Gavin B.

Rarities and Out of Issue Dept.

Bad Weed- Junior Murvin & Lee Perry Many reggae or Clash fans will recogize this riddim as Police and Theives a big hit for Junior Murvin. This Lee Perry dub remix is about the rudest dub remix I've ever heard him do and that's saying a whole lot about a producer who used samples of cow mooing in his dub effects. Shortly into the song Perry hits a fog horn blast that makes your jump out of your skin if you're not ready for it.



Black Star Liner -Reggae Regular I first heard this song at a dancehall in Sav La Mar in 1978. I searched the bins of Gregory Isaacs' African Museum record store, Joe Gibb's store and Randy's Records and couldn't find it anywhere. Now by accident, I come across it on You Tube three decades later. This is the full 9 + minute song and dub version on the original 12" issue by Greensleeves.




Marcus Garvey 1924

Black Star Line- Fred Locks Another song inspired by Marcus' Garvey's Black Star Liner Company an effort by Marcus to repatriate American black citizens back to Africa via ocean going luxury liner. Garvey's Universal Negro Improvment Association (UNIA) was the largest black organization in history with over 2 million dues paying members. Nobody, not Martin Luther King, Malcom X nor Jesse Jackson had as large a following as Garvey.

Engine

Amazingly good stuff, Gavin. I have some different thoughts about repatriation/Garvey-as-hero but I love that you inject true History into your posts here.
I've never heard the 3 songs above but clearly all three are treasures.

Gavin B.

Thanks for your kind thoughts, E.

Garvey like any other grass roots leader had his flaws which were often synonmous with his own strengths as a leader. His own seperatist views that were viewed as racist by whites were viewed by Garvey's followers as a strength. Garvey simply refuse to allow whites to define the nature of the struggle of American blacks for racial sovereignty.

I would never support Garvey's repatriation efforts, especially since the only people in the modern USA that would support a Garvey style repatriation are white segregationists. My wife who is Jamaican Creole would wring my neck if I supported sending her back to Africa...LOL She has stated unambiguously to me in her own alluring patios on several occasions, “Deh be no bumba clot bungo mon gwan to repatriate I and I.”

Remember that in Garvey's era, however, there were many black folks who were either born slaves or sons and daughters of slave who really did want to return to their homeland, but that was 100 years ago. The African nation of Liberia was actually founded by former slaves in America who repatriated back Africa.

Early on, freed slaves were assisted with the establishment of Liberia, by the American Colonization Society (ACS). The society was supported by Southerners fearful of organized revolt by free blacks, by Northerners concerned that an influx of black workers would hurt the economic opportunities of indigent whites, by some who opposed slavery but did not favor integration, and by many blacks who saw a return to Africa as the best solution to their troubles.

During that era the ACS was regarded as a liberal and benevolent charity even as their racist intent seems pretty obvious in today's world. For the record, the ACS existed until 1964, so repatriation of blacks to Africa was seen as acceptable social policy in the United States from the end of the Civil War, all the way up to the dawn of the Civil Rights movement.

I wrote my senior thesis on Garvey, which was a great way for me to gain entry and some sort of credibility among Rastafarians and reggae musicians in Jamaica. Some hard core followers of Rasta Fari Makonnen, the founder of the religion, are still black separatists but most 2nd and 3rd generation Rastafarians are racial pluralists who have always preached the gospel of racial unity.

That being said, many of those 2nd and 3rd generation Rastafarians are still have a blind spot on the subject of Garvey and some of his own errors of judgment toward the end of his career because all Rastafarian view Marcus Garvey as a prophet of foretold the coming of Haile Selassie I, the most high. I was very careful to never raise some of the more troubling aspects of Garvey's career with my Rastafarian friends and associates. Most of them simply deny the fact that Garvey had a short lived alliance with the American Ku Klux Klan who supported his repatriation efforts.

Garvey, by the way, was the first the very first political target of J. Edgar Hoover, who was an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department and believed that Garvey was a dangerous foreign national and wanted to deport him. Failing to find any grounds to deport Garvey, Hoover built a trumped up case of mail fraud against Garvey for selling ownership shares in the Black Star Liner Company by mail.

The evidence of fraud was based on a painted picture of a ship on a Black Star Liner investment brochure called the Phyllis Wheatley. Hoover claimed mail fraud had been committed by Garvey because a ship named the Phyllis Wheatley never existed in the Black Star Liner fleet. The ship portrayed in the brochure was a ship called the Orion, which Garvey had planned to rechristen with the name Phyllis Wheatley but never had a chance to do so, because Hoover stepped in and arrested him for mail shortly after he sent the first batch of "Phyllis Wheatley" brochure through the mail.

Hoover's specious charges would have been dismissed by any reasonable modern day judge but this was Jim Crow America in the 1920s.The federal prosecuter spent most of the trail convincing the all white jury that Marcus Garvey was a dangerous man who needed convicted on the mail fraud charges because Garvey and his and his 2 million UNIA followers were a threat to white America.

