The Professor dreams himself away to Florida and strolls through the night with tinted aviator glasses on his nose – in his ear the latest from JJ Grey, Albert Castiglia and The Imagine If as well as a Talking Heads tribute album and various soul vinyl singles.
Originally, I was planning to write about the day when a pack of pugs stormed the professor’s study. However, recent events have pushed this anecdote back a little. But if you read on diligently in today’s Rhythm and Soul Revue, you will soon find out what a hyperactive pug trio has to do with the slightly neon-tinged funk and soul music of the nineties, just keep on keepin’ on, to quote the incomparable Dr. John once again. Well then, fresh memories: This morning the alarm clock rang in the earliest hours of the morning, even though it is the Lord’s Day. Unfortunately, the local soccer association’s schedulers don’t care about that, they put their daughter’s away game* at that time of the Sunday weekend when the early morning mist is still rolling up from the river and the sun is sleepily waiting behind the horizon for the first coffee of the day. The Missus was still asleep too, which is why I blindly reached into the shelf in the dark and slipped the first T-shirt I could find over my head. Which, I only noticed later in the rear-view mirror of the stagecoach used to transport the team to foreign parts of the city, was extensively printed. “Welcome to Mofro’s Down Home Review – Where the Sun Shines Brightest”: That’s what it says on the front in small typography, above an illustration that is supposed to represent the Florida sun, and, oh boy, back came the memories… There was a time when the professor would buy a T-shirt at every concert, but at some point he passed the brightly printed cotton blob on to the local homeless charity, which is probably why to this day some life-stricken fellow human beings are still walking around in faded concert T-shirts by Jethro Tull, Miles Davis and Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung. I kept a few in my wardrobe, including the dark blue one from JJ Grey & Mofro’s very first gig on European soil. The fact that this had to be in faraway Frankfurt, of all places, and in the mid-sized Batschkapp disco – you can’t always choose the scene of unexpected good fortune. At the time, it must have been 2007 or 2008, the professor drove his little horse south and witnessed the start of a beautiful little career with around 16 other visitors. Stay tuned!
* For the sake of completeness, it should be mentioned that both teams agreed on a draw in the first game of the season after a nerve-wracking back-and-forth: 5:5. Despite the early autumn schedule, the sun was blazing like in Florida in the high season. Karma, I can hear you …
JJ Grey & Mofro – Olustee
Here we go, Grandpa is talking about the old days: In the good ol’ days, when you turned on the TV to watch something on RTL or SAT1, there were program guides with a circulation of millions. The professor had subscribed to one of them, and not because of the list of RTL programs, but because of a page at the back of the magazine. Records were discussed there, in just two and a half sentences each, but to the point. In case the unknown author from back then reads this: Thank you, my friend! One of these review miniatures promised “Florida soul with country, funk and southern rock influences”, front porch blue-eyed blues from the hinterland of the sunshine state. Country Ghetto by the previously unknown JJ Grey and his band Mofro became the record of the summer for the professor. Shortly afterwards, the singer-slash-guitarist, at the time still a full-time log sorter in the timber wholesale trade in the Florida hinterland, left home for the first time and came to Germany for three concerts. The first took place in Frankfurt, and the Professor rode south like the Pony Express. At the mini-merch stand, I finally purchased the conscious T-shirt, presented to me by Mr. Grey himself. Later I saw the good man in an almost sold-out house, his career had deservedly taken off. But then: Nine years of radio silence, no album, JJ Grey had disappeared from the professor’s radar – until I accidentally found myself in the almost forgotten concert shirt on the sidelines of the match between the 1st B girls of Altona 93 and Grün-Weiß Eimsbüttel. Okay, long detour to the message of the day: the new album Olustee, streamed five minutes before this Rhythm and Soul Revue went to press, friends, friends … The opening song “The Sea” – a goosebump ballad à la Cat Stevens. “Top Of The World” – Jukejointfridaynightdancesoulfunk for tired dancing legs. Title track “Olustee” – punk guitar dances in a pogo contest with the harmonica, creating the new cross-genre stoner soul. To put it perfectly in a nutshell: Fuckin’ awesome!
