RhoDeo 1424 Grooves

Hello, as the Worldcup heats up, England is going home, they got routed by the Premiership player of the year who couldn't fire on all cylinders but it was enough to see England go down, the slim chance they had left was undone by Costa Rica that won their second game against the odds and is now the first to qualify from a group they were expected to trail, Italy and Uruguay can fight over the other place. In what probably is the weakest groupe France degraded Switzerland that nevertheless are likely to go on as the other 2 teams Ecuador and Honduras are weak. I mentioned it before the top half of the draw is occupied by much much stronger teams as the bottom half, an un fucking believable difference. Courtesy of FIFA the most corrupt organisation on the planet run by mafiosi in expensive suits, time to end its existence and let its voting members fry in the desert.


These weeks it's all about "Soul Brother Number One," "the Godfather of Soul," "the Hardest Working Man in Show Business," "Mr. Dynamite" -- those are mighty titles, but no one can question that today's artist earned them more than any other performer. Other singers were more popular, others were equally skilled, but few other African-American musicians were so influential over the course of popular music. And no other musician, pop or otherwise, put on a more exciting, exhilarating stage show: his performances were marvels of athletic stamina and split-second timing. He is ranked seventh on the music magazine Rolling Stone's list of its 100 greatest artists of all time. He's been very productive hence plenty to choose from, today 3 titles from his extensive live reportoire......N'joy

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Through the gospel-impassioned fury of his vocals and the complex polyrhythms of his beats, Brown was a crucial midwife in not just one, but two revolutions in black American music. He was one of the figures most responsible for turning R&B into soul and he was, most would agree, the figure most responsible for turning soul music into the funk of the late '60s and early '70s. After the mid-'70s, he did little more than tread water artistically; his financial and drug problems eventually got him a controversial prison sentence. Yet in a sense, his music is now more influential than ever, as his voice and rhythms have been sampled on innumerable hip-hop recordings, and critics have belatedly hailed his innovations as among the most important in all of rock or soul.

Brown's rags-to-riches-to-rags story has heroic and tragic dimensions of mythic resonance. Born into poverty in the South, he ran afoul of the law by the late '40s on an armed robbery conviction. With the help of singer Bobby Byrd's family, Brown gained parole and started a gospel group with Byrd, changing their focus to R&B as the rock revolution gained steam. The Flames, as the Georgian group was known in the mid-'50s, signed to Federal/King and had a huge R&B hit right off the bat with the wrenching, churchy ballad "Please, Please, Please." By that point, The Flames had become James Brown & the Famous Flames; the charisma, energy, and talent of Brown made him the natural star attraction.

 All of Brown's singles over the next two years flopped, as he sought to establish his own style, recording material that was obviously derivative of heroes like Roy Brown, Hank Ballard, Little Richard, and Ray Charles. In retrospect, it can be seen that Brown was in the same position as dozens of other R&B one-shot: talented singers in need of better songs, or not fully on the road to a truly original sound. What made Brown succeed where hundreds of others failed was his superhuman determination, working the chitlin circuit to death, sharpening his band, and keeping an eye on new trends. He was on the verge of being dropped from King in late 1958 when his perseverance finally paid off, as "Try Me" became a number one R&B (and small pop) hit, and several follow-ups established him as a regular visitor to the R&B charts.

Brown's style of R&B got harder as the '60s began; he added more complex, Latin- and jazz-influenced rhythms on hits like "Good Good Lovin'," "I'll Go Crazy," "Think," and "Night Train," alternating these with torturous ballads that featured some of the most frayed screaming to be heard outside of the church. Black audiences already knew that Brown had the most exciting live act around, but he truly started to become a phenomenon with the release of Live at the Apollo in 1963. Capturing a James Brown concert in all its whirling-dervish energy and calculated spontaneity, the album reached number two on the album charts, an unprecedented feat for a hardcore R&B LP.

Live at the Apollo was recorded and released against the wishes of the King label. It was this kind of artistic standoff that led Brown to seek better opportunities elsewhere. In 1964, he ignored his King contract to record "Out of Sight" for Smash, igniting a lengthy legal battle that prevented him from issuing vocal recordings for about a year. When he finally resumed recording for King in 1965, he had a new contract that granted him far more artistic control over his releases.

Brown's new era had truly begun, however, with "Out of Sight," which topped the R&B charts and made the pop Top 40. For some time, Brown had been moving toward more elemental lyrics that threw in as many chants and screams as they did words, and more intricate beats and horn charts that took some of their cues from the ensemble work of jazz outfits. "Out of Sight" wasn't called funk when it came out, but it had most of the essential ingredients. These were amplified and perfected on 1965's "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," a monster that finally broke Brown to the white audience, reaching the Top Ten. The even more adventurous follow-up, "I Got You (I Feel Good)," did even better, making number three.

These hits kicked off Brown's period of greatest commercial success and public visibility. From 1965 to the end of the decade, he was rarely off the R&B charts, often on the pop listings, and all over the concert circuit and national television, even meeting with Vice President Hubert Humphrey and other important politicians as a representative of the black community. His music became even bolder and funkier, as melody was dispensed with almost altogether in favor of chunky rhythms and magnetic interplay between his vocals, horns, drums, and scratching electric guitar (heard to best advantage on hits like "Cold Sweat," "I Got the Feelin'," and "There Was a Time"). The lyrics were not so much words as chanted, stream-of-consciousness slogans, often aligning themselves with black pride as well as good old-fashioned (or new-fashioned) sex. Much of the credit for the sound he devised belonged to (and has now been belatedly attributed to) his top-notch supporting musicians such as saxophonists Maceo Parker, St. Clair Pinckney, and Pee Wee Ellis; guitarist Jimmy Nolen; backup singer and longtime loyal associate Bobby Byrd; and drummer Clyde Stubblefield.

Brown was both a brilliant bandleader and a stern taskmaster, the latter leading his band to walk out on him in late 1969. Amazingly, he turned the crisis to his advantage by recruiting a young Cincinnati outfit called the Pacemakers featuring guitarist Catfish Collins and bassist Bootsy Collins. Although they only stayed with him for about a year, they were crucial to Brown's evolution into even harder funk, emphasizing the rhythm and the bottom even more. The Collins brothers, for their part, put their apprenticeship to good use, helping define '70s funk as members of the Parliament-Funkadelic axis.

In the early '70s, many of the most important members of Brown's late-'60s band returned to the fold, to be billed as the J.B.'s (they also made records on their own). Brown continued to score heavily on the R&B charts throughout the first half of the '70s, the music becoming more and more elemental and beat-driven. At the same time, he was retreating from the white audience he had cultivated during the mid- to late '60s; records like "Make It Funky," "Hot Pants," "Get on the Good Foot," and "The Payback" were huge soul sellers, but only modest pop ones. Critics charged, with some justification, that the Godfather was starting to repeat and recycle himself too many times. It must be remembered, though, that these songs were made for the singles radio jukebox market and not meant to be played one after the other on CD compilations (as they are today).

By the mid-'70s, Brown was beginning to burn out artistically. He seemed shorn of new ideas, was being out-gunned on the charts by disco, and was running into problems with the IRS and his financial empire. There were sporadic hits, and he could always count on enthusiastic live audiences, but by the '80s, he didn't have a label. With the explosion of rap, however, which frequently sampled vintage J.B.'s records, Brown became hipper than ever. He collaborated with Afrika Bambaataa on the critical smash single "Unity" and reentered the Top Ten in 1986 with "Living in America." Rock critics, who had always ranked Brown considerably below Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin in the soul canon, began to reevaluate his output, particularly the material from his funk years, sometimes anointing him not just "Soul Brother Number One," but the most important black musician of the rock era.

For the majority of his career, Brown carried around a strict drug and alcohol-free policy with any member in his entourage, including band members, firing people who disobeyed orders, particularly those who used or abused drugs and alcohol. Some members of Brown's vocal group the Famous Flames were fired due to alcohol use. Noting of the policy, some of the original members of Brown's 1970s band, The J.B.'s, including Catfish and Bootsy Collins, intentionally got high on LSD during a concert gig in 1971, causing Brown to fire them after the show because he had suspected them to be on drugs all along.

However, by the mid-1980s, it was alleged that Brown himself was using drugs. After meeting and later marrying Adrienne Rodriguez, she and Brown began using PCP ("angel dust"). The drug resulted in domestically violent outbursts from Brown and he was arrested several times for domestic violence against Rodriguez while high on the drug. Clearly Adrienne Rodriguez had a bad influence on him and his brain couldn't cope with drugs. In 1988, Brown's personal life came crashing down in a well-publicized incident in which he was accused by his wife of assault and battery. After a year skirting hazy legal and personal troubles, he led the police on an interstate car chase after allegedly threatening people with a handgun. The episode ended in a six-year prison sentence that many felt was excessive; he was paroled after serving two years.

