This
is a one-off extra mid-month edition of Podwireless. The
regular March one can be found here and the normal April one will be along on
31st March.
Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the
pioneering folk, roots and world music label.
Back
during the lockdown years in September 2020, I did a Podwireless special
celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first record label that I ran, The Village Thing. Now, as a bit of self-indulgence, here's another marking the 40th anniversary
of the next one, Rogue Records, which flourished during the 1980s and ’90s with
some notable firsts and big sellers.
Looking
back, things become clear that weren't obvious when in the thick of them. One
of those was that as the 1980s unfolded they became a golden age for folk,
roots and what would eventually be called world music in the UK.
Following
the boom years for folk music and connected things like blues in the 1960s,
partly caused by the post-WW2 generation coming of age en masse with curiosity
and freedoms that their parents had never enjoyed, the 1970s saw a steady
decline. Audiences got set in their ways, began to age and fell away.
Innovations like folk rock got stuck in stylistic dead-ends. The festival movement
had barely begun. Folk clubs turned inwards, mostly rejecting any interest from
the next generation, failing to see that the DIY and political aspects of mid '70s punk
rock made for kindred spirits. Music from other cultures was hard to find in
record shops and few non-Western artists came to the UK to play outside their
own diaspora. But as the 1980s dawned, things began to change.
A new
spirit of adventurousness filled the air. Artists from both within and without
the established folk scene began to experiment and follow their instincts.
People from the rejected punk scene who were turned off by the glossy pop music
of the era came digging for something with more depth and integrity – and
roots. Common opposition to the Thatcher regime helped. Artists from other
countries – African, Latin and Asian in particular – began to appear more
visibly in the UK and their records started to be released as independent
labels multiplied, and open-eared musicians began to listen and be influenced
by them.
The
airwaves of the day had proper broadcasters like Alexis Korner, John Peel and
later Andy Kershaw on Radio 1, questing enthusiasts with a free hand to pick
what they wanted to play, unrestricted by computerised playlists – and they
did. Festivals burgeoned, the GLC in London funded multi-cultural events, and
organisations like Arts Worldwide and WOMAD were established. Later on, artists
like Billy Bragg and the Pogues would achieve mass popularity and singles by
Mory Kante and Ofra Haza would hit the UK charts.
On the
folk scene, a big signpost was a cover feature by the late Colin Irwin in the
autumn 1982 issue of The Southern Rag
which christened an imaginary, probably non-existent movement as Rogue Folk, featuring artists like
Moving Hearts, Andrew Cronshaw, Dick Gaughan, Oyster Band, De Danann… and The
English Country Blues Band and Jumpleads…
That
same year, a bewildering combination of factors involving the BBC's weekly folk
show, massively popular radio presenter (Sir) Terry Wogan, and a bit of cheeky
chance-taking by a little gang including myself, Maggie Holland, Andrew
Cronshaw and a friend at the British Council with contacts in Sofia, resulted
in a one-off minor hit single and album by Bulgarian singer Nadka Karadjova. To
seize the day and get it out there, we created a one-off label branded FMS,
which Polygram marketed.
After a
decade away from running a label and wanting to reduce time on the road after
some 16 years of full-time gigging, the idea appealed again. It was mainly to
give a home to the band I was then playing in along with projects by its
individual members and our friends. Out there, others had even achieved actual
hits with folk-connected singles, so anything seemed possible. And so, in Farnham, Surrey, where we'd moved around the time of the closure of Village Thing, something stirred…
And
thus, 40 years ago, on 11th March 1983, the first two singles were released on
a new independent label, Rogue Records, by The
English Country Blues Band and our Oxford-based friends Jumpleads. They were quickly followed
by the debut solo LP of ECBB member Maggie
Holland and then later that summer by what was supposed to be a one-off
single of the anthem of the new wave of English country dance Bands, Speed The Plough by a specially created
band called Tiger Moth – an expanded, electric ECBB with Jumpleads'
Jon Moore on lead guitar and drummer John Maxwell. The interest it created
meant that Tiger Moth became a real thing, eventually recording two albums and
some 12" EP projects as Orchestre Super Moth, but not before the ECBB did
their second LP.
There
was very quickly a lightbulb moment saying "Ooh, we have a record label,
we can put out anything we fancy" and so it was that we became one of the
pioneers of what would eventually get christened "world music" some 4
years later, putting out lots of records from West Africa and eventually
Madagascar in particular.
