On the way home a wiff of Asian food while stopped at a stop sign reminded me of San Francisco in my twenties. I had a reggae mix playing in my car and coupled with the smell, I flashed on an apartment building I lived in when I was there. Now that I think about it, all of the SF apartment buildings smelled like Asian food when I was there. Nevertheless, the smell tonight and the music that happened to be playing, led to a flashback of sorts. It was about that time that I was just starting to discern different reggae sub-genres. You wouldn't think it would take roughly five years of listening to reggae to figure out that King Tubby is in a different universe than Alton Ellis but I was green, very few of my friends listened to reggae, and there was no internet. Yadda, yadd, yadda, and now you get some reggae.
Prince Jazzbo's "Crab Walking" was one that I wanted to post because it sort of combines different sub-genres of reggae. The riddim is from Horace Andy's "Skylarking", a classic early reggae cut from Coxsone Dodd's Studio One. Jazzbo toasts over it, and being an eight minute disco mix, there's a little dub in the middle of it. That's three cuts with the same riddim on the same label. Andy's original, Jazzbo's version and then the extended version and whoever did the dub part. That's nothing. There were at least five records on Studio One using that riddim. Riddim Guide lists over fifty on various other labels. There's three other unrelated favorites below too, because they were handy but are also the shit. Yadda, yadda, yadda, noodles.
Prince Jazzbo - Crab Walking mp3 at Snuhthing Anything
Burning Spear - Social Living mp3 at Internet Archive 12" version, with a couple minutes of the version on the flip.
Horace Andy - See A Man's Face mp3 at Kazo Wailers
Gregory Isaacs - Poor and Clean mp3 at Kazo Wailers
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