as a reminder that Johnson recorded some of the most important sides in the history of the blues.

Robert Johnson – Cross Road Blues

Lee Perry – Songs To Bring Back The Ark

Having abandoned the Jamaican tropics for the snowy peaks of Switzerland, the legendary reggae producer Lee Perry – aka Scratch, the Upsetter, the Super-Ape, Pipecock Jackson, Inspector Gadget, the Firmament Computer, and a cornucopia of other monikers and aliases – now makes his home in one of the quietest corners of Europe. It’s an odd but somehow fitting environment for Perry – not because precision clocks and banks have much to do with the intense, spooky, and profoundly playful records he’s known for, but because Lee Perry had always been something of a stranger in a strange land.

This is definitly not the Lee Perry album to start with for newbies, but an interesting collection of solo works and collaborations with the fabulous Mad Professor.

Lee Perry – Songs To Bring Back The Ark

Jacob Miller – Tenement Yard

Jacob Miller’s debut solo album gives one a vivid idea of Miller’s standing back in 1978.

The album features classics like “Tenement Yard”, “Tired fe Lick Weed in a Bush,” and the seminal “Forward Jah Jah Children.”

“Roman Soldiers of Babylon” is on a par with these classics, while “Dread, Dread” is nearly of the same caliber.

Yet this is Jacob Miller we’re talking about, so there’s also lighter material, including the singer’s fabulous 1976 Song Festival entry “All Night Til Daylight,” the sparkling “Suzie Wong,” a chirpy cover of War’s smash “Why Can’t We Be Friends,” and a phenomenal cultural take on Otis Redding’s masterpiece “(Sittin’ on The) Dock of the Bay.”

This album still remains a fabulous introduction to Miller’s oeuvre that beautifully showcases Miller’s heavier and lighter sides, and for its time it was a revelation.

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Jacob Miller Tenement Yard

(192 kbps)

Schroeder – Live beim Rennen

“The german Rolling Stones – but a lot more clever.” – Bernhard Jogschies in “Sounds”, 1981

Schroeder Roadshow was – besides Ton Steine Scherben – the german political rock band in the seventies and eighties of the last century. They supported the squatter movement and became a subculture cult band with their anarchistic slogans and subversiv statements.

In difference to most of the other bands of this political rock scene – Ton Steine Scherben, Floh De Cologne, Checkpoint Charlie and many more – they had a more ironical and sassy approach. Their trade mark was a subversiv and anachistic humour, solid life gigs and absolutly no respect to nobody.

Here´s their last release, a live recording from the “Werner – das Rennen”-festival on the Hartenholm airport, where the band played nearly with all original members in front of 200.000 people. This cd re-relaese includes three bonus tracks.

Tracks:
1) Eintritt
2) Menschen
3) Bonn bei Nacht
4) Dach der Welt
5) P6
6) Städte
7) Helja
8) Herzas
9) Schrei dich frei
10) Fette Ratten
11) Hurra
12) Nimm meine Hand

Schröder – Live beim Rennen (192 kbps)

Mark Stewart – Jerusalem (On-U Sound, 1982, vinyl rip)

Tomorrow I will visit a screening of the documentary “On/Off: Mark Stewart from Pop Group to Maffia” with Mark as a special guest.

The film retraces Mark Stewart’s steps and paths from the early days of The Pop Group right up to the present. Director Toni Schifer followed the singer around for a full two years and the result is said to be a crafted and detailed, often intimate portrait of the artist, supplemented by interviews with Mark Stewart himself, Adrian Sherwood (On-U Sound), Daniel Miller (Mute), Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, Doug Wimbish, Skip McDonald, Keith LeBlanc, Gareth Sager (The Pop Group, Rip Rig and Panic) and many others, plus live recordings and music clips.

Celebrating this very special event we will post some of Mark Stewarts recordings, starting with a vinyl rip of the On-U Sound single “Jerusalem” from 1982.

No link.

Mark Stewart – Jerusalem (On-U Sound, 1982, vinyl rip)

Tomorrow I will visit a screening of the documentary “On/Off: Mark Stewart from Pop Group to Maffia” with Mark as a special guest.

The film retraces Mark Stewart’s steps and paths from the early days of The Pop Group right up to the present. Director Toni Schifer followed the singer around for a full two years and the result is said to be a crafted and detailed, often intimate portrait of the artist, supplemented by interviews with Mark Stewart himself, Adrian Sherwood (On-U Sound), Daniel Miller (Mute), Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, Doug Wimbish, Skip McDonald, Keith LeBlanc, Gareth Sager (The Pop Group, Rip Rig and Panic) and many others, plus live recordings and music clips.

Celebrating this very special event we will post some of Mark Stewarts recordings, starting with a vinyl rip of the On-U Sound single “Jerusalem” from 1982.

No link.

Alles Lalula Vol. 2 – Songs & Poeme von der Beat-Generation bis heute

So here´s the second and final part of this four cd set spanning compilation presenting poems, songs and litaruture beyond the mainstream.

This set featurs recordings from the beat generation to the present days – Allen Ginsberg, John Cage, Ernst Jandl, Meredith Monk, Cecil Tylor, Peter Rühmkorf, Brion Gysin, Amiri Bar, Einstürzende Neubauten and many more…

Alles Lalula Vol. 2 – pt. 1
Alles Lalula Vol. 2 – pt. 2

Alles Lalula Vol. 2 – Songs & Poeme von der Beat-Generation bis heute

So here´s the second and final part of this four cd set spanning compilation presenting poems, songs and litaruture beyond the mainstream.

This set featurs recordings from the beat generation to the present days – Allen Ginsberg, John Cage, Ernst Jandl, Meredith Monk, Cecil Tylor, Peter Rühmkorf, Brion Gysin, Amiri Bar, Einstürzende Neubauten and many more…

Alles Lalula Vol. 2 – pt. 1
Alles Lalula Vol. 2 – pt. 2

Mark Stewart & Mafia – Learning To Cope With Cowardice

The Pop Group split in 1981, with Stewart and two other members heading off to London to hook up with the emerging On-U Sound “conspiracy of outsiders” as part of the New Age Steppers.

On-U became a focal point of a diverse set of networks – punks, reggae players from both the UK and Jamaica and free-jazzers. Mark Stewarts first post-Pop Group release was as ‘Mouth 2’, the 1982 single “Who’s Hot”. Two releases followed with On-U associates under the name ‘Mark Stewart & The Maffia’ – the “Jerusalem EP” in 1982, and the 1983 album “Learning to Cope with Cowardice”.

While “Learning to Cope with Cowardice” was no less confrontational than some of the Pop Group’s work, it left behind the harsh, frenetic avant-funk of the Bristol band to foray into more experimental, dub-oriented territory. The standout track is the cut-up version of “Jerusalem,” the English hymn (using William Blake’s visionary words) that has come to stand almost as an unofficial national anthem. Stewart’s “Jerusalem” embodies the multiple sonic facets of this album, juxtaposing jarring electronics, hectoring vocals, and heavy beats with more expansive layers of melody. Here, Stewart mixes his own strident declamation of Blake’s verses with samples of a traditional arrangement of the hymn and with echo-heavy dub textures in such a way as to craft a complex meditation on issues of race, class, and tradition in Thatcher-ite Britain.

No link.