red tops…

I’m always slightly stunned when I see the Morning Star on the shelf in my local newsagents. Whatever you think of the politics, a daily communist newspaper for the UK is kind of impressive. I mainly avoid it like the plague, not wanting to read about the ins and outs of trade union bureaucrats and how shite Labour is. But they do occasionally come up trumps with a good feature or review. More recently things have come on apace with some great articles by Michael K, which he now has archived at http://www.marginreleased.net.

Similarly, the fortnighly anarchist newspaper Freedom has improved by about 17 million percent since the last time I saw a copy in the 90s…

Maurice Brinton / Chris Pallis RIP

I’m sad to hear that Maurice Brinton died yesterday. There’s a couple of texts by him on uncarved.org – one about sexual repression and politics, and one on the parallels between Jonestown and trotskyite cults masquerading as political groups.

Brinton was one of the main people behind Solidarity – one of the best and most interesting “libertarian socialist” groups, mainly active in the 60s and 70s. They published a wealth of stuff which unpicked a load of the left’s assumptions on a whole heap of issues, as well as accounts of contemporary industrial struggles. Brinton’s stuff especially, was remarkable in its ability to be both informed and readable – sadly very rare in lefty publications…

stem2.jpg

His day job was neurosurgery, it seems! (He co-wrote the ABC of Brain Stem Death, which is surely a title as good as anything dreamt up by power electronics bands.)

workers-power

AK Press recently published an anthology of his writings – For Workers’ Power, which I haven’t got hold of yet and apparently there is an extensive book documenting Solidarity’s life and times in preparation as well.

In the beginning there was punk

How did it happen? Here is the short version. It was 1981. I was living in London and working in a factory making Durex condoms, but also a member of the (Kill Your Pet) Puppy Collective. Don’t worry. No puppies were ever killed, it was a metaphor.

We went to see the Barracudas play at the Hope and Anchor pub in Islington. Some Puppies were persuaded to go to a rival attraction, a squatted church on the Pentonville Road called the Parallel Universe. Somehow, via a gay punk squat on Huntingdon Street in Islington, this Parallel Universe later fused with a search for magic mushrooms at dawn on Hampstead Heath and seeing The Mob play a free gig in an adventure playground on Parliament Hill Fields.

You know how everyone has this mental list of people they would love to do a blog, but they never will? Well one of mine just started one!

Alistair is now up at http://greengalloway.blogspot.com/. If his blog ends up with a fraction of the stuff he’s sent me in emails and letters, then it will one of the best things ever.

Lyric Maker (from England and Jamaica): John Eden and paul.meme present a JA vs UK Soundclash

cover for the mix!

Me and Paul Meme have come up with a new mix for download – Jammys digital to start, but mainly mid 80s fast chat cockney business. Essentially the product of too many evenings round at mine while Paul was staying over. I’d play him my records and then he’d go away and painstakingly muck about with the cassette tape adding effects and getting rid of our mistakes.

No big analysis from me, I will try and write something “proper” about the artists on there in due course.

Direct link to zipped mp3 here.

EDIT 2014: Paul’s sleevenotes and tracklist vanished from his blog, so here they are rescued from Google Cache:

This mix came about after spending a couple of years staying at John’s house for a couple of nights a week, spending most evenings listening to his completely amazing collection of roots, dub, dancehall and digidub. I’ll remember these nights for the rest of my life because I was able not just to take refuge from working life away from my family, but was able to spend night after night listening to what is as far as I’m concerned THE GREATEST MUSIC EVER MADE.

A natural evolution of these blissful nights was to start putting together mixes of some of the best bits of his collection. He supplied the sounds and a lot of the mixing, I supplied the editing and effects. The first result of this collaboration was this mix – recorded onto tape and dumped into my Mac for tarting up. The idea was, firstly, to showcase the difference between organic, warm, rocking JA dancehall and the somewhat different strain of British fast chat, and secondly, to completely blow away any listener even vaguely familiar with the musical frameworks and conventions of reggae.

Here’s the line up to whet your appetite…

1. Thriller U – Sweetest Sound (Digital B 1989)
Fade Away / Peanie Peanie Rhythm
This is a KILLER soundsystem tune. “When the first dub hit the turntable it like thunder.”

2. Chuck Turner – Run Around Girl (Live & Love)
3. Cultural Roots – Running Back To Me (Live & Love)
4. Version (Live & Love)
Unknown Rhythm
And now the thunder. Vast sinuous bass (occasionally massively overdriven) and swinging digital beats underpin achingly melancholic songs of love lost. Live and Love info: http://www.xs4all.nl/~tapirs/lovealb.htm

5. Admiral Tibet – Leave People’s Business Alone (Techniques)
6. Cutty Ranks – Gunman Lyrics (Techniques)
Tings n Time rhythm

Two classic examples of cyclic, infinitely funky JA dancehall in all their devastating glory. Tibet floods us with emotion while Cutty Ranks strafes anyone still standing with salvoes of monotone fast chat.