Throughout the '90s Brown continued to perform and release new material like Love Over-Due (1991), Universal James (1992), and I'm Back (1998). While none of these recordings could be considered as important as his earlier work and did little to increase his popularity, his classic catalog became more popular in the American mainstream during this time than it had been since the '70s, and not just among young rappers and samplers. One of the main reasons for this was a proper presentation of his recorded legacy. For a long time, his cumbersome, byzantine discography was mostly out of print, with pieces available only on skimpy greatest-hits collections. A series of exceptionally well-packaged reissues on PolyGram changed that situation; the Star Time box set is the best overview, with other superb compilations devoted to specific phases of his lengthy career, from '50s R&B to '70s funk.

In 2004, Brown was diagnosed with prostate cancer but successfully fought the disease. By 2006, it was in remission and Brown, then 73, began a global tour dubbed the Seven Decades of Funk World Tour. Late in the year while at a routine dentist appointment, the singer was diagnosed with pneumonia. On December 25, 2006, Brown died at approximately 1:45 am EST (06:45 UTC) from congestive heart failure resulting from complications of pneumonia, at age 73, with his personal manager and longtime friend Charles Bobbit at his bedside. According to Mr. Bobbit, Brown stuttered "I'm going away tonight", and then Brown took three long, quiet breaths and fell asleep before dying.

After Brown's death, Brown's relatives and friends, a host of celebrities and thousands of fans attended public memorial services at the Apollo Theater in New York on December 28, 2006 and at the James Brown Arena on December 30, 2006 in Augusta, Georgia. A separate, private memorial service was also held in North Augusta, South Carolina on December 29, 2006, which was attended by Brown's family and close friends. Celebrities who attended Brown's public and/or private memorial services included Michael Jackson, Jimmy Cliff, Joe Frazier, Buddy Guy, Ice Cube, Ludacris, Dr. Dre, Little Richard, Dick Gregory, MC Hammer, Prince, Jesse Jackson, Ice-T, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bootsy Collins, LL Cool J, Li'l Wayne, Lenny Kravitz, 50 Cent, Stevie Wonder, and Don King, among others.


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James Brown is featured here with the then newly formed J.B.'s -- the maestro's second great band, including Bootsy Collins, Phelps Collins, Jabo Starks, Bobby Byrd, and Fred Wesley. Live at the Apollo had caught James Brown the '50s gospel/R&B singer; Love Power Peace captures James Brown the funkster. In the early '70s Brown turned up the funk, recording such litanies for Black America as "Ain't It Funky Now," "Sex Machine," "Give It Up or Turn It Loose," "Super Bad," "Get Up, Get into It, Get Involved," and "Soul Power." They're all here, along with revved-up, white-hot versions of the early- and middle-period classics. Brown had planned to release this as a triple album in 1971. When several bandmembers left shortly after it was recorded, Brown switched from King to Polydor Records, leading him to scrap it and record a new studio album instead. In 1992, Polygram decided to make the recording available for the first time.

James Brown - Love Power Peace  (flac 380mb)

01 Intro 1:12
02 Brother Rapp 3:03
03 Ain't It Funky Now 5:36
04 Georgia On My Mind 6:12
05 It's A New Day 2:53
06 Bewildered 4:19
07 Sex Machine 8:45
08 Try Me 2:24
09 Medley : Papa's Got A Brand New Bag / I Got You (I Feel Good) / I Got The Feelin' 1:30
10 Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose 5:14
11 It's A Man's Man's Man's World 5:43
12 Please Please Please 2:09
13 Sex Machine (Reprise) 0:39
14 Super Bad 5:08
15 Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved 2:07
16 Soul Power 4:25

James Brown - Love Power Peace   (ogg 129mb)

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This is the recording of Brown’s 1974 concert that was part of the build up to the “Rumble in the Jungle”, the famed boxing match between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. This is, to my knowledge, the only post-Payback, pre-decline live album of Brown, and therefore it is absolutely essential. The sound quality is great-to-good throughout, and although sometimes the crowd cheering drowns out the band a little (especially, annoyingly enough, during “The Payback” and its reprise) all the musicians are loud and clear, and the only complaint is that maybe the horns are occasionally too screechy-sounding, but it is not a major problem. A bigger problem is that some of the tracks are edited together rather poorly, with “Get on the Good Foot” being split into two parts and some songs getting cut off before the band has finished playing. Although these edits don’t have too much of a negative effect on the album, they do ensure that the flow gets broken a few times throughout.

James Brown - The Godfather Goes to Africa  (flac 432mb)

01 Intro 2:05
02 The Payback 3:55
03 Soul Power 2:26
04 The Boss 1:58
05 Makin' It Easy 1:51
06 Doin' It To Death 5:27
07 Bewildered 5:00
08 Sex Machine 5:03
09 Interlude 0:45
10 The James Brown Theme Part 1 5:07
11 The James Brown Theme Part 2 0:20
12 Caught With A Bag-Gimme Some More 2:58
13 Get On The Good Foot Part 1 1:51
14 Get On The Good Foot Part 2 0:59
15 It's a Man's World Jam Part 1 5:03
16 It's a Man's World Jam Part 2 11:10
17 Money 3:10
18 Finale 10:26

James Brown - The Godfather Goes to Africa  (ogg 154mb)

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The earlier show celebrates Studio 54 (on its' closing night) and the mid-'80s showcelebrates 40 years of James Brown in Show Business.This show from New York, at this point for longtime fans and JB is the one *on* the one! An absolutely terrific performance with the new JB, if you will - riding high on the Yuppie-Club Circuit, with a new, scaled-down, "Disco Soul" approach, with a softer-edge on the vocals: much less emphasis on screams, moans, and other nonverbalisms. He's trimmed down and funky as he wanna be.
Opening number, "It's Too Funky In Here" and finale intro. version both cut on CD.

The Chastain Park show has been recycled nearly into oblivion but the show is good > typical of the period - no surprises - but even at age 52 the superstar's energy level is amazing. It includes one of the greatest "Georgia On My Mind"(s) you'll ever hear. I've always said that Brown's arrangement is just as good as Ray Charles'; it's a shame it got lost on a B-side. It can be said that the '80 show is more guitar-driven, whereas the '85 mix showcases the horns (meaning that St. Clair Pinckney and Maceo "Father Popcorn" Parker have arrived early for the party).

James Brown - Double Dynamite  (flac 505mb)

01 Gonna Have A Funky Good Time (Doing It To Death) 2:53
02 Get Up Offa That Thing 6:07
03 Body Heat 5:13
04 Sex Machine 6:37
05 Try Me 4:27
06 Papa's Got A Brand New Bag 2:32
07 Get On The Good Foot 4:09
08 Medley Man's World, Lost Someone, Man's World (Reprise) 14:59
09 I Got The Feeling 2:42
10 Cold Sweat 3:15
11 Please, Please, Please 2:52
12 Jam 4:59
13 Medley The Payback, It's To Funky In Here 4:15
14 Prisoner Of Love 4:46
15 I Got You (I Feel Good) 3:27
16 Georgia On My Mind 5:52

James Brown - Double Dynamite  (ogg 190mb)

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RhoDeo 1424 Goldy Rhox 165

Hello, shocker Spain is going home the world champion eliminated after 2 losing games, has to be said Chile were great and i expect them to beat Netherlands in the final game. Latter had a difficult time with the Australians and the referee who took every opportunity to give Australia a benefit (Guess FIFA was not amused seeing their champion humiliated) still Netherlands were the first to qualify for the next round where i'm afraid they'll be up against Brazil and the FIFA referees. In the late game Cameroon's best player Song got send off leaving Croatia to give them the runaround 4-0 that will be some match between Mexico and Croatia for the honor of getting eliminated by Chile in the 1/8th finals. I'm already betting on a Chile-Germany final....

Today the 165th post of GoldyRhox, classic pop rock, as the Worldcup plays out these weeks i thought it fitting to show in the darklight today another Brazilian Megastar in this case the Queen of Axe (= a popular music genre originating in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil approximately in 1986, fusing different Afro-Caribbean genres, such as Marcha, Reggae, and Calypso. It also includes influences of Brazilian music such as Frevo, Forró and Carixada.)  The word "axé" comes from a Yoruba religious greeting used in the Candomblé and Umbanda religions that means "soul", "light", "spirit" or "good vibration".

Since her breakthrough, today's mystery artist has become one of the best known Brazilian female singers, selling over 20 million albums worldwide. She is also the Brazilian female performer with most #1 hits (14) in the country. She grew up in a middle class household in the Brotas neighborhood of Salvador with her four siblings. A trouble-maker as a child, she was nicknamed "drip-fire". To the unease of her parents, she started singing in local bars age 15, beginning in 1980. She made her trio elétrico debut soon afterward, during the 1981 carnival. Her zeal for dance eventually led her to the Federal University of Bahia, where she enrolled in the Dance School in 1984. A year later she married electronic engineer Zalther Póvoas and became a mother, giving birth to Gabriel Almeida Póvoas. A year after later she had another child, daughter Giovana Almeida Póvoas 12 years later they divorced. Last year she married a woman journalist Malu Verçosa....

