Collectables
The Devil's Anvil : Hard Rock from the middle East (US,1967)**°°'
One of the earliest examples of a cooperation by a US band with middle eastern musicians. It was a 60's Freakbeat band. The combination of styles is still pretty rough. In these days it was completely new territory that they explored. It's a fine experiment, but musically only some tracks are more interesting. I especially like "Besaha", an Arab tune composed by the middle eastern musicians (Armenian,..?). Most traditional tunes however are based upon pretty rough and less directly appealing traditional themes. If top jazz / rock musicians would have tried the same concept the sound would have been more interesting.
After some listens I began to enjoy more the interpretations of traditional songs with some 60's touch. But still only a couple of tracks stand out, a couple more are still very interesting, a few more are just ok. Still, an interesting album for those interested in early crossovers.
This album has been put on LP reissue recently.
More info :
The Feenjon Group was an Armenian group that played in New York in Armenian bars (-I think they released one album-), but became also popular in a coffee house that showed talents like Fred Neil, Ritchie Havens, John Sebastian, Cass Eliott. After jamming with them in the same bar there was formed a new group, the Devil's Anvil, who combined a mid hard 60's rock sound with Arabian songs. With a promising sound, still somewhat young and freshly new, they released an album summer of 1967. A bad timing because the Israeli/Arab war started. With a cover with one musician in Arab dress, and a group called
Devil's Anvil, with the title of the album "hard rock from the middle east" it became too provocative to become successful then. But it showed a beautiful early crossover style.
In my radioshow I chose to play "Selim Alai" for its nice psych organ and aggressive powerful crossover style. It has oud, rhythm guitar, electric bass, organ, drums and vocals in Arabic.
