(CG)
As sound clashes developed in Jamaica in the 1970s, the dub plate, where the popular reggae tunes were stripped down to rhythm and drums providing the sound systems with the space to lay down their own sounds as well as the toasting and improvised toasting of the DJs that were invited to perform against each other, took on an energy of it's own. This intense competition between sound systems and the need to deliver to exclusive versions to match and outplay the rival sound systems led to an intensively creative period in Reggae music with the reworking of tunes using the sound studio to weave or drop in musical and vocal phrases over the drum and bass, often accented by dub or other effects before fading out. Each sound system developed its own highly prized style to attract large followings as well as outplay rivals in the musical duels as it revealed new dub plates that offered original reworkings of tunes and innovative dub sounds to dazzle. The originality of sound engineers meant that their studios and output became as famous as the sound systems, musicians and vocalists, singers and toasters. Osbourne “King Tubby” Ruddock and “Lee Scratch” Perry were key to these developments and their fame spread far and wide, including the UK where British sound systems in its metropoles, such as Sir Coxsone Sounds (named after the famous Coxsone Dodd sound system in Jamaica), Jah Shaka and Chanel One (a little later) in London as well as many others in London and the UK, set up and imported the latest dub plates to acclaim.
In the mid-1970s in central London the two
places to hit were Colombo’s where Sir Coxsone played and the Thursday night
reggae session at the 100 Club where virtually every single reggae artist played
when they passed through London, including Gregory Isaacs, Sugar Minot, Lone
Ranger, Cedric Myton and the Congos among a plethora of other great Jamaican
musicians. Daddy Kools sound system from the reggae vendor Daddy Kools in
Hanway Street off Tottenham Court Road played the sounds at the 100 club and
people would bring in the latest dub plate from Jamaica for them to play,
including one week in 1976 the classic King Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown by
Augustus Pablo that had been circulating as an exclusive dub plate. The next
day I rushed round to Daddy Kools to buy a DJ white cover copy from their fast
diminishing stack of King Tubby’s which they had bought the previous night.
King Tubby and Lee Scratch Perry, with his Dub Blackboard Jungle are perhaps the
two most recognised dub originators with many classic dub records to their
names but another who is much less well known as a dub originator is Keith
Hudson, whose song The Michael Talbot Affair was part of his dub album
Pick-a-Dub. This was the first thematic album in dub released in 1974 and was
the first dub album to be released in the UK.
One of the truly great dub albums it presented
a seemingly austere focus on drum and bass but reworked classic tunes with
Aston and Carlton Barret (from Bob Marley and the Wailers) laying down bass and
drums that opens up to repeated hearings while Keith Hudson, Big Youth and
Horace Andy add vocal phrases. However the Michael Talbot Affair is for
me the apex of the album and I listen to it on a regular basis right up to the
present day. It has a complex interweaving of melody lines by a range of
instruments, including Augustus Pablo’s melodica, that shape the dub rhythm and
as it plays, its different interposed elements and phrases enrich each other
while the progression of both the rhythm and the melodies offer a satisfying
resolution by its end. It is a classic and truly great original cut that can
match any comparable example in other genres.
(PS)
I have to admit, I’m a total novice with
regard to Dub. I’ve since done a small amount of reading up about it online,
and I can’t believe I never knew what a crucial role toasters played. I do
now.
I’ve always found it hard to get into the
laid-back groove of Dub though, always preferring the more upbeat stylings of
Ska; but this instrumental based on House of the Rising Sun had a bit more to
it for me. Being largely in a minor key it has a mournful feel to it, which
seems to tally with one youtube poster who says that it’s “In
memory of Michael Talbot from Bristol who lost his life in a racist incident in
the '70s”.
The twinning of the guitar & sax after
the stripped down introduction works really well and the melodic lines merge
nicely: the guitar seeming to take Eric Burdon’s vocal line from the original
and the sax playing a variation alongside it; but the guitar is lower in the
mix so it’s not necessarily the first thing you hear.
The guitar repeats this melodic line
afterwards, with the sax comping alongside it – and that’s where the hook
became more obvious to me. Then the sax takes over for the last half of the
song, which reprises its earlier theme in a very unassuming, discreet fashion –
occasionally drifting out completely to allow subtle piano & organ to
quietly fill the gaps. The only thing which jarred ever so slightly was the
errant C in the fadeout, but it’s such a tasteful solo – and I rather like it
when the occasional bum note is left in.