Label: Alligator/H’Art
Format: CD, LP, DL 24/96
Albert Castiglia – Righteous Souls
To save on travel expenses, let’s just stay under the Florida sun, or rather put on our aviator shades and plunge into Miami’s neon-lit nightlife. Chances are we might bump into Albert Castiglia by dawn, the most famous bluesman on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Perhaps he is playing in a local bar and spots us loitering at the bar in the background. A knowing smile will march through his five-day beard, because he also likes to wear tinted aviator glasses in his mildly tanned southern brother face. Of course, he will immediately recognize us as blues brothers and soul sisters in spirit. So much for the professor’s daydream, as I myself am grooving on the keyboard, hitting the keys with grammatical triplets and semantic analogy chords, with Castiglia’s new album Righteous Souls playing in the background. And that, friends, is a fine, fat, funky-funky blues work – back in the early nineties, when Castiglia, in his mid-twenties, was causing a first stir as the touring guitarist for the harmonica devil Junior Wells, who died in 1998, you’d have used the now-tired music reviewer phrase “bang on the money” for albums like these. With the active assistance of colleagues (including the blues guitar bards Joe Bonamassa, Josh Smith and Popa Chubby), they “light up a merciless firework of groove” – I’ll give you this vapid phrase for free, but what can you do when your basest headbanging instincts are satisfied with an all-round successful Southern rock album? Listen here: “Centerline” (guitar duel with 500-pound blues heavyweight Popa Chubby), “Get Down To The Nitty Gritty” (danceable juke joint blues with guest singer Alabama Mike) and “The Dollar Done Fell” (cover of the Buddy Guy Chicago blues standard in a funky arrangement and duet with Florida guitarist friend Josh Smith from Fort Lauderdale).
Label: Gulf Coast Records (H’Art)
Format: CD, LP, DL 16/44
Various Artists – Everyone’s Getting Involved: A Tribute to Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense
Please be patient, dear circle of readers. The professor has to rewind far, far back … (Five minutes of music on hold) So, here we go: In the dark gray days of yore, when they still had me deal with ablatives, eff-of-ecks functions and the gross domestic product of Mongolia, I would make a pilgrimage to every concert of a band called Ottodox and the Reformed. This was a cover band that performed extremely committed musical cabaret versions of “Purple Rain”, “Real Wild Child (Wild One)” and the Talking Heads hit “Life During Wartime” up here in the Arctic Circle in the 1980s, especially at district festivals. In this respect, I was initially fundamentally interested when a CD of the recently released cover album Everyone’s Getting Involved: A Tribute to Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense landed in the professor’s packing station. On top of that, the concert film Stop Making Sense directed by Jonathan Demme (even before his hits Philadelphia and The Silence of the Lambs) and the accompanying live album became one of the cultural awakenings of my still virginal understanding of music in the mid-1980s. However, this album leaves me feeling somewhat ambivalent: there are some very good interpretations alongside some very bad ones – which could have something to do with the “Everyone’s getting involved” approach already anchored in the title: Some artists would have been better off not getting involved for the ambitious intention of covering a live album. Miley Cyrus, for example: What the former Hannah Montana actress and hit parade conqueror does here with “Psycho Killer” – no, no, no. Oompa Woompa beats from the premium producer database take the congenial core of the song with its spartan instrumentation ad absurdum with boombox, acoustic guitar and David Byrne’s oversized beige linen suit. All the more surprising is the loving production of “Heaven”, performed by The National with acoustic piano, analog guitar and Matt Berninger’s slightly sluggish baritone. Berninger knows how to do covers; three years ago he had already beautifully illuminated Velvet Underground’s “I’m Waiting For The Man” (on I’ll Be Your Mirror – A Tribute To The Velvet Underground & Nico). “Burning Down The House”, on the other hand, is beautifully close to the punky original, intoned by Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras Tour’ support band Paramore. But then “Life During Wartime”: a certain DJ Tunez, a Nigerian-American DJ, turns this banger driven by keyboards and drums into a very decelerated fizzler with, for whatever reason, a Brazilian Copacabana jazz foundation. Not my cup of caipirinha. Then “Take Me To The River”: New Zealand pop singer Lorde, who despite a number 1 hit around ten years ago with “Royals” is unknown to me, conjures up a small post-modern retro work of art here in typical rumbly, good-humored Talking Heads fashion.
