Club Contact

The new MP3 blog from London's club Contact. The idea is to allow people to hear new music they wouldn't have otherwise found but, if anyone has any copyright issues with a particular song, i'll take the link down. Songs are only available for a limited amount of time.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Although a huge Clash fan, i've never really liked Rock The Casbah as much as many of their other songs. Reinvented in Arabic by the Algerian singer Rachid Taha, it takes on a whole new dimension. Taha is the most prominent rock star in the Arab world, and along with Natasha Atlas and Souad Massi, one of the North Africans most recognisable to people who would class themselves as "serious fans of world music" rather than lovers of international pop. This has led to a number of performances or collaborations with eminently dull musicians like Steve Hillage and Robert Plant. Like the great Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan, you get the impression that the music would be much more exciting if the middle-aged Anglo-American musos just left him to get on with it. The cover which, rather oddly, has backing vocals by Brian Eno, taps into his early punk roots with the band Carte de Séjour though and must stand as the definitive rendition of the song.

Buy Rachid Taha stuff

Rachid Taha - Rock El Casbah

1 Comments:

  • At 2:16 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    This site is one of the best I have ever seen, wish I had one like this.
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