Real headz: Best FELA albums?
BeardedD
770 Posts
I've got Shakara (the one with all the tits on the cover). I love nearly everything I've heard. This is a massive subject. I'm looking for some consensus on what's the best from the deep people around here. Particularly interested in the tracks like 'Lady' that'll have people at the bar literally applauding at the end, even though all you did was take a lazy ass 15 minute smoke break. Thanks d
Comments
Sorry - you lost me here. National Geographic syndrome? Please tell me it hasn't been reduced to this.
But then there's the Koola Lobitos stuff and his first LP after that, "Fela Fela Fela" which are a little bit more contained (in the 5-7 minute range) and jazzy/improvisational and are really fucking awesome.
You can't really go wrong. I think "Sorrow Tears & Blood" is an awe-inspiring record. "Excuse-O!" is excellent. In terms of his records that are not that hard to turn up, "Power Show" is a fave of mine and was pressed on Capitol in the early 80s.
I play "2000 Blacks Got To Be Free" with Roy Ayers out all the time and it kills in a loft/disco set.
I haven't heard a *bad* Fela record although I kind of clock out in the Amsterdam concert/Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense era.
K.
From watching that documentary that's how that dude seemed exactly. He was a one of a kind, no doubt.
K.
I've heard one bad Fela record
Army Arrangement on Celluloid
I've heard he didn't have a whole lot to do with this release though
Also: his name on other African artists' records is definitely a Trademark of Quality
...as are the names of his band memebers on other LP's - Tunde Williams, etc.
K.
I would have to say that I like this one a lot.
Hard to go wrong with Fela in the 70s, even harder to pick a favorite, so I won't give the exhaustive list but I do need to big up Palm Wine Song from the Fear Not For Man album, which is definitely my favorite instrumental from Fela. Not the hard funky funky, but an absolutely beautiful jam that I listen to over and over.
Oh, and don't forget the Tony Allen with Africa 70 records as well.
Also check Tony Allen's (Fela's drummer in the Afrika 70) solo LPs. They were re-ished on the UK label Strut a few years ago.
Army Arrangement isn't bad at all. It's just from the 80s. It's also one of the first records I ever sampled to make a beat from, so there's a sentimental attachment to this song for me.
But yeah Bearded D, you can't really go wrong with Lady, Shakara, Gentlemen (That first drop of the beat after the initial horn solo gets me EVERY SINGLE TIME), Water Get No Enemy* (Who cares if it's popular?!?), Zombie, Sorrow Tears & Blood (Them regular Trademark!!), Coffin For Head Of State, No Agreement, Roforofo Fight Upside Down, man the list goes on and on...
* Water Get No Enemy is the song that contains the most perfect moment, just one little instance, a single hit, and it it's the most perfect moment in any song in the history of music. It's Tony Allen hitting this one random high-hat like 4 minutes into it and it's so fucking REAL.
cheers.
Wow that is tough. Through the years ive been able and FORTUNATE enough to get my hands on 23 FELA KUTI albums. My favorites are the long play songs. The ones that peak at near 25 minutes. Where the band just seems to build untill they explode when fela gets on the mic. Damn I really wish there was live footage somewhere of when he performed at the Africa Shrine. Must have been madness!!!
here are some must listen to cuts
Sorrow, Tears, and Blood
Upside Down
Mr. Follow Follow
Zombie
No Agreement
Again, Excuse O
Condition
Go Slow
Observation is no crime
Water get no enemy
Expensive shit
He miss road
love to share some joints with some peeps get at me with PM or [email]djstacks@cg718.com[/email]
I believe there's some stuff on the French documentary "Music Is The Weapon"
But, as everyone else has already said, you can't go wrong with picking up any 70s Fela.
???
"Water No Get Enemy," is one of those songs I find I have in my head all the time, so I put it on as I started reading this thread. About a minute after I read this quote, I got to the above mentioned moment in the song- really listening for it, wondering if I would know it.
I gasped ... started laughing.
Never appreciated that before. Too lost in the hornline. Good lookin' out on that.
holluretti.
Water No Get Enemy is one of those songs that has very special meaning for me. It changed my life, musically. Basically, when I heard that record for the first time, it was like no record I had ever heard up to that point, and yet it was like I was waiting to hear it all my life. [color:white]Apache from the Incredible Bongo Band is another. [/color]
Oh, and I forgot to include this in my previous post:
Y'know, if his body of work wasn't so spectacular otherwise I might give it more credit
But AA was done almost entirely by Bill Laswell, who I'm not a fan of, and Fela didn't like what he'd done with it either
thank you good sir.
okay, that's where i messed up, this is on the "Expensive Shit" Album. Failed to check that album. Beautiful tune indeed.
yo really this man's music can do no wrong in my ears. inspirational.
i saw some live afropop last friday and afterwords there was a dj who was playing butter shit. on a big screen he had music is the weapon...eeven with NO SOUND people were watching it, mesmerized (the ladies were also oooohing and aahing everytime they panned out to fela chilling in his speedos).
we can look at a dude who was rather hedonistic, had a billion wives, smoked the hioly chalice with gusto and partied and danced and got people moving on some fucking bachanalian madness shit on the regular. then you zoom out just a little little bit and you see a dude who constantly put himself in the line of fire with his words and actions and was manicaly inspired to speak truth to corrupt power and used his art to do it.
that is some REAL SCHITT
that moton re-enhancement boosts up the bass of the horns, it sounds good on a big system.
and then you can zoom out a little further and catch an egomaniacal asshole. i'm not trying to shit on fela-- musically, he's a hero to me and i respect how far he went and how much he endured in the face of repression from the Nigerian government-- just saying that some of his words and actions, especially vis-a-vis women and safe sex, were pretty fucked up.
indeed. my copy skips like hell now! there is also a FELA LIVE dvd. mid 80s. Small indoor venue to. Believe its someone in FRANCE. If you have netflix its in there. Great, shows him rockin the keys, chatting with the audience real raw footage. backdrops to the dancers, band mates, real ill shit. There was a dude on ebay not to long ago that was selling a copy of raw footage from the shrine I believe he converted to dvd or vcd. Was outbid. Though I was skeptical. I know theres a Femi Kuti live from the africa shrine that was released not to long ago. The book is a great read too. When Stevie Wonder visited africa he went down to the shrine and rocked out with fela all night. That must of been some night. spiritual shit
it starts so funky,
then the chorus at the end
with the big horn blasts.
my favorite Fela tune.