Gavin B.

The song is called Tightrope and the band is Steel Pulse.

You can download the song for a mere 99 cents here: Download Tightrope by Steel Pulse

Gavin B.

More Dubwise Roots Music


Messian Dread- A promising new talent in the dub arena.


Maranatha Discomix- Messian Dread I came across this fantastic roots dub video on a recent visit to the Dubroom. I don't know anything about the performer but the Dubroom has been posting some wicked good free downloads on their internet site @ Dubroom Star Selections: Main Page the past few months. Messian Dread is part of the new roots reggae underground that is just beginning to blossom at indie music websites like the Dubroom.

Gavin B.

SPYING GLASS: Lloyd Barnes version vs. Massive Attack version


Horace Andy: "They want to know Rasta's business."

The first embedded video is the orignal version of Spying Glass recorded by Horace Andy with producer Lloyd Barnes for his 1981 album "Dance Hall Style"



In 1994 Horace recorded a second version with UK trip hop heroes Massive Attack which appeared on their groundbreaking album Protection. Horace's Massive Attack version retains a strong rhythm around the bass line, but producer Tricky wholly updates the groove, and adds clattering percussion which intermittently weighed into the song before receding in waves.

Tricky's more dramatic and darker production techniques take Spying Glass to the next level of paranoia. It's the all-seeing eye of big brother police state watching rasta through the spying glass, awaiting the opportunity to kick down the front door with a search warrant for the herbs.

Gavin B.

Dub Reggae- The French Connection


Fred the Dub Machinist is part of the Bordeaux based Control Tower posse.

Don't Give Up the Riddim- Dub Machinist Just as everyone thought reggae was dead there suddenly springs forth a 3rd genration of outernational dub artists and an expanding network of roots conscious musicians.

I haven't been this excited about reggae music since the early 80s. The reggae music dub artists of the French undergound have developed a decentralized business development model that may cause the music industry's monolithic Tower of Babel to come crashing down. The French always had a flair for crashing down top-heavy social institutions.

The primary vehicle for this new generation of musicians is the internet that serves as the primary point of music distribution for these artist owned microlabels. There is a do-it-yourself aesthetic among the the digital generation outernational music that resembles the early years of punk music.

Most of the artists the supervise all of the production and distribution aspects of their compact discs. The retail music store may carry the music but most of the sales are via internet download or mail order. There's a growing sense that the mega music labels have become superfluous to the recording, production and distribution of music. Dub Mechanic's label Control Tower Records even owns a few boutique retail stores in France that specialize in sales of reggae, dub and outernational music.

That's music to my ears. Every since Shawn Fanning launched Napster, the first digital file sharing service in June 1999, observers of the music business have predicted the days of the conventional music buisness model were numbered. I thought it would take 10 years to crash the towering monolith but I was optimistic.... We're probably talking about 15 years until mega music's hour of Armageddeon

Dub artists like Dubmatrix, the Vibronics and Dub Mechanic no longer need radio or television airplay because they find their own audiences via video websites like YouTube, Yahoo and Daily Motion. There was never room on the radio or broadcast television for an artist like Dub Mechanic anyway. The Dub Mechanic'c musical stylings share a close kinship with Augustus Pablo and King Tubby's Firehouse Rockers.

The coke snorting twits at Geffen Infotainment aren't about to give any kind of reggae music a fair hearing. In the early 70's, a tone deaf David Geffen took a pass on Marley as talentless while he was busy promoting the career of Cher. Maybe that's why the Geffen "dream team" is on the brink of finanical collapse. Four decades later, the licensing rights to Marley's back catalog of recorded music ten times the value of any the megastars in Geffen's stable of artists. Bob got the last laugh because his family label Tuff Gong owns the rights to his catalog of music which is about the 4th or 5th most valuable songwritter's book in the music business.

Roots reggae, dubwise and dancehall music never went away, it was simply pushed off the stage by music industry opinion makers who were eager to milk the next musical trend on the horizon. The Dub Mechanic and his musical colleagues present compelling evidence that reggae music be around a lot longer than Geffen Records.

Gavin B.

A Cautionary Tale From Gregory


My wife took this picture of Gregory perched on a scooter outside a dancehall in the late Seventies. It's the perfect Jamaican rude boy photo. Gregory said he was "guarding" that massive sound system speaker behind him, at the request of Prince Jammy, the headliner for the dancehall event.

Hard Drugs- Gregory Isaacs Gregory Isaacs' fondness of cocaine got him into a lot of trouble with the law which hobbled his career as a performer. He spent a lot of his prime years behind bars at Kingston's General Penitentiary on a series of drugs and weapons charges and was unable to tour the United States and Europe just as he was breaking out as an international star. When Gregory finally was released from GP in the mid 80s, his criminal record made it nearly impossible for him to get a visa to tour.

Hard Drugs is a cautionary tale to the rude boy on the street about the dangers of hard drug use based his own career setbacks from his own use of coke.

Gavin B.

