When I was a kid my family would pile into a station wagon at least once a year and drive/canoe for thousands of kilometers in pursuit of the Perfect Camping Spot. I remember tent-heavens in the mountains near Jasper, amidst the paprika colours of Gros Morne, along the lakes and rivers of Quetico, after long drives to the Lake of the Woods, and in many other hot-spots of the Canadian near-north. Those epic journeys needed a soundtrack. My brother and I would spend hours making mix tapes for the ride, mostly from my father’s large vinyl collection, doing manual fades and swear word bleep-outs with the knobs on our silver casette deck.

Despite these wicked cross-fades, linking the likes of My Bloody Valentine to Run DMC to Roxy Music, the most successful car tape was probably one we didn’t make ourselves, something called Crusin’ 67. It was the kind of cheesy thing you’d buy from Time Life or while waiting in line at Canadian Tire with an armful of camping stove fuel, but we all loved it. In much the same way that my current parties demand a heavy dose of Nigerian funk and Ghanaian highlife, my early car trips demanded 1960s American pop tunes that pleased everyone in the wagon.

I’m saying all this because that was the first thing I thought of when I saw in the liner notes that Le Tout Puissant Poly Rythmo got their start in 1967 in Professor Wallace Creppy’s group, Sunny Black. Now I’m sitting here listening to Poly Ryhmo’s track, Agbaza Mimim, off their album Nouvelle Formule, and all I can imagine is my father slapping the steering wheel of his silver Oldsmobile, singing along like it was The Turtles’ Happy Together.

ps- we can all thanks Benn loxo listener, Frank, for picking this album up for me in Belgium.

T.P. Poly Rythmo – Agbaza Mimin / Djomido