Brentford All-Stars - Greedy G

ORIGINATION Studio One Rockers
LAST LISTENED TO a few days ago
CHANCE OF WAKING TO IT pretty good
RATING

Destination: Jamaica again today! This is getting uncanny. I did spend all of last weekend listening to nothing but music from the island, but i have listened to other stuff since. Clearly it's backed up in my head. Which is fine by me.

The Brentford All-Stars where Studio One's house band (named after Brentford Road, the street upon which it stood). Studio One is one of the, if not the most important labels in Jamaican music. Its rolling cast of studio musicians included some of the best players on the island. They provided the music and rhythms for whoever was the singer on any given day. It was something akin to the factory-line inspired set up at Motown in the US, only more so, as often the music and rhythms were used many times over and in many versions. These Studio One musiciains, like their Motown brothers, worked endlessly and under different collective names, whilst only getting a handfull of releases of their own. Greedy G, under the Brentford All-Stars name, is one of their best known, or at least has become so with the rise of interest in Jamiacan music through the '90s.

It is a piece of mid-to-fast tempo funk, with a (naturally) Jamaican twist and is a good example of what could be done with primarily just these guy's rhythm tracks. The drums are clear funk, although with more echo on than you'd expect. There are also several places where they drop out, where a huge echo from them reverbarates off into the distance, in a dub style. The funky rhythm guitar is closer to its American cousin, but it just skanks too much to be regular funk. Over this rhythm section, however, things become more typically funky with nice southern-fried funky guitar picking and some tasty organ solo action.

It's not quite funk as you know it, but it still is damned funky and damned good.