Her self-titled debut album was released in 1991 through independent record company Eldorado. The lead single of the album, "Swing da Cor", which features Olodum, became a number-one hit in Brazil, and the album was soon known as Swing da Cor. Another song from the album, "Menino do Pelô", which also features Olodum, became Mercury's second top-ten hit in Brazil, charting at number four. On the following year, Mercury shut off from the record company and, ever since, produces her own albums to negotiate the distribution of them later with the labels that are interested. In 1992, Mercury became an independent artist, which means she would start to produce her own albums and sell them to record companies (since then, she has founded a production company called Canto da Cidade and Páginas do Mar, a publishing house). That same year, O Canto da Cidade was released through Sony. The title track became a number-one hit in Brazil for months. The album gave Mercury the distinction of being the first singer to sell more than two million copies in Brazil...

In 1994, Música de Rua was released, the album was received with lukewarm reviews, with some critics complaining about the similarities between this album and its predecessor. Nevertheless, the album was very well received by the public, selling more than one million copies
In 1996, Feijão com Arroz was released, this album was much more well received by the critics than its predecessor. It is her second best selling album, behind only O Canto da Cidade. In 2000, she released her fifth studio album, today's mystery album, the album sold almost a million copies and produced two number-one singles. The following year, Mercury released Sou de Qualquer Lugar the album sold half of its predecessor, but was able to produce the number-one single "Mutante"

In 2004, Carnaval Eletrônico was released for the recording of this album, she invited DJs and producers of electronic music in Brazil, as well as Gilberto Gil, Carlinhos Brown, and Lenine. It is a commemorative disc celebrating the five years of her having formed TrioTechno, the first trio elétrico of electronic music in Bahian Carnaval. The disc received a Latin Grammy nomination for best pop album of the year and she was nominated for a TIM Award for best female pop/rock vocalist. In 2005, Clássica was released through Som Livre on both CD and DVD. Recorded from a concert Mercury gave the year before at São Paulo's Casa de Espetáculo, the album is a sampler of bossa nova, jazz, and some of her biggest MPB hits.

That same year, her eighth studio album, Balé Mulato, was released, but through EMI. The album was very well received by the critics, with some even saying it was Mercury's best album since Feijão com Arroz (1996). It was not, however, very well received by the public, with none of the singles being able to chart on the top-ten; a large part due to lack of record company support. The next year, the Latin Grammy Award-winning live version of Balé Mulato, was released. Today's artist has completed her newest release, Canibália. Canibalia was launched in October 2009. afterwards she went on a big tour performing for 7 million fans.

Canibália, reaches into the future by traveling through the continuum of two significant upheavals that marked Brazilian culture forever: The Brazilian Modernist Movement spawned by the Oswaldo Andrade’s 1928 Manifesto Antropófago, the 1968 Tropicalia Movement launched by Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso’s recording Tropicália: ou Panis et Circensis. Given her well known penchant to continuously innovate, it comes as no surprise that she, like her predecessors, would promulgate yet another phase of a passionate and intelligently articulated reinvention of Brazilian popular culture – Canibália. (an intrinsic Brazilian collection of Pop, Samba, Samba-Bossa, Samba-Reggae, Merengue, Axe and Salsa with a definitive Electronic base that permeates throughout.)

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Most of the albums i 'll post made many millions for the music industry and a lot of what i intend to post still gets repackaged and remastered decades later, squeezing the last drop of profit out of bands that for the most part have ceased to exist long ago, although sometimes they get lured out of the mothballs to do a big bucks gig or tour. Now i'm not as naive to post this kinda music for all to see and have deleted, these will be a black box posts, i'm sorry for those on limited bandwidth but for most of you a gamble will get you a quality rip don't like it, deleting is just 2 clicks...That said i will try to accommodate somewhat and produce some cryptic info on the artist and or album.

Today's mystery album is the fifth studio album by todays mystery artist, released in April 2000 in Brazil. Two of its singles, "Ilê Pérola Negra" and "Como Vai Você", became number-one hits in Brazil. The other single released from the album, "Santa Helena", peaked at number twenty six. This is todays mystery artist's fourth best-selling album in Brazil, having sold over eight hundred thousand copies there.

Today's mystery album is a bid for the big time by the queen of axé music. By enlisting the talents of one of Latin music's biggest producers, Emilio Estefan, Jr., it's nothing less than an attempt to crack the lucrative American market. The question is, can she do it -- adding the gloss and sheen -- without losing her roots? And from the first moments of the first track, the answer is apparently yes. The snares and percussion are crisper than on any of her earlier releases, firing the cuts along with a real directness, while the horn arrangements have a real zip about them that frames her powerful, emotive voice, as on Caetano Veloso's celebratory Bahian "Axé Axé." The ballads don't go over the top, unlike so many Latin artists, and even the hip-hop flavor of some songs is never overstated, all due to Mercury's fastidious quality control on the material (as well as co-producing, she's responsible for many of the arrangements, as well as co-writing some songs). The result firmly keeps its Salvador grounding, but takes on an international flavor in its colorations, more than in the songs themselves, where the complex rhythms could be from nowhere but Brazil. In fact, the only piece that doesn't work, surprisingly, is a club mix of "Ilê Pérola Negra," tacked on at the end of the album, and done in half-hearted '80s fashion, accomplishing nothing except filling out time. While it might not be her very best album, the sonic clarity does her justice, and brings out the richness of her singing -- enough for anyone to understand why she's acquired a reputation as one of the major stars of MPB, Brazilian popular music.



Goldy Rhox 165   (flac 470mb)

Goldy Rhox 165   (ogg 173mb)


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RhoDeo 1424 Aetix

Hello, Worldcup report, dark horse Belgium got away with a scare and looking at the Russia-S Korea 1-1 draw tonight they should easily win this group. Watching Brazil zero zero with Mexico tonight it is amazing how uneven the worldcup draw turned out, there's at least 10 top teams in the top half of the draw and just 3 in the bottom half those will cruise thru til the quarter finals whilst f.i. in group A and B 4 top teams will meet in the 1/8th finals and each at that point having already eliminated 1 top team that would likely have cruised thru if they'd been drawn in the bottom half. It's FIFA's doing and they must be so pleased with that Japanese ref that gifted Brazil the win in the opening game, otherwise Brazil would be in serious trouble possibly being eliminated in the first round, now that would be a disaster, that said they might still fail to reach the quarterfinals the way they currently play.

One of new wave's most innovative and (for a time) successful bands, Devo was also perhaps one of its most misunderstood. Formed in Akron, Ohio, in 1972 by Kent State art students Jerry Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh, Devo took its name from their concept of "de-evolution" -- the idea that instead of evolving, mankind has actually regressed, as evidenced by the dysfunction and herd mentality of American society well they sort of proved their point here  ....N'joy

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One of new wave's most innovative and (for a time) successful bands, Devo was also perhaps one of its most misunderstood. Formed in Akron, Ohio, in 1972 by Kent State art students Jerry Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh, Devo took its name from their concept of "de-evolution" -- the idea that instead of evolving, mankind has actually regressed, as evidenced by the dysfunction and herd mentality of American society. Their music echoed this view of society as rigid, repressive, and mechanical, with appropriate touches -- jerky, robotic rhythms; an obsession with technology and electronics (the group was among the first non-prog rock bands to make the synthesizer a core element); often atonal melodies and chord progressions -- all of which were filtered through the perspectives of geeky misfits. Devo became a cult sensation, helped in part by their concurrent emphasis on highly stylized visuals, and briefly broke through to the mainstream with the smash single "Whip It," whose accompanying video was made a staple by the fledgling MTV network. Sometimes resembling a less forbidding version of the Residents, Devo's simple, basic electronic pop sound proved very influential, but it was also somewhat limited, and as other bands began expanding on the group's ideas, Devo seemed unable to keep pace. After a series of largely uninteresting albums, the band called it quits early in the '90s, and Casale and Mothersbaugh concentrated on other projects.

Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh both attended art school at Kent State University at the outset of the '70s. With friend Bob Lewis, who joined an early version of Devo and later became their manager, the theory of de-evolution was developed with the aid of a book entitled The Beginning Was the End: Knowledge Can Be Eaten, which held that mankind had evolved from mutant, brain-eating apes. The trio adapted the theory to fit their view of American society as a rigid, dichotomized instrument of repression which ensured that its members behaved like clones, marching through life with mechanical, assembly-line precision and no tolerance for ambiguity. The whole concept was treated as an elaborate joke until Casale witnessed the infamous National Guard killings of student protesters at the university; suddenly there seemed to be a legitimate point to be made. The first incarnation of Devo was formed in earnest in 1972, with Casale (bass), Mark Mothersbaugh (vocals), and Mark's brothers Bob (lead guitar) and Jim, who played homemade electronic drums. Jerry's brother Bob joined as an additional guitarist, and Jim left the band to be replaced by Alan Myers. The group honed its sound and approach for several years (a period chronicled on Rykodisc's Hardcore compilations of home recordings), releasing a few singles on its own Booji Boy label and inventing more bizarre concepts: Mothersbaugh dressed in a baby-faced mask as Booji Boy (pronounced "boogie boy"), a symbol of infantile regression; there were recurring images of the potato as a lowly vegetable without individuality; the band's costumes presented them as identical clones with processed hair; and all sorts of sonic experiments were performed on records, using real and homemade synthesizers as well as toys, space heaters, toasters, and other objects. Devo's big break came with its score for the short film The Truth About De-Evolution, which won a prize at the 1976 Ann Arbor Film Festival; when the film was seen by David Bowie and Iggy Pop, they were impressed enough to secure the group a contract with Warner Bros.

