Monday, February 13, 2012

OFEGE - TRY AND LOVE (1973)



Apologies for the gap between posts. I've been making the requisite tagging of all my music to facilitate the great migration over to iTunes and, truthfully, not listening to much Afro even though that's the running theme of the blog for the time being. I'm presently wrapped up and swimming through copious amounts of Library... De Wolfe, KPM, TeleMusic and the like. Perhaps a switch in High Plains Drifter's theme will lean that direction shortly. Though I've tended to keep the theme congruent with what I'm currently listening to, it's difficult to predict the cycle of musical events that lead to genre hopping.

Today I bring you one of the great Afro Rock albums. Once again, not much info out there on Ofege despite their being one of the biggest Afro Rock acts of the '70s. I've run into a couple middle-aged Africans who know Ofege, but its disturbing how these bands fell into oblivion until the recent internet phenomenon which has revived this great music. Sadly, this is all threatened by the most recent attack in the bogus piracy war which should not be aimed at responsible file sharing. If seizures of file sharing sites gets as Draconian as the powers that be would like it to and resembles anything like the unlawful Megaupload seizure, we risk the the curtailment of further buried treasures ever seeing the light of day, or at the very least risk a return to where the opportunity to hear such obscurities becomes impossible. If the allegations are true, I'm not in any way defending Megaupload's freak of a boss, only the unlawful tactics employed in its seizure. But seeing as how businessmen and women cannot make a buck off music like the stuff posted here and on other great blogs, it's unlikely, due to its relative obscurity, it will ever surface as long as there's no tangible way to share it.

To all responsible music bloggers out there I say, keep up the good fight.

So, Ofege. Great album. Several songs which, if they weren't, should have been rock n' roll anthems. Here's one that definitely is.







TRY & LOVE