THIS IS ON BUSINESS

Holy shit. I had to have posted a link to this at some point in the past. In case I haven't, and I am too lazy to check,...shit, I don't care if I posted it before, it hits the spot. It's a reggae post is at Snuhthing Anything, and it's been stewing online for twelve damn years. If you're into reggae, you probably know these well. But it is the cream, big names, stuff you know from The Harder They Come, and the ones you know from covers. Dandy Livingston's "Rudy, A Message to You", which was covered by the Specials, the Paragons' "Tide Is High" was covered by Blondie, Junior Murvin's "Police and Thieves", covered by the Clash, blah, blah, blah. It's a great post and, so far, the only mp3s I've found to be dead are the Desmond Dekker and King Tubby cuts. But, shit, "Johnny Too Bad" or "Draw Your Brakes" alone qualify as a great post in these quarters. Take it away, Snuthing, you ol' dead ass blog you.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
The Slickers - Johnny Too Bad mp3 at Snuhthing Anything
Scotty - Draw Your Brakes mp3 at Snuhthing Anything
Roots Reggae Sunday - Roughly ten more songs at Snuhthing Anything

RATCHET MEANS KNIFE

Most of you who are into reggae, specifically the early stuff, know the Slickers' "Johnny Too Bad". It's a song about rude boys, on half of the reggae compilations that ever existed (really, I checked). It was on the soundtrack for The Harder They Come, which makes it about as entry level as it gets. Not to slight it, it's a badass song about bad badasses. Every time I hear it I picture Jamaican street toughs with period cool Kingston style and six rounds of swagger walking down the street like they owned it. It occurred to me that although I know that song like the back of my hand, as many of you might, I don't even know off the top of my head if I have any of their other stuff, which amounts to a roughly thirty 45s and one LP. So I did what we do, I went digging. I did find one other song by them, "Nana", which is great and awesome and all of that, but the real surprise was running into a cover of "Johnny Too Bad" by Taj Majal, It's great, far better than most covers I've heard. (Believe me, there are some awful ones out there. Don't get me started about UB40's cover, or anything about UB40 for that matter. I hate that band. Hate's a harsh word, let's just say I think they blow.)

It made me think, after all these years, about the Off's version, one that I haven't though about in at least ten years. The Off's (not to be confused with Off!), were an early (meaning late seventies) San Francisco punk band. Their version is that from that era of real (not posed) low budget, low circulation, raw, muddled, independent punk 45s. I love that sound. They were doing the best they could with the resources available, unlike stuff of recent years intentionally dumbing down the production. Listen to the instrumental break (starting at 1:23). You'd think you'd be in for a dub thing, or a real solo, but what you get is the Shaggs and Velvets churning out a reggae rhythm with (if you're still with me, and I know only the Mystery Suggester might be) Harley Davidson from Deadbolt gritting his teeth, playing lead over a music he hates. Yo, this shit's getting thick.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
The Slickers - Johnny Too Bad mp3 at DJNoDJ
The Slickers - Nana mp3 at Bad Luck City
Taj Majal - Johnny Too Bad mp3 at A.Tumblr (?)
The Offs - Johnny Too Bad (streaming) at YouTube

BOSS SOUNDS FROM THE TRASTOS HI-FI

One advantage of being a certain age is that, when it comes to reggae, your objectivity isn't necessarily skewed by hippies, hacky-sack, Bob Marley, trustifarians or other such reggae cliches. My friends and I were lucky enough to be turned on to reggae as an ersatz chaser to a punk rock cocktail. When all other mellow music was getting tossed aside, reggae was not. Simply put, it was the best rebel music with a soulful beat available. It was an awesome awakening: the hunt for reggae on the shelf, any store shelf (Ratner's Electric in downtown San Diego?!?), the booming sound system of the reggae disco at North Park Lion's Club (you could feel the bass in your chest), the kind recommendations from reggae freak elders, and learning the proper way to spell New York ("a knife, a fork, a bottle, and a cork, that's the way you spell New York..."). And all of that discovering of this other acceptable genre comes flooding back when I hear anything from Horace Andy's first album, "Skylarking".

