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.
