Ofege Lp

I know very little about this group, other than the fact that they rock. The twist is that they are from the early 70s and were located in Nigeria. I found a needle drop of their early 70s lp on the internets and have been cranking it quite frequently on the reference system.

A simple stroke of the almighty GOOG returns the following"

The Ofege Phenomenon The 1970s school boy musical band from St. Gregory's College, Obalende, Ikoyi, Lagos. Nigeria's most outstanding school boy band of all time ! The Ofege music was largely influenced by the guitar solos of Carlos Santana, Jeff Beck, Robert Plant, Francis Rossi and the criss-cross rhythms of Osibisa. At home they were influenced by the music of ‘BLO’ (Berkley Jones, Laolu Akins and Mike Odumosu), ‘Monomono’ (led by Joni Haastrup), The funkees and Ofo the Black Company. Just before Ofege, there were a few boy bands in existence. ‘Grotto’ a senior Gregorian band featured Skid Ikemefuna on guitar alongside Martin Amenechi and Soga Benson. At Igbobi College was ‘IC Rockets’ in which Cornelius Tay (CEO of CT & A) played bass guitar. Other popular Gregorians who were accomplished ‘session men’ and could back any fledging band at the time included Sultan Anibaba, a practising architect and project director with the National Health Service (NHS) in England and Koku Konu (also a UK trained architect, but is somewhere in Nigeria). ‘Sultie & Koku’ were like the legendary hard funk duo ‘George & Louis Johnson of Brothers Johnson’ – both graduates of Bill Preston’s School of Rhythm and Lead Guitar. Other bands on the circuit were ‘Tirogo’ in which Funmi Onabolu (CEO Bates Cosse) played the keyboards and bass guitar. ‘BAC Foundation’ was a fusion of boys from Gregs, Igbobi College and Methodist Boys High School, Lagos. It had Wale Gomez (Gomie States) on drums, Laku Coker on keyboards, Tunde May on lead guitar and Debo Ajayi on rhythm guitar. Ofege was about Afro-funk. At their gigs...it was funk, funk and more funk! Read all about the oustanding group Ofege in the latest edition of Island News. Culled from NIGERIA TODAY ONLINE MONDAY, MAY 23, 2004 Tel: 01 791 4196-7 E-mail: info@the-islandnews.com

The fuzz that they utlize on the electric guitar is straight from the garage. The polrythmic jams that they work are straight from Africa. It is a great mix of influences.

Soul-sides has the full skinny on Ofege here.

The vocal delivery is a bit weak, but the bass and tones of everything makes up for it. Since they were kids, this may explain a bit of it.

Here is a link for their instro track off their lp:
gbe mi lo