Turban alert: TM Mike Love (Beach Boys)

I came across these images of Mike Love from a post on the super super music blog Aquarium Drunkard. It presents and discusses a video of The Beach Boys singing with the Alexander Hamilton Double Rock Baptist Choir. The song, "That Same Song," is, well, vintage Beach Boys + gospel. It was released on their album 15 Big Ones in 1976.

One of the things that struck me was Mike Love in turban (the second photo shows him with Al Jardine.)

Mike had gone to Rishikesh, India, as part of a group of sixty, organized by The Beatles and including also Donovan and Paul Horn, in February. There they studied Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. I guess this is evidence that Mike was still fully in to TM in the mid-seventies.

While they were all there, The Beatles wrote and recorded a lot of music, that would show up on the White Album and Abbey Road.

And they recorded this, which never appeared on record: the very very BeachBoysesque "Spiritual Regeneration/Happy Birthday Mike Love," on the occasion of Mike's birthday.

I guess the most Beach Boys-sounding Beatles song ever recorded is "Back in the USSR," penned by Paul McCartney. Mike Love has stated that he encouraged McCartney to "talk about the girls all around Russia, the Ukraine and Georgia" to make the song sound more Beach Boys.

Treasure trove: Middle Eastern recorded music from the British Library

The British Library has a very nice sound archive that includes 74 items from the Middle East, digitized shellac recordings.

Most famous of the artists recorded here (10 tracks) is the Iraqi Jewish singer Salima Murad (1970-1972), listed here as Sitt Salima Pasha, as she was also known. Her tracks are all from the 1930s.

Salima Murad

Also worth hearing are two tracks from Sitt Mounira Hawazwaz, another female Jewish Iraqi singer. Two tracks from her, also from the 1930s.

And also cool, a couple tracks recorded in Bombay, India, by Muhamed Abdul Salam, presumably a Saudi 'ud player and vocalist. Finally, six very nice tracks from Ustad Salim Rashid Suri of Oman.

You should check them all out. Like I said, a true treasure.