mr. bassie's notes and comment

i wake up in the morning and i just can't keep from blogging

2005-06-29T13:47:00.000-07:00

Fire House Rock
The Wailing Souls
The Biggest Dancehall Anthems, 1979-82 (Greensleeves, 2002)

Prison Oval Rock
Prison Oval Dub
Barrington Levy
Prison Oval Rock (RAS, 1991)

I picked up this Greensleeves comp a year ago and it's been in constant rotation on my stereo ever since. There are forty tracks of rub-a-dub goodness, including this Wailing Souls classic that I almost tossed up online for my earlier post. There's not a bum track on the comp, but among the standouts are Barrington Levy's "Mary Long Tongue" and Johnny Osbourne's "Fally Ranking" and a sizable helping of classic deejay platters like Eek-a-Mouse's classic "Wa-Do-Dem" and Michigan & Smiley's "Diseases." Greensleeves is a great label - they started sometime in the late 70s (I think), as roots was starting to fade, and they made their name with the new dancehall stuff that was coming out around then. This was back when English and American record labels were still focussed on roots singers, so I got much respect for folks at Greensleeves. If you're new to Mr. Bassie's favorite five year period of Jamaican music, there is no better introduction than this. (Listening to it all at once is a bit exhausting, but these are forty classic tracks you need to have in your collection.)

While I'm at it, I figure why not post this Barrington Levy track. Who doesn't know Barrington Levy? He's probably the most famous Jamaican singer to emerge from the 80s dancehall. I get a little tired of his tenor voice and his excessive use of those backwards yodels, but he dropped some fine records back in the day. On this joint, "Prison Oval Rock," one of my favorites by Levy, he expertly rides the "Fire House Rock" riddim, strutting all over it with his inimitable dancehall swagger. It comes off RAS records' compilation album Prison Oval Rock, which is a collection of some of Barrington's singles from the early eighties. (Don't confuse the RAS comp with Levy's 1985 album of the same name, though. That one's good, but you'll only find it on vinyl.) Levy's pretty much a singles artist, and his greatness doesn't translate to album as well as Marley or a group like The Wailing Souls, so stick to his various Best Of sets and you'll be fine.

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Buy Prison Oval Rock from amazon.com.

Buy Prison Oval Rock from the iTunes Music Store.

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Laters.

this is it

2005-06-29T13:21:00.000-07:00

Oh What A Feeling
A Fool Will Fall
The Wailing Souls
Fire House Rock (Shanachie, 1980)

This is it. As far as Mr. Bassie is concerned, the greatest period in Jamaica's musical history is the post-roots dancehall of the early eighties. Shit got stripped down and minimal like the Bauhaus architecture movement. Meandering chord sequences became two chord vamps. The guitar stopped playing the bouncy insistent upbeat that carried Jamaica from ska to rocksteady to roots reggae. (It was replaced by the subtler rhythmic emphasis of the hi-hat.) All the excess instrumentation was dropped and the bass and drums got LOUD. There were still horns back there somewhere, but the horn parts became much less complex – often the whole horn section (i.e., a sax, a trumpet, and a trombone) simply played lines in unison. And the tempo slowed way the fuck down.

Now, if you’re English (or is it British? what do I call you guys? I'll cop to my ignorance), you probably know this shit. (Y’all got lots of Jamaicans over there.) But if you’re American, and not from New York, Boston, or Miami or some such place, this is probably about when Jamaican music drops off your radar. Back in the 1970s, the record companies knew exactly how to market roots reggae, but then it all seemed to change overnight and we Americans stopped listening as much as we used to and the record labels stopped trying so hard. (Though, at some point in the early 80s, A&M tried to package reggae legend Dennis Brown – Bob Marley’s favorite singer, y’all – as some sort of Jamaican R&B crooner and pseudo-funkster. That shit is ugly.)

Not that roots disappeared completely, though. The Wailing Souls, one of the greatest of the roots harmony groups, stuck around. They had been around since way back in the day – they cut an album for Dodd on Studio One in the sixties, and in the seventies they cobbled together a bunch of their killer 45s (including “Bredda Gravalicious” and “Very Well”) to put out the roots classic Wild Suspense. (An album that is sadly out of print here in the States, though I might be willing to trade someone my copy of it via mp3 to the first person who’s got something good I want to listen to. Email me.)

