jawbreaker

Time to discuss this major name of reggae and dub.

For the record, Dennis worked with Linton Kwesi Johnson and 4th Street Orchestra, and produced such artists like The Slits, The Pop Group, Madness.

He is also known for popularizing a branch of reggae called 'lovers rock'.

If you listen to his solo albums, you will notice that he is quite eclectic in his tastes.

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"the secret of a long life is to try not to shorten it". My name is nobody, Sergio Leone, 1973

Prettygurl

I love this forum.

jawbreaker

No one acquainted with this fabulous artist ?

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"the secret of a long life is to try not to shorten it". My name is nobody, Sergio Leone, 1973

Prettygurl

No, and I listen to lovers rock. Keep them coming Jawbreaker.

William_the_Bloody

Yep great artist

jawbreaker

Thanks for replies.
'Audio Active' is also a very fine album of reggae/dub.

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"the secret of a long life is to try not to shorten it". My name is nobody, Sergio Leone, 1973

Gavin B.

I've seen Dennis Bovell's Dub Band in concert with Linton Kwesi Johnson a few times and they're the best live reggae band I've ever heard. Three Dub Band members, Dennis on bass, John Kpieye on guitar and Nick Straker on keyboards have been playing in the Dub Band since 1984 when they began touring behind Linton. The other musicians vary but they're always first rate players.

The Dub Band is one of those rare bands that sound better live than in the studio. Martin Rex, the Dub Band's sound board operator produces waves of dub effects at live shows that rival the mind-blowing studio productions of Scientist or the Mad Professor.

I don't think the Dub Band has toured with Johnson since their 2004 European tour. After a long silence, Linton only recently began doing poetry recitals without music in smaller venues around the UK and the East Coast of the United States.

Linton is now 60 years old, but from the recent photos I've seen of him, he looks like he hardly looks like he's aged a bit since 1984 when I first met him on his first American tour with the Dub Band.



The video below is from a Paris concert in their 2004 European tour. It's a rather long video but it gives you a real feel for the sledgehammer momentum the Dub Band builds up during a live performance.

William_the_Bloody

Wow! I would have loved to see Dennis Bovell with LKJ, personally LKJ is bar none one of my favorite artists of all time.

You are one lucky man, I know he is 60, but I hope he gives touring one last go.

Gavin B.

I hoping that Linton does one last tour with the Dub Band. I was the house deejay at the Channel club in Boston at LKJ and the Dub Band's 1984 concert. It was the single best concert I ever attended. By all appearances, Linton at age 60 looks like he's in great health but he hates touring.

I got to meet both Linton and Dennis. Linton was a bit aloof but Dennis was a big gregarious fellow who was very friendly.

I was told that Linton was into a black consciousness thing and trusted very few white people. Linton had no use for the Rastafarian concept of one love and racial harmony & was a committed Pan-African socialist. His dub poetry was influenced by U-Roy and I-Roy but Linton was never a member of the brotherhood of the Rastafarian believers.

In 2012, Linton Kwesi Johnson joined such distinguished authors as Harold Pinter, JG Ballard and Doris Lessing as winner of the Golden PEN award, for a lifetime's distinguished service to literature. It's the highest literary award in the UK. In 2005, LKJ received an appointment as visiting professor of literature at Middlesex University in London.

My biggest thrill at the 1984 LKJ concert was when Linton's opening act, Gil Scott-Heron came up to my deejay booth and startled me with the greeting, "Hi I'm Gil". I told Gil, he didn't need to introduce himself to me...I'd worshiped his music for years. Gil joined me as impromptu deejay for my first set of songs.

Gil was the most charming performer I ever met. Part of Gil's charisma was his towering presence on stage... He stood around 6' 7" tall (200.66 cm in UK measures), which automatically commanded the attention of everybody, whenever he entered a room or walked onto a stage.

It crushed me when he died in 2011 in New York. Gil was bedeviled by both drugs and alcohol when he was alive, but he was sober when I met him at the Channel gig in 1984. He ordered ginger ale when I bought him a drink and he refused to indulge when a somebody offered him a toke off a spliff. Gil chronicled his own struggle with chronic addiction in both his poems and his music.

William_the_Bloody

All I can say is that your one lucky guy to be able to have seen LKJ in his prime, with Gil Scott Heron opening up!?!...and he DJ'd with you.. Wow, that is just simply...wow, I am left speechless. I really cannot think of a more phenomenal bill.

Two men with very similiar political views that drove them to make great music. I heard that Gil struggled with cocaine addiction, sadly though, it can take down even the greatest of giants, cheers.