Recorded under the auspices of pioneering producer Brian Eno, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! was seen as a call to arms by some and became an underground hit. Others found Devo's sound, imagery, and material threatening; Rolling Stone, for example, called the group fascists. But such criticism missed the point: Devo dramatized conformity, emotional repression, and dehumanization in order to attack them, not to pay tribute to them.

While 1979's Duty Now for the Future was another strong effort, the band broke through to the mainstream with 1980's Freedom of Choice, which contained the gold-selling single "Whip It" and represented a peak in their sometimes erratic songwriting. The video for "Whip It" became an MTV smash, juxtaposing the band's low-budget futuristic look against a down-home farm setting and hints of S&M. However, Devo's commercial success proved to be short-lived. 1981's New Traditionalists was darker and more serious, not what the public wanted from a band widely perceived as a novelty act, and Devo somehow seemed to be running out of new ideas. Problems plagued the band as well: Bob Lewis successfully sued for theft of intellectual property after a tape of Mothersbaugh was found acknowledging Lewis' role in creating de-evolution philosophy, and the sessions for 1982's Oh, No! It's Devo were marred by an ill-considered attempt to use poetry written by would-be Ronald Reagan assassin John Hinckley, Jr. as lyrical material.

As the '80s wore on, Devo found itself relegated to cult status and critical indifference, not at all helped by the lower quality of albums like 1984's Shout and 1988's Total Devo. With the band's shift toward electronic drums, Alan Myers departed in 1986, to be replaced by ex-Sparks and Gleaming Spires drummer David Kendrick. Devo recorded another album of new material, Smooth Noodle Maps, in 1990, after which its members began to concentrate on other projects. Mark Mothersbaugh moved into composing for commercials and soundtracks, writing theme music for MTV's Liquid Television, Nickelodeon's Rugrats, Pee-Wee's Playhouse, and the Jonathan Winters sitcom Davis Rules. He also played keyboards with the Rolling Stones, programmed synthesizers for Sheena Easton, and sang backup with Debbie Harry. Buoyed by this success, Mothersbaugh opened a profitable production company called Mutato Muzika, which employed his fellow Devo bandmates. Jerry Casale, meanwhile, who directed most of the band's videos, directed video clips for the Foo Fighters' "I'll Stick Around" and Soundgarden's "Blow Up the Outside World." No reunions were expected, but as Devo's legend grew and other bands acknowledged their influence (Nirvana covered "Turnaround," while "Girl U Want" has been recorded by Soundgarden, Superchunk, and even Robert Palmer), their minimalistic electro-pop was finally given new exposure on six dates of the 1996 Lollapalooza tour, to enthusiastic fan response.

The following year, Devo released a CD-ROM game (The Adventures of the Smart Patrol) and accompanying music soundtrack, in addition to playing selected dates on the Lollapalooza tour. 2000 saw the release of a pair of double-disc Devo anthologies: the first was the half-hits/half-rarities Pioneers Who Got Scalped: The Anthology (on Rhino), while the second was the limited-edition mail-order release Recombo DNA (on Rhino's Handmade label), the latter of which was comprised solely of previously unreleased demos. In 2001, the Mothersbaugh and Casale brothers reunited under the name the Wipeouters for a one-off surf release, P'Twaaang!!! Casale would introduce his Jihad Jerry & the Evildoers solo project with the 2006 album Mine Is Not a Holy War. It was that same year that the band teamed with Disney for Dev2.0, a band/project/album that involved a set of preteens re-recording classic Devo tracks, although some lyrics were adjusted to be more "family friendly." Devo got back to releasing their own material in 2007 with the downloadable single "Watch Us Work It," but a new, promised album failed to materialize. In 2008 they returned to Akron for a rare show and in support of Barack Obama's presidential campaign with all proceeds going toward the Summit County Democratic Party. After deluxe 2009 reissues of Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! and Freedom of Choice sent the band back on the road to play said albums live in their entirety, work resumed on a new album. By the end of the year, it was announced that the band had once again signed with Warner for an album originally titled "Fresh." An Internet campaign where fans got to choose the full-length's 12 tracks inspired the 2010 effort, Something for Everybody. Sadly, Bob Casale died suddenly and unexpectedly from heart failure on February 17, 2014; he was 61 years old.

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Devo followed up their platinum-selling pop breakthrough in typically perverse fashion: New Traditionalists presents a band seemingly aghast at being pegged as a novelty act by some of their own satirical targets. Apparently deciding -- admittedly, not without reason -- that America's comprehension of irony was sorely lacking, Devo largely abandons its sense of absurdity on New Traditionalists, explicitly stating their cultural views and at times calling attention (as with the otherwise terrific single "Beautiful World") to their already obvious sarcasm, in case anyone missed the point. The problem was, Devo's cult wasn't missing the point, and with all their quirky trappings, the band was hardly likely to reach most of their newfound pop audience by making their message more straightforward. Still, despite some heavy-handedness, New Traditionalists is hardly a total failure. The opener "Through Being Cool" actually benefits from the new outlook, making for a clear and effective statement of purpose. It sets the stage for some of Devo's angriest, most embittered songs, which often function as connections between new wave and the punk attitudes that were so crucial in its creation. Devo might have pulled it off if their songwriting hadn't also begun to slip -- too many tracks end up flat-out unmemorable. They try a couple new things arrangement-wise (adding more electronic percussion), but nothing that drastically overhauls their minimalist synth-pop, and that lack of variety is more glaring when paired with the melodic deficiencies. New Traditionalists' repetition of musical and lyrical ideas foreshadows the band's decline, but really, at least half of the album is worthwhile. It just doesn't quite recapture the inventiveness or pointed humor of its predecessors.

Devo - New Traditionalists ( flac 244mb)

01 Through Being Cool 3:15
02 Jerkin' Back 'N' Forth 3:05
03 Pity You 2:48
04 Soft Things 3:28
05 Going Under 3:31
06 Race Of Doom 3:44
07 Love Without Anger 2:37
08 The Super Thing 4:21
09 Beautiful World 3:35
10 Enough Said 3:34
11 Working In The Coal Mine 2:53
12 Mecha-Mania Boy 2:48
13 Nu-tra Speaks (New Traditionalist Man) 1:39

Devo - New Traditionalists  (ogg 86mb)

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New Traditionalists seemed to indicate that Devo saw their audience as having shifted to the mainstream, and Oh, No! It's Devo slides further in that direction. For their first non-self-produced album since the debut, the band brings in Cars producer Roy Thomas Baker, who smooths out any remaining edges in the band's sound, and employs colder-sounding digital synths more often. As a result, it's hard to differentiate Devo from all the other new wave synth-pop acts following the trail they'd originally blazed. Topping off their increasingly generic sound is a reliance on thudding electronic percussion, which contributes heavily to the album's overall feeling of bloodlessness. Still, Oh, No! It's Devo is only about as uneven as New Traditionalists, which means that there are several quality singles, and some barely memorable album tracks. There's also a bit more novelty material, perhaps in hopes of scoring another hit on the level of "Whip It."

Devo - oh, no! it's DEVO  (flac 236mb)

01 Time Out For Fun 2:48
02 Peek•A•Boo! 3:01
03 Out Of Sync 3:34
04 Explosions 3:01
05 That's Good 3:23
06 Patterns 2:57
07 Big Mess 2:42
08 Speed Racer 2:38
09 What I Must Do 2:34
10 I Desire 3:13
11 Deep Sleep 3:24

Devo - oh, no! it's DEVO  (ogg 91mb)

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Shout was Devo's sixth studio album, and the last they would record before a five-year layoff, and while it's pure speculation if the making of this disc had anything to do with that decision, from a creative standpoint this represents the low point of the group's first era. While the herky-jerky push-and-pull between homemade electronics and cheap guitars was a large part of what made Devo's first few albums so exciting, Shout is so slick and glossy one could fry an egg on its surfaces, and that isn't a good thing -- with the exception of "Puppet Boy" and "Please Please," this music is carefully processed synth pop with all human surfaces stripped away, and possessing no more personality or edge than what Howard Jones or Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark were doing around the same time (and, for that matter, with far less vision or daring than what Prince was starting to do with electronics). It might have helped if the group had come up with a batch of interesting songs, but that sure wasn't the case, and it's hard to believe that Shout was made by the same people who wrote "Girl U Want," "Gates of Steel" or "Big Mess" just a few years earlier. Shout holds the distinction of being Devo's least album.

