Had a rare daytime Record Club yesterday, as always very enjoyable.

Nina opened with a wonderful piece (apparently not all that unknown), a "field recording" (if you can say that about something recorded in an office) of several Ghanaian postal workers as they rhythmically--very rhythmically---stamp cancellations on envelopes while whistling a lovely tune. You can listen to it here if you like.

Dan jogged some long-buried memories by playing "Is She Waiting?" from the first McDonald & Giles album (1971). From the first bass note, I knew I knew the piece. I could anticipate the lyrics. Knew it was a record I'd had while in high school. Took about a minute into the song to positively place it as McDonald and Giles, a recording I'm sure I haven't heard a whit of since, at the latest, 1975. Never ceases to amaze me how firmly planted in the brain are these songs heard in one's teens. Scary.

But the musical highlight of the day, for me, was Chris Cochrane's choice of a traditional bagpipe track by Jean Blanchard, from his 1988 release on Ocora:











Amazing music! Not sure what "tradition" this was from, but there were tons of Arabic overtones. I searched around briefly this morning but couldn't locate a ready source for the disc (are some Ocora's OOP?). Apparently Mssr. Blanchard remains active, as the pic at the top is a more recent one. Couldn't locate a complete Ocora catlog on-line either--a lifetime goal of mine would be a complete collection of same.