The Wailing Souls were heavy roots, but they were musical chameleons who managed to stay true to their Rastafarian faith while hooking up with rub-a-dub producer extraordinaire Junjo Lawes and the Roots Radics, and then dropping one of the classic albums of the era (during the first half of the eighties, before Jamaican dancehall went electronic). That album, Fire House Rock, is one of my Top Ten of All Time albums. It’s that fucking good. Usually, where Jamaican music is concerned, I would go for a singles compilation before I’d go for an artist’s album – the place has always been all about the 45s. Shit, I think it was only in the late 1990s that CDs starting selling there in sizable numbers (please correct me if I’m wrong). That emphasis on singles makes it hard to find an album that achieves the “coherence” that many white Americans like me, brought up in the world of Pitchforkian rock-critical geekdom, are looking for in an album.

Well, this album has got “coherence.” I don’t how many songs from it were released as singles or what, but all I know is that it’s glorious. The two songs I’ve chose for this post happen to be my favorites, but the album is so good I’m not even sure these two tracks are the best here. (I had to pass up on posting both the classic title track and the phenomenal “Kingdom Rise Kingdom Fall” because I didn’t want to put up two roots track on this post.) No matter, cause the whole album measures up.

Dig the roots badassness of "A Fool Will Fall," then swoon to the loveliness of "Oh What A Feeling," then buy it, cause it's good.

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Here’s what Rick Anderson over at the all music guide has got to say about Fire House Rock:

Talk about a triple threat: first you have the (by this point well-established and effortlessly professional) Wailing Souls, one of the greatest of the cultural harmony groups; then you have the Roots Radics, the studio band that almost singlehandedly defined the new dancehall reggae sound in the early '80s; and to make everything perfect, you have the unassailable team of producer Henry "Junjo" Lawes (who can claim equal status with the Roots Radics as a dancehall pioneer) and engineer Hopeton "Scientist" Brown. The result is one of the finest reggae albums of all time, one which combines the Wailing Souls' top-notch songwriting and harmony singing with the absolute best in studio accompaniment-there may never be another reggae band with a sound as rock-ribbed as that of the Roots Radics. Each track is a highlight in its own way, but pay particular attention to the title track, the gently rolling "Who Lives It" and the smoky, apocalyptic "Kingdom Rise Kingdom Fall."

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Laters.

lazy monday post

2005-06-27T16:57:00.000-07:00

10
M.I.A.
Arular

Though I've heard nearly every track of the M.I.A. at some place or another in the blogosphere, I finally decided last weekend to show some love and buy the album. Over the last five or six months, I'd downloaded all of the Piracy Funds Terrorism mixtape, seven of the album's twelve tracks, and several bitchin' mash-ups and remixes (big up to boom selection - thanks, mate!). I was all over that shit, but somewhere along the M.I.A. way I missed this track. Which is a damn shame, cause it's fucking banging! If I had heard this shit earlier, I would've gone out and bought the fucking album on day one.

Yeah, so you've probably heard this shit before. Yeah, you probably bought the fucking album already. Big up to yourself, playa, cause you're a pimp! Mr. Bassie is fucking lazy today and this his fucking lazy post. Shit, you fish have been crammed to the gills with so much M.I.A. propaganda nonsense that I don't even have to say anything. Shit, I don't even have to link to anything. Fucking awesome how easy it is! Just click, download (if you ain't got), and show some love if you haven't already. (I'm keeping this mp3 up for a week, so I'm interested to see if I get some fancy suits breathing down my neck - that shit ain't happened to Mr. Bassie yet.)

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Big up to Portland Trail Blazers' GM John Nash. Now that the finals are done and gone, dude has got the entire league hanging on his every word, waiting for him to make his move. Just don't fuck it up tomorrow, John. I want my Blazers back!

