What makes a band great isn’t essentially the individual musicians’ quality, but rather how they all harmonize. It’s all about the famous »understanding each other without words«, which can only develop over the years. This combo doesn’t just fulfill the requirements because most of them are actual brothers; they’ve also made themselves known as one of THE backing-studio-bands in Nigeria before recording this album together. Amongst other albums, they’ve been responsible for Pax Nicholas’ »Na Teef« and they have also re-written Nigerian music-history under the pseudonym The Shadows International, lead by their fellow countryman Saxon Lee. So far, so good. However, what they produced after that under the Nigerian flag could have easily made it internationally, too – if only the rest of the world would have known about it! »Money« was recorded in the legendary Arc-studios under the instruction of Fela Kuti’s drummer Ginger Baker (who was already world famous back then), from there, the recording went to one of the intersections of international music-trade-ways, precisely to the Tin Pan Alley studios in London, in order to get mixed. Additionally, at the beginning of the 1970s, they used the record »Money« to expand the idea of Afro-beat (which they helped creating and which, since Fela Kuti, has served as a musical Esperanto) by a certain funk-dialect, widely spread and easy to understand. The JBs couldn’t have designed the track »Onje Awumawu« to be more suitable for »Soul Train«; and yet, there was neither a talent-scout nor a manager around in order to place their album in record stores all over the world. Why?, you might ask – and quite honestly, I don’t have a single clue. However, luckily (for us), great things don’t ever get old. And since the pool of lost private pressing-collections from Europe and the U.S. has been almost used up in the last years, we can all look forward to enjoying more African treasures in the years to come. Like this very treasure here.
Money
