Gal Costa – De Um Role
Gal Costa – Hotel Das Estrelas
Gal Costa – Vapor Barato

Today would have been Matthew Africa’s 54th Birthday and every year around this time, here on Melting Pot, we pay tribute to Matthew, who was a singular influence on my musical sensibilities…As I’ve shared here elsewhere (I believe when I wrote about US 69, a band I heard first from Matthew Africa, and even under similar circumstances), for a far too brief period of time at KALX, Matthew’s radio show would start right after mine, and more than a few times, probably by design, the first thing Matthew would play would cause me to make a beeline from the library as I was refiling records from my show, back to the control room to find out what it was he was playing.  I can vividly remember that being the case with this album from Gal Costa, recorded live at a concert she gave in London.

I’d long been a fan of this period of Brazilian music, and especially Gal well before I ever met Matthew at KALX. Aside from the magnificence that was her voice, the sounds from the bands she put together in that late 1960s/early 1970s period recorded some of my favorite psychedelic music.  I thought I knew all the records she recorded from that period of time, but I was wrong. 

This album, released as a double-LP, is sandwiched between her albums LeGal and India, and features several songs that were never recorded in the studio.  That’s not much of a problem, because the sound of the album is vibrant and very much live, but the brilliance is marred by some of the absolute worst crowd noise, which some times sounds like it’s being mixed into and out of itself, especially when you listen in headphones.  I’ve long hoped that some reissue of this album would get the crowd noise “right” or at least remaster the music and leave the crowd noise out of the mix, but alas, this is the best we’ve ever gotten.  I’ve seen some versions that have the largely acoustic sides with just Gal and her guitar listed as the first album, but I think the version I have, with the first LP being with the full band, and the whole album then ending with the epic “Vapor Barato,” makes much more sense.  That song isn’t meant to just close a side, but to close a whole experience. Having never seen Gal Costa live, given how deep my love is for her music, this album is truly treasured and I might have never heard it if I had stepped out to go to the bathroom right after my show, gone to get some food, or if I had left my shift early.  But thankfully, I was there in the library that particular day when Matthew began his show with this album.

I didn’t actually react immediately when Matthew played Gal’s version of the Novos Baianos song “De Um Role,” despite those lovely guitar lines from Lanny Gordin…but once it got to Gal singing the first verse, along with that murderous rhythm beneath her, I literally stood up at attention, and then beelined my way to the studio to find out what record it was.  Turned out to be this album, though that particular day it was a CD, plucked from the KALX library. I remember Matthew saying something very casual like, “yeah, it’s one of Kitty’s favorites,” referring to our friend Kitty English, who did Soulvation soul nights at the Ruby Room, where I was lucky enough to be one of the DJs for Matthew’s 30^th bday.  In those days on KALX, where the schedule would get revised every semester or so, Kitty, Matthew & I often had our shifts around each others.  Sometimes, like around when I heard this Gal for the first time, Kitty would start the block, I’d be in the middle and Matthew would close, but no matter the order, it was a fine fine time. And, while I’ve enjoyed every place I’ve been at during my radio career, I’m not sure if there were ever better moments of musical discovery, sharing & debating, than that specific time of my life at KALX, and so much of that feeling was thanks to Matthew Africa…never be another, he was my brother.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Volunteered Slavery
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Spirits Up Above
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Say A Little Prayer
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Live At 1968 Newport Jazz Festival

I know this may seem like more of the same, but I will 100% be saying all the words about this album, one of my all-time favorites by Rahsaan, shared here on his birthday, a sacred day for Melting Pot as he is our patron saint, in due time…Bright Moments

{Update 7-4-25} 2025 has been a fucker from the start, as evidenced by my complete and total lack of posts this year up to this point…But my mentals have finally adjusted, so perhaps I’ll be updating these ahead of our anniversary on 7/7, maybe after.  But this (and all the other delinquents on this site) will be updated soon and I’ll be back to sharing more from the platters that matter…Peace & Bright Moments

{Update 7-4-25} 2025 has been a fucker from the start, as evidenced by my complete and total lack of posts this year up to this point…But my mentals have finally adjusted, so perhaps I’ll be updating these ahead of our anniversary on 7/7, maybe after.  But this (and all the other delinquents on this site) will be updated soon and I’ll be back to sharing more from the platters that matter…Peace & Bright Moments

Free Design – Friendly Man
Free Design – Light My Fire
Free Design – Love Me

Okay…I know how this looks. There’s been barely any posts in 2024, and the many of the ones over the past year still haven’t been updated. Look…2024 was a tough year on multiple fronts, but a New Year brings with it new possibilities, and so, as ever, I remain hopeful that I’ll finally get around to getting everything here on Melting Pot back up to speed in the new year and also get into a steady flow of posting & sharing music again…But I have plans and want to make sure that I at least post up the last album I got in 2024, as is tradition…I’ll have a proper post here in the new year.

The Faust – The Lurcher
The Faust – Do So
The Faust – Party 9
The Faust – Meer

Today would have been Matthew Africa’s 53rd Birthday and every year around this time, here on Melting Pot, we pay tribute to Matthew, who was a singular influence on my musical sensibilities. This record is actually another one from Matthew’s personal collection, bought almost exactly a decade ago during a sale, the proceeds of which went to those he left behind. When I bought this LP it was sealed, but I have a memory of Matthew playing this on his KALX show while I was there, which is over twenty years ago at this point. It’s those drums on “The Lurcher,” recorded during a session at the BBC, that are particularly unforgettable. It does have a bit of lurch to it, and the slight offbeat nature of it really gets kicked up a notch when the saxophone comes in.