Devo - Shout  (flac 235mb)

01 Shout 3:15
02 The Satisfied Mind 3:07
03 Don't Rescue Me 3:06
04 The 4th Dimension 4:23
05 C'Mon 3:16
06 Here To Go 3:16
07 Jurisdiction Of Love 2:59
08 Puppet Boy 3:09
09 Please Please 3:04
10 Are You Experienced? 3:09

Devo - Shout  (ogg 80mb)

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DEV-O LIVE is a live EP (and later live album) by the New Wave band Devo. It was recorded during the Freedom of Choice tour of 1980, at The Fox Warfield Theatre. Issued just after "Whip It" became one of the early '80s' most popular new wave hits, 1981's DEV-O Live was issued by Warner Brothers to cash in on Devo-mania. The six-track EP was recorded live at San Francisco's Warfield Theater on August 16, 1980 -- officially released as a 16-track promo-only release, "Warner Brothers Music Show", Warner edited down the song list and decided to issue it domestically as DEV-O Live. Mixing favorites ("Whip It," "Girl U Want") with rarities ("Be Stiff"), album cuts ("Gates of Steel," "Planet Earth"), and a song reconstructed for the stage ("Freedom of Choice Theme Song"), DEV-O Live shows that the spazzy quintet was a fun live act.

Initially only six songs from the show were released on an EP in 1981, intended for airplay use (largely for the King Biscuit Flower Hour). It featured the otherwise-unreleased "Freedom of Choice Theme Song" and a reworked version of "Be Stiff".

Although DEV-O Live went out of print shortly after its release, it turned up again on a British two-fer CD with their debut, Q: Are We Not Men, in 1994. In 1999, Rhino Handmade re-released DEV-O LIVE on a full album including the entire Warfield show, with the exception of "Pink Pussycat" (played after "Secret Agent Man"), "Satisfaction" (played after "Blockhead"), "Freedom of Choice" and "Jocko Homo" (both played after "Gates of Steel"), all of them appearing on audience recordings of the show.

 Devo - Live   (flac 515mb)

01 Freedom Of Choice Theme Song 2:45
02 Whip It 2:52
03 Girl U Want 2:56
04 Gates Of Steel 3:27
05 Be Stiff 2:55
06 Planet Earth 2:46
07 Freedom Of Choice Theme Song 2:52
08 Whip It 2:45
09 Snowball 2:50
10 It's Not Right 2:25
11 Girl U Want 3:01
12 Planet Earth 2:36
13 S.I.B. (Swelling Itching Brain) 4:06
14 Secret Agent Man 3:25
15 Blockhead 3:26
16 Uncontrollable Urge 3:17
17 Mongoloid 3:29
18 Be Stiff 3:00
19 Gates Of Steel 3:28
20 Smart Patrol / Mr. DNA 7:20
21 Gut Feeling / (Slap Your Mammy) 4:31
22 Come Back Jonee 3:40

 Devo - Live  (ogg 182mb)

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Rhodeo 1424 Roots

Hello, well Game of Thrones wrapped up the 4th season and some regulars will not return for a fifth as some of its favorite characters killed some not so nice but intriguing characters. It's all in the game. Meanwhile there was some fantasy present as well, nasty undead and lovely angelic children I suppose a whole season without fantasy was a nono, oh well its another 40 weeks wait before that story continues.

Meanwhile it was something of a n Africa day at the worldcup, two top african teams were active, African champions, Nigeria was very disappointing, sloppy poor setplays and somehow much to hasty in their actions resulted in a zero zero, the first draw of the championship. Other contenders Ghana who looked odds on favorite to beat The USA but saw themselves trailing within 30 seconds, what followed was the same overhasty play lots of silly ball loss not a great game until 10 min before time they equalized in a great move it looked as if they were about to overrun the US but then in what was one of the first second half incursions into the Ghanian half by the US a defender gave away a silly corner and as these things go a tall substitute made the most of his advantage and scored, unsure as to how to react he ran to the side and laid on the grass facedown and stayed there long after his teammates made it back-after the celebrations, he risked a yellow for timewasting if you ask me, oh well US wins 2-1 but didn't convince me one iota.

It's almost impossible to overstate the impact and importance of Fela Anikulapo (Ransome) Kuti (or just Fela as he's more commonly known) to the global musical village: producer, arranger, musician, political radical, outlaw. He was all that, as well as showman par excellence, inventor of Afro-beat, an unredeemable sexist, and a moody megalomaniac. His death on August 3, 1997 deeply affected musicians and fans internationally, as a musical and sociopolitical voice on a par with Bob Marley was silenced. A press release from the United Democratic Front of Nigeria on the occasion of Fela's death noted: "Those who knew you well were insistent that you could never compromise with the evil you had fought all your life. Even though made weak by time and fate, you remained strong in will and never abandoned your goal of a free, democratic, socialist Africa." This is as succinct a summation of Fela's political agenda as one is likely to find. For the third and last time the spotlight here is on Fela ...N'joy

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Born in Abeokuta, Nigeria, north of Lagos in 1938, Fela's family was firmly middle class as well as politically active. His father was a pastor (and talented pianist), his mother active in the anti-colonial, anti-military, Nigerian home rule movement. So at an early age, Fela experienced politics and music in a seamless combination. His parents, however, were less interested in his becoming a musician and more interested in his becoming a doctor, so they packed him off to London in 1958 for what they assumed would be a medical education; instead, Fela registered at Trinity College's school of music. Tired of studying European composers, Fela formed his first band, Koola Lobitos, in 1961, and quickly became a fixture on the London club scene. He returned to Nigeria in 1963 and started another version of Koola Lobitos that was more influenced by the James Brown-style singing of Geraldo Pina from Sierra Leone. Combining this with elements of traditional high life and jazz, Fela dubbed this intensely rhythmic hybrid "Afro-beat," partly as critique of African performers whom he felt had turned their backs on their African musical roots in order to emulate current American pop music trends.

In 1969, Fela brought Koola Lobitos to Los Angeles to tour and record. They toured America for about eight months using Los Angeles as a home base. It was while in L.A. that Fela hooked up with a friend, Sandra Isidore, who introduced him to the writings and politics of Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver (and by extension the Black Panthers), and other proponents of Black nationalism and Afrocentrism. Impressed at what he read, Fela was politically revivified and decided that some changes were in order: first, the name of the band, as Koola Lobitos became Nigeria 70; second, the music would become more politically explicit and critical of the oppression of the powerless worldwide. After a disagreement with an unscrupulous promoter who turned them in to the Immigration and Naturalization Services, Fela and band were charged with working without work permits. Realizing that time was short before they were sent back to Nigeria, they were able to scrape together some money to record some new songs in L.A. What came to be known as the '69 Los Angeles Sessions were remarkable, an indication of a maturing sound and of the raucous, propulsive music that was to mark Fela's career. Afrobeat's combination of blaring horn sections, antiphonal vocals, Fela's quasi-rapping pidgin English, and percolating guitars, all wrapped up in a smoldering groove (in the early days driven by the band's brilliant drummer Tony Allen) that could last nearly an hour, was an intoxicating sound. Once hooked, it was impossible to get enough.


The documentary "Fela Kuti Music is the Weapon" wit the Afrobeat legend, political revolutionary, musician, composer and performer, mixes footage of Fela Anikulapo Kuti performing at his Shrine nightclub, interviews with the controversial musician, glimpses of life at his not-so-palatial Kalakuta Republic compound, and scenes of Lagos street life. Some voice-over narration gives basic information on Kuti's musical career and Nigerian politics, but for the most part, the images are left to speak for themselves. Well shot in color, it's an important historical document capturing Kuti in stage and home environments that were most crucial to his life and work.






Upon returning to Nigeria, Fela founded a communal compound-cum-recording studio and rehearsal space he called the Kalakuta Republic, and a nightclub, the Shrine. It was during this time that he dropped his given middle name of "Ransome" which he said was a slave name, and took the name "Anikulapo" (meaning "he who carries death in his pouch") . Playing constantly and recording at a ferocious pace, Fela and band (who were now called Africa 70) became huge stars in West Africa. His biggest fan base, however, was Nigeria's poor. Because his music addressed issues important to the Nigerian underclass (specifically a military government that profited from political exploitation and disenfranchisement), Fela was more than a simply a pop star; like Bob Marley in Jamaica, he was the voice of Nigeria's have-nots, a cultural rebel. This was something Nigeria's military junta tried to nip in the bud, and from almost the moment he came back to Nigeria up until his death, Fela was hounded, jailed, harassed, and nearly killed by a government determined to silence him. In one of the most egregious acts of violence committed against him, 1,000 Nigerian soldiers attacked his Kalakuta compound in 1977 (the second government-sanctioned attack). Fela suffered a fractured skull as well as other broken bones; his 82-year old mother was thrown from an upstairs window, inflicting injuries that would later prove fatal. The soldiers set fire to the compound and prevented fire fighters from reaching the area. Fela's recording studio, all his master tapes and musical instruments were destroyed.

After the Kalakuta tragedy, Fela briefly lived in exile in Ghana, returning to Nigeria in 1978. In 1979 he formed his own political party, MOP (Movement of the People), and at the start of the new decade renamed his band Egypt 80. From 1980-1983, Nigeria was under civilian rule, and it was a relatively peaceful period for Fela, who recorded and toured non-stop. Military rule returned in 1983, and in 1984 Fela was sentenced to ten years in prison on charges of currency smuggling. With help from Amnesty International, he was freed in 1985.

