JULY 2023 ISSUE
A sneaky peek of just some of what is in the July 2023 issue – OUT NOW!
Bettye Lavette
Bettye Lavette is always great fun to interview. Whether it be on the phone, in-person or [like this one] via Zoom, conversations with her are always littered with jokes, one-liners and laughter, though, just the same, you still always get a sense that after all this time in the business and the many ups and downs of her life and career, she has by now developed a true sense of her own worth.
And so she should have: hers has always been a distinctive voice. Like other soul greats that come easily to mind – Aretha, Chaka, Gladys, Mavis, Irma and the rest – she’s never sounded like anyone other than herself. You always know a Bettye Lavette record as soon as she opens her mouth to sing. It simply couldn’t be anybody else.
And so the second flowering of her long and storied career continues with a terrific new album, Lavette!, once again helmed by Grammy winning producer Steve Jordan…
Kool & The Gang
Back in the mid-eighties, one of our Christmas issues famously featured Kool & The Gang on the cover. Hurling themselves into the spirit of the thing, the lads had happily donned Santa hats, wrapped tinsel around their necks and posed playfully in front of the giant Christmas tree in the foyer of the Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington for our cover shot. Their album that year, Emergency, had just produced the hits Fresh, Misled and Cherish, become their biggest seller thus far and had cemented their status – built in the late seventies on crossover hits like Celebration, Ladies Night, Get Down On It, Joanna and more – as the most successful crossover US pop-soul band of all time. A year on they’d be turning up at Live Aid and singing on Do They Know It’s Christmas, their early seventies days as a party-funk band long behind them.
At the time, those of us who had joined their story with Funky Stuff, Hollywood Swinging and Jungle Boogie were still grumbling to ourselves that we’d like a little more funk in place of the pop, thanks…
African Head Charge
The secret’s in the name: African Head Charge. It makes you think of Africa for sure, but it also denotes a rush of blood and energy that sweeps over you and leaves you dizzy, gasping for breath and feeling disorientated. Listen to any AHC album and you’ll know just what I’m mean, because there’s nothing quite like them.
For the uninitiated, African Head Charge grew out of the friendship between master drummer Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah and On U Sound’s Adrian Sherwood, the maverick producer whose wizardry in the studio – allied to an adventurer’s spirit – has resulted in a body of work that’s truly unique. The pair first got together in the late seventies and are currently celebrating the release of a new album A Trip To Bolgatanga, which Adrian considers their best yet.
“It has all of the ingredients that we love,” he says on a recent three-way Zoom call. “This record is so complete. It’s a masterpiece… ”
Inna De Yard
Inna De Yard have been described as Jamaica’s answer to the Buena Vista Social Club. But that’s lazy journalism, in truth, and simply doesn’t do justice to an aggregation of musicians whose mission is to make unfiltered reggae music, recorded in a natural setting, one that is remarkably free of all attempts at commercialism.
The cast of Inna De Yard is a movable feast, although it revolves around stalwarts such as Kiddus I, Winston McAnuff and The Congos’ Cedric Myton, plus invited guests. Their latest album is Family Affair, which, like its predecessors The Soul Of Jamaica and Inna De Yard, is released on French label Chapter Two. That’s the successor to Makasound, who launched the original Inna De Yard series from the home of veteran Jamaican guitarist Earl “Chinna” Smith” more than 20 years ago. After the company folded, Chinna went his own way and Makasound’s Nicolas Maslowski and Romain Germa formed Chapter Two, whose essential remit remains the same…