There’s some nice edits and effects in this bit.

7. Lui Lepke – Can’t Take Me Landlord (Joe Gibbs)
8. Gregory Isaacs – Storm (Penthouse 2002)
9. Warrior King – Education (Penthouse 2002)
10. Yellowman – Gregory Free (white label)
Storm Rhythm

Lepke winds the pace down a bit, adding a delicious narrative over a cavernous groove, which Isaacs reassembles into a clockwork-driven melodic pulse. Warrior King adds horn-driven weight and hand-raising refrains before Yellowman lowers the tone of proceedings considerably while broadcasting a message of support to the imprisoned Gregory Issacs.

Just one rhythm delivers a seemingly endless succession of different dynamics and flavours, attesting to Jamaica’s incredible inventiveness.

11. Gregory Isaacs – Raving Tonight (Virgin 1978)

And now the respite. This is just an absolutely glorious tune and makes a great reply to Yellowman. Gregory supplies a vocal that simply aches with feeling. Why the chorus isn’t on a million hardcore records I don’t know – maybe it is? Tell us if you know!

12. Cu Oonuh Version(Techniques)
13. Melting Pot Version (Techniques)
14. Dilinger – Melting Pot (Techniques)
15. Johnny Ringo – Dedicated to Jah (Fashion 1985)
16. Asher Senator – Senator No Skin Up (Fashion 1985)
17. Reggie Stepper – Cu Oonoh (Techniques)
Stalag Rhythm

We kick off with a couple of dubs of what must still be the most popular rhythm in reggae. These have been cut up a lot to bring you the maximum laidback grooves. Dillinger takes us even deeper into the alternate universe of funk that is Stalag, and Johnny Ringo Responds. “Now students, compare and contrast the JA style with that of their British counterparts….” The UK sound is more stipped down, slightly more clinical but soaked in vibe. Asher Senator, one of the fast chat originators, deploys his laidback flow to fine effect, before Reggie Stepper slays it: this tune just rocks . The horizontal funk of the original gets hyped right up with digi-bashment syndrums.

18. Top Cat – Push Up Your Lighter (9 Lives)

You’ll know this cos it’s been sampled to fuck, but this is high velocity dancehall at its finest. And it’s rock’n’roll! Just listen to those Duane Eddy riffs ricochet through the mix.

19. Peter Bouncer & The Offbeat Posse – Huff ‘n’ Puff (Y&D 1989)

But if JA was delivering house’s peak time energy with Top Cat, the UK was as ever speeding it up, stripping it down to hammer out ardkore’s blueprint – and being from 1989 it’s a direct antecedent. It’s a pounding 140bpm+ monster, with the vocal and dub versions spliced together.

20. Johnny Ringo – New Yorker (Fashion 1985)
21. Asher Senator – To Whom Respect is Due (Fashion 1985)
Unknown Rhythm

Winding it RIGHT back down to the beginning of the story, Johnny Ringo relates the differences between UK and US reggae cultures over a supertight backing. Asher bigs up of Danny LaRue.

22. Johnny Ringo – Nice and Easy (Fashion 1985)
23. Asher Senator – Asher in Court (Fashion 1985)

The Fashion crew loved to differentiate their productions from their Jamaican peers with stiffer, more weirdly syncopated rhythms that sound a lot like some current Grime rhythms.
Johnny Ringo bio: http://www.icebergradio.com/artist/30237/johnny_ringo.html

Asher in Court is probably THE signature Asher Senator tune. He spins a fantastic yarn about sharing a joint with the judge and turns the groove around completely.

24. Michigan & Smiley – Nice Up The Dance (Studio One/Soul Jazz)
25. Tippa Irie – All the Time the Lyric a Rhyme (UK Bubblers 1984)
Real Rock Rhythm

A solid gold classic. Michigan and Smiley’s iteration of Real Rock is an ecstatic, bouncy, rolling, JA dancehall apocalypse. In Brit hands it condenses into a series of hard, minimal pulses with Tippa Irie’s unbelievably intense monotone fast chat. It’s just amazing. Plus it includes the best fast chat line ever: “Well me and Mrs Irie well you know that we’re related”. Superb.

26. Papa Levi – Big ‘n’ Broad (Island 1984)

Papa Levi picks up the groove and pushes it up a gear. His delivery isn’t quite as sharp as Tippa’s but it still drops bombs and the rhythm’s devastating.

Intense siren action on this one.