Label: A24 Music
Format: CD, LP, DL 24/48
The Imgaine If – Great Expectations
Oh, Canada. A place of longing ever since the professor put 100,000 miles on the clock of a way too small campervan with the Missus and the offspring. Maple syrup-sweet bliss. Mysterious, deep forests in which the grizzly bear dances honey-drunk two-step with the beaver when no lumberjack is looking. In fact, a country where lumberjacks still wear lumberjack shirts is unimaginable in metropolitan areas like Barcelona or Castrop-Rauxel. So I’ve now received a record debut from the better America that I’d like to recommend to you. The Imagine If hail from Toronto, the largest city in the country. Founded in 2019 – bad timing for a new band. Now they’ve finally released their first album, Great Expectations, funded by the Canadian government and the FACTOR Foundation (Foundation Assisting Canadian Talent On Recordings): Surprisingly catchy southern soul with a juicy organ and meaty gospel pipes. Little information has circulated about the band so far, just one or two shaky YouTube films from the local Horseshoe Tavern. The quintet around singer Alia Logan allows Americana imagery to take shape before the inner ear, which the professor likes. Listen here: “Old Shack By The Highway” (opening song with organ and driving drums as well as a blues guitar milling away with such energy that it could probably fell a maple tree or two), “Devil’s Child” (Southern soul rock clearly showing that there’s a good songwriting team at work here) and “Flowers” (roadside bar ballad in which the cowboy hat wearer with the white cowgirl boots leads the lumberjack of her choice tightly embraced onto the small dance floor between the stage and the bar). Folks, let’s dance!
Label: The Imagine If Records
Format: CD, DL 24/48
Various Artists – Various vinyl singles
Let’s now get back to the pugs. Canis lupus familiaris, the common pug. And here is some more additional, irrelevant information in passing: the English painter William Hogarth, one of the most important artists of the 18th century, liked to pose in self-portraits with his pug, who went by the name of “Trump” of all things. Well… On a beautiful summer morning, a charming, good-humored trio of pugs stormed the professor’s poet’s attic. In tow they had Emanuel Fränzel-Brase, admirer of fine grooves and evidently also of Canis lupus familiaris. In the northern European hemisphere, he is mostly known as “Emu”, a DJ, label maker and record producer in the field of soul, who has been on an open-ended odyssey to promote the medium of vinyl singles since the early nineties. At the beginning of the year, his Hamburg label Soulciety Records merged with fellow single outlet Sed Soul from Bremerhaven to form Sedsoulciety Recordings, releasing almost forgotten soul and funk recordings stashed away in both the archives of both labels for decades in a freshly pressed seven-inch format. Singles are once again the most popular medium in DJ and vinyl nerd circles, so the Professor would like to draw your attention to the first releases selected by well-curated hands. Bobby Byrd’s Never Get Enough, for example: In the mid-nineties, James Brown’s old companion re-recorded some of his songs in Hamburg for Soulciety Records, and the album On The Move enjoyed modest success in Europe at the time. The newly released recording comes from this session presents the soul shouter at his zenith, even though he is now more towards the back end of his career. This single is a particular highlight for the Professor, as I was able to experience Byrd at one of his legendary concerts in 1994, when he was in Germany for a week to record. On the B-side of every single from the newly founded vinyl distribution house is an instrumental version of the respective song, as a “service for all DJs”, as Emu told me through a flurry of pugs during his visit to my office. Other works come from vibraphone legend Roy Ayers, from producer and songwriter Mousse T. (he wrote “Sex Bomb” for Tom Jones) and from rather unknown bands such as the Bremerhaven soul project Cool Million. Some of these keyboard and drum computer-heavy recordings with a strong eighties vibe don’t quite hit the professor’s nerve – but don’t let that dissuade you. My respect goes to his passionate commitment to soul – keep on keepin’ on!
Label: Sedsoulciety Recordings
Format: Vinyl single