For some reasons I cannot explain, something popped up in my mind reminiscing the seventies jam sessions when imported US and UK grooves influenced local musical ensembles of the day.
Every now and then, I dust off my packed vinyl LPs, long obsolete for the way technology considerably changed, especially in electronics. What it means is that I have packed every musical gadget in my household—the tower-like speakers, amplifiers, cassette tapes, VCR—for the fact it occupies unnecessary space and now that very tiny gadgets, as small as a cable TV remote control can supply any form of music loud enough to blow out your ear drums.
Dusting off these LPs, I picked up Commodores “Machine Gun” released as a single in 1974. The first time I heard this track already an album was in 1975 while holidaying at my brother’s house in Lagos. I had not paid much attention to this group until sometime in 1976 while attending a ballroom dance with my childhood buddy Andy Iheanacho and other friends in the complex of an all girls secondary school on the hills of Uruala. We had trekked more than five miles holding our three layers, the Bootsy Collins kind of boots in our hands with our tight-fitting-wide bottom pants folded up from another secondary school up the hill for this much anticipated dance in a complex that has nothing but girls.
While we walked and climbed the hill leading to the school on the left, we discussed extensively the music of the day. Hughes Corporation, Crown Heights Affair, K.C. & the Sunshine Band, George McCrae, Marvin Gaye, James Brown, Muscle Shoals Horns, Jimmy Castor Bunch, Dramatics, O’Jays, Billy Paul, Bill Withers, Isaac Hayes, and many other R & B flavored influences, with a groove obverted discothèque approach.
And we arrived!
At the same time while we enjoyed the imports and “boogie nights”—“Young Girls Are My Weakness,” “I Feel Sanctified,” “Machine Gun,” “Soul Limbo,” “Rock The Boat,” “Ring My Bell,” “Let’s Get It On,” “Joy,” “For The Love Of Money,” “Payback,” “Do It Good,” “Hustle To The Music,” “Smiling Faces,” Papa Was A Rolling Stone,” and all that great hits, Anwar Richards and his Kenyan-born colleagues catapulted Matata to London doing gigs at the pubs and night clubs. Mac Tontoh and his brother, Teddy Osei, in the days of egwu onwa, moonlight plays, formed Osibisa and turned every household in London into a crowded house with those “Kokorokoo,” “Sweet America,” “Basa Basa,” “Fire,” “Che Che Kule” and “Woyaya” smash hits. South African legendary trumpeter, Hugh Masekela did sessions with Fela and Osibisa, and recorded "The Boys' Doing It" while in exile, on the run from a bastardized Apartheid regime. Meanwhile, the Funkees were funky, too. Jake Solo and Harry Mosco Agada shooting it straight like the Bad Company took Funkees to another level. London pubs were jammed because Funkees hanged around doing their own thing.
It was something else, how “we” teenagers of the day rocked every disco hall to these "funked-up" attitudes from the East (all over) to the West (Lagos in particular). As teens, we were attracted to the socio-political concepts of Karl Marx even though politics in that era was a “taboo,” something that can get one into trouble, thus the presence of the military juntas who ruled by the barrel of the gun.
Back in the day, grooving the way we did, one must belong to the era’s socially accepted group (SAG) in order to hang. Each SAG had its own thing going on, though; there were the highlife buffs and ikwokirikwo-ajasco dancers whose passion for Congo and East African soukous/rumba music had taken them to a whole new height. They had their own gigs which played only highlife, soukous and the kind of ikwokirikwo music Ikenga Super Stars of Africa invented.
