In early 1996, he went to Japan, and right before he left, he and I were at his mom's in LA [Los Angeles, US] writing songs. He seemed in really good health—sometimes he wasn't in such good health, sometimes he could barely walk because he was so fucked up. When he came back from Japan, he left me a couple of messages on my answering machine. He sounded completely out of his mind, though not like he was drunk. It was strange, like he'd gone crazy; finally I got hold of someone, and she told me Jeffrey had come back, that he'd been drinking while he was gone, his liver had poisoned his system, and he was experiencing dementia. The hospital turned him away saying, there's nothing we can do for him, his liver's shut down, he's dying. After this, I get a call from him; he was up in Utah and he sounded normal. And I said, what the hell, man, everyone's saying you're going to die. And he said, they always say that. And a week later, he fell into a coma and died.Pierce spent time with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds during the recording period of the latter's album, Let Love In. Mick Harvey, former Bad Seeds member, has recalled, "He was sat on the couch during much of the recording ... He'd come almost every day and just sit on the couch and then he'd come out to dinner with us and just mumble away. He was very hard work. He was very unusual and a very unique guy." Pierce then joined the band on-stage at the Shepherds Bush Empire venue, during the "Let Love In" tour in 1994, to sing on the Cave/Bad Seeds song, "Wanted Man". Harvey has also disclosed his personal perspective on Pierce:
I love a lot of his songs but he was pretty hard to connect with at first. I suppose he was pretty out of it with drink and drugs and so kind of difficult to communicate with. Most of the time it was difficult to work out what he was talking about. But he was always very nice and very gentlemanly.Cave was in contact with Pierce prior to his death and revealed in a 2012 interview:
He looked increasingly ill, I mean, we all did, but Jeffrey looked particularly so. His pallor, you know. He was physically suffering. And then he went to Japan. I think he got involved in some kind of relief work ... Helping earthquake victims. This seemed to have a positive effect on him, you know, spiritually. Then he went back to the states. The phone calls that I got from him there, he seemed really well. Or comparatively well. And happy, you know. And then, I think, [Henry] Rollins phoned me to tell me that he died."
Here is a groovy slice of Ghanaian Highlife from one of the originators of the form. E.K. Nyame started performing in the late '40s, formed his own band in the '50s and brought respectability to the music of the palm-wine bars. Here you'll find spidery, picked guitars, mandolin, thumping double bass, super afro-latin percussion, theatrical harmonising and gorgeous clarinet. This album appears to be re-recordings of some of E.K. Nyame's earlier hits, but I have no clue as to when the tracks were originally recorded, or re-recorded for that matter.
"It was painful for me to keep my eyes open above a few seconds; the light of day seemed to fill the room with a blinding glare. Yet every object, in the brief glimpse I caught, appeared normal in color and shape. With my eyes closed, most of the visions, after the first chaotic display, represented parts of the whole of my body undergoing a variety of marvelous changes, of metamorphoses or illumination. They were more often than not comic and grotesque in character, though often beautiful in color. At one time I saw my right leg filling up with delicate heliotrope; at another, the sleeve of my coat changed into a dark green material, in which was worked a pattern in red braid, and the whole bordered at the cuff with sable. Scarcely had my new sleeve taken shape than I found myself attired in a complete costume of the same fashion, mediasval in character, but I could not say to what precise period it belonged. I noted that a chance movement -- of my hand, for instance -- would immediately call up a color vision of the part exerted, and that this again would pass, by a seemingly natural transition, into another wholly dissimilar. Thus, pressing my fingers accidentally against my temples, the fingertips became elongated, and then grew into the ribs of a vaulting or of a dome-shaped roof. But most of the visions were of a more personal nature. I happened once to lift a spoonful of coffee to my lips, and as I was in the act of raising my arm for that purpose a vision dashed before my closed (or nearly closed) eyes, in all the hues of the rainbow, of my arm separated from my body, and serving me with coffee from out of dark and indefinite space. On another occasion, as I was seeking to relieve slight nausea by taking a piece of biscuit passed to me by H. E., it suddenly streamed out into blue flame. For an instant I held the biscuit close to my leg. Immediately my trousers caught alight, and then the whole of the right side of my body, from the foot to the shoulder, was enveloped in waving blue dame. It was a sight of wonderful beauty. But this was not all. As I placed the biscuit in my mouth it burst out again into the same colored fire and illuminated the interior of my mouth, casting a blue resection on the roof. The light in the Blue Grotto at Capri, I am able to affirm, is not nearly as blue as seemed for a short space of time the interior of my mouth. There were many visions of which I could not trace the origin.
