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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Oh!
If I may…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gsy5sJy5_34 (Indian folk metal)
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5AbMw_V5IY (Japanese band that mixes modern and traditional instruments)
Dave, you might enjoy Music From Saharan Cellphones
https://youtu.be/3RyS0e4Ppg4
Just happened upon this on Tumblr: a Mongolian throat-singer and a Latvian bagpipe ensemble walk into a field…
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vztRqe_CHC0
When I saw the descriptions of Tabby Lavalamp’s links, I thought “ooh, I bet that’s Bloodywood and Wagakki Band”. Was not disappointed!
This is my own contribution. This song has been running through my head for days now. It’s ridiculously catchy for metal. https://youtu.be/zBRquLkjmf4 (FEUERSCHWANZ – Untot Im Drachenboot).
My favourite video game is Witcher 3 Wild Hunt. This song is done by the band that did a lot of the soundtrack to that game. The song is in Polish. https://youtu.be/yO9ORpWV2LM (Percival Schuttenbach – Oczy Wiedźmina). This song has also been rattling around my head for a long time now.
A song I first heard in 2021 (although it’s considerably older) was “Galvanize” by the Chemical Brothers, used in a Michelin tire commercial—it hit as an anthem for Fun, Travel, and Adventure that were the antithesis of my experience at the moment; I was watching from a hospital bed. (I’m out now, and continuing to recover; it wasn’t COVID, but quarantine circumstances brought a lot of cumulative stresses to a crisis point.)
Here’s the song the Chemical Brothers sampled: “Hadi Kedba Bayna” (Just Tell Me The Truth), by Berber Moroccan singer Najat Aatabou; the narrator is railing at her cheating husband:
When I was a yoot (I used to burn collie weed) but also I loved this.
Goth pop combo The Sisters but with Yemeni-Isreali singer Ofra Haza. Top choon.
Although I must confess, I also really love this version. Released under the very honest title of Temple of Shite. But I’m sure any of our goth contingent will appreciate the lyric.
Edit: Double post
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U_LhzgwJ4U&w=560&h=315%5D
my actual favorite song from 2021, actually from 2021
This metal cover of Roxette’s “Listen To Your Heart” has been in my head and my heart for over a year:
I’ve been a huge fan of Aksak Maboul for many decades. The clip you posted is from a reunion.
http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=1306
Ooh, nice collection of stuff I haven’t heard before. The churches/robert smith one is nice, and I’m definitely going to check out Najat Aatabou; spotify has a lot of her stuff.
I think the only music here I’d already encountered was the saharan cell phone tape; it’s quite good and a great concept.
I can’t remember which one this was but I liked the one with the bhangra beats mixed into the metal.
Lotta metal in these suggestions, which reminds me that I need to be listening to more babymetal, whom I only recently started listening to.
@ david
The you might enjoy this.
This is like the national anthem in my home town of Bradford. For the full experience you should be blasting this out from your 1994 Black VW Golf with 3 weeks MOT left.
ETA: Heh, from the comments
@Alan Robertshaw:
This is like the national anthem in my home town of Bradford. For the full experience you should be blasting this out from your 1994 Black VW Golf with 3 weeks MOT left.
Or, like Bloodywood, you can metallize it and barrel around the farm blasting it from your friend’s John Deere tractor:
@ full metal ox
Oh wow! That was surreally wonderful! I need to buy a diesel Golf.
They also win for best album title.
I’m now on a bit of a Punjabi vibe; so here’s a song from a mates’ band. (Wolverhampton is in the Punjab, right?)
Off topic to your off topic: So, looks like Joe Rogan thinks the new cool and edgy thing to do is to incite hate crimes against the homeless. Basically he was bemoaning that in most places you can’t just confiscate a homeless person’s belongings and toss them in a dumpster under littering laws anymore. But if, say, someone were to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights, it eventually counts as abandoned property…
@Wannabikkit:
This is my own contribution. This song has been running through my head for days now. It’s ridiculously catchy for metal. https://youtu.be/zBRquLkjmf4 (FEUERSCHWANZ – Untot Im Drachenboot.)
You realize that Feuerschwanz arguably qualify as Goths ^2. (And I’m not even remotely surprised that their label is Napalm Records, stronghold of Heavy Mithril.)
@Full Metal Ox – stronghold of Wind Rose too. Diggy Diggy Hole is another song that won’t stop running around my head! 😆
@Wannabikkit:
And then there’s Gloryhammer, aka WHAT IF? Thor and Star-Lord started a band?
@Full Metal Ox
Oh my goodness, that is awesome. I love it! 😂
Napalm Records is also home to this band from my country – Alien Weaponry
https://youtu.be/5kwIkF6LFDc
My favorite thing about power metal is when you are 90% certain that an album is based entirely on the band’s Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
@Wannabikkit:
Napalm Records is also home to this band from my country – Alien Weaponry
https://youtu.be/5kwIkF6LFDc
Metal Haka! With all the epic historical and fantasy adventure that gets shot on location in New Zealand, high bloody time some of it was Māori!
Funny enough, I found my current favorite band on this very site. David posted an article (I can’t remember which one) about the sexualization of Asian women, and a commenter posted Aldious (an all-female Japanese metal band)’s music video “Go Away” which led me to my new favorite band. I listen to Aldious all of the time now, along with X Japan. hide’s death was a true tragedy. Did you know he was about to go on tour in America? Imagine the impact he would have made on pop culture. (Or, more likely given his flamboyant pink hair and foreign origin, he would have become a target of cranky old Republicans everywhere). Thanks, David. And thanks, commenter.
Aldious: Other World link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCqqay5oHQE
As a side note I also interpreted Iris, a song about a man whose elderly wife is succumbing to dementia, as being about Darth Vader and Padme. (Or a sweaty Mass Effect player and Liara T’Soni).