This was the first time I’d heard the Bhundu Boys played on a Peel show. If this blog was covering Peel shows from the previous decade, I would have probably had regular exposure to them already given how Peel was moved to tears of admiration when he first saw them play live in the mid-1980s. However, the slight sense of guarded enthusiasm that he radiated when cueing up this track from the Friends on the Road album, which Cooking Vinyl had released towards the end of 1992, suggested that a lot of water had flowed under the bridge since then. Indeed the band had gone from world music darlings supporting Madonna at Wembley Stadium in 1987 and finding themselves signed to WEA; to an outfit which was riven by acrimonious departures (not least of lead singer Biggie Tembo), critical & commercial indifference (their major label records sold poorly and were badly reviewed with critics feeling that their music had been made bland due to compromises designed to make them accessible to Western audiences) and the spectre of AIDS which would kill off three members of the band in successive years between 1991 and 1993.
Friends on the Road would turn out to be their penultimate album. In an effort to potentially revitalise the band, they were involved in several collaborations with other artists on the record such as Hank Wangford and Latin Quarter. Peel was more taken by the tracks which they worked on themselves of which Pombi is a beautifully engaging example. The liner notes described the song as being about disease and economic awareness, while the title is based on an African proverb of typically nonsensical profundity:
If you have a pump, then buy your own bicycle.
Video courtesy of Takari Ekwensi
No comments:
Post a Comment