He Miss Road & Expensive Shit

He Miss Road - Ginger Baker’s idiosyncratic production gives this album an attractive dusting of psychedelia (the best Nigerian weed of the era was as potent as a dose of Owsley Stanley’s acid over in San Francisco). The keyboard and horn sounds are tweaked and the mix is more skeletal than the norm for Africa 70, allowing the listener to hear shekere, sticks and conga with a clarity obscured by denser mixes. As one would expect, Baker also makes sure fellow drummer Tony Allen’s kit is sympathetically miked. Expensive Shit - A kind of Part Two to 1974’s “Alagbon Close,” the title track here focuses in more detail (and with more humour) on the police’s attempt to nail Fela for possession of weed following the May 1974 raid on Kalakuta Republic.