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Serious blogging will resume tomorrow, y'all. I got a nice platter to serve up: two fat rub-a-dub joints by Bassie favorite The Wailing Souls. Laters.

a great big cadillac

2005-06-10T17:12:00.000-07:00

Be Thankful
Bunny Clarke
Shocks of Mighty: Lee Perry and Friends

Dubbing in the Backseat
The Upsetters
Shocks of Mighty: Lee Perry and Friends

Howdy y'all. Let's keep this brief, because some of us need to get drunk tonight. I forgot about this Bunny Clarke track until the mo rizza posted another reggae cover of this William DeVaughan classic on his blog yesterday. I wasn't totally digging that one, but y'all need to check out the reworked chromeo joint he posted cause that shit goes balls deep into the giant vagina of electro-soul music heaven.

Well, like the mo rizza was saying, I've never heard anyone touch the pimped-out swagger of DeVaughan's version. I've always loved the song. Some killer shit. I mean, listen to the song: dude's obviously sitting on some cash, driving around like a fucking gangsta, but he drops the verses like he singing one of those ghetto-conscious numbers that were so kinda popular back in the early 70s. "Though you may not drive a great big cadillac," dude sings, "you can still stand tall - just be thankful for what you've got." Fucking what? Dude's a fucking gangsta hypocrite. He's probably that mysterious Rinehart from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Probably gets his dough running numbers. Well, it's this, uhh, confusion that makes me totally dig the DeVaughan joint and is why I'm more likely to return to it instead of some other socially-conscious number by The Impressions or somebody (no diss for Curtis, cause his solo shit is scalding hot).

I don't know much about this Lee Perry-produced joint since I got this disc burned from a friend, but I'm pretty sure the comp it comes from is out-of-print. The dub version of the song also appears on Trojan's Flashing Echo set, where it hopefully was remastered to sound better than this shit job. Bunny Clarke was also the singer for the pop-reggae group Third World. Clarke's cut doesn't have the swagger of the DeVaughan version, but maybe that's a good thing. Instead, Clarke sounds desperate. DeVaughan sings it like he's got bank, but Clarke sings it like he's got nothing. I think it's the creepy synth line in the background that nails it for me.

It's fucking raining right now in Portland, Oregon, and what a fucking surprise that is. You know, it was like this last year, too. It was winter weather until the tenth of fucking July - rain, rain, rain, rain. Fucking hell. Where is summer? I just got out of a long relationship, I'm back home, and I'm alone, and what I want is hot chicks in short skirts on northwest twenty-third. God hates me.

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Get Bunny Clarke's "Be Thankful" on 7" here.

bassie's back

2005-06-09T15:09:00.000-07:00

I Admire You
Oh Girl [extended mix]
Larry Marshall
I Admire You

Nanny Goat
Nanny Goat Dub
Larry Marshall
The Sound Of Channel One: King Tubby Connection

I left the game for awhile, but I'm back now. I'm meaning to stick around this time, but we'll see how it goes. I had to stop blogging back in February cause I was getting way too whiny and bitchy in my posts. I was dealing with some terrible shit at the time, but this blog was never supposed to be about letting off steam, so it had to go. I'm back now.

Larry Marshall. I don't know too much about this guy. There's just not a lot of good info out there on the internet about Jamaican music. But I don't have any money to drop on some books 'cos I spend most of my money on crack and compact discs. That being said, this is what I know: Larry Marshall started recording in the mid-1960's for Clement Dodd at Studio One; his classic "Nanny Goat" is considered to be one of the earliest reggae (i.e. not rocksteady) tunes; in 1974, Marshall spent his own cash to finance his classic "I Admire You" album (which features the famous Barrett brothers working the bass and drums); and, by 2002, he had prostate cancer and was working a construction job in Miami to foot the medical bills (see here).

Fucking great stuff. Maybe I put up too much, but I couldn't bear to choose between these four cuts. "Oh Girl" and "Nanny Goat" are extra classic (and King Tubby totally brings it on the "Nanny Goat Dub," which kicks the funk up a notch), but "I Admire You" is nearly as good. Marshall is a damn fine songwriter - what I like about his stuff is that, to my ears, his melodies sound very simple (almost traditional), but they surprise me and they're graceful. Great stuff.

I'm trying something new in regards to hosting the files, so drop some comments if ya have any problems. Laters.