27. Tippa Irie – Lyric Maker (UK Bubblers 1985)
Throw Me Corn rhythm

The rest of tunes in the mix are good, but this… this is something else. Lyric Maker is the signature tune of the mix, the place where it all comes together. Because it’s here that Brit dancehall showed how it could take reggae into places that the JA heartland couldn’t quite imagine, a universe of mechanoid dub beats and electronic pop noise. Obviously Tippa’s delivery is the apotheosis of fast chat brilliance, endlessly riding peaks of intensity without ever falling in on itself. This is one of the greatest records ever made.

28. Sleng Teng intro (Who’s Gonna Make the Dance Ram Dub) (Fashion 1985)
29. Andrew Paul – Who’s Gonna Make the Dance Ram (Fashion 1985)
30. Version (Who’s Gonna Make the Dance Ram Dub) (Fashion 1985)
31. Peter King – Step on the Gas (Fashion 1985)
32. Version (Fashion 1985)
Sleng Teng Rhythm

Sleng Teng is one of the ultimate JA rhythms but the two UK versions here are easily superior in my book. “Who Makes the Dance Ram” was a huge hit in the UK and I think it crossed over in Jamaica as well. Plus, it’s a monstrous acid house stormer and for my money shows just how much eighties dancehall created acid’s blueprint. We close with acid dub heaviosity from Peter King, the originator of the fast-chat sound. It’s yet another tune that reflects the automotive obsessions of the Fashion stable, and it’s a great car crash story. “Step on the gas, KICK down the accelerator…”

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Lyric Maker (from England and Jamaica): John Eden and paul.meme present a JA vs UK Soundclash.

Unsound Feb 2005

The Bug @ Unsound - photo by Dubversion

The Bug @ Unsound – photo by Dubversion

It was always going to be good, but…

Brixton in the freezing cold, trudge trudge trudge. I was already fairly boxed before I got there, which turned out to be exactly the right state to be in for the rest of the night…

Dubversion up to his usual tricks on the decks, warming the place up up up… and still being chatty. Somebody renamed the venue Jamm since last time, but I’ll let them off because they also divided it up into two rooms and put a big soundsystem in the main one. Initially we were confined to the bar room which meant a chance to catch up, and to meet some online personas in the flesh.

Kevin Martin showed up with his bags and gave me the lowdown on the contiuning Bug infection strategies – been in the studio since the beginning of the year, been destroying computers like they were going out of fa-fa-fa-fashion, been playing all over the place – low key things where the audience is guaranteed to go mental. I even carried his bag for him into the main room, the slag that I am. There had been some indie band on in the main room… time to blow all that away!

Some teething problems with the sound (which frustratingly sounded excellent in the hall, but the monitors weren’t working or something, so no noise on the stage) meant another brief set from Dubversion (ha! Main Room action at last!) who rose to the occasion inna rub a dub style. Wicked.

And then… Kevin had sussed that people were up for a party, so we got a top notch selection of 90s ragga – Burru Banton, Ninjaman, Cutty Ranks, oh yes and some Smiley Culture. Great stuff rewound at the right moment, a touch of effects, superb pacing, the whole place jumping. Ras B and Warrior Queen took the stage and the sound… the sound… some bloke behind me heard the first burst and said “oh this is a bit violent for me, I think I’ll go next door again”.

MCs on form – you can tell they’ve been out on the road a load recently – occasionally telling Kevin to put a sock in it so they can freestyle and be heard, Ras B on the war on terror, Warrior Queen with some rude spanish… it just got better and better – Warrior Queen over the Killer riddim, Ras B AND Warrior Queen over “F-Yah Self” which tore the place up (that bass never sounded so good and the the sirens were perfect – not grating at all). Somewhere in the mix Kelis and TOK collided, a one-off mashup or something we can all get our hands on? They rocked it.

The only thing to follow up with was Miss Pink with some ruff Congo Natty classics moving into drum ‘n’ bass. Great to see her up there – she used to sell me d ‘n’ b and breakcore records in Ambient Soho and was about 17 million times nicer than anyone else working in a “dance” record shop I have ever encountered. Top DJ also.

So there I was, shivering, wandering down Brixton Road at 3:00am, muttering to myself “fucking excellent… fuck me… fuuuuuuck…”. 4 night buses to get home but worth every minute…

time is money (bastard)

work your proper hours day

Over five million people at work in the UK regularly do unpaid overtime, giving their employers £23billion of free work every year. If you’re one of them, why not take some time to reflect on how well (or badly) you’re balancing your life?

25th February 2005 is the day when the average person who does unpaid overtime finishes the unpaid days they do every year, and starts earning for themselves. We think that’s a day worth celebrating.

Personally, I’ve already turned up late, so I’m off to a good start…

http://www.worksmart.org.uk/workyourproperhoursday/

free tibet

Admiral Tebbit/Tibet interview and selected discography over at Small Axe. From a while back, but still essential – I’ve been trying to find the original paper version for ages, so this reprint is very welcome!