We'll kick off July -- a month so dense with concert-a-versaries I could post three times a day for the duration and not run out of possible shows to share -- and festival season with someone most have likely never heard of, but since when did that ever deter us?
You know I have more than a soft spot for Turk Rock and Turkish funk-n-psych in general, so it shouldn't be all that shocking that I'd dig up some Alex Oriental Experience to lay on y'all.
AOE is just the brand name created by Alex Wiska, whose Seventies LPs form a great deal of the basis for and the best of this endless wellspring of Anatolian Rock that he helped birth.
Alex wasn't even born in Turkey; he began life in Germany. His first two LPs of the '70s were in fact produced and contributed to by several of the guys from Can.
A spiritual quest brought him onto the Anatoly Highway to Ankara in the late 1960s, and although he'd been a recording musician in various groups up to then, this journey would define everything he was to innovate along the subsequent path going forward.
Using a custom made merger of an electric guitar and an Eastern stringed instrument called a saz -- sometimes also referred to as a baglama -- he came up with a nearly seamless fusion of traditional Anatolian music and the Jimi Hendrix-style of psychedelic, guitar driven rock then exploding upon the world like a million burning Stratocasters in the Monterey haze.
Those first two records -- where it's just him and the Can dudes -- are absolute touchstones and I hope that someday they find the master tapes of the second one (That's the Deal) and it can be reissued from something other than a scratchy old LP.
As the '70s became the '80s, he formed a vehicle for his music, the band we feature here in a 20th anniversary fireworks spectacular of a performance that really showcases his skills as an improviser on the electric saz/baglama axe for which he was renowned.
Alex Oriental Experience
Immeldorf Open Air
Weisses Ross
Lichtenau, Germany
7.2.1999
01 introduction
02 Turkish and American Blend
03 For Now and Forever
04 Sad and Lonely
05 Hit the Road jam incl. bass & drum solos
06 Show Me incl. Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) jam
07 Ein Kleiner Boogie/Into the Sun
08 Yo Yo Yo
Total time: 1:42:25
disc break goes after Track 04
Alex Wiska - guitar, baglama & vocals
Uwe Friedrich Otto 'Ufo' Walter - bass
Manfred von Bohr - drums & percussion
sounds like a DAT straight from the desk, master sbd
I took the time to remove the digital clipping issues this one had, and I also broke off the last tune into its own track, where before it had been part of the previous one.
There's all sorts of summer fever planned for July and beyond, so stay tuned and I shall return with the foo to get you through -- there are honestly so many great shoes, it's tough to choose -- super soon.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves... we need to get you availed of the AOE and Alex Wiska -- sadly, he passed away in 2011, but music like his can never really die as long as it gets passed along -- via this exemplary 102 minutes of maelstrom, taped on this day in 1999.--J.
11.12.1950 - 3.3.2011