Bob Marley - One Love

ORIGINATION dunno, around
LAST LISTENED TO many years ago, except for last night when Bill Bailey made us all listen to it in his show
CHANCE OF WAKING TO IT irritatingly good
RATING

I just can't be bothered with Bob Marley. I'll admit it might be due to musical snobbishness. Or, then again, maybe it's just that i don't like his music. Although it's hard not to like, so i dunno. What's most likely is that it's due to his ubiquity. He is the only Jamaican artist most people ever hear, which is pretty sad.

One Love, along with No Woman, No Cry are the most over-played of all of his tunes and, consequently, are the two i am most sick of hearing. Take it away.

Senior Soul - Is It Because I'm Black

ORIGINATION Studio One Soul (v/a)
LAST LISTENED TO yesterday
CHANCE OF WAKING TO IT fair
RATING

About Senior Soul i know nothing. What is clear, however, is that whomever they may have been, they effected one of the most sucessful Jamiacan soul covers that i have heard.

Originally written and performed by Syl Johnson, the song is the story of one man's depair caused by his given place in the world. He cries 'something is holding me back, i wanna know, is it because i'm black?' Which, clearly, is something of a rhetorical question. It is a heartfelt piece of laid-back soul, describing the injustice of the world.

In the hands of Senior Soul, the passion of the original is retained, here driven by a mid-tempo rocksteady-ish beat. Two guitars play throughout; one cranks along with a typical rocksteady skank, whilst the other, slightly distorted and wah'd, recalls Johnson's playing on the original.

It is a pretty straighforward cover. The simple translation to a Jamiacan style, together with its passion are what make it one of the best cover version you'll find on any Jamiacan compliation.

Ken Boothe - Set Me Free

ORIGINATION Studio One Soul (v/a)
LAST LISTENED TO a couple of days ago
CHANCE OF WAKING TO IT ok, i guess
RATING

Ken Boothe is better known for another song. It's another cover, like this one. I forget the name and can't really be bothered to check for it. But you'd know it, if you heard it. He is Jamiacan and does reggae, by the way.

This one is, if you've not guessed, a cover of The Supremes hit You Keep Me Hanging On. If you can imagine that song done in a rocksteady/reggae/Jamaican soul style, by a man better known for somthing else, then you've got it. It's a nice enough tune, but it's nothing special and it lacks the drive and passion of the original. Still, if things Jamaican are your bag, then you'll might well go for this.

The version here is the extended 12" version and it really just goes on too long. The original can only have been around the three minutes. This version, however, is just over seven and instead of the extended sound dynamics that you might hope for (in a dubwise stylee), it merely stretches out the instrumental parts, with little additional flair. This goes on for quite a few minutes. Towards the end, someone at Studio One clearly got bored and decided to drop the vocals back in and rather abruptly at that, even for the somewhat slap-dash approach found at times in Jamiacan music (which of course is part of its appeal). And that's it for this tune.

Hear it once. Yawn. No repeat, thanks. Next…

Devon Irons & Doctor Alimantado - Vampire

ORIGINATION Lee 'Scratch' Perry & Friends: Open The Gate
LAST LISTENED TO yesterday
CHANCE OF WAKING TO IT no bad, likes
RATING

From out of the Black Ark comes craziness. Mutant organic soup dub reggae. Jah sent him here to catch vampire. Lee 'Scratch' Perry. Record producer and absolute nutter. If you have never experienced his work before, nothing can really explain it to you. However: modern studios often have at least 24 tracks (one track for guitar, one track for bass, etc); all you could need for a fertile imagination? Perry had 4 tracks in his Black Ark and he didn't see that as a restriction. He just kept mixing all the tracks down into one. Over and over. Added to this heroic amounts of ganja. Mad vibes. He created a swamp of sound that is unlike any other. A big, swirly swamp. Mountains of bass and clouds of cymbals. Vocals drifting in and out. Random found sounds and brass. Choppy guitar cranks. Vampire may be about vampires. It may even be about Island Record's Chris Blackwell whom Perry thought was a vampire (possibly literally). There are several version by differing artists, all are mostly the same tune. More or less. Recycled, remixed, reconstituted, but the same. Strap yourself down and listen to this through headphones in a dark room. Alter your brain cheap. Obadiah sent us here to catch vampire.

Prince Buster - Sit And Wonder

ORIGINATION 200% Dynamite
LAST LISTENED TO yesterday
CHANCE OF WAKING TO IT fairly good
RATING

Prince Buster is one of the most important people in the history of Jamaican music. He was both artist, writer and producer and, whilst being best known for his contribution to ska, he was of almost equal importance to rocksteady. (For the confused, ska slowed down, got rude and became rocksteady, which itself slowed down, got conscious and became roots (or reggae).)

