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artist.....: Harry Mosco
album......: Funkees-For You Specialy
year.......: 2014
label......: Secret Stash Records
SSR-CD-32
source.....: CDDA
moodswing..: Funk
releasesize: 54.79 MB
tracks.....: 06
length.....: 30:13
encoder....: VBR LAME 3.98.4 -v0
quality....: avg. 252kbps
scenealized: 04.09.2015
Harry Mosco had been knocking around
London for about four years when he
made this album, watching his
pioneering Afro-beat outfit, the
Funkees go, well, defunct, and banging
his head against the wall trying for a
commercial breakthrough. For You
Specially was originally intended to be
the opening salvo for Africanium, a
band Mosco started with drummer Willie
Bestman in the aftermath of the Funkees
demise. The title and album art,
however, sought a clear connection with
the older band. The word "FUNKEES"
appears in much larger type face on the
cover than Mosco's name or the
misspelled title.
As a marketing gambit, it didn't work
very well. The album didnÆt sell on its
release and has been out of print for
decades (in fact, until Minneapolis
Secret Stash decided to reissue it this
year). But still, even now, if you're
interested in For You Specially, it's
most likely because of its linkage to
the Funkees, whose reputation has grown
with comps and reissues like Nigeria
70, Dancing Time, Nigeria Rock Special
and others. Be aware though that if
those reissues captured the Funkees in
their purest, most Nigerian state, For
You Specially sounds like a diaspora
record, just as funky as the old stuff
but infused with a bigger dose of
Western soul and R&B.
You notice this right away with
"Wasting My Time," whose twitchy bass
and syncopated wah stutter to the
background behind fluid, melodic group
singing. If the Funkees of ôAcid Rockö
(circa 1970) sound like an African band
thatÆs been listening to a lot of James
Brown, Harry Mosco of "Wasting My Time"
echoes smoother soul acts like the
O'Jays and Curtis Mayfield. The song is
less staccato, more legato than you'd
expect and altogether the weakest track
on the disc. It doesn't help that
Mosco's voice is the least formidable
of all his instruments ù he plays
guitar, bass and percussion as well
here and that he puts it right up
front.s
"Usassa Funk" is 100 percent better,
riding a chant rather than a croon
through pointillist syncopations of
bass, guitar, sax and brass. The slap
and pop bass is particularly fine here,
loping ahead and step stopping back in
a rubbery rhythm that is both laid back
and propulsive. "Consolation" runs
slower and more mellifluously, floating
dreamy Rhodes figures over its sizzling
underpinnings. Still, the smoke comes
from below in its just-about-to-catch-
fire interplay between bass thump and
guitar twitch. "Ada Aku" is the most
overtly African track on the disc,
couching Ibo call and response in
Afro-beat trance rhythms and flying a
scorching trumpet solo over the
extended midsection.
The album wraps with another Western-
style slow jam, "Sweet Loving Girl"
which is also a bit of letdown and also
puts too heavy an emphasis on Mosco's
voice. There's plenty going on in the
margins, an intricate, proggy keyboard
solo erupting from a saccharine chorus,
the dyspeptic commentary of funk guitar
nattering on amid the romance. But why
hide your light under a bushel? Why
hide it at all?
You can hear Mosco making a play for
broad audiences in these bookending
cuts, and why not? He'd travelled half
a world from home for big time success,
and anyway, there was plenty of worse
funk-and-soul going on in 1977 in
London, Philly, Detroit, Chicago etc.
The mid-section of For You Specially is
wonderful, enough to excuse a little
Motown cliched-ness at the front and
back end.
psst, more info at secretstashrecords.com
01 Wasting My Time (Loving You) 05:41
02 Usassa Funk 04:39
03 Consolation 04:49
04 Ada Aku 04:41
05 It Ain't Easy 05:20
06 Sweet Loving Girl 05:03