As the '80s ended, Fela recorded blistering attacks against Nigeria's corrupt military government, as well as broadsides aimed at Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan (most abrasively on the album Beasts of No Nation). Never what you would call progressive when it came to relationships with women or patriarchy in general (the fact was that he was sexist in the extreme, which is ironic when you consider that his mother was one of Nigeria's early feminists), he was coming around to the struggles faced by African women, but only just barely. Stylistically speaking, Fela's music didn't change much during this time, and much of what he recorded, while good, was not as blistering as some of the amazing music he made in the '70s. Still, when a Fela record appeared, it was always worth a listen.

His album output slowed in the 1990s, and eventually he stopped releasing albums altogether. The battle against military corruption in Nigeria had taken it's toll. Rumors were also spreading that he was suffering from an illness, on August 3, 1997 his brother Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, a prominent AIDS activist and former Minister of Health, stunned the nation by announcing Fela had died from an AIDS releated disease, more than a million people attended his funeral at the site of the old Shrine compound.

He never broke big in the U.S. market, and it's hard to imagine him having the same kind of posthumous profile that Marley does, but Fela's 50-something releases offer up plenty of remarkable music, and a musical legacy that lives on in the person of his talented son Femi. Around the turn of the millennium, Universal began remastering and reissuing a goodly portion of Fela's many recordings, finally making some of his most important work widely available to American listeners.

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Pioneering musician, activist, and bandleader Fela Kuti is the first word in Afro-beat, making such strides in the genre over the course of his career that his contributions are foundational and nothing less than legendary. Why Black Man Dey Suffer is a relatively early chapter in the Fela discography, originally recorded in 1971. Put to tape with early band Africa 70 and Cream drummer/Afro-beat enthusiast Ginger Baker on board as well, the record is made up of two extensive, repetitive, and loping pieces. The rhythmic title track is a blueprint of early Afro-beat and "Ikoyi Mentality Versus Mushin Mentality" is a deep groove of burning horns and fearless percussion.

Fela Kuti - Alagbon Close and Why Black Man Dey Suffer  (flac  362mb)

01 Alagbon Close 17:03
02 I No Get Eye For Back 11:24
03 Why Black Man Dey Suffer 15:15
04 Ikoyi Mentality Versus Mushin Mentality 12:57

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Fela Kuti made some frantic albums in his career--ones that popped with his enthusiastic political disobedience and ones that roared with fury at the Nigerian system and Africa's disadvantaged position in the late-20th century. But Coffin for Head of State is a different tiger. It's a downturned, sad, melancholic 22-minute work that signaled how Fela would make his previously general criticisms of Nigerian politics very specific. He recorded the album in 1981, several years after the Nigerian military's destruction of his self-declared Kalakuta Republic (a residential compound, in truth) and the ensuing, relentlessly violent assault on its residents, including his mother, who later died as a result of her injuries. Coffin finds Fela castigating Muslim and Christian leaders for idling while the government raped and pillaged, and it boasts a visionary quality in the antiphonal "Amens" that gets bounced through the band. Filling out this double-length CD is Unknown Soldier, a pointed musical assault on the government's position that "unknown soldiers" had perpetrated the Kalakuta attack, when Fela well knew that the 1,000-man rampage was officially sanctioned. The 30-minute track that comprises Unknown is still Fela in a keyed-down mode, railing against the attackers with his customary electric keyboard, a battery of percussionists, all of it stewing for 15 minutes before he bellows in with bright backing vocal chants. After Coffin's melancholy, this is uplifting enough to make you share in his indignation. These sessions mark an unparalleled peak for the musical display of fury and political criticism.

In 1977, the government of Nigeria had enough of Fela Kuti and decided to take evasive action on his walled-in residence that he called the Kalakuta Republic (Fela declared it a separate state). Over a thousand soldiers descended on the compound and savagely beat the residents. Fela himself escaped death (but not incarceration), but his activist mother was thrown through a window and broke her hip -- causing an injury that would take her life within that month. This prompted Fela to begin recording reactions to this event: Unkown Soldier, Sorrow, Tears, and Blood, and Coffin for Head of State were those reactions. "Coffin for Head of State" was an elegy for his lost mother, to whom he was very close. The song opens lackisdasically and never really steps to any sort of fire that many of his compositions contain. He starts singing with the lines "Amen, Amen, Amen...," but he continues to talk about how those that live "by the Grace of Almighty Lord" do wrong by their fellow man. He talks about walking through the cities of Africa and seeing those that do bad things by the "grace of Allah." Throughout the song his sadness grows: "Them kill my Mama/So I carry the coffin." He then directly blames Nigerian President Obasanjo for her death: "Obasnjo dey there/With him big fat stomach." "Coffin for Head of State" is the saddest in his repertoire. Fela has certainly dealt with sad issues in his songs, but here he deals with sadness in a very direct, morose personal way.

Fela Kuti - Coffin For Head of State / Unknown Soldier  (flac  352mb)


01 Coffin For Head Of State (Part 1&2) 22:43
02 Unknown Soldier (Part 1&2) 31:09

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Underground System was among the better recordings of Fela's late career, comprised of two extended tracks, the title cut and "Pansa Pansa." "Underground System" starts off with rhythms that are far faster and more urgent than those on most of Fela's characteristically lengthy tracks. If that sounds like a marginal quality upon which to judge a song as a standout, well, something like a much faster and played-as-though-we-mean-it tempo really does help to differentiate it from the singer's generally similar output of the 1980s and 1990s. The backup singers also come in quickly with infectious chants, prior to a typical Fela lyric observing the difficulty in enacting positive political change in Africa. Hearing them sing in tandem with Fela instead of doing call-response patterns, as they do during much of the 28-minute cut, also makes for a refreshing variation. "Pansa Pansa," at a mere (for Fela) 17 minutes, also gets your attention more than his average effort, with rapid propulsive beats and sprinkles of slightly dissonant jazzy piano. The 2001 CD reissue on MCA adds a half-hour song from his 1990 album, ODOO, which is considerably slower and moodier than the prior two tunes, the beginning emphasizing mournful electric keyboards and sax soloing.

Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and Egypt '80 - Underground System  (flac 515mb)

Underground System (Originally Released 1992)
01 Underground System 28:26
02 Pansa Pansa 17:18
Bonus from The "O.D.O.O." 1990 Album
03 Confusion Break Bones (C.B.B.) 29:10

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RhoDeo 1424 Cabin P 10

Hello, another night of football matches, the Swiss were extremely lucky and undeserved winners against Ecuador, Honduras discredited the game and still lost 3-0 first goal awarded thru goal line technology which non of us would have seen in unlucky move by the keeper almost as unlucky as that Bosnian defender that saw a ball bounce of his knee into the net, it set up Argentina for a hardly deserved win of 2-1 and yes Messi finally did what he's expected to do score nice goals, it lifted him visibly so maybe next match against Iran he'll be firing on all cylinders again. I'm sure those creepy isis terrorists will rejoice in a humiliation of those Shia Iranians.

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Cabin Pressure is a radio situation comedy series written by John Finnemore. Its first series was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2008. The show follows the exploits of the oddball crew of the single aeroplane owned by "MJN Air" as they are chartered to take all manner of items, people or animals across the world. The show stars Stephanie Cole, Roger Allam, Benedict Cumberbatch and John Finnemore.

The principal cast, the 4-person crew, is the following:

As part of her last divorce settlement, Carolyn Knapp-Shappey (Stephanie Cole) received a mid-size (16 seat) jet aeroplane named "GERTI" (a "Lockheed McDonnell 312", registration G-ERTI). As a result, she founds her very own single plane charter airline, "MJN Air" ("My Jet Now"), which is crewed by an oddball mixture of characters who fly to various cities around the world, encountering a variety of situations.

The airline's only Captain, Martin Crieff (Benedict Cumberbatch), has wanted to be a pilot since he was six years old (before which he wanted to be an aeroplane). He suffers, however, from a distinct lack of natural ability in that department. He was rejected by at least one flight school, and had to put himself through the required coursework, barely qualifying for his certification – on his seventh attempt. He took the job with MJN for no salary at all, as long as he could be Captain. He appears to have no outside interests beyond flying. He is a stickler for procedures and regulations, but is more prissy than pompous. At the end of series two he tells Douglas that he survives financially by running a delivery service using the van he inherited from his father (running two different jobs largely explaining the lack of hobbies). This was his only inheritance (apart from a tool kit and multimeter) because his father believed he would waste any money he received trying to become a pilot. He has two siblings, Caitlin, now a traffic warden and Simon, a council administrator who often frustrates Martin with his annoying superiority. This isn't helped by his Mother's constant admiration of Simon, often saying that "Simon knows best".

First Officer Douglas Richardson (Roger Allam) is, on the other hand, a quite competent pilot who worked for Air England – until he was fired for smuggling. He chafes at his subordinate position to Martin, and misses no opportunity to flaunt his superiority in the younger pilot's face. In later episodes, it is revealed that Douglas, ashamed of his second-rate job, dresses in Captain's uniform for his wife Helena's benefit, changing to First Officer's uniform before he gets to work. Douglas is, however, something of a smooth operator who knows all of the dodges available to airline officers, and enjoys taking part in all of them.

