LOCK DOWN THEATER NIGHT 29

Jimmy Cliff, The Harder They Come

It's a little early for Lock Down Theater re-runs, but there's a good reason. Yesterday I ran into an online report that Toots Hibbert is in intensive care in a Jamaican hospital. Possible covid. Yikes. Though reports today say he's improving, at 77 years old, he's no spring chicken. Thoughts and prayers and all that jazz.

Hibbert was the lead singer of the Maytals, one of the earliest reggae bands. In fact, their song "Do the Reggay" [sic] was the first song title using the word. Hibberts voice is somewhat gruff and when he does the call and response thing sounds almost like gospel backed by a reggae band. In doing searches about his health I also just read that he and the reformed Maytals (consisting of what other singers I'm not sure) just released a new LP in the last week.

I wanted to find the clip of them from The Harder They Come, only to find out that the movie link I'd posted back in April was kaput. The good news is that there's some other stuff. So here's The Harder They Come, the documentary on Toots and the Maytals and assorted Maytals songs, including a streaming version of one off the new LP. Thoughts and,,,well, prayers for some of you. Thoughts anyway.

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Listen:
The Maytals - Do the Reggay Drop mp3 at Dinosaur Gardens 1968
The Maytals - Pressure Drop mp3 at Dinosaur Gardens 1969
The Maytals - Monkey Man mp3 at Space Pack 1969
The Maytals - Gold and Silver mp3 at The Fader (?) 1971
Toots and the Maytals - Pomp and Pride mp3 at Renan (?) 1972
Toots and the Maytals - Time Tough mp3 at Tumblr 1974
Toots and the Maytals - Got to Be Tough (streaming) at YouTube 2020
Video:
Toots and the Maytals - Sweet and Dandy at YouTube From The Harder They Come
Toots and the Maytals - Documentary at YouTube
The Maytals - Treat Me Bad at YouTube From This Is Ska 1964
 

FUCK YOU CORONA

Fuck you Corona beer. I will not let you ruin this song with your stupid ass commercial. You were the first legal beer I drank, in Mexico when I was about 18. That was a long time ago, before you came to the states. Now you're the beer of beach invading douchebags. Stick that lime where the sun don't shine. Get off the air. Here is a song worth defending.

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Listen:
Jimmy Cliff - You Can Get It If You Really Want mp3 at  tztvu.zj.cn (?)

YOU ALWAYS REMEMBER YOUR FIRST

If you are at all into reggae and haven't seen The Harder They Come, you have missed an entire semester and you will be put back. Go get the soundtrack. Watch the film. It'll not only school you on the varied strains of early seventies reggae, but with the film you'll get an idea of what 1970s Kingston was like. And those of you who are familiar with both, you can stand around looking like a big shot, or you can try a nifty exercise. Listen to the songs below and reflect on when you first heard them, or saw the film, and how it's shaped your views on reggae ever since.

Production on a sequel, The Harder They Come Pt 2 is scheduled to start later this year, with Jimmy Cliff reviving his role, despite the fact that he was shot up and presumed dead in the original. You can read about it here. In the meantime check these. If you're still not convinced, poke around for other clips from the original. They're all over the place.

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Listen:
Jimmy Cliff - The Harder They Come mp3 at Cause Equals Time
Toots and the Maytals - Sweet and Dandy mp3 at Atumblr (?)
Scotty - Draw your Brakes mp3 at Le Blog de la Grand Chose
The Melodians - Rivers of Babylon mp3 at Brendan McGetrick (?)
The Slickers - Johnny Too Bad mp3 at DJ No DJ
Desmond Dekker - 007 (Shanty Town) mp3 at Midwestern Housewives
Visit:
Jimmy Cliff to reprise role in 'Harder They Come Pt 2' at The Gleaner
The Harder They Come at Wikipedia

BUTTERFLY EFFECT

If you've ever wondered why the hell there's reggae all over this place, along side rock 'n' roll and other seemingly disparate types of music, there's a reason probably only obvious to old punk rockers. For a lot of us geezers, even here in the states, it can be traced back to DJ Don Letts. He worked at the Roxy, a London night club, back in the seventies, spinning records between punk bands.  There was very little punk rock on vinyl at the time, so he turned to the music he knew, and that was reggae. Like punk rock, a lot of it was rebel music, and that loose connection essentially all it took for early UK punk bands to embrace the music. Many became well versed in reggae, even if it wasn't necessarily absorbed into their music. But the influence was there, most notably with the Clash, who covered reggae songs like "Police and Thieves", wrote their own versions ("Guns of Brixton", "White Man in Hammersmith Palais") and recorded with Lee Perry producing.  But the Clash weren't alone. Generation X's "Wild Dub", the B side on their "Wild Youth" single, was a somewhat feeble attempt to bridge the dub gap (before it became commonplace). The Slits, who wholly embraced reggae, brought a whole new low tech/high imagination hybrid to the table. 

Some of the UK bands would mention this person or that, and that's when it the sound really spread in punk circles. For instance, when Johnny Rotten name dropped reggae toaster Dr Alimantado in an interview, UK record sales for Alimantado spiked. But it wasn't limited to the UK for long.  As UK punk zines slowly reached the U.S., a whole other crowd was turned on. Hell, my very first reggae 45, "New Star" by Tapper Zukie, was bought via a recommendation by some long forgotten punk taste maker (Poly Styrene?).  In the second issue of my short lived zine, contributors submitted Top Ten lists. Mine included Tapper Zukie and U Roy records, both of which were bought at the same independent record store that had the hot punk shit.  To put this into period context, it all happened before Bob Marley became a household name around hippie flop houses and college dorms. He was pretty much just another reggae artist. That said, his song, "Punky Reggae Party", celebrated the unlikely alliance, name dropping punky reggae party attendees, starting with his own band name, followed by the Damned, the Jam, the Clash, the Maytals and Dr. Feelgood. (Well intended as it was, Marley, in an slight case of randomized bullshitting, picked a few there that don't quite belong, eh?) The lines that follow the name dropping verse were music to punk ears, "No boring old farts, no boring old farts, no boring old farts, will be there!" Punky reggae party. OK.

  

It's really pretty remarkable when you think of how many people were tuned onto reggae via this very real butterfly effect. Letts himself cites the film The Harder They Come, punk rock, and Bob Marley, in that order, for the rise of reggae. And the whole punk rock part of the equation came about because Don Letts didn't have any punk records. 

Notes:: Letts later began film making, and was a member of Big Audio Dynamite. In  2005, he produced Punk: Attitude, what may be the definitive documentary of punk rock. Really, he gets it right. It's good, and it's authentic (highly recomended). About the music below, it's a smattering of related stuff, all worthwhile hot ass shit. Read the little blurbs for the reasons. I could have hunted for more, but I gotta sew this thing up.

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Listen: 
Bob Marley and the Wailers - Punky Reggae Party mp3 at You Sound Like a Robot 
Bob Marley and the Wailers - Stir It Up mp3 Original JA version 
Bob Marley and the Wailers - Soul Rebel mp3 at Review Stalker Produced by Lee Perry 
Jimmy Cliff - Guns of Brixton mp3 at Groove on Fire Clash cover 
U Roy - 006 mp3 at Groove on Fire Produced by Lee Perry 
Dr. Alimantado - Poison Flour mp3 at Le Blog de la Grande Chose 
Live set: 
The Clash - Live at the Palladium (1979) at Captain's Dead Complete set as a zip and individual songs as mp3s. Good quality soundboard recordings, for those who care. 
Video: 
Don Letts interview at Red Bull Academy "The cultural revolution of two spliffs and one beer, told by the man who unified punk and reggae" (Text version below) 
Visit: 
Don Letts - Interview at Red Bull Academy 
Don Letts at Wikipedia 
Don Letts - Radio show at the BBC

TO LONGEVITY

Jimmy Cliff has a new record out, you may have heard that. But think about it. The Harder They Come, the film (and soundtrack) featuring Cliff, came out in 1972. That was forty years ago. What's really amazing is that Cliff had already been recording for over ten years when he did The Harder They Come. And now the man has a new record, over fifty years later. Take that Stones.

The new one is produced by Rancid's Tim Armstrong, which...hey, good for him. In a recent interview, Cliff gave Armstrong props for his knowledge of Jamaican music, session musicians and studios. That may be all fine and dandy. I've only heard a handful of songs on the new one and, while it's good, it's not Cliff good. Well, you might think it is. I prefer his early seventies stuff. Maybe it just bugs me, for no particular reason, that Armstrong produced it. Whatever. (Dude, Lee Perry's just hanging out acting weird in Switzerland, or wherever it is he lives nowadays. Get him to do it. Lee Perry producing Jimmy Cliff? That I would dig.). Regardless, he's still singing, and appears to be healthy with all his wits about him. And that makes me feel good.

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Listen:
Jimmy Cliff - One More mp3 (via Box.net) at The Slow Drag At Box.net, click on the "Download" button in the top right to save.
Jimmy Cliff - Bang mp3 (via Box.net) at Surviving the Golden Age
Jimmy Cliff - Ruby Soho (streaming) at Cover Me
Older stuff:
Jimmy Cliff - Miss Jamaica mp3 at Dinosaur Gardens 1962
Jimmy Cliff - My Lucky Day mp3 at Jaliscoska 1963
Jimmy Cliff - One Eyed Jacks mp3 at Jaliscoska 1963
Jimmy Cliff - The Harder They Come mp3 at The Cargo Culte 1972
Jimmy Cliff - You Can Get It If You Really Want mp3 at 2 Bean or Not 2 Bean 1972
Jimmy Cliff - Sitting In Limbo mp3 at PopDose 1972

I'M WITH THEM

Full disclosure: I'm one of the 99%, and I am fed up. When I hear of bank bail outs, obscene profits and salaries, it pisses me off. I've worked consistently since my first job as a paperboy. I've been unemployed only when laid off, or after moving to a new city (totalling less than eight weeks in my adult life). I'm well past the age that my parents were when they had a house, and five kids, on one average salary. I am not a spendthrift. My tightwad-ness is the subject of jokes with some friends. I cannot afford to buy a home in the neighborhood that I grew up in, and my neighborhood is not affluent by any stretch of the imagination. My American dream is little more than the pot to piss in. I am a working American grunt. To paraphrase the Talking Heads, where is my beautiful house?...How did I get here?

This snippet, from Jimmy Carter's Nobel Peace Prize speech, in 2002, really sums up the crux of the problem (link to entire speech below) :

"At the beginning of this new millennium I was asked to discuss, here in Oslo, the greatest challenge that the world faces. Among all the possible choices, I decided that the most serious and universal problem is the growing chasm between the richest and poorest people on earth. Citizens of the ten wealthiest countries are now seventy-five times richer than those who live in the ten poorest ones, and the separation is increasing every year, not only between nations but also within them."

Now that that's out of the way, I tried to think of a song that would aptly portray the frustration that those of us near or on the bottom rungs of the income ladder. I thought a Pete Seeger song might hit the spot, but couldn't find an mp3 of any that were completely appropriate. I thought that the Dil's "Class War" might be a tad militant for some of you who weren't around back in the day. Then, while looking for something else online, I happened upon the song that seemed written for this day, this mood, this movement. Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder they Come."

Well, they tell me of a pie up in the sky
Waiting for me when I die
But between the day you're born and when you die
You know, they never seem to hear even your cry

Chorus:
So as sure as the sun will shine
I'm gonna get my share now what is mine
And then the harder they come
The harder they fall
One and all
The harder they come
The harder they fall
One and all

And the oppressors are trying to track me down
They're trying to drive me underground
And they think that they have got the battle won
I say, forgive them Lord, they know not what they've done

Chorus

And I keep on fighting for the things I want
Though I know that when you're dead you can't
But I'd rather be a free man in my grave
Than living as a puppet or a slave

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Listen:
Jimmy Cliff - The Harder They Come mp3 at Backseat Sandbar
The Dils - Class War mp3 (zip file) at 7 Inch Punk
Visit:
Occupy Wall St.
Occupy Together
We Are the 99%

Jimmy Carter's Nobel Peace Prize speech, December 10, 2002

THE HARDER THEY FALL

I'm a sucker for uprisings. Is that sufficiently shallow for you? I know. Nevertheless, the situations in Tunisia, Yemen and Egypt are incredible, especially when you consider the first one, in Tunisia, all began with someone lighting themself on fire in protest. How far they go remains to be seen, but my "what if" sensors are fully raised. So there's an admittedly loose reason to post a few versions of what should be a standard for most of you.

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Jimmy Cliff - The Harder They Come mp3 at The Cargo Culte
Keith Richards - The Harder They Come mp3 at Rollo & Grady
Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros - The Harder the Come (live) mp3 at JonSolomon (Note: Low quality recording, record store appearance)
Joe Jackson - The Harder They Come mp3 at PopDose
Video:
Jimmy Cliff - The Harder They Come (w/movie clips) video at YouTube
Jimmy Cliff - The Harder They Come (live, 2006) at YouTube
Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros - The Harder They Come (live) video at YouTube
Rancid - The Harder They Come (live) video at YouTube
Madness - The Harder They Come (live) video at YouTube
Willie Nelson - The Harder They Come video at YouTube
Read:
Waves of Unrest Spread to Yemen, Shaking a Region at the New York Times

MAYTALS' "SWEET AND DANDY" (I CAN DO THAT!)

Where to start with this clip? It's the Maytals, in a studio scene from "The Harder They Come," one of the reasons I first fell in love with early reggae vocal groups. It was right before the big push to make Toots Hibbert the central focus of the group, which was probably justified because his throaty rasp became one of the most recognizable and enduring reggae voices in the ensuing decades. The clip's also a particulary good example of the gospel and soul influences that often found their way into early reggae vocal groups.
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For me though, the real draw of this clip is a punk rock-esque moment, one that gives me goosebumps everytime I see it. It comes at about 1:52 in the clip where Jimmy Cliff , as the central character Ivan (in the yellow hat), has that "aha!" moment. The epiphany that launched hundreds of reggae (and early punk) careers, the DIY baptism, where the light bulb goes off. The "I can do that!" moment, without which, we'd all still be listening to Perry Como. (To see that captured on film was worth breaking my "no YouTube" policy.)

.

And, yes Virgina, there are mp3s. Download "Pressure Drop" if you want the soundtrack to what this oaf calls dancing (it does happen).

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Toots & the Maytals - Pressure Drop mp3 at My Old Kentucky Blog
The Maytals - Gola Silver mp3 and Pee Pee Cluck Cluck mp3 at 33/45