Our
first step outside the "house band" was to license the first ever UK
release by celebrated Texas-Mexican accordeon wizard Flaco Jimenez. The LP, which I'd picked up a copy of in Los Angeles
in 1980, was originally released by small label DLB from San Antonio. After the
complications of licensing Nadka from Bulgaria, surely getting something from
Texas must be easier? Turned out they only spoke Spanish… but we got there! Our
next one from Texas, a 12" EP by "nuclear polka" exponents Brave Combo (described by celebrated US
rock critic Lester Bangs as "the only truly original band in the
USA") was much easier to organise, and putting out the debut LP by
England's own The Deighton Family (a
multi-cultural family group of father, mother and five offspring based in
Yorkshire) was easier still!
One of
the biggest activists and influencers of the day was Lucy Duran, then working
at the National Sound Archive, who organised a couple of
winter trips to the Gambia and Senegal for music enthusiasts in 1986 and 1987. It was on the
first of these that we recorded kora masters Dembo Konte & Kausu Kuyateh. Their resulting first album Tanante caused a sensation and their
debut UK tour was a massive success during which we recorded their second, Simbomba. Lucy and I also produced an
album by the Sidiki Diabate Ensemble
from Mali (featuring Sidiki's son Toumani Diabate and celebrated singer Kandia
Kouyate, both on their first UK releases) which came out in a pair of LPs in
conjunction with the NSA. The other comprised field recordings of the Tukano & Cuna People Of Colombia
from their collection.
More
things spun off from Lucy's influence. In Senegal she'd picked up a local
cassette by Baaba Maal & Mansour
Seck which entranced me. A long period of tracking down contacts resulted
in a licence for Rogue, for which engineer David Kenny and I had to remix the
original multi-tracks from scratch as the 2-track stereo master had gone
missing. Djam Leelii, Baaba's first
UK release, became one of our biggest sellers, a world music album of the year,
and launched his subsequent international career. And as I kept going back to
the region I managed to find and field record, on Lucy's recommendation, the
Balanta guitarist and singer Pascal
Diatta & Sona Mané in Casamance.
Somewhere
in there we also put out a nice album by Anglo-French group the Cock & Bull Band, a 12" by a one-off outfit calling themselves The Mighty Clouds Of Dust (comprising
members or ex-members of the Pogues, 3 Mustaphas 3, Horslips, Radiators From
Mars and Oyster Band), and the debut LP by what was widely acclaimed to be the
UK's best African band, Abdul Tee-Jay's
Rokoto, who would release several more on the label.
[All of this time I was also editing Folk Roots magazine, presenting on the radio – initially locally in Guildford and then on the BBC World Service – and producing festivals: seven Farnham Folk Days and three Bracknell Folk & Roots Festivals up until I left Farnham and moved to London in winter 1988/9. It was a very full-on busy time which eventually didn't leave much for gigging as well, which fell by the wayside until the new century.]
Our last
big West African project was an adventurous one to put our kora masters into
the studio with members of 3 Mustaphas 3, English squeeze box man John
Kirkpatrick, myself and others as Dembo Konte,
Kausu Kuyateh & The Jali Roll Orchestra. The resulting 1990 album Jali Roll, one of several of our
releases produced by Ben Mandelson (a.k.a. Hijaz Mustapha) was another
critically acclaimed big seller, World Music Album Of The Year in Q and Vox magazines.
Back in
the house band, Tiger Moth had done their second album (this was the point
where releases on vinyl LP and cassette changed to CD and much better sound)
and then Moth melodeon player Rod Stradling
recorded his solo album in 1991 and Maggie Holland's second one came out in '92,
including the first fruits of her songwriting, as heard here in a song later covered by June Tabor.
At that
point I got distracted by Madagascar. I'd started going there in 1990 and got
deeply involved in the music. 1992 saw a trio of releases, by acoustic,
traditionally-based group Tarika Sammy
(again using the Mustaphas' rhythm section); by the king of the local dance
music called salegy, Jaojoby (his
first international release); and by Paris-based Malagasy-exile guitarist Freddy De Majunga who had got very
involved in the Paris-Zairean soukous scene.
Tarika
Sammy rapidly became successful internationally, touring and released in the
USA, but just as quickly broke up. Leader Hanitra Rasoanaivo then put together
a new band alongside herself and her sister Noro, simply called Tarika, who from then on regularly
topped the World Music album charts on both sides of the Atlantic. By 1997 they
had become one of the biggest names in their home country, bringing back
national pride in their own roots music. We even created their own sub-label,
Sakay.
Sadly,
everything fell apart in 2001 when Tarika had just arrived in the USA for a
major tour to promote the release of what turned out to be their final album Soul Makassar, recorded in London and Indonesia with local
musicians guesting. Their first gig was at B.B. King's in Manhattan on 10th
September. On the 11th, what the Americans call 9/11 happened. The tour
collapsed, short-term xenophobia broke out, the band were stuck in the USA for
several weeks as all international flights were halted, and with their and the
label's finances completely decimated and the band severely traumatised, they
never toured again.
