My Inner Lester Bangs: "Come With Me Now" by Kongos

A very happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers.  That being my wife, my family, old friends from Port Orange that are on the night shift at the hospital, and random people who googled "Lester Bangs Gay".  (That's a real search that found my blog, btw.  Not sure where that came from.)

Anyways, back to MILB on Friday.  This week, I'm going to give you a band from South Africa.  Kongos are 4 brothers whose father was a famous (in South Africa) singer named John Kongos.  John's biggest hit is in fact something you might have heard before.  It was a song called "He's Going to Step On You Again."  In 1990 it was released as "Step On" by The Happy Mondays.  (With the great line of "you're twistin my melon man.")

Well, Kongos are a rock band from South Africa with a very eclectic sound.  I mean, "Come With Me Now" starts off with an accordion.  How many rock bands would have the guts to do that?  Not many I can tell you.  They sound like nothing I've heard before in music.  I definitely like that they are trying to stretch themselves, and find a way to get their music out there.  In South Africa they are huge.  I mean, they played at Joburg Day 2012, and people on the radio still talk about it.  (It was in September.)  They and the Parlotones are the forefront of a large group of music coming from South Africa.

Now, onto the song.  The lyrics speak of anxiety and fear, which is something we know a bit about.  I can certainly identify with the first verse: "Afraid to lose control; caught up in this world; I've wasted time I've wasted breath; I think I've thought myself to death."  Powerful stuff really.

It's a hard driving song with a lull in the middle for the bridge.  The bridge has a haunting quality to it, with the music slowing and lowering with the main part sung in almost a falsetto ("Far Away, I heard him say") answered by a low, almost guttural growl, ("Come with me now") and trading back and forth, almost call and response.  It's a good trick as the song picks up again and thrashes it's way onward.

At the end, it gets a bit deep but even then there's a bit of humor in the subject.  The last verse says, "Confused what I thought with something I felt; Confuse what I feel for something that's real; I tried to sell my soul last night; funny, he wouldn't even take a bite."

Go out and buy the Kongos CD.  I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by it.