My kind of fraternity back in the day was absolutely engaged with US and UK imports which influenced local ensembles like the Apostles, Wings, One World, Doves, Wrinkers Experience, Black Children, Strangers and Founders 15 in the East; and also the “Chief Priest” Fela, Segun Bucknor, BLO (Berkeley Ike Jones, Laolu Akins and Mike Odumosu), St. Gregory College spoiled brats Ofege, Tirogo, Joni Haastrup and Monomono in the West (Lagos in particular). “Yeah,” Lagos was jamming and everybody felt like bursting loose, the Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers way. Friday Jumbo had called it quit with Fela’s Africa ‘70 Band joining the flamboyant Joni Haastrup and Kenneth Okulolo to form the group Monomono. A whole lot of these stuffs have been digitally re-waxed and reproduced on CD. The pure funk of Ofo & The Black Company’s “Allah Wakbarr” recently compiled alongside William Onyeabor, Joni Haastrup and Monomono, Afro Funk, Strangers’ “Survival,” Matata’s “Wanna Do My Thing” including The Funkees “Love Rock” makes one “wanna holla” whenever I hear these masterpieces.
It’s all good vibes, especially when one remembers the legendary vocalist, Spud Nathan, whose life was cut short by the nasty sting of bad roads on Njaba Bridge deliberately neglected by Ukpabi Asika’s administration. But hey, at least, Nathan got this far with hits that changed the pop world in the East and beyond. I’m still spinning his good old vibes; those powerful lyrics that made the girls had an instant crush on us the hippies. Now, I don’t mean the kind of sixties hippies that swept through the United States and Europe on a counterculture revolution. We were just “hippies.” We obeyed our parents—had our routine confessions and attended mass on Sundays as prescribed by the Roman Catholic Church--did the right thing and kept intact the cultural heritage of our forebears, not the kind of Woodstock hippies that rebelled against the establishment.
By the way, why is Tirogo “Everybody Loves Funky Lagos” popping up? I heard of this funked-up group when Jacob Akinyemi Johnson (JAJ) was on primetime at Radio Nigeria 2, AM/FM Stereo; so to speak, the way these party animals bragged about it and made something out of it; which made Lagos the New York City of Africa. “Yeah,” Lagos was really jamming, back in the day!
Enter “Machine Gun.” Many of my peers thought Machine Gun was a name of a musical group not knowing it was a cut from the Commodores debut titled “Machine Gun,” which melted every teen of that era. “Machine Gun” was the opening act for the Commodores’ long journey that would span nearly a decade before Lionel Richie’s solo projects. The album is still selling and the Commodores, believe it or not, are taking every royalty to the bank, unlike the case of our wretched musicians who are not only in penury through bad business decisions but denied royalty by pirates and bootleggers who copied every bit of their song with impunity.
The Commodores met as freshmen at the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama where they began singing and playing instruments to entertain the girls. It was just a pastime until local businessman Benny Ashburn discovered such magnificent talents with potentials to blow up. And, of course, they did. After opening gigs for the Jackson Five in 1971, Berry Gordy who ran Motown efficiently signed these lads from Tuskegee and the rest would be history. Everything the Commodores touched turned gold and hits upon hits carried them through over the years.
The band’s early years at Tuskegee had Lionel Richie on saxophone; Thomas McClary on Guitar; Milan Williams on keyboards; Walter “Clyde” Orange on drums; William King on trumpet and Ronald LaPread on bass. They produced hits and club numbers without winning a Grammy until the exit of Richie when British born J.D. Nicholas of Heatwave was invited to replace Richie’s powerful chords. “Night Shift,” a tribute to Marvin Gaye was then produced and Commodores finally won a Grammy Award.
We use to sing that song verbatim at party jams waving our handkerchiefs and raising our hands and it echoed something like this:
Marvin, he was a friend of mine
And he could sing a song
His heart in every line
Marvin sang of the joy and pain
He opened up our minds
And I still can hear him say
Aw talk to me so you can see
What’s going on
Say you will sing your songs
Forever, evermore
Gonna be some sweet sounds
Coming down on the night shift
I bet you’re singing proud
Oh I bet you’ll pull a crowd
Gonna be a long night
On the night shift
Oh you found another home
I know you are not alone
On the night shift…
That was how it wrapped up through the eighties with the magic tough of Nicholas which made its Grammy nomination inevitable. Oh, by the way, I got to go now. The month has just ended and you know what’s up.