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Purchase Larry Marshall's "I Admire You" at the iTunes Store.

the deejay say

2005-02-17T01:34:00.000-08:00

Baby Love
The Sensations
Jamaican Beat

DJ Choice
Dennis Alcapone
High Explosion: DJ Sounds From 1970 To 1976

This was one of my first posts, but since nobody was reading the blog at that point I figure I could reprise it now. "DJ Choice" is hands-down my favorite old-school deejay joint, and I can't think of a better introduction to that style - Alcapone does spot-on impressions of all the great early deejays. It's funny, and the early deejay style, with all the whoops and screeches, was funny to begin with. And the riddim. The riddim Alcapone toasts over is a favorite early reggae riddim of mine. The lazy beat feels as if it were to tumble over. But the Alcapone toast brings something out of it. The harmonies and the guitar on The Sensations track are gorgeous - i think that's Ernest Ranglin on guitar there - but Alcapone's toast brings a subtle bounce from the riddim that the straight-up love ballad version lacks.

let's fall in love

2005-02-15T11:33:00.000-08:00

Let's Fall In Love
Bob Andy
Fire Burning

Memories By The Score
John Holt
Trojan Lovers Box Set

Well, it's been a while since I've posted. I doubt that I have many readers who care, but I'm back. And I've got some nice, sweet love songs for Valentine's Day - just one day late. These two love songs are cheesy and overarranged, but they're two of my favorites. The Holt track is a re-recording of his own Memories By The Score, one of my favorite Holt compositions. He's one of reggae's better songwriters, in my opinion - he's the guy who wrote "Stick By Me" for Christ's sake!

I've also heard that Bob Andy is one of Jamaica's better songwriters, but I wouldn't know - not much other than the so-so Fire Burning album has been released on CD. There's some of his duo stuff with Marcia Griffiths on her Trojan comps, and it's much better than most of Fire Burning. But Let's Fall in Love is one of my favorite standards, and this reggae version is one of my favorite recordings of it. Harold Arlen was a badass mutherfucker - check out Ella's Arlen songbook album: the Riddle-arranged Gershwin songbook seems so tired in comparison to May's more playful swing. And this reggae recording of Let's Fall in Love is, to me, nothing if not playful.

gimme likkle bass, make me wine up me waist

2005-01-28T11:24:00.000-08:00

Uptown Top Ranking
Althea & Donna
Uptown Top Ranking: Joe Gibbs Reggae Productions, 1970-78

I'm Still In Love With You/Three Piece Suit and Thing
Marcia Aitken/Trinity
Trojan 12" Box Set

Was going to post some Johnny Osbourne, my favorite dancehall singer, but I could't decide. I have at most 25 readers, so I figure no one is waiting with bated breath for my next post. I'm thinking of expanding this blog. I figure I have a fucking ton of brazilian music, more than I do Jamaican, and I have basic fluency in Portuguese, so maybe I'll drop some Brazilian tracks?

Well, here's one of my favorite partytastic riddims ever. I understand that this was quite the summer anthem back in England in 1978 or something. John Peel repped the fuck out of it. Miss him, he was a cool dude. Even cooler than Uptown Ranking, however, is Trinity toasting over the same riddim (on the flip of Marcia Aitken's "I'm Still in Love With You") for his famous "Three Pice Suit and Thing," which a lot of people tap as a starting point of dancehall and the movement away from the Rasta consciousness shit. The Aitken track is good (though she isn't quite on pitch on several of the notes, but the backing singers are fucking gorgeous) but not quite as classic as Trinity's. Check out the kickass dubby production, with the echoed piano being particularly awesome.

nice up the dance in a rub-a-dub style, pt. 2

2005-01-26T19:00:00.000-08:00

Real Rock
Sound Dimension
The Best of Studio One, Vol. 3: Downbeat the Ruler

Nice Up The Dance
Michigan & Smiley
Rub-a-Dub Style

Armagideon Time
Willie Williams
Tougher Than Tough: Natty Sing Hit Songs, 1975-81

I stayed up too late last night smoking crack instead of studying, and totally fucked myself over. Now that I'm back in school, I'm having a hard time reading my blogroll much less blogging. Back when I had that nice cubicle job doing design work, that was the perfect way to blog. A cup of coffee and plenty of time. And money. How the fuck do I presume to be doing a music blog when my incoming funds are lessened? The new music I purchase is coming in at a trickle now. I'm going to set up a new email address soon, and anyone who wants to send me shit for free, feel welcome.

