Thousand

No prizes for guessing what post number this is. 

Here's an eclectic 90 minutes of songs, remixes or acts featuring either '1000' or 'thousand' in the name. What was a little surprising was just how many examples are bouncing around in my collection. Even my shortlist contained roughly twice as many songs as made the final selection. 

Something for everyone, although not necessarily all together or in the right order. Ride, Hoodoo Gurus, Dengue Fever, The Sugarcubes, Gram Parsons, Gonzales, Stereolab, the selection also hops around the world a fair bit. Speaking of which...

 

Those of you who follow the excellent 27 Leggies and in particular Ernie's African Odyssey will have been hugely disappointed by the difficult decision to exclude the mighty King Ayisoba from this week's stop off in Ghana, such was the embarrassment of musical riches emanating from the country. Rest assured, his majesty makes an appearance here, with one of the songs that Ernie originally posted and part of my introduction to the Ghanaian great.

The selection closes with a two-hander from XTC and The Coral and I don't think I could have picked two better songs to wrap up. 

Viel spaß mit meiner tausendsten beitragsauswahl, meine Freunde!

1) 1000 Miles: Ride (1994)

2) Rilly Groovy (S1000 Mix By Spencer Williams & Mike Koglin): Beautiful People ft. Jimi Hendrix (1992)

3) Furious Angels (Rollo's Thousand Volts Mix): Rob Dougan (1998)

4) 1000 Miles Away: Hoodoo Gurus ft. Vicki Peterson (1991)

5) One Thousand Miles An Hour: Stereolab (1995)

6) 1000 Faces: Gonzales (2002)

7) Through It Poured The Next Day, I Never Noticed The Rain (Single Version): One Thousand Violins (1986)

8) One Thousand Tears Of A Tarantula (Album Version): Dengue Fever (2005)

9) One Thousand Years: TUU (1993)

10) Swords Of A Thousand Men: Tenpole Tudor (1981)

11) 1000 Dollar Car: The Bottle Rockets (1994)

12) Son Of A Thousand Fathers: Prince Fatty & Mutant Hi-Fi (2011)

13) 1000 Miles: Dirty Three (1996)

14) Blue-Eyed Pop (S1000 Mix By Spencer Williams & Mike Koglin): The Sugarcubes (1992)

15) 1000 Can Die: King Ayisoba ft. M3nsa & Lee 'Scratch' Perry (2017)

16) $1000 Wedding: Gram Parsons ft. Emmylou Harris (1974)

17) A Girl Like You (1000 Times) (Remix By Howard Gray): The Wolfgang Press ft. Claudia Fontaine (1992)

18) 1000 Umbrellas: XTC (1986)

19) 1000 Years: The Coral (2010)

 

1974: $1000 Wedding: 16

1981: Eddie, Old Bob, Dick And Gary: 10

1986: Please Don't Sandblast My House EP: 7 

1986: Skylarking (2016 Steven Wilson Mix): 18

1991: Kinky: 4 

1992: A Girl Like You EP: 17

1992: It's-It: 14

1992: Rilly Groovy EP: 2 

1993: One Thousand Years: 9

1994: Carnival Of Light: 1 

1994: The Brooklyn Side: 11

1995: The In Sound EP: 5 

1996: Horse Stories: 13

1998: Furious Angels EP: 3

2002: Presidential Suite: 6

2005: Escape From Dragon House: 8

2010: Butterfly House: 19

2011: Return Of Gringo!: 12

2017: 1000 Can Die: 15

Thousand (1:29:08) (KF) (Mega)

And if that's not enough for you, there are thousands of others that could have made the cut. 

Contributing today's cover photo, I bought the 12" of I Feel It/Thousand by Moby in the 1990s. I remember reading in Mixmag or DJ magazine at the time that the song achieved a Guinness World Record for having the fastest BPM tempo of any released single, peaking at approximately 1,015 beats per minute. 

