Oo-er. Ingram is onto me! I shall batton down the hatches and expect a broadside soon.

He’s also done a good piece on the Honest Jon’s Light of Saba reissues – the jazzier (and therefore in some ways more respectable) end of reggae:

“What’s good about Reggae? It’s an endlessly recyled restless modernism. It’s a synthesis of voodoo and cheap technology. It’s got CHOONS. Not it’s posture, not it’s internationalism (works best always as infinite localism), not the impact of other musics on it, not it’s perfectionism, not it’s classicism. All of which are in abundance here.”

Matthew’s big ting is the AvantYob vs Beatnik dichotomy (definitely an interesting exercise) and he sees this as being the Beatniks trying to regain some of the Yob territory.

Possibly not relevant, but I’m sure some of the impetus behind reissuing the Saba stuff is that the original pressings have been going for up to 300 quid for the last 15 years. Maybe crude economics is more AvantYob than Beatnik?