ALBARN, MASON & ME
19 Mar 2010
I’ve taken to listening to radio shows on my MP3 player & i found a file from 2009 when Damon Albarn hosted a Radio1 show.
I was rather enjoying listening to it and what stuck with me was him playing a track by William Onyeabor, ‘Better Change Your Mind’ and what he said about it (click ‘stream’)
I am a big fan of that song & I agreed with Damon, which takes me back a little bit…
<picture goes wobbly>
It’s 2005 & I am crazy about the fantastic compilation ‘Love’s A Real Thing (The Funky Fuzzy Sounds Of West Africa)’ , so much so that I grabbed a little sample of ‘Better Change Your Mind’ & built a beat out of it.
Now, here’s where it gets strange… King Biscuit Time (Steve Mason, recently departed from The Beta Band, and working on his ‘Black Gold’ album at the time) makes a myspace (remember myspace?) request for lyrics about pirates which he will then make into a track. I send him a message saying I also had a beat for it, attaching a couple of loops…
So he took my ‘better change your mind’ loop and made the track… what a guy.
PIRATES
I eventually made a track using the loop too; the opening track on my 2008 album ‘TONES, DRONES & BROKEN BONES’…
STREET BY STREET
So Damon Albarn, Steve Mason & me, all thanks to William Onyeabor’s brilliant track… grab that compilation, it’s a beauty.
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