Carolyn's son Arthur Shappey (John Finnemore) is an eager and cheery dimwit aged 29, who is supposed to be the flight attendant but usually manages to get in everyone's way. He is half-English and half-Australian; Carolyn is his English mother, and Gordon, Carolyn's ex-husband, his Australian father (original owner of Gertie). Arthur is a relentless optimist, whose biggest claim to fame is being the inventor (or at least discoverer) of fizzy yoghurt (the recipe for which is yoghurt plus time). He also celebrates Birling day, Birling day eve, Gertie's birthday and Summer Christmas, and is a definite polar bear enthusiast and expert. He is very allergic to dragon fruit and strawberries, but frequently forgets, having eaten strawberry mousse on occasion.

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Cabin Pressure - 204 Johannesburg (ogg 25mb)

204 Johannesburg 27:35

After an unsuccessful birthday treat for Douglas' daughter, Carolyn makes a bet with her pilots. However, a dodgy warning light means that Martin and Arthur must fetch the engineer in a baggage truck. Douglas scrapes €20 by washing the airfield manager's car, Carolyn relaxes on a deckchair and Arthur uses the engine exhausts to make boiling water which ends badly.

previously

Cabin Pressure - 101 Abu Dhabi (ogg 25mb)
Cabin Pressure - 102  Boston (ogg 25mb)
Cabin Pressure - 103  Cremona (ogg 25mb)
Cabin Pressure - 104  Douz (ogg 25mb)
Cabin Pressure - 105  Edinburgh (ogg 25mb)
Cabin Pressure - 106  Fitton (ogg 25mb)

Cabin Pressure - 201  Helsinki (ogg 25mb)
Cabin Pressure - 202  Gdansk (ogg 25mb)
Cabin Pressure - 203   Ipswich (ogg 25mb)

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Sundaze 1424

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RhoDeo 1423 Grooves

Hello, as the Worldcup started yesterday with a blatant referee penalty give away for the hosts, todays action saw 2 regular Mexican goals denied luckily they did manage 1 to win their game so in the end the damage was limited, unlike those poor Croatians that were robbed by Fifa.  Then tonight the repeat of the previous final well this time not a 0-0 no, an outright sensation after a crafty constructed penalty against the Dutch, latter struck back with a vengeance Spains defence was torn apart by Robben and Van Persie in the end the world champions were standing K.O and could have seen more then 5 against them. The Spanish might point to the ominous fact it was a full moon friday the 13th something that won't happen again until 2049...


These weeks it's all about "Soul Brother Number One," "the Godfather of Soul," "the Hardest Working Man in Show Business," "Mr. Dynamite" -- those are mighty titles, but no one can question that today's artist earned them more than any other performer. Other singers were more popular, others were equally skilled, but few other African-American musicians were so influential over the course of popular music. And no other musician, pop or otherwise, put on a more exciting, exhilarating stage show: his performances were marvels of athletic stamina and split-second timing. He is ranked seventh on the music magazine Rolling Stone's list of its 100 greatest artists of all time. He's been very productive hence plenty to choose from today 3 titles from his early/mid seventies era......N'joy

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Through the gospel-impassioned fury of his vocals and the complex polyrhythms of his beats, Brown was a crucial midwife in not just one, but two revolutions in black American music. He was one of the figures most responsible for turning R&B into soul and he was, most would agree, the figure most responsible for turning soul music into the funk of the late '60s and early '70s. After the mid-'70s, he did little more than tread water artistically; his financial and drug problems eventually got him a controversial prison sentence. Yet in a sense, his music is now more influential than ever, as his voice and rhythms have been sampled on innumerable hip-hop recordings, and critics have belatedly hailed his innovations as among the most important in all of rock or soul.

Brown's rags-to-riches-to-rags story has heroic and tragic dimensions of mythic resonance. Born into poverty in the South, he ran afoul of the law by the late '40s on an armed robbery conviction. With the help of singer Bobby Byrd's family, Brown gained parole and started a gospel group with Byrd, changing their focus to R&B as the rock revolution gained steam. The Flames, as the Georgian group was known in the mid-'50s, signed to Federal/King and had a huge R&B hit right off the bat with the wrenching, churchy ballad "Please, Please, Please." By that point, The Flames had become James Brown & the Famous Flames; the charisma, energy, and talent of Brown made him the natural star attraction.

 All of Brown's singles over the next two years flopped, as he sought to establish his own style, recording material that was obviously derivative of heroes like Roy Brown, Hank Ballard, Little Richard, and Ray Charles. In retrospect, it can be seen that Brown was in the same position as dozens of other R&B one-shot: talented singers in need of better songs, or not fully on the road to a truly original sound. What made Brown succeed where hundreds of others failed was his superhuman determination, working the chitlin circuit to death, sharpening his band, and keeping an eye on new trends. He was on the verge of being dropped from King in late 1958 when his perseverance finally paid off, as "Try Me" became a number one R&B (and small pop) hit, and several follow-ups established him as a regular visitor to the R&B charts.

Brown's style of R&B got harder as the '60s began; he added more complex, Latin- and jazz-influenced rhythms on hits like "Good Good Lovin'," "I'll Go Crazy," "Think," and "Night Train," alternating these with torturous ballads that featured some of the most frayed screaming to be heard outside of the church. Black audiences already knew that Brown had the most exciting live act around, but he truly started to become a phenomenon with the release of Live at the Apollo in 1963. Capturing a James Brown concert in all its whirling-dervish energy and calculated spontaneity, the album reached number two on the album charts, an unprecedented feat for a hardcore R&B LP.

Live at the Apollo was recorded and released against the wishes of the King label. It was this kind of artistic standoff that led Brown to seek better opportunities elsewhere. In 1964, he ignored his King contract to record "Out of Sight" for Smash, igniting a lengthy legal battle that prevented him from issuing vocal recordings for about a year. When he finally resumed recording for King in 1965, he had a new contract that granted him far more artistic control over his releases.

Brown's new era had truly begun, however, with "Out of Sight," which topped the R&B charts and made the pop Top 40. For some time, Brown had been moving toward more elemental lyrics that threw in as many chants and screams as they did words, and more intricate beats and horn charts that took some of their cues from the ensemble work of jazz outfits. "Out of Sight" wasn't called funk when it came out, but it had most of the essential ingredients. These were amplified and perfected on 1965's "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," a monster that finally broke Brown to the white audience, reaching the Top Ten. The even more adventurous follow-up, "I Got You (I Feel Good)," did even better, making number three.

These hits kicked off Brown's period of greatest commercial success and public visibility. From 1965 to the end of the decade, he was rarely off the R&B charts, often on the pop listings, and all over the concert circuit and national television, even meeting with Vice President Hubert Humphrey and other important politicians as a representative of the black community. His music became even bolder and funkier, as melody was dispensed with almost altogether in favor of chunky rhythms and magnetic interplay between his vocals, horns, drums, and scratching electric guitar (heard to best advantage on hits like "Cold Sweat," "I Got the Feelin'," and "There Was a Time"). The lyrics were not so much words as chanted, stream-of-consciousness slogans, often aligning themselves with black pride as well as good old-fashioned (or new-fashioned) sex. Much of the credit for the sound he devised belonged to (and has now been belatedly attributed to) his top-notch supporting musicians such as saxophonists Maceo Parker, St. Clair Pinckney, and Pee Wee Ellis; guitarist Jimmy Nolen; backup singer and longtime loyal associate Bobby Byrd; and drummer Clyde Stubblefield.

Brown was both a brilliant bandleader and a stern taskmaster, the latter leading his band to walk out on him in late 1969. Amazingly, he turned the crisis to his advantage by recruiting a young Cincinnati outfit called the Pacemakers featuring guitarist Catfish Collins and bassist Bootsy Collins. Although they only stayed with him for about a year, they were crucial to Brown's evolution into even harder funk, emphasizing the rhythm and the bottom even more. The Collins brothers, for their part, put their apprenticeship to good use, helping define '70s funk as members of the Parliament-Funkadelic axis.

In the early '70s, many of the most important members of Brown's late-'60s band returned to the fold, to be billed as the J.B.'s (they also made records on their own). Brown continued to score heavily on the R&B charts throughout the first half of the '70s, the music becoming more and more elemental and beat-driven. At the same time, he was retreating from the white audience he had cultivated during the mid- to late '60s; records like "Make It Funky," "Hot Pants," "Get on the Good Foot," and "The Payback" were huge soul sellers, but only modest pop ones. Critics charged, with some justification, that the Godfather was starting to repeat and recycle himself too many times. It must be remembered, though, that these songs were made for the singles radio jukebox market and not meant to be played one after the other on CD compilations (as they are today).

By the mid-'70s, Brown was beginning to burn out artistically. He seemed shorn of new ideas, was being out-gunned on the charts by disco, and was running into problems with the IRS and his financial empire. There were sporadic hits, and he could always count on enthusiastic live audiences, but by the '80s, he didn't have a label. With the explosion of rap, however, which frequently sampled vintage J.B.'s records, Brown became hipper than ever. He collaborated with Afrika Bambaataa on the critical smash single "Unity" and reentered the Top Ten in 1986 with "Living in America." Rock critics, who had always ranked Brown considerably below Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin in the soul canon, began to reevaluate his output, particularly the material from his funk years, sometimes anointing him not just "Soul Brother Number One," but the most important black musician of the rock era.