“Do So” may be short, but after the heaviness (in all the variety of meanings that word suggests) of “The Lurcher” closing out that first side with such a whismy little tune feels a bit odd, but Faust has always seemed like a bit of an odd bunch, even amongst the Krautrockers of this time. I’m not a big enough fan to know what the situation is with the other four tracks on the 2nd side. They aren’t from any conventionally released album, but do show up on a more recent collection of music recorded from 1970-1973. I suspect this mysterious LP, where I don’t know who put it out or when they put it out, was their first appearance on wax. “Party 9” is a pretty lovely weird number, but “Meer” is an extraordinary piece of meditative, slightly melancholy, musical goodness. Such extraordinary range with The Faust, as is the case with so many other German bands of this period.

Matthew & I shared an affinity for this type of music, but we rarely spoke about it. I wish I had a chance to have the kind of listening sessions I often have these days with friends, where we just bring a bunch of records, sometimes on a theme, generally not, and just try to melt each other’s faces off with the wild stuff we’ve found. It would have been nice to have seen him look at a record for the first time and say “No, I’ve never seen this before…” though that happened so rarely when he was around, it’s much more likely he would have said, “Oh yeah, I got that…in fact, I got an extra sealed copy you want that instead of this one you got?” MKA always seemed to have doubles or triples of whatever dope record you could think of. I’m eternally thankful for his friendship and the effect he had on me, and thankful that I get to share another record in his memory this year. In sharing those sounds, Matthew Africa lives forever. Peace & Bright Moments

Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Domino
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Meeting On Termini’s Corner
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – A Stritch In Time
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – 3 In 1 Without The Oil

I may have missed our Anniversary by a day, but never ever will I forget to pay tribute to our patron saint on his birthday, today August 7th, Rahsaan Roland Kirk.  This year’s selection is his debut for Mercury records, where he would record for most of the 1960s, Domino.  At this time, Rahsaan must have been flying pretty high. He’d just been in Charles Mingus group, immortalized on the album Oh Yeah (and later on the album of outtakes from that session, Tonight At Noon), and while he had been seen as almost a sideshow artist previously, his skill and his talent was winning more and more converts. 

It’s fascinating listening to Domino, and realizing that it’s actually the album that premieres some of Rahsaan’s hallmarks during this early period.  We Free Kings, released later that same year, might have truly been his breakout, especially with it’s iconic, “Three For The Festival,” but listening to the selection of tracks here, particularly “3 in 1 Without The Oil,” you see that Rahsaan was already on a different level right from the start.  When you think about later iconic songs, like “Serenade To A Cuckoo,” again, you hear so much of what Rahsaan would be working on then, here right at the start.  It’s a lovely, largely brisk album, as Rahsaan, on flute, tenor, manzello & stritch, is accompanied by Andrew Hill on the first six tracks, including all of the ones I’m sharing, and then backed by Wynton Kelly and Roy Haynes on the final four tracks of the album.  Bassist Vernon Martin does stalwart work throughout, as of course also does Rahsaan. 

I know this copy I currently have of Domino, which I’m fairly sure I bought during a birthday week jaunt to Groove Merchant years ago, isn’t as minty in terms of sound quality as we all might like, but at the same time, none of those minor issues with the vinyl can take away from the brilliance of these performances…Bright Moments!

Eclipse – Vision Interieure
Eclipse – Le Reve De John W.
Eclipse – Honey #36

Despite not having posted much of anything for four months, there was no chance that I was going to pass up the opportunity to post about a band called Eclipse on the same day that there was a total solar eclipse here in the Americas…Picked this LP up on my first visit (and perhaps still only visit, though I’ll change that in the Summer) to Sonido Del Valle in Boyle Heights. I’d gone to get a cumbia record they had posted about on IG (back when I had social media), but I always make sure to spend a fair amount of time in a new spot and love to hit up parts of the store that aren’t the specialty of the shop, just to see what oddities there might be.

With the cover you see above, and some barely legible computer like writing on the back, this record caught my eye. I’d originally thought this band was French, but then I noticed from the rather snazzy insert that almost all of the band members were originally from Montreal or Quebec (and oddly, at least to me, Manitoba), so French Canadian instead.

Thankfully Sonido Del Valle had some turntables for listening so I could drop the needle on the album instead of just taking a flyer. As you’ll hear, Eclipse definitely have some Dark Side era Floyd influences, and at the moment I was heavy in a moody, slow, psych kind of mood, so that style was music to my ears. Somewhat strangely, at least in comparison to the other tracks, “La Reve De John W.” is a straight funk track with a super long drum break at the start. It seems on later releases, the band ditched the Floyd-isms and just went straight disco. But here on this record you get both sides, without one eclipsing the other (sorry, had to do it!). I’d been meaning to post this one up for some time, but thankfully it’s here now, on the absolute most perfect day to post it. We’ll see if I can track down more eclipse related music by the time the next one, in 2026, comes around…