THE VERY BEST OF OSIBISA (GOLDEN STOOL)

(First review of this album.) OSIBISA is probably the best known 70's Fusion band from Africa and pioneers of the so called World Music. Most players were from Ghana but were operating in London. Their first two albums from the beginning of the decade, Osibisa and Woyaya, are considered their best. Funky, rhythmic Fusion with lots of woodwind, brass, excellent electric guitar and percussion, and with a strong Western African feel (a cousin to that of Latin-American). The band continued to make albums but they eventually got poorer and poorer, less and less original - often even disco-ish - as can be seen from the ratings here. And that notion gets pretty clear with this compilation too.

Roger Dean (the illustrator known by all YES fans) has done many of the later album covers too, including this one. That, and the title "The Very Best Of" makes one expect a good, well done compilation but these expectations are not fulfilled very well. It's definitely more recommended to get the double issue of the mentioned first albums. Not that all of the later stuff is crap. Some songs are quite listenable even if they don't have much in common with the Fusion they started with. And of course it's interesting to hear how they changed through the years. Well, at least they always kept that happy, joyous mood.

What a decent compilation should do is give the listener deeper information of the band. In that sense too this is a let-down. Especially I would have wanted to get the release years of each track. Albums are mentioned but not their release years, strange!