it’s hard to get a handle on nigerian musicians nash dodoo, charlie cuul and jonas caulley. in 1980 they released an album of face-melting gospel boogie as the bml chapels. and in the same year, calling themselves the beta yama group, they put out free love, a belated love letter to san francisco’s summer of love and an album altogether focused on more worldly concerns. free love is a small slice of haight-ashbury transported to the polygram studios in lagos. ‘te revoir’ is mamas and papas jamming with sergeant pepper’s beatles. ‘free love’ offers a respectful nod towards je t’aime-era serge gainsbourg. sure, ‘revolution’ gets hard and funky and ‘rain’ flirts briefly with a calypso reggae sound, but the majority of the album is cheesecloth and flowers in your hair. insanely rare – and worth buying for the freaky cover art alone – free love is a funky, reverb heavy call for love, peace and sweet, sweet loving. what more could you want from an album?
(peter moore)