 

None of which means the song is any good, of course. Rather than subject you to the full version, here's two minutes of Moby "performing" Thousand at the Electric Daisy Carneval in (I think) 2015. Health warning: strobe lights, plus a bald, pasty-skinned man topless and puffing his chest out to the largely indifferent masses. The fireworks are lovely, though.

 

Someone else who's still rocking the hairspray and lippy like it's 1985 is Robert Smith of The Cure. Here's A Thousand Hours (and bonus At Night) performed last October in Los Angeles. The venue is the Smoothie King Center, presumably named after a US company/sponsor but was there ever a more appropriately named venue for ol' Bob?

Back to 1994 and The Fatima Mansions live on stage 1000%, again cutting away to some fairly blank faces. Phillistines! I saw Cathal Coughlan and crew at The Fleece in Bristol around the same time and it was one of the most blistering, incendiary gigs I've been to. A greatly missed creative genius. 

You get some strange stuff on You Tube, don't you? I love The Beloved and I really like the song 1000 Years From Today. One fan has taken this one step further and created their own video. Not the mental image I had when listening to the song previously.

 

I have one song by Lia Ices aka Leah Kessel, courtesy of a Mojo magazine cover mount CD. A bit of an insult really, given that she's released four albums since 2008. Luckily for Lia, the one song is called Thousand Eyes so it gets a mention here. Not a fan-made video, although it's cut-and-paste job shamelessly stealing from Bollywood.

And for those of you who on seeing the post title and theme have been shouting "Where's Slough's finest, Thousand Yard Stare, for feck's sake?!" at the screen ever since, I think it's about time you got your comeuppance. 

 

No, I mean the song's called Comeuppance... 

 

Wait, come back....

 

...oh, now I've gone and done it.

Sahel Sounds Souvenir

Yes, it's Sahel Sounds Sunday. No, it's not the start of a series.

November was the first Bandcamp Friday in a long time that I didn't buy anything from Sahel Sounds, more a case of blowing my budget on other music, rather than the well running dry. I'd previously been focusing on catching up with the vast number of Sahel Sounds compilations that have been made available over the years. 

 

However, in October, I did buy a trio of artist albums by Mamman Sani Abdoulaye, Les Filles De Illighadad and Mdou Moctar. The former was a recommendation by The Swede (thank you!) and dates from 1978, sounding like something that would have come from Sheffield via The Human League or Cabaret Voltaire, rather than Niamey, Niger. Hama, hailing from the same capital city, is a natural successor, with an Eighties sound to match anything Jan Hammer and Harold Faltermeyer could put on a TV or movie soundtrack.

I've greatly enjoyed the Les Filles De Illighadad and Mdou Moctar albums and the remaining selection here continues to highlight artists that I want to explore further. And of course, it would be remiss of me not to include King Ayisoba (albeit here in a guest appearance with Atamina) as a thank you to Ernie at 27 Leggies. 

 

If you enjoy this and missed my previous Sahel Sounds selection, you can find it here.

 

1) Hey Malale: Andal Sukabe (2022)

2) Lidda: Mamman Sani (1978)

3) Afashee: Prince Buju (2015)

4) Ahiyana: Idassane Wallet Mohamed (2008)

5) Erilegh Ifanata: Les Filles De Illighadad (2016)

6) Home Witches: Asaa Naho (2016)

7) Ndougou: Fagaru Evolution (2010)

8) Terroir: Hama (2019)

9) Kamane Tarhanin: Mdou Moctar (2019)

10) Africa Problem: Atamina ft. King Ayisoba (2016)

11) Souvenir Nam Adjosa: Koudédé (2006)

2010: Ishilan n-Tenere: 7

2013: La Musique Electronique Du Niger: 2

2013: Music From Saharan Cellphones: Volume 2: 11

2016: Les Filles De Illighadad: 5

2016: This is Kologo Power!: 3, 6

2019: Ilana: The Creator: 9

2020: Sahel Sounds Label Sampler 2: 4, 8, 10

2022: Music From Saharan WhatsApp: 1

Sahel Sounds Souvenir (46:12) (Box) (Mega)

Africa Needs Africa

Today's Sahel Sounds selection would not exist but for three things:

 

1) the Covid pandemic and subsequent lockdown in 2020;

2) the introduction of Bandcamp Friday; and

3) the rather wonderful 27 Leggies music blog.