Given the dedication mentioned above, this song seems to me like a hugely dignified response to a tragic incident in a racially charged period of our nation’s history, and I’m grateful that I’ve been made aware of it now.
(MS)
I went looking for a coffee table the other day. A small
coffee table. I’d just moved flat and realised I’d reached the point where all
was in place except this, a place for my mug of tea. So with impending national
restrictions on my shopping options in the air I ventured out in search of said
item with headphones on bleeding the works of Keith Hudson into my ears. A cold
heavy rain set about the streets around Olympia where nearly a hundred years before
Oswald Mosely had entertained a monster gathering of British fascists and where
in December 1967 the psychedelic underground had its final fling with the Christmas
on Earth Continued event with Hendrix, Soft Machine, The Move, Pink Floyd, Traffic
et al elbowing each other out of the way on their mad dash for overground
success. I was heading south as Shepherd’s Bush had surprisingly offered
nothing at all in the shape of second-hand furniture. That seems odd doesn’t
it? Perhaps that’s what happens when the largest Shopping mall in Europe sets
itself down on a locale like some gleaming spaceship. “What is this thing called dub?” I thought
to myself, as I carefully stepped over puddles that I judged may engulf my Jermaine
Genius-style white sole trainers, recently repaired via stick-on-soles from
Timpsons. With it’s booming bass-lines and echo-treated drums it struck me it’s
just another colour on the great aural palette of mind-altering music intended
to achieve the Rimbaudian disordering of the senses. It also struck me that the
great Westfield shopping centre could possibly have been accommodated within
the confines of the Olympia exhibition hall, maybe leaving Shepherds Bush with more
space for crazy alleyways of bric-a-brac shops and…second hand furniture.
Wasn’t Steptoe and Son set in Shepherd’s Bush? I think a certain music
fan always reaches out for stuff that promises an other-worldly sensation.
Music as a drug perhaps for those of us who prefer a pint of beer than dangerous
meetings with shadowy figures in Camden doorways. When I was young in the late
70s and 80’s I can see the path had been pre-destined for me to term this sort
of musical quest as psychedelic; the dry vacuum of the 80’s could do nothing
but half-remember more colourful days. It was a catch-all phrase for the
way-out which I soon applied similarly to my enjoyment of jazz with it's
Pollock abstracts on the Ornette Coleman gatefold sleeves. The long soloing
passages of Coltrane clearly inspiring the improvisational efforts of the 60s
guitarists and keyboard virtuoso’s to come. I thought of this as I crossed
Gunterstone Road where Hendrix was first deposited from the newly christened Heathrow
Airport in 1966 and where he jammed with Andy Somers, later to find fame in The
Police, and from where he set about dismantling the London psychedelic movement.
Hendrix was fond of the echoed guitar sound drifting away into the background,
like his B52 bomber raid solo during the Star Spangled Banner. Interesting to
hear the same effects adopted by Jamaican studio freaks just a few years later.
Down North End Road I finally found a coffee table small enough to carry home.
I held it over my head to keep off the rain and darted down a side street maze
back home. The Michael Talbot Affair came on just as I turned down
Beaumont Crescent where I found a plaque to the home of Marcus Garvey’s Universal
Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. And speaking of
coincidences the last time Hendrix played it was at Ronnie Scott’s in the
company of Eric Burdon the vocalist on The House of the Rising Sun. I like the
way London can send my thoughts adrift in kaleidoscope patterns and this
thing called dub is a welcome addition to my palette.
(JS)
As instructed I’m going to ignore the monumental contribution this
recording offered to the music industry spawning the commerciality of remixing.
Creating the notion that everything that had ever been recorded could exist in
multiple commercial editions is perhaps the greatest contribution Dub made,
together with opening the door of aesthetic intellectual pretensions normally
reserved for the jazz set to descend to lesser technicians of the musical
fraternities. Dub also bestowed musicality status to the mixers and studio
engineers who had been silently building greater reputations in the industrial
production cycle of popular music.
The Michael Talbot Affair takes the Animals standard “