Arabica
Thursday, 27 September 2007
Last night I saw Fake again. “Fake” is an old Dutch name, pronounced in very different way than most people will read it.
I met Fake long time ago, but a few years ago our contact became rather minimal, mainly because my life provided me new things to do and left me with little time for the things I used to do. I had not even met Marijn, who lives with Fake for quite a few years now. I had a wonderful evening.
The best test for finding out if I really had a good evening with friends, is how I feel the morning after. Sometimes I feel drained and want to stay in bed, sometimes I wake up early, full of energy. Well, it is very early now and I couldn’t feel better.
Fake and I exchange compilations. Once on cassette, now on CD. I love his taste! And because he is a graphic designer, everything that comes from him looks beatiful. One of the series he does is called Murder: a collection of songs from all corners of the music industry, but mainly 45’s from country and blues singers that I had never heard of. I will write about this when I re-discover volume 1. I just spend half an hour searching for it, but I have no idea where it is.
Long time ago I made a CD-compilation named Arabica ,western pop songs that echo Middle Eastern influences. I really love this sub-genre, especially when it is mix of rock’n’roll and Arabic melodies. Well, I call it Arabic, but you know my talents for geography. It took me quite a while to find enough good songs to fill a 80 minutes CD, but I remember that I have been playing it for weeks after i finally finished it. Apart from the well known gems in this genre, like Ganimian & His Orientals with Come with me to the casbah, Laguestra with Flying carpet, and Kaleidoscope with Egyptian garden, I found many surprises. David & The Red Sea Singers with The oriental beat goes on , Chubby Checker with Miserlou, and much more. I gave a copy of this CD to Fake and forgot all about it.
Last evening Fake handed me a part two of Arabica. I had been thinking about making a part two myself, but I couldn’t find enough interesting material. But Fake did, and I am listening to the CD on repeat. Man! Fake dug up some true treasures, most of them totally unknown to me. Ali Baba & Ses 4 Voleurs with Shish kebab Yeye , Rene Hall with an exciting version of Cleo, Alan Barnicoat with Trip to the orient, The Falcons with El camel, etcecetra, etcetera.
This CD makes me happy. Not only because the music on it is so great, but also because of the fact that somebody answered my first CD. This is what I like about collecting records.
Here is a song that is not an any of the (first?!) two Arabica compilations, Crazy one by Ramases & Selket.