Actually, there's a fourth: Sahel Sounds itself would not exist had Christopher Kirkley not been inspired to start a blog in 2009, then a record label before evolving and expanding further to encompass an artist collective, film production house and arts organisation.

 

But, for me, it all kicked off in 2020 with being at home, trying to work (a story in itself) and not annoy Clan K (another story in itself), whilst attempting to preserve my sanity. The blogosphere was incredibly important to the latter. I began to expand my reading and start to engage a bit more with comments and contributions before going full on with this blog by the end of the year.

Along the way, I was - and continue to be - introduced to music from all over the world that I would never have discovered otherwise. Case in point, the Sahel Sounds label, based in Portland, Oregon and promoting music and artists from (deep breath for Wikipedia quote) "northern Senegal, southern Mauritania, central Mali, northern Burkina Faso, the extreme south of Algeria, Niger, the extreme north of Nigeria, Cameroon and Central African Republic, central Chad, central and southern Sudan, the extreme north of South Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia".

 

Of course Ernie, the creator of 27 Leggies, was onto Sahel Sounds several years before, but this Johnny Come Lately picked up on it in the early weeks of the UK lockdown in March 2020 when Ernie highlighted the Bandcamp Friday promotion. 

Since then, I've been getting one of the Sahel Sounds 'name your price' compilations pretty much every other Bandcamp Friday. After taking a break earlier year, the promotion started again last Friday (2nd Sep) and I bought Music From Saharan WhatsApp, released in June. I've a few more to get - Field Recordings From The Sahel and Gao Rap: Hip Hop From Northern Mali, to name two - but with nearly a hundred songs amassed so far, I figured a Dubhed selection was (over)due. 

 

Before I started following Ernie's recommendations on 27 Leggies and then buying the compilations, I'd only heard of one artist on the Sahel Sounds roster, Mdou Moctar. I'm very glad that I've had the opportunity to delve more into his catalogue and also open my mind and ears to the diverse and exciting sounds coming from the Sahel. 

 

Bandcamp Friday will continue for at least the rest of 2022 and I'll be moving onto buying individual artist albums. My bank balance will hate me, my musical brain will love me. Love always wins.

 

Today's title is the name of a 2017 song by King Ayisoba featuring Wanlov The Kubolor & Big Gad. It's not featured on the Sahel Sounds compilations I own, but I've included the video for your viewing and listening pleasure.

 

This one's for Ernie, with heartfelt thanks for the continuing education and entertainment at 27 Leggies.

 

1) Bahouche: Amaria Hamadalher

2) N'Dianguene Demngal Men: Tidiane Thiam

3) Elyn: Jeich Ould Badu

4) Inigradan: Les Filles De Illighadad

5) Waihidjo: Pheno S.

6) Akokass: Abdallah Ag Oumbadougou

7) Girma Girma: Fati Niger

8) Inizgam: Mdou Moctar

9) Taliat: Intriya Ag Babo

10) Iban Mano D'Ikhya: Etran De L'Aïr

11) Africa: King Ayisoba

12) Abandé: Yeli Fuzzo

2010: Ishilan n-Tenere: 9 

2011: Music From Saharan Cellphones: 12

2013: Music From Saharan Cellphones: Volume II: 5 

2016: This is Kologo Power!: 11

2017: Agrim Agadez: 1, 10

2019: Sahel Sounds Label Sampler: 4, 8

2020: Sahel Sounds Label Sampler II: 7

2021: Sahel Sounds Label Sampler III: 2, 6

2022: Music From Saharan WhatsApp: 3

 

Africa Needs Africa (46:08) (Box) (Mega)