We’re going way off topic today, but sometimes I really need to clear my head of all things terrible, and fill it with things that are good. And what better way than with a mashup of hit songs (and not hit songs) from … everywhere … in the 1970s.
At the end of each year, Spotify sends you a playlist of the songs you listened to most over the course of that year. Last year, well, let’s just say that even I was surprised by my list; it turns out I was listening to more Asian and Middle-Eastern music than I thought. And most of it was from the 1970s. But I wouldn’t call these obscurities, not all of them, as some were huge hits in their respective countries at the time.
Like this one, from Lata Mangeshkar, from the soundtrack to the Bollywood hit Caravan from 1971. This may be my favorite Bollywood song of all time. As for the dance number, well, let’s just say it could do with a lot less hitting. It’s from 1971.
This one’s from Lebanon, in 1972, giving folk music a bit of a psychedelic edge.
This 1983 song is a Japanese dance number that got rediscovered by Western music nerds and reissued in 2015. It’s an amazing album. (The visuals here were added by the person who put this up on YouTube. Crank the volume, as the uploader has it way too quiet.)
This one is Turkish, from a 1979 album, but it sounds more early 1970s to me. At least the original does; this is a later dance remix. I listened to rather a lot of old Turkish psychedelia last year. (I have no idea how the visuals here connect with the song itself but they’re, well, kind of diverting.)
This one seems to have come from outer space. I’m not sure if it’s a reissue of early 80s music or a more recent song by someone really in to early drum machine sounds.
This is a 1970 single from reggae producer Duke Reid. The artist Nora Dean also did reggae and ska. But this one is in a genre of its own.
I believe this is what it says it is: a recording of actualy snake charmers in north India.
And we’re back to Japan for this funky number (either from 1969 or 1971).
Some late 1960s psychedelia by an artist no one seems to know much about.
This one from the Krautrock giants Can reminds me a lot of the Talking Heads’ 1980 Remain in Light album. I’m guessing Brian Eno, David Byrne’s co-producer on the album, probably heard this one, as it came out four years earlier.
Ok, that’s probably too many songs to digest. But once I started I couldn’t stop!
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@Alyson:
Whose? Looks like the beginning of the name got lost somehow.
Aren’t those the same thing?
@Alyson:
I listen to Aldious all of the time now, along with X Japan. hide’s death was a true tragedy.
Especially given (from what I understand of the situation) the lack of forewarning; my own suspicion is that hide died from autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong, and that the Japanese press deemed suicide a more face-saving explanation.
(And you gotta love a band who saved the fandom the trouble by making their own self-insert Fist Of The North Star-esque Anime Music Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1dcM1pGZS8 )
The one that hit me, a year later, was Kami of Malice Mizer, inducted into the 27 Club by a brain hemorrhage. The band had already been fractured by Mana and Gackt’s falling-out (not having been there, I’m not going to pick a side, although the Japanese fandom evidently requires you to.) Mana has always been an Auteur with a very specific artistic agenda, and Gackt’s tastes evidently ran more mainstream; I’m just grateful that their creative tensions—along with Kö-zi’s, Yūki’s, and Kami’s—lasted long enough to produce two wonderful albums; Merveilles, in particular, is one of my Top Ten albums, period.
@Surplus to Requirements:
Whose? Looks like the beginning of the name got lost somehow.
It’s commonplace for Japanese pop stars to render their names in quirky typography that Standard English usage might deem incorrect—think of it as a counterpart to the Heavy Metal Umlaut. His Wikipedia entry offers this note on hide (né 松本 秀人, Matsumoto Hideto): His stage name is written in all capital English alphabet letters while in regard to his work with X Japan, but in all lowercase letters when talking of his solo career and work with Zilch.