The rest is history. Garvey was convicted by an all white jury and sent to the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary and was unceremoniously deported by President Calvin Coolidge upon his release in 1927. J. Edgar was rewarded for his efforts on the Garvey prosecution with an appointment as the Director of the newly formed Federal Bureau of Investigation where he spent the next 37 years harassing and falsely prosecuting black political leaders, left wing radicals and any political groups that didn't meet his conservative right wing standards.

Engine

That was one of the most interesting things I have ever read on the internet.
I did my senior thesis on why T. Jefferson failed to do anything about 'the slavery issue' while his written rhetoric indicated that he favored abolition. I know all about the ACS but you still just gave me an education on Garvey and I thank you for that as much as I thank you for the reggae that you've exposed me to (and created) on this thread.

Gavin B.

Post Millineum Dub

Dubliftment- The Vibronics Dubliftment was the title track of a double album. vinyl only, UK release by the Vibronics, in 2004. Five years later it gets a lot of play on sound systems in London and New York, although I must be the only person in the great state of Missouri in the US of A who paid 30 bucks to have it shipped to them from London. Most people in Missouri think Dub is a pretty good name for a horse.

The first issue of Dubliftment sold out almost instantly but we are talking about a limited edition run of 5000-10,000 pressings mostly for deejays, remixers and collectors. If a UK boutique label like Zion Train can turn a profit doing limited edition pressings of 5000 albums, I don't understand why the major labels can't turn a profit with all of those quadruple platinum albums they sell, even with all the file trading and free downloading going on.

Gavin B.

Back to Barrington

Murderer- Barrington Levy Murderer is a killer! This song blew the roof off of dancehalls all over Jamaica when in first appeared in 1984.



Prison Oval Rock- Barrrington Levy A 1982 hit from Barrington. "The prisoners are skanking while the wardens are watching." What a great line!



Shine Eye Girl- Barrington Levy Shine Eye Girl was Barrington's first big dancehall hit and a certified reggae classic. It's Barrington's signature tune.

Bulldog

Barrington Levy is an amazing old dude! Here I Come is an absolute classic of dancehall - everything that makes it as viable a sub-genre as roots, dub etc, is summed up by listening to that LP. Good post sir

Gavin B.

A Remastered Version of Classic Dancehall Song


Junjo strikes a pose with his massive sound system.


Jump No Fence- Frankie Paul I obtained this dancehall classic on a 1984 trip to Jamaica and it was on the album you see displayed in the YouTube video window below. The album was called Barrington Levy Meets Frankie Paul and side one contained six Barrington Levy songs while side two featured six Frankie Paul songs.

The album was never released in the United States and a rare UK edition of the album has gone out of issue. It was fairly typical of the two artist showcase albums that were popular in Jamaica at the time. However, Barrington Levy Meets Frankie Paul was unusual because all twelve songs were produced by Henry Junjo Lawes at Channel One and each song came from the Roots Radics session with Lawes that was ground zero in the rise of dancehall music in Jamaica.

The Roots Radics and Lawes laid down the riddim tracks for the earliest dance hall hits at the Channel One sessions which introduced General Echo, Michigan and Smiley, Eek-A-Mouse, Scientist, Yellowman, Cocoa Tea, Hugh Mundell, Toyan, Clint Eastwood plus Barrington Levy and Frankie Paul as the second generation of artists performing reggae music.

Henry Lawes singlehandedly created dancehall music sub-genre and did so without even having his own studio to record in. Lawes used Channel One to lay down the riddim tracks and the shuttled the tapes over to Harry J's studio lay down the vocal tracks and do the final mix.

Lawes was also something of a star-crossed figure: he spent the latter half of the '80s in jail, halting his career just as the new, electronic ragga sound was changing the face of dancehall. Although Lawes returned to work in the '90s, he was no longer on the cutting edge, and tragedy struck in 1999 when he was gunned down and murdereed in London.

I was surprised that YouTube didn't have a single posting of Jump No Fence which I rank among the best five songs produced during the dancehall era. I remedied that situation by posting my own digitally remastered version of Jump No Fence to make this song available to one and all. I'm not one to blow my own horn, but I got lucky in my remastering effort and the fidelity of the song almost sounds like the virgin vinyl Channel One edition of the song I first heard in Jamaican dancehalls in 1984.

jackhammer

This is bloody fantastic and another reason why more of us should support independent music. I would love to hear the album in full. Keep up the good woek. Superb journal and a real eye opener for me with some names.

__________________

Gavin B.

More great dubwise reggae from the Zion Train label:

I think the Vibronics are the best of the Zion Train label dub masters . The dubbing skills are right up their with Scientist and Mad Professor. Here is a link to the Vibronics UK homepage. Be sure to hit the "downloads" link on their homepage because they usually have 10 or 15 free MP3 downloads and couple Mpeg movies, free of charge.


Crossfire Dub- The Vibronics




Who Are You - Batch




Tribesman Dub- Iration Steppers