Rare West

Released on Foreigner manager Bud Prager's RCA imprint – Phantom records, it is one of two albums released by Leslie West on that label in 1975, the other being titled simply The Leslie West Band. The Great Fatsby's album cover has the rock & roll guitarist in front of a mansion surrounded by babes à la the F. Scott Fitzgerald character. It opens with a nice and bluesy Paul Kelly tune, "Don't Burn Me," and for the post-Mountain work here, that direction works best. "The House of the Rising Sun" features a duet with Dana Valery and is an interesting read on the traditional tune made famous by the Animals. Mick Jagger plays some guitar on a tune credited to himself, Keith Richards, West, Corky Laing, and Sandra Palmer.

Five Times Surprise brings together a volatile mix of longtime compatriots and newly forged relationships. The distinguished improvisers all boast exceptionally diverse resumes. More than finding common ground, they reveal a vast universe of possibilities fueled by creative conflagration and genre blurring. “We’re improvisers who can walk into a room and create something together,” says the project's original instigator Henry Kaiser, who then listed the salient qualities of his fellow players here: the ability to listen, kindness, generosity, and—rare in this electric realm—a sense of humor. All those factors were at work on this new recording.

Raw, sometimes sloppy material by this enigmatic, psychedelic cult band appeared on an extremely rare debut album in 1966 (their first LP for Reprise, Part One, is usually considered their first recording). The West Coast Pop Art were always a strange act, and this collection does nothing to tarnish that perception. It's not so much the weirdness of the sound - they could be plenty weird per se on Zappaesque freak-outs like "Insanity" (co-penned by Kim Fowley), but only occasionally. It's more the sheer unpredictable range of the material. One minute they're attacking "Louie, Louie" and the classic jazz instrumental "Work Song" with all the finesse of teenagers in their bedroom; the next they're doing pretty psych-pop tunes with a bizarre edge, like "I Won't Hurt You"; then there are the Dylan covers, which are approached as if they are Yardbirds' tunes, with splashes of feedback and hard rock/R&B arrangements…

Best of Rare Cult, the companion piece to the Cult's expansive box set Rare Cult, features an interesting collection of rarities, unreleased material, B-sides, studio experiments, and just plain throwaways. If you're just an average fan or a curiosity seeker, the Best of Rare Cult single CD will do just fine…

Bengt Berger - Bitter Funeral Beer (1981) {ECM 1179} {OOP & RARE rel 1994)
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 254 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 101 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 169 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1981, 1994 ECM Records | ECM 1179
Jazz / World Music / Avant-Garde Jazz / African Traditions / West African

The term "cultural imperialism" is often used, justly, when Western musicians appropriate aspects of third world music for their own, watering it down to listener-friendly levels and giving scant acknowledgement to its original creators. Whereas this sort of approach has been the unfortunate rule, from Paul Simon to David Byrne, every once in a while a glorious exception emerges. Such an exception is Swedish percussionist Bengt Berger's Bitter Funeral Beer band. Berger, who devoted lengthy periods of study to West African music, particularly that of Ghana, assembled a large contingent of fellow Swedes, trained them in various aspects of West African traditions and, most importantly, chose Ghanaian folk themes with utterly beautiful and irresistible melodic lines from which to improvise.