And that
was the end of Rogue Records too. On our subsidiary Weekend Beatnik imprint
there was a short series of mid-price CD compilations and re-issues of older
Rogue material, earlier recordings by the house team, some from other sources
like an otherwise lost album by Al Jones
and a few things from the old Village Thing catalogue. But nothing was newly
recorded after the millennium.
There
are a few Rogue/ Weekend Beatnik compilations still available as CDs and/or
downloads in the Ghosts From The
Basement shop on Bandcamp – Tiger Moth, the English Country Blues Band, Konte & Kuyateh, Diatta &
Mané, Hot Vultures and yours truly…
And you can get a free (or pay what you like) download of that first Rogue single by the English Country Blues Band – Don't Take Love b/w Put Your Money In Your Shoes. Find it here
Here's
the Playlist…
1. (Intro) Tiger Moth : Larousse from the LP Tiger
Moth (Rogue FMSL 2006)
2. Nadka Karadjova : A Lambkin
Has Commenced Bleating from the LP A
Lambkin Has Commenced Bleating (FMS FMSL 1001)
3. The English Country Blues Band : Don't Take Love from the 7" single (Rogue FMSS 102) Free download.
4. Jumpleads : False Knight from
the 7" single (Rogue FMSS 103)
5. Maggie Holland : Banks Of The
Nile from the LP Still Pause
(Rogue FMSL 2002)
6. Flaco Jiménez : La Piedrera
from the LP Viva Seguin (Rogue FMSL
2003)
7. Tiger Moth : Speed The Plough
from the 7" single (Rogue FMSS 104)
8. The English Country Blues Band : England's Power And Glory from the LP Home & Deranged (Rogue FMSL 2004)
9. Brave Combo : People Are
Strange from the 12" EP (Rogue FMST 4007)
10. Maggie Holland & Jon Moore : If I Had A Rocket Launcher from the 12" EP (Rogue FMST4008)
11. The Deighton Family : Travelling
Light from the LP Acoustic Music To
Suit Most Occasions (Rogue FMSL 2010)
12. Dembo Konte & Kausu Kuyateh : Simbomba from the LP Simbomba
(Rogue FMSL 2011)
13. The Sidiki Diabate Ensemble : Kounadi
La Beno from the LP Ba Togoma
(Rogue FMS/NSA 001)
14. Tukano Indians : Early
Morning Birdsong & Deer Bone Flute from the LP Music Of The Tukano & Cuna People Of Colombia (Rogue FMS/NSA
002)
15. Tiger Moth : Sloe Benga from
the LP/CD Howling Moth (Rogue FMSL
2012)
16. Baaba Maal & Mansour Seck : Djam
Leelii from the LP/CD Djam Leelii (Rogue
FMSL 2014)
17. Cock And Bull Band : Stony
Brawl from the LP Concrete Routes,
Sacred Cows (Rogue FMSL 2015)
18. Pascal Diatta & Sona Mané : Adjilabone
from the LP/CD Simnadé (Rogue FMSL
2017)
19. Abdul Tee Jay’s Rokoto : Ro-Manké
from the LP/CD Kanka Kuru (Rogue FMSL
2018)
20. The Mighty Clouds Of Dust : Champion
The Wonder Horse from the 12" single (Rogue 12FMS 108)
21. Dembo Konte, Kausu Kuyateh & The Jali Roll Orchestra : Sana Diop from the LP/CD Jali Roll (Rogue FMSL 2020)
22. Rod Stradling : The
Sportsman's Hornpipe from the CD Rhythms
Of The Wold (Rogue FMSD 5021)
23. Maggie Holland : A Proper
Sort Of Gardener from the CD Down To
The Bone (Rogue FMSD 5022)
24. Freddy De Majunga's Tsinjaka : Tsinjaka
Salegy from the CD Tsinjaka
(Rogue FMSD 5023)
25. Tarika Sammy : Rabeza from
the CD Fanafody (Rogue FMSD 5024)
26. Jaojoby : Tsaiky Joby from
the CD Salegy (Rogue FMSD 5025)
27. Tarika : Retany from the
CD D (Sakay SAKD 7034)
28. Tarika : Koba from the CD
Soul Makassar (Sakay SAKD 7037)
29. Hot Vultures : South Coast
Bound from the CD Vulturama! (Weekend
Beatnik WEBE 9031)
30. Al Jones : I'm So Happy from
the CD Swimming Pool (Weekend Beatnik
WEBE 9033)
31. Ian A Anderson : Time Is Ripe
from the CD Time Is Ripe (Weekend
Beatnik WEBE 9045)
32. (Outro) Tiger Moth : The Belfast Poker (the B-side of the original Speed The Plough
single) from the CD Mothballs Plus
(Weekend Beatnik WEBE 9043)
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