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Special Announcement
It’s come to our attention that many subscribers did not receive last Thursday’s Other Music Update. If you didn’t get a copy in your in-box last week, you can still view the new release email by going to: http://www.othermusic.com/2007may10update.html.

 
This Week's Featured Download

Various Artists
Cult Cargo: Grand Bahama Goombay
The Numero Group
$9.99
Listen & Buy

Quality reissue label the Numero Group delivers the second release in their new "Cult Cargo" series of region-specific funk and soul compilations with Grand Bahama Goombay. The first in the series collected obscure and forgotten 45 RPM nuggets from Belize; this time around, the focus is on the Bahamian region, most specifically the city of Freeport. Goombay (a word defined in the liner notes as an annual street festival, a pina colada-esque drink flavor, and perhaps most importantly, a drum) is less frenetic than its Belizean predecessor, though no less enjoyable; every cut here is loose, raw, and totally heavy. Highlights include a handful of tracks by Cyril "Dry Bread" Ferguson, from the civil-rights call to arms "Gonna Build a Nation" to "Words to My Song," one of the most moving songs about writer's block I've ever heard! Elsewhere, the Mustangs' "Time for Loving Is Now" combines a lopsided cowbell groove, a fuzzed-out organ, and beautiful harmony vocals, while Jay Mitchell serves up a monstrous 13-minute deconstruction of Mack Rice/Wilson Pickett's "Mustang Sally." My favorite cut, though, is Sylvia Hall's double-dutch abstinence ode "Don't Touch That Thing," which manages to combine a risque (for the ‘70s, at least) children's playground rhyme and a "Funky Nassau"-esque drum stomp into one of the best jams on an overall quality compilation.

– Mikey IQ Jones