Reggae Classic Available for the First Time In CD and MP3 Format


Pablo Moses' roots reggae classic A Song has finally been reissued after 20 years.

Each Is A Servant- Pablo Moses Each Is A Servant is from the groundbreaking 1980 reggae album A Song by Pablo Moses. When A Song was first released there was a wave of hope in the international reggae community that Pablo Moses would fill the shoes of Bob Marley. For a lot of reasons Pablo never became the "next Bob Marley" and it took several years for folks to realize that Bob was simply an irreplaceable leader. A Song is one of about 5 reggae albums I couldn't live without and finally, after being out of issue 20 years, A Song is available in both cd and mp3 formats for the first time. I can finally give my well worn vinyl copy of A Song a rest.

Gavin B.

The Neville Brothers Sing an Old Reggae Classic


The Nevilles sing a beautiful version of By the Rivers of Babylon

By the Rivers of Babylon- The Neville Brothers By the Rivers of Babylon is one of the earliest reggae songs and the lyrics are based of one of the biblical pslams of David. The most beautiful version of this oft recorded song is sung by the Neville Brothers. The New Orleans 2nd line riddim used by the Nevilles in a lot of their songs is strikingly similar to the one drop riddim of reggae. The brothers have enough reggae songs in their repetoire to record an full album of reggae music. I'm hoping they will someday.

Gavin B.

The Dubwise Beat

The Beat's I Just Can't Stop It reaches a landmark age of 30

Stand Down Dub- The Beat 2010 marks the 30th anniversary of the release of the (English) Beat's release of their first album I Just Can't Stop It in the USA. From my perspective, I Just Can't Stop It was the most significant pop music release of the 80s decade and still remains one of the five greatest releases from the post punk generation.

The Beat was the last of the celebrated 2Tone bands to release an album. The Beat had formed in 1978 and released a single on the Special's 2Tone label but went on to form their own label, Go Feet, to record, produce and distribute their first album. The Specials, The Selector and Madness had all released well received but slow selling albums in the USA and the Beat's release of their first stateside album was delayed because of legal wrangling over their use of the name "The Beat" because an American band held the copyright to the name "The Beat." Hence the use of "English Beat" by the band as their name on all their American releases.

The Beat were the most musically accomplished of the 2Tone ska bands with three frontline vocalists capable of leading their own band. Their songwriting contained sophisticated political and social commentary on the rise of Thatcherism in the UK, the racist attitudes of the National Front, unemployment and class resentment in Great Britain. The Beat also came up with imaginative arragements for cover songs like Smokey Robinson's Tears of a Clown and an unlikely version of the Andy Williams 60s hit, Can't Get Used to Lonsing You. The Beat's biggest strength their own pop sensibilities which went beyond the confines of the ska revival movement.

The first song I ever heard by the Beat was Whine and Grind/Stand Down Margaret which became the anti-Thatcher anthem of the post-punk era. When I was in London in 1980, the song had a ubiquitous presence in record shops, night clubs, and on radio stations. Stand Down Margaret was the even selector's choice in the Jamaican run dancehalls I visited in Brixton in the fall of 1980 where Linton Kwesi Johnson, Culture and Mikey Dread were performing. Stand Down Margaret had more of a contemporary reggae dancehall one drop reggae beat, which was very different from the trademark 2Tone ska revial riddim.

30 years have past, but each time I hear Stand Down Margaret it summons all these memories of my year long visit and internship as an aspiring American journalist in Londontown. To mark the occasion I'm presenting this rare dubwise version of Stand Down Margaret that I bought in 1980 as a 12" vinyl single. I converted the vinyl recording into a high quality MP3 file, cleaned up and remixed the sound and posted it on YouTube yesterday. I've never seen this dub version available anywhere in the United States. The dub version may be available on a UK Beat anthology that I'm unaware of, but I think Stand Down Dub has fallen completely out of issue.

Gavin B.

U Brown: Special Pon Hi Fashion Riddim



Lootyard by U-Brown U-Brown was one of the great original deejays along with U-Roy and Dennis Alcapone. U-Brown was only 15 when he began deejaying shows in Jamaica in 1971. Unfortunately U-Brown has gotten the attention of his early peers because he was living in London and recording in obscurity when the big stampede to sign Jamaican reggae artists in the mid Seventies began. He moved back to Jamaica in 1990 and still continues to deejay and record from time to time.

lucifer_sam

I've been skimming through this thread for a few days now, you have quite a few interesting reggae acts that you posted about so far. I know a bit about reggae, but not nearly as much as I'd like and it's starting to irk me. I think what would be most helpful for a philistine such as myself is to get an introspective view into the history of the movement, how it evolved from rocksteady & ska and so on. Just so my understanding is accurate, the "golden age" was approximately 1965-1973, correct?

Here's a 1000 albums blog I think you might enjoy, it's got some pointless sacred cows on it but more than a healthy dose of ska & reggae that you might appreciate:

The Best Albums Since 1965

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