For the majority of his career, Brown carried around a strict drug and alcohol-free policy with any member in his entourage, including band members, firing people who disobeyed orders, particularly those who used or abused drugs and alcohol. Some members of Brown's vocal group the Famous Flames were fired due to alcohol use. Noting of the policy, some of the original members of Brown's 1970s band, The J.B.'s, including Catfish and Bootsy Collins, intentionally got high on LSD during a concert gig in 1971, causing Brown to fire them after the show because he had suspected them to be on drugs all along.

However, by the mid-1980s, it was alleged that Brown himself was using drugs. After meeting and later marrying Adrienne Rodriguez, she and Brown began using PCP ("angel dust"). The drug resulted in domestically violent outbursts from Brown and he was arrested several times for domestic violence against Rodriguez while high on the drug. Clearly Adrienne Rodriguez had a bad influence on him and his brain couldn't cope with drugs. In 1988, Brown's personal life came crashing down in a well-publicized incident in which he was accused by his wife of assault and battery. After a year skirting hazy legal and personal troubles, he led the police on an interstate car chase after allegedly threatening people with a handgun. The episode ended in a six-year prison sentence that many felt was excessive; he was paroled after serving two years.

Throughout the '90s Brown continued to perform and release new material like Love Over-Due (1991), Universal James (1992), and I'm Back (1998). While none of these recordings could be considered as important as his earlier work and did little to increase his popularity, his classic catalog became more popular in the American mainstream during this time than it had been since the '70s, and not just among young rappers and samplers. One of the main reasons for this was a proper presentation of his recorded legacy. For a long time, his cumbersome, byzantine discography was mostly out of print, with pieces available only on skimpy greatest-hits collections. A series of exceptionally well-packaged reissues on PolyGram changed that situation; the Star Time box set is the best overview, with other superb compilations devoted to specific phases of his lengthy career, from '50s R&B to '70s funk.

In 2004, Brown was diagnosed with prostate cancer but successfully fought the disease. By 2006, it was in remission and Brown, then 73, began a global tour dubbed the Seven Decades of Funk World Tour. Late in the year while at a routine dentist appointment, the singer was diagnosed with pneumonia. On December 25, 2006, Brown died at approximately 1:45 am EST (06:45 UTC) from congestive heart failure resulting from complications of pneumonia, at age 73, with his personal manager and longtime friend Charles Bobbit at his bedside. According to Mr. Bobbit, Brown stuttered "I'm going away tonight", and then Brown took three long, quiet breaths and fell asleep before dying.

After Brown's death, Brown's relatives and friends, a host of celebrities and thousands of fans attended public memorial services at the Apollo Theater in New York on December 28, 2006 and at the James Brown Arena on December 30, 2006 in Augusta, Georgia. A separate, private memorial service was also held in North Augusta, South Carolina on December 29, 2006, which was attended by Brown's family and close friends. Celebrities who attended Brown's public and/or private memorial services included Michael Jackson, Jimmy Cliff, Joe Frazier, Buddy Guy, Ice Cube, Ludacris, Dr. Dre, Little Richard, Dick Gregory, MC Hammer, Prince, Jesse Jackson, Ice-T, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bootsy Collins, LL Cool J, Li'l Wayne, Lenny Kravitz, 50 Cent, Stevie Wonder, and Don King, among others.


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Originally released in 1973 as a sprawling two-LP set, The Payback was one of James Brown's most ambitious albums of the 1970's, and also one of his best, with Brown and his band (which in 1974 still included Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker, St. Clair Pinckney, Jimmy Nolen and Jabo Starks) relentlessly exploring the outer possibilities of the James Brown groove. Stretching eight cuts out over the space of nearly 73 minutes, The Payback is long on extended rhythmic jamming, and by this time Brown and his band had become such a potent and nearly telepathic combination that the musicians were able pull out lengthy solos while still maintaining some of the most hypnotic funk to be found anywhere, and on the album's best songs -- the jazzy "Time Is Running Out Fast", the relentless "Shoot Your Shot", the tight-wound "Mind Power", and the bitter revenge fantasy of the title cut -- the tough, sinuous rhythms and the precise interplay between the players is nothing short of a wonder to behold. And even the album's lower-key cuts (such as the lovelorn "Doing The Best That I Can" and "Forever Suffering") sink their hooks into the listener and pull you in; quite simply, this is remarkable stuff, and even Brown's attempts at lyrical relevance (which were frankly getting a bit shaky at this point in his career) are firmly rooted enough to sound convincing. The Payback turned out to be one of James Brown's last inarguably great albums before he hit a long fallow streak in the mid-to-late 70's, but no one listening to this set would ever imagine that this was the work of an artist (or a band) about to run out of gas.

James Brown - The Payback  (flac 448mb)

01 The Payback 7:39
02 Doing The Best I Can 7:39
03 Take Some ... Leave Some 8:20
04 Shoot Your Shot 8:19
05 Forever Suffering 5:39
06 Time Is Running Out Fast 12:58
07 Stone To The Bone 10:14
08 Mind Power 12:04

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After Isaac Hayes kicked his career into high gear with the popular and influential score for Shaft, and Curtis Mayfield managed the same feat with Superfly, seemingly every major soul star of the early 1970's ended up doing music for a blaxploitation film, and James Brown was certainly no exception. Brown sang the title tune for Larry Cohen's idiosyncratic black crime film Black Caesar, as well as performing ten other pieces for the movie's soundtrack (most written by Brown in collaboration with Fred Wesley); Barry Devorzon's lead-off cut, "Down and Out In New York City", sets up the picture's story, while most of the other five vocal cuts reflect the film's narrative in one way or another (although "Make It Good To Yourself" seems to be here mainly because of it's high funk quotient, and on "Mama Feelgood", Brown appropriately hands the vocal chores over to Lynn Collins). Like most soundtrack albums of the period, Black Caesar sounds rather scattershot, especially when the music is divorced from the film's narrative, and this isn't one of Brown's stellar albums of the 1970's; however, there are several top-notch tracks, especially the much-sampled "The Boss", the potent "Make It Good To Yourself", and the melodramatic "Mama's Dead", and Fred Wesley's superb horn charts, Jimmy Nolen's percussive guitar, and Jabo Starks' dead-on-the-one drumming make even the weaker instrumental cuts worth a quick listen.

James Brown - Black Caesar  (flac 220mb)

01 Down And Out In New York City 4:43
02 Blind Man Can See It 2:18
03 Sportin' Life 3:50
04 Dirty Harri 1:29
05 The Boss 3:14
06 Make It Good To Yourself 3:18
07 Mama Feelgood (Feat. Lyn Collins) 3:29
08 Mama's Dead 4:47
09 White Lightning (I Mean Moonshine) 2:40
10 Chase 2:38
11 Like It Is, Like It Was 3:51

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Brown's early-'70s run of classic singles and good-to-great albums is still impressive. Hell was the double album released a year after the gold selling The Payback. To some, the title might put this effort in the realm of kitsch, but in many ways Hell was one of Brown's strongest albums. The album was the pinnacle of his work as the Minister of the Super New New Heavy Funk. From the tough and nimble Latin rhythms of "Coldblooded," and "Sayin' It and Doin' It" to the title track, all are prime pre-disco Brown. "My Thang" is probably as hard and unrelenting as he got without spontaneously combusting. The biggest surprise of Hell is that no matter how odd the song choices seemed, practically everything worked, excluding a few key songs of course. Both "When the Saints Go Marching In" and "Stormy Monday" don't belong in James Brown's catalogue, let alone the same album. Ballad-wise, Brown fares better. "These Foolish Things Remind Me of You" has him getting all warm and fuzzy as he inexplicably throws in an "I'm hurt, I'm hurt" for good measure. That song, as well as the weepers "A Man Has to Go to the Cross Road Before He Finds Himself" and "Sometime," were produced by David Matthews who could always get good ragged yet poised vocals from Brown. Although Brown did roll snake eyes on all of side three, he did leave Hell on a good note. "Papa Don't Take No Mess" is laid-back, funky jazz that's worth each of its 13-plus minutes. Despite a few detours, Hell is worth listening to.

James Brown - Hell  (flac 441mb)

01 Coldblooded 4:46
02 Hell 5:07
03 My Thang 4:19
04 Sayin' It And Doin' It 3:08
05 Please, Please, Please 4:14
06 When The Saints Go Marching In 2:41
07 These Foolish Things Remind Me Of You 3:15
08 Stormy Monday 3:17
09 A Man Has To Go Back To The Crossroad Before He Finds Himself 2:57
10 Sometime 4:20
11 I Can't Stand It "76" 8:08
12 Lost Someone 3:41
13 Don't Tell A Lie About Me And I Won't Tell The Truth On You 5:09
14 Papa Don't Take No Mess 13:51

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