Well, today, I've got a nice riddim platter for you. "Real Rock" was a kicking instrumental cut from Sound Dimension on Studio One. I don't really know much about Sound Dimension - the Rough Guide to Reggae credits "Real Rock" instead to he Soul Vendors - but they make up about half of the tracks on The Best of Studio One, Vol. 3: Downbeat the Ruler, Heartbeat's fucking partytastic Studio One instrumental comp. All the tracks are killer much-versioned 60s Studio One riddims, and are party-down danceable. You need this album, for summer days and drunken nights. Get it on the iTunes store for $10 bucks. Nice deal.

"Real Rock" was versioned on Michigan & Smiley's "Nice Up The Dance." My favorite deejay duo partying it up. I'm sure that I'm breaking some sort of audioblog code of ethics by posting two tracks from a six track album, but this album is too good, and y'all need to take your asses to the iTunes store and buy it. Why buy it for 17 bucks when you can get it for 7? Go now.

The tone of "Armagideon Time" is a bit different than on party-starters M&S's rub-a-dub version. I typically roll my eyes with a lot of hardcore Rasta shit, but this is the kind of consciousness shit I love. Badass muthafuckin' apocalytic Rasta shit. This was a big hit with UK punkers back when they were punk. You may have heard the Clash version. This version is much better. No shit. As is the Junior Murvin version of Police & Thieves, because The Murv sings that in the most bitchines' falsetto I ever heard. But, on the flipside, Joe Strummer did impress me with his version of "Redemption Song" on his last album. I got "Armagideon Time" off the Tougher Than Tough box set, which is one of the best purchases a casual fan of Jamaican music could ever make. If you can find it, that is. It's out of print, but Hip-O's Reggae Box looks just as good and goes a little further into modern dancehall.

nice up the dance in a rub-a-dub style

2005-01-24T10:23:00.000-08:00

Rub-a-Dub Style
Michigan & Smiley
Rub-a-Dub Style (Heartbeat, 1999?)

Rub-a-dub. The period from the end of the 70s to the mid 80s, right after the rasta dominance of the dancehall and before the casio-toned electronic dancehall that emerged in 1985 after "Under Me Sleng Teng" is when a lot of my favorite Jamaican music comes from. Barrington Levy (or maybe Sugar Minott) is probably the point to start any talk about music from this period but I'm actually blogging from the middle of my American Lit class, so I don't have the time.

Michigan & Smiley were the originators of dancehall deejay teams and they rock. This is my favorite track from the Heartbeat album. It's fucking spectacular and it's also a fucking bargain on the iTunes music store at I think $7 for the whole album. Get it.

I'll try and amend this post later. But I'll put up more tomorrow.

let's have a ska party

2005-01-21T07:20:00.000-08:00

Ska Party
Ernest Ranglin
Ska Wey Dat

Latin Goes Ska
Lester Sterling & The Skatalites
Phoenix City

I having a fucking hangover. But's it the weekend and that means party. And ska.

The Ernest Ranglin track comes from Ska Wey Dat, a double CD which contains his E.B.@noon album and the In O.D. live set. I don't know where or what O.D. is, but I am not getting up to find the damn liner notes. As a guitarist myself, I have a lot of admiration for Ranglin, but I was disappointed by Ska Wey Dey when I first got it. The live set has grown on me, though. It's a lot of fun and the crowd loves him, but the E.B.@noon set is such a piece of ska-ed up easy listening trash, that I can't really recommend this album to anyone at its full price.

The Skatalites track comes from the Phoenix City two-CD Trojan comp which is billed, I think, to the Skatalites and Friends. The Skatalites were a hard-working, prolific group of musicians, but it's still surprising that some of the musicianship in some of the songs is so sloppy. But it's a great, fun set. I prefer it to Foundation Ska, the two CD Skatalites set on Heartbeat. But that's just quibbling.