"There were spirals and arabesques and flowers, and sometimes objects more trivial and prosaic in character. In one vision I saw a row of small white flowers, one against the other like pearls of a necklace, begin to revolve in the form of a spiral. Every flower, I observed, had the texture of porcelain. It was at a moment when I had the sensation of my cheeks growing hot and feverish that I experienced the strangest of all the color visions. It began with feeling that the skin of my face was becoming quite thin and of no stouter consistency than tissue paper, and the feeling was suddenly enhanced by a vision of my face, paper-like and semitransparent and somewhat reddish in color. To my amazement I saw myself as though I were inside a Chinese lantern, looking out through my cheek into the room. Not long after this I became conscious of a change in the visions. Their tempo was more moderate, they were less frequent, and they were losing somewhat in distinctness. At the same time the feeling of nausea and of numbness was departing. A short period followed in which I had no visions at all, and experienced merely a sensation of heaviness and torpor. I found that I was able to open my eyes again and keep them fixed on any object in the room without observing the faintest blue halo or prism, or bar of glowing color, and that, moreover, no visions appeared on closing them. It was now twilight, but beyond the fact of not seeing light or color, either without or within, I had a distinct feeling that the action of the drug was at an end and that my body had become sober suddenly. I had no more visions, though I was not wholly free from abnormal sensations, and I retired to rest. I lay awake till the morning, and with the exception of the following night I scarcely slept for the next three days, but I can not say that I felt any signs of fatigue, unless, perhaps, on one of the days when my eyes, I noticed, became very susceptible to any indications of blue in an object. Of color visions, or of any approach to color visions, there was no further trace; but all sorts of odd and grotesque images passed in succession through my mind during part of the first night. They might have been the dreams of a Baudelaire or of an Aubrey Beardsley. I would see figures with prodigious limbs, or strangely dwarfed and curtailed, or impossible combinations such as five or six fish, the color of canaries, floating about in air in a gold wire cage. But these were purely mental images, like the visions seen in a dream by a distempered brain.
"Of the many sensations of which my body had been the theater during three hours, not the least strange was the feeling I experienced on coming back into a normal condition. The recovery did not proceed gradually, but the whole outer and inner world of reality came back, as it were, with a bound. And for a moment it seemed strange. It was the sensation -- only much intensified -- which everyone has known on coming out into the light of day from an afternoon performance at a theater, where one has sat in an artificial light of gas and lamps, the spectator of a fictitious world of action. As one pours out with the crowd into the street, the ordinary world, by force of contrast with the sensational scenes just witnessed, breaks in upon one with almost a sense of unreality. The house, the aspects of the street, even the light of day appear a little foreign for a few moments. During these moments everything strikes the mind as odd and unfamiliar, or at least with a greater degree of objectivity. Such was my feeling with regard to my old and habitual self. During the period of intoxication the connection between the normal condition of my body and my intelligence had broken -- my body had become in a manner a stranger to my reason -- so that now on reasserting itself it seemed, with reference to my reason, which had remained perfectly sane and alert, for a moment sufficiently unfamiliar for me to become conscious of its individual and peculiar character. It was as if I had unexpectedly attained an objective knowledge of my own personality. I saw, as it were, my normal state of being with the eyes of a person who sees the street on coming out of the theater in broad day."
Havelock Ellis - Mescal: A New Artificial Paradise (1898)
Mbaraka Mwinshehe was one of the most popular guitarists and singers in East Africa in the late '60s and early '70s. It's beautiful music, and obviously heavily influenced by the rumba drifting East along the Congo, but this music lacks the fluidity and suppleness of someone like TPOK Jazz, it feels slightly more rigid or regimented. Or maybe its my ears.
"...the beasts were at the rack in the stables and the travellers were at the other end in the kitchen, separated from the stable by two stone steps. At that time, this was the normal arrangement in nearly all Spanish inns. The whole building was but one long room of which the greatere part was occupied by the mules and the lesser by the humans. But it was all the merrier for that. As the zagal saw to the pack animals, he kept up a steady stream of repartee with the innkeeper's wife, who replied with all the liveliness of her sex and station until the more serious minded innkeeper came between them and interrupted the exchanges. They soon started up again, however. The inn rang to the sound of the castanets played by the maids, who danced to the raucous singing of a goatherd. Travellers made each other's acquaintance and invited each other to supper. Everyone gathered round the stove, said who they were, where they were going and sometimes told stories. Those were the good old days; now our inns are more comfortable, but the boisterous social life which the travellers of those days led had a charm I cannot describe to you."
George Mukabi (Musical Career 1956 to 1963)
Marehemu George Mukabi was born in Kisa near Kakamega. In his short musical career he recorded less than 30 songs. Each and every one of them without exception was a HIT. His first recording Sengula Nakupenda recorded in 1956 by AGS sold over 100,000 copies within a period of two years.
This record has been rereleased many times ver the years. It has never lost its popularity and even today after 25 years it is just as popular. George's name became so popular that I believe there isn't one musical fan who does not recognise his unique style of music.
George was a truly gifted artist and his Lyrics were that of a genius. he mixed emotions of joy love and tragedy which are truly part of everybody's life. His gift was that of a Unique Style of plucking a Guitar and combined with his Lyrics reached almost everybody's heart.
George Mukabi was tragically killed in 1963. Although in body he died his music shall live forever in hearts of all music lovers.
In this album the Producers AGS give just some of his masterpieces. We hope his music moves you as it has done thousands of others over the years.
TRIBUTE BY FELLOW MUSICIAN WHO KNEW GEORGE MUKABI VERY WELL, Mr. John Nzenze (Producer AGS Records)
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