What are you listening to?

[Savonarola]

Guy Clark – Old No 1 (1975)
 
I'm not that big of a fan of country music, and I'd never heard of Guy Clark before.  Looking over his biography, I have heard a number of his compositions as he was more well known as a songwriter than singer.  This album is really good, all about drifters, loners, desperadoes and one night stands.  Based on this I thought what Tom Waits is to Kerouac, Guy Clark is to Larry McMurtry.

[Savonarola]

Fela Kuti - Expensive Shit (1975)

Short (clocks in at 24 minutes and has only two songs) but compensates for that by having topless women on the record cover.

According to Pitchfork:

The title of the album and first track refers to an incident in 1974. The Nigerian police planted a joint on Kuti. Before he was arrested, he ate the joint, but the police brought him into custody and waited for him to produce the (titular) excrement. According to legend, he managed to use another inmate's feces and was eventually released.

Which is certainly a fact I'd hate to ruin by further research.  The second track, "Water No Get Enemy," I think is the better track.  I once saw Femi Kuti perform that live.   

[Savonarola]

Mahmoud Ahmed -Ethiopiques, Vol 7. (1975-1978)

I've never heard anything like this before, most of the African music I'm familiar with is either from west or south Africa.  This, from Ethiopia, doesn't use a western scale, but instead has a five note scale.  It sounds sort of Indian, but uses western instrumentation.  I really enjoyed it - the other Ethiopiques will have good songs on them, but aren't consistent, but this and Volume 6 (also with Ahmed) are excellent.

This was made in a turbulent time in Ethiopia - Ahmed had been a singer with the Imperial Bodyguard Band.  These releases would cover the period of the reign of Amha Selassie, the overthrow of the monarchy and the beginning of the dictatorship (which, in 1978, would forbid him from releasing anything on vinyl.)

[Savonarola]

Louis Jordan - The Best of Louis Jordan (1975)

Jordan was an innovator of The Jump Blues, a precursor to Rock and Roll.  To me the songs sound like Ray Charles style R&B but livelier.  Most of the songs sound like novelty numbers (like "Ain't Nobody Here but Us Chickens") but it was the 1950s and "How Much is that Doggy in the Window" was considered a serious song.

[Josephus]

Supertramp: Crisis What Crisis.
Probably the least well known of their quadrilogy of Crime of the Century, Even In the Quietest Moments, Crisis and Breakfast in America; there's some great tunes on this including Sister Moonshine, Soapbox Opera and the late Rick Davies penned Ain't Nobody But Me