Next week, I'm going to drop a bunch of kickass rub-a-dub dancehall stuff. Less Trojan, more Heartbeat and Greensleeves. And, at some point, I want to talk about the classic Dr. Alimantado album, Best Dressed Chicken In Town, which was a favorite of London punks in the 70's.

the sweetness

2005-01-19T02:01:00.000-08:00

Curly Locks
Junior Byles
Lee Perry: The Ultimate Collection

Coming Home
Junior Byles
Beat Down Babylon (Trojan, 1998)

The reason I got into Jamaican music was because of the singers. To me, Jamaican singing is all the sweetness of African-American singing without all that excess fat (the endless trills and fills and less straightup shouting). And of all the singers, I love Junior Byles and Slim Smith the most. The anguish, pain, joy, and etc. in their songs - the emotions that they sing - are incredibly intense and deep. Few singers can match them. Bob Marley and Garnett Silk have something like it, but Slim Smith and Junior Byles seem so much more desperate. And they were both crazy.

Junior Byles recorded under Lee Perry in the late 60s and early 70s and put out the fucking classic Beat Down Babylon album in 1973. By 1975, the partnership was over. J.B. was always a basket case and when Halie Selassie died in that same year, he totally lost it. Never a prolific artist, since then he has recorded very little. Which is a damn shame.

J.B. was mostly about Rasta roots shit. Which is what made Curly Locks such a shock when I first heard it - it being one of the prettiest love songs I've ever heard. A rasta love song. I put Coming Home up cause I had to put some up from Beat Down Babylon. It's too good. Go get it.

Allmusic's got a great bio of Junior Byles here.

the upsetter

2005-01-18T13:28:00.000-08:00

Underground / Croaking Lizard
Lee Perry
Super Ape (Mango, 1991)

Crab Yars
Lee Perry
Return of the Super Ape (Cleopatra, 2000)

Personally, I don't get Lee Perry. I like his music, but the cult of his supergenius seems a little silly to me. This genius is the same guy who burned his own studio down and then did something like live in the ruins for weeks talking to bananas and trying to baptize people with a hose? It's kind of like Ol' Dirty Bastard. I don't get that shit either. I liked "Brooklyn Zoo," the Mariah Carey "Fantasy" remix and all that, too, but dude was not a genius. Dude was like one of those absuridist comedy routines that is much funnier in concept than in execution. The idea of ODB was much cooler than it turned out to be. Dude's life was a tragedy. It was sad to watch. But then he dies and blogplanet goes genius-overload on his ass. Nick Sylvester at Pitchfork gets it right when he says in his review of the ODB Osirus official mixtape shizz that just got released that "ODB had so successfully blurred the line between playing the fool and actually being retarded, nobody would dare criticize him for fear of seeming pointlessly cruel or, worse, painfully out of the loop." That's damn right, and, well, okay, maybe it's not quite like that with Lee Perry but, shit, he's smoked enough weed to be retarded and he hasn't put out much good music in the last 15 years either. Maybe some, but I'm not going to waste my money.

But don't let this dumbass illiterate rant stop you from downloading the kickass 70's Perry riddims I put up today. It's just that today was first day of classes and it's always a mess here at this fucking school at the beginning of the semester. I'm always in a bad mood when I get back. Shit, what am I doing here? I really should transfer. Oh, but wait - you don't care about that. Lee Perry. That's what you care about.

Well, I've got Lee Perry for you. Three tracks. One from 1978's Return of the Super Ape, and two ("Croaking Lizard" has a kickass toast from Prince Jazzbo) from 1976's Perry classic Super Ape, which is not in print in the U.S. right now - which a damn shame - but it is in print in the U.K. from what I hear (a friend burned me a CD-R copy). They're both great albums, and you should go out and buy them. Because you're cool. And that's what cool people do. If they wanna stay cool.

motown monday

2005-01-17T13:44:00.000-08:00

(That's the Way) Nature Planned It
Ken Boothe
Let's Get It On (Trojan, 1973)/Crying Over You (Trojan, 2001)

African-American music, from jazz to hiphop, has been an important influence on the development of Jamaican music for the last century or so. For years, the connection was more one-sided, with few exceptions like Texas-born entertainer Johnny Nash, but now you got Sean Paul all up here in the states and all this talk about the hiphop-dancehall connection and Busta Rhymes is Jamaican and yada yada yada. Well, I'm going to use my Mondays as a chance to drop M-based alliterations (watch out for Mayfield Mondays!) and also some cuts that illustrate this connection. We'll see how long this lasts.

Today, I got a nice track for you by Ken Boothe, one of my favorite singers. I guess it's more that I just love the sound of his voice (I'm a sucker for baritones), cause his song choices and interpretations often perplex the shit out of me. You should rest easy knowing I won't be posting his shitty-ass version of Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" in the future (except as maybe a joke). But when everything's right, like it is on this Four Tops' cover from his out of print Trojan LP, Let's Get It On, he's great.

That said, Trojan's Crying Over You compilation is maybe one disc too long. It's decent, though, but you'd be better off going for Trojan's one CD comp Everything I Own: The Best of Ken Boothe, which also contains his shitty-ass cover of Let's Get It On. I went for the double CD comp because it cost 20 bucks while Trojan's one CD comp was priced at a way too high 15 dollars.

Well, whatever. Happy listening!

funky friday

2005-01-14T11:51:00.000-08:00

Could You Be Loved
Bob Marley & The Wailers
Stadio San Siro - Milan, Italy (06/27/80)

Here's a funkyass bootleg Marley cut. According to this guy, this bootleg, often mislabeled as 8.26.80 Live at Dormund (Germany), is actually a soundboard recording of a concert at the Stadio San Siro in Milan, Italy the following day. Whatever. The show is amazing and this performance of Could You Be Loved that I'm posting is my favorite track on the CD. Family Man Barrett is one of my favorite drummers ever and the backbeat he lays down for this song is superfunky. They take the song a little faster and the quick tempo and propulsive groove make this version of the song a more direct, powerful statement than the original. Stunning.

the deejay say

2005-01-12T15:08:00.000-08:00

DJ Choice
Dennis Alcapone
High Explosion: DJ Sounds From 1970 To 1976 (Trojan, 2003)

Baby Love
The Sensations
Jamaican Beat (Culture Press, 2000)

While I was browsing at the CD/Game Exchange the other day, looking for something to feed my crack addiction, one of the clerks put on Trojan's kickass High Explosion deejay compilation. Everyone in the store was new to the style of toasting on the Trojan comp, and the clerks were having a lot of fun mimicking U-Roy, Alcapone, Big Youth, & co.'s crazy grunts, groans, and moans. The fun was contagious so I thought I'd spread it to my readers (i.e., my sister and two friends). And, as a bonus for my three readers, I'm also dropping the sublime original track, the Sensations' "Baby Love," that Alcapone versioned on "DJ Choice."

third post

2005-01-11T19:03:00.000-08:00

My Time
Gregory Isaacs
All I Have Is Love (Trojan, 2002)

I'm getting lazy already. I meant to write more at work, but things got too busy, and I'm not in the mood to write much now that I'm home. All I've got to say is that I love Gregory Isaacs, and I love this melody, but what the hell is he talking about? Is "My Time" a declaration of rasta consciousness, the end of a romance, or something else altogether?

still moving shit around

2005-01-10T13:08:00.000-08:00

Rockers Time
Augustus Clarke
Black Foundation Dub (Burning Sounds, 1976/Motion, 2003)

Yo, I am still getting set up here, but I thought I'd throw something out there. This is one of my favorite riddims ever. This dub track comes off Augie Clarke's essential Black Foundation Dub album from 1976. Gregory Isaacs cut his extra classic "My Time" on this riddim. I'll post "My Time" later, for sure, but let's keep it simple for now.

By the way, I intend to play mostly Jamaican on this blog, so get ready. I won't be posting that 70s conscious shit that natty dread white boys listen to, though. And none of the newer dancehall shit, either. It's not that I'm not a big fan (I am), I just don't have the time, money, or energy to sift through it all. For me, it stays in the dancehall.

this site is on

2005-01-09T22:02:00.000-08:00

I know even your grandmama has a music blog, but I figured I could drop some shit you aren't really listening to. I don't want to keep the posts too genre-specific, but I will try and keep it funky. And outside of the United States. I'm planning to drop mostly Jamaican joints, and maybe some tracks from my various Brazilian, French, and African obsessions. But I won't be posting much hiphop, funk or old skool whatever cause peeps got you covered here, here, and here.

And there will also be writing. Unlike some people, I can read books, even the ones with big words, so watch out for posts where i drop some of that book-learned k-science on y'all. I'll try to keep it interesting.

Yes, yes, y'all.

Out.