THE AU PAIRS

Birmingham, 1979, post-punk is Britain’s new "opium for the masses". Out of the blue, a band of outsiders came along and kicked ass with its catchy sounds, sarcastic lyrics and tight rhythm section (Jane Munro on bass and Pete Hammond on drums.)
This was the time when girls in bands started speaking out and, boy, they had a lot on their minds!

The Au Pairs were fronted by riot grrrl Lesley Woods, a lesbian and feminist, hence her bias led the band to be one of the very first ones that celebrated sexuality from a woman’s point of view.
Miss Woods and fellow guitarist and vocalist Paul Foad took a dry look at gender relations and were not ones to mince words. Their music was in your face but smartly bold and ironic, therefore their debut album Playing With A Different Sex is regarded as a post-punk classic and was compared to Delta 5, Gang Of Four and The Slits.
If you want to get the picture, listen to malign “Come Again” at maximum volume, you’ll want to start a riot, you will blow the place apart and will have a blast!
The second album Sense & Sensuality did not get as much recognition as it was more jazz, blues and funk oriented and the band finally split up in 1983 after a live album.
Both Lesley and Jane Munro quit making music, cheeky Lesley is now a lawyer but Paul and Pete remain active musicians.
Although this band was short lived, its aura and sounds are still vivid and very relevant. The Scottish band Sons & Daughters is one of its modern expressions.
For anyone who's feisty or a rebel at heart...

FELA KUTI

The first time I heard Fela Kuti I couldn’t believe my ears.
I felt ashamed.
Ashamed of not knowing who he was, where he came from, what he sung about. Then I started reading about him. Yes he IS the father of Afro Beat, which is essentially a fusion of jazz, funk, psychedelic rock, and traditional West African chants and rhythms. He was Nigerian, and was a multi instrumentalist, a civil rights activist, he released over 47 albums, and he supported socialism.
But aside from all that it was what he produced in me, what he made me feel, physically, my body responded to him.

I come from a dark skinned father and a light skinned mother. I was born in a country where drums, Africa and the Negro culture gave the whole country its heart beat. Without it, Uruguay doesn’t breath. My country invented Candombe, we white folks are lubolos (white people appearing as black people at Carnivals, wanting to be black, feeling themselves black). Uruguay actually has a pure African descendant population of %6.3 and coming from a small country its saying a lot, Brazil has only %6 pure black population (data from 2000) and is a much, much larger country.
I grew up in a neighborhood where we white, were the minority, I wanted to be black when I was 4 and played with my friends.
I now live in Buenos Aires, and if someone asks me what it lacks I could instantly point out 2 things, a beach on its capital city and black people.
Down here, we had racist issues, not as much as in the North Continent of our beloved America, but we did have them. Black people and Indians fighting the Libertarian and Civil wars on the front line, so they would die first than the white people. Shame on those who claimed to be “libertarian” and acted that way.

I felt ashamed, I’ve always felt a bit ashamed about my skin, my light skin, always felt anger and rage every time an injustice was thrown onto the black people, so beautiful to me, so talented, with such life in them that all their problems would go away. I’ve always been fascinated by their power to transform death into life.
Black people singing in the cotton fields.
Black people dancing to the stars in Africa.
Black people fighting apartheid with open hands and closed fists.
Black people, with such black power.

Yes, I’m going to make a racist stand here.
No, I didn't believe, in my heart, that we were equal, I’ve never had.
I had always felt black people were better, more talented. They sung better, they danced better, their skin was more beautiful, their bodies better built, they were better at sports, better in music.
Simply better. I strongly believe that one of the reasons for racism to exist is envy.

Then I heard Fela Kuti and something inside of me changed, completely, I felt no color, just beat, rhythm, sound, blood in my veins, warmth in my skin, I was alive, experiencing music completely.
I was black and white; I was in Buenos Aires and in Africa.

He brought everything together for me.
I could never talk about Fela Kuti without talking about what I felt about my skin, because it’s the largest organ of my body and he made me realize I had one.
Music has no shape, no color. Music chooses you; you never choose music, not really. Music can take you places you’ve never been to, I believe that he thought that way; he made us all into one huge African heart beat.

After all, men comes from Africa. The heart of the world is Africa.
Black Africa. Black Power.



+INFO:
Fela Kuti

THE FLYING BURRITO BROS

Fight fire with Fire

Legend tells us that the Phoenix is a mythical bird with a colorful plumage and a tail of gold and scarlet. It has a 500 to 1,000 year life-cycle, near the end of which it builds itself a nest of myrrh twigs that then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix or phoenix egg arises, reborn anew to live again.

Country.
Rock.
Legacy.
Legend.

All of these words apply to talk about one of the most influential bands of the 60’s.
The Flying Burrito Bros are what Unenlagia is to Paleontology, and using an “almost” bird from ancient times is completely accurate. Why? Because before we learn to fly, we got to learn to walk, and these animals taught us that.
Same happened with The FBB back in the 60’s; their music is the link between two great genres, Country & Rock, and by linking them together they accomplished more than they actually realized.

You see, Country and Rock were, and can still be, two very closed forms of music, inside the Country family there were only a few who dared to step into Rock, and when they did Ma’, Pa’ and the Country Music Industry weren’t happy about it; and when a Rocker went Country (it has happened) he or she got stoned for it.

Then in the 60’s, these guys come and give everybody a huge middle finger with their first record The Gilded Palace of Sin (1969), I mean c’mon, isn’t that a Rock and Roll album name or what? And what we had there was “good old farmers meet LSD” and it worked out GREAT.

Giving the atmosphere of those years, it was to be expected that as if came natural to them to mix different points of view, it was natural that their statement was going to be someone else’s too. Let’s thank the Lord for that, Amen!

Their formation varied and I must name Mister Ingram Cecil Connor III, or Gram Parsons to us all, a modern man like few in our time, and like the modern man he was, he took life by its horns and gave us all beautiful music to live to.

Not many people know about The FBB, or to say it better, they are not named as much as they should, we’re talking about the band that Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones looked up to, the band that shared members with The Byrds and The International Submarine Band.

Maybe like with ancient stories, they need to be passed on from person to person, like a marvelous secret that needs to be taken care of.
What’s true is that after you experience listening to them one gets the impression that we understand it all, finally.

I got the story from a dear friend, now I’m passing it to you.
Keep it alive, like the phoenix and Gram, always burning, always living, and forever young.

13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS

The 13th Floor Elevators being an inspiration for our blog, they deserved our first tribute.
This Austin band was groundbreaking in many respects, they were the very first band that actually used the term "psychedelic" (which means "soul revelator") in their debut record title.
They believed that man is alienated by material and practical perception and used the eye and the triangle as the symbols of upper perception triggered by psychotropic substances.
Like many bands from the sixties, their music and lifestyle were intertwined, their work ethic was a way of life, as both aimed at achieving a superior state of mind by altering their mental state.
Back then, they were regarded as very subversive, they were searched and two of them were charged on possession of marijuana. Their lead singer and guitarist Roky Erikson escaped and was then sent to a mental institution where he underwent electric shock treatment. (outrageous!)

The Elevators are a reference to common superstition, there are indeed seldom if ever 13th floors in high buildings and hotels. It can also allude to the 13th letter of the alphabet : M, for marijuana.
Their music is so unique that it is instantly recognizable, just listen to that bubbling garage aura.
The electric jug is one of the sound effects that makes their sound so peculiar and they have blessed us with garage anthems like "You're Gonna Miss Me", "Reverberation" or "Rollercoaster" or "folkier" tunes like "She Lives (In A Time Of Her Own") , "Dust" or "Don't Fall Down".

Although those Texans never got as famous as contemporary peers The Doors or The Byrds, they created a trademark sound in four albums, still bring out a true rollercoaster of emotions four decades later and paved the way for many bands such as Spacemen 3, Primal Scream and fellow austinites The Black Angels who have praised and stated them as a major influence.

They live in a time of their own.
They have always been in your ear
Their voice sounds a tone within you
Listen to the words you hear
Their time has no past or future

Genius is timeless, isn't it?