THE INCREDIBLE BONGO BAND
The Incredible Bongo Band was a project started in 1972 by Michael Viner, a record artist manager and executive at MGM Records. Viner was called on to supplement the soundtrack to the B-film The Thing With Two Heads. The band’s output consisted of upbeat, funky, instrumental music. Many tracks were covers of popular songs of the day characterized by the prominence of bongo drums, conga drums, rock drums and brass. (More from Wikipedia)
Like Cliff Richard, his backing band the Shadows has a fairly low profile in this country; but they have considerable renown in their own right as an instrumental rock band besides the recordings that they made with Cliff Richard. The Shadows were the first band to record the well-known “Apache” for instance. And this instrumental standard has had a major impact elsewhere as well; quoting from Wikipedia: “A 1973 version [of ‘Apache’] by the Incredible Bongo Band has been called ‘hip-hop’s national anthem’. Although this version was not a hit on release, the long percussion break in the middle has been sampled countless times on hip-hop, rap and dance tracks since the 1980’s.”
(November 2014)