This tune is from the rocksteady period and is typical of the style. It is not one of his best rocksteady tunes, but it is notable for some nice vocal harmonies. The song is about the Prince's lady, who he suspects of doing the dirty on him with some Rude boys. He sings that they took her home after the dance and "who knows where they took you before". Typical slackness for the rocksteady period, but interestingly the story does not then go on to feature violence (or more rudeness). Instead the Prince goes on to wonder if life is worth living, which is more than a little unusual for this period. This, along with the vocal harmonies, gives the song a slight melancholy air, which is kinda refreshing.

Dawn Penn - You Don't Love Me (No, No, No)

ORIGINATION 12"
LAST LISTENED TO some time last week
CHANCE OF WAKING TO IT middling
RATING

Jamaican Dawn Penn originally recorded this ditty during the rocksteady period at the end of the '60s. It was a big hit in Jamaica, but she never followed up on it and soon retired from music altogether. However, 17 years later she stared to revive her career. Meeting little success initially, in '94 she re-recorded her biggest hit (in the more current dancehall style) and had a global hit with it.

As you'd expect for a dancehall tune, there is bass aplenty and a mid-pace rhythm. Added to this are the odd vocal sample and some brass that, knowing the tendency for re-cycling in Jamiacan music, could in fact be from the original, just speeded up. Not that it really matters when the brass is as warm and friendly as this.

The real star is, of course, Penn's vocal, which floats over the top delightfully. The 12" features five mixes of the track and of them the best (by far) is the one that is cut for radio and gives the most time to the delightful vocal.

The Congos - Congoman

ORIGINATION Heart Of The Congos
LAST LISTENED TO last year?
CHANCE OF WAKING TO IT barry white on the northern line
RATING

To cut a long and complicated story short, it can be seen that in Jamaican music the producer is often responsible for writing the music and organising the musicians in his productions. Therefore the name of the artists on the recording was more often than not that of the vocalists only. In many ways these albums can be seen as more belonging to the body of work of the producers, as opposed to the vocalists. With this album that is almost the case.

The Congos were a roots reggae duo composed of vocalists Cedric Myton and Roydel 'Ashanti' Johnson. The combination of their voices was quite unique in the genre: Myton's voice is a clean falsetto and Johnson's a rich tenor. This contrast is one of the things that is particularly attractive in their music. The other was that the Heart Of The Congos album was produced by the legendarily bizarre producer Lee 'Scratch' Perry. Here he showed his superlative skills in turning out settings for this unique combination of voices. The album is hailed as one of the very finest in the genre, although at the time it was turned down by the likes of Island records and sank into semi-obscurity.

Congoman is the second song in the set and was chosen as a single back in '77. It has a more stripped back feel than almost all the other tracks on the album and is driven by a combination of tribal drumming and 'regular' percussion (as well as, one suspects, copious amounts of weed). In behind this percussion is as big a bass as one could hope for, with further instrumentation present, albeit buried below the rhythm. (This murky sound was all part of the character of Perry's famed Black Ark studio and is part of the ambience that makes this a classic album.) Myton and Johnson's righteous vocals soar over this rich soup of sound, repeating many of the same phrases many times over, giving something of a religious vibe.

It makes for one of the key tracks not only on this album but in roots reggae as a whole. Anyone with the slightest interest in Jamaican music should hear this.

The Melodians - Rivers Of Babylon

ORIGINATION 20 Reggae Greats
LAST LISTENED TO no idea
CHANCE OF WAKING TO IT non existant RATING

Just to clear this up straight away: this is the original version. Ok?

Good. Let us continue.

During the '60s and '70s, arguably the most creative period in Jamaica's musical history, almost none of its musical output reached beyond its shores. There was the occasional hit in the UK, but that was it. This left the way open for other acts to cover tunes and score hits, which happened on many occasions. Best known was the cover of this by Boney M and Blondie's version of The Paragons Tide is High. And then there was UB40, but i find it's best not to think about UB40 at all.

The Melodians were a vocal trio best known for their sweet harmonies. They recorded Rivers Of Babylon during the rocksteady period and, after a career of mostly love songs, it was their first song to touch on Rastafarian consciousness.

In Rastafari, Babylon is a white colonial or imperialist power structure that is responsible for the oppression of all blacks and as such it has very negative connotations. On the other hand Zion is the black spiritual home, seen as being specifically Ethiopia, it is also roughly comparable to Judao-Christian-Islamic heaven. Hence the chorus:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down
ye-eah we wept, when we remembered Zion.

This was the biggest hit that The Melodians ever scored. In '71, the following year, their producer died and the quality of their output was seen to drop, never to reach these heights again.