At the time, a lot of earlier reggae was getting licensed in the U.S. and issued at bargain prices. Marley had yet to break and it seemed like the reggae that was being released as if spattering paint, just hoping some of it would stick. The reissues were typically released with bland packaging with total disregard of the exotic covers of the originally issued LPs. It boggles the mind to think about what could have happened if these LPs were released with the original packaging (as seen here). What if the significance of these reissues was more widely recognized, and what would have happened if reggae music as a whole had broken before the rampant one dimensional Marley mania?

Before any miscreants start whining about how great Bob Marley was, let me pose this question: what would rock n' roll be like if the only artist most people were familiar with was the Rolling Stones? You get the picture, so make room on your plate. There is so much more essential reggae.

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Horace Andy - Skylarking mp3 at KinoSport

All the ingredients are here: an essential 1969 Studio One classic
Horace Andy - Skylarking, the entire LP download at Global Groove
Sound Dimension - Real Rock mp3 at The Suburbs are Killing Us
The house band at Studio One with the rhythm that backs 250+ early reggae classics
Sound Dimension - Real Rock Version mp3 at The Suburbs Are Killing Us
The Heptones -Hypocrite mp3 at Ear It Now
The Maytals - Pressure Drop mp3 and 6 other Maytal cuts at I Predict A Riot
Sister Nancy - Bam Bam mp3 and 11 early reggae & rock steady cuts at I Predict a Riot
Bam Bam, from 1982, had to have been on MIA's turntable at some point
Alton Ellis - I'm Still in Love With You mp3 at Grand Panda
If the rhythm sounds familiar, you must have checked Althia and Donna's Uptown Top Ranking
Big Youth - Screaming Target mp3 at Djnodj
The Slickers - Johnny Too Bad mp3 at Motel de Moka
King Tubby - Take Five mp3 at 8106
How this is a King Tubby cut when there's no dub is beyond me, but a cover of Dave Brubeck with a groove keeps me from asking too many questions...

Augustus Pablo and King Tubby - King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown mp3 and 3 others at Dollar Bin Jams

Another all time classic: melodica + dub = chill bliss

Stop Listening To Bob Marley

In the years preceeding Marleymania, more than a few reggae recommendations came stateside from UK punk rockers (via the music press), and additional exploration quickly spread through their US counterparts. But before all that, the soundtrack to The Harder They Come had already introduced reggae neophytes to the Maytals, the Slickers, the Heptones, Scotty, Jimmy Cliff and others. And, in hindsight, by featuring multiple artists it was a far better set of training wheels than any single artist, Bob Marley or otherwise, could provide.

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Chris Blackwell fucked that right up. The first release on his Island Records had been Millie Small's My Boy Lollipop. It became an unlikely hit, charting even the US. Convinced that Bob Marley could be the big international breakthrough artist he'd been waiting for, he took Marley's bare-bones Jamaican masters to England and laid overdubs of British session musicians over them. He then put the bank on Marley.

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It was a move taken right out of UK's Trojan Records' playbook. Trojan had already made their mark a few years earlier, disinfecting scores of reggae songs to make them more palatable to English ears. But Trojan's approach wasn't nearly as narrow in scope, distributing promotion evenly among dozens of reggae artists.

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If you grew up in the Marley era. or are otherwise on the fence about reggae, download these cuts and let them simmer. If the only reggae that you've really heard is Bob Marley, stop listening to Bob Marley. There's far more adventurous stuff out there.

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Start From Scratch Reggae Starter Kit:

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From The Harder They Come Soundtrack:
The Maytals - Pressure Drop MP3 [1]

The Slickers - Johnny Too Bad MP3 [2]

Scotty - Draw Your Brakes MP3 at [2]

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Originals of songs covered famously by other bands:
Daddy Livingstone -A Message to You Rudie MP3 (covered by the Specials) [2]

Willie Williams - Armagideon Time MP3 (covered by the Clash) [2]

The Paragons - The Tide is High MP3 (covered bt Blondie) [2]

Junior Murvin - Police and Thieves MP3 (covered by the Clash)[2].

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BONUS: An excellent Trojan cut:

The Pioneers - Papa Was a Rolling Stone MP3 [3]

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MP3 Hosts:

1. The Late Greats

2. Snuhthing/Anything

3. Feed Me Good Tunes