The Bodhi-Beat Poets: Baltimore (Behold The Precious Stupa) Positive Paranoia!

front

Cherry Red 1984.  MRED60

Discogs

This post is a request for information as much as anything else.  I heard it on Peel and bought it – the usual story.  I listened to it quite a lot and bought their second album too.  I had an idea in my head that they were a kind of semi-legendary proto-rap group, pre-dating its popularity and as a result not really sounding like anyone else.  However my efforts to find out more about them have failed – I can’t find anything at all.  Clearly they can’t have been as groundbreaking and influential as I thought.

So, since I was wrong about them, can anyone fill me in?

The album is full of the sort of gritty social commentary I like and a mysticism I’m less keen on.  The rapping is much more poetic than is usual and very effective.  However it’s a 30 year old rap record so the backing is pretty primitive.

I can’t imagine why I’m writing this blog tonight.  The house movers are coming in the morning and I’m surrounded by boxes and exhausted.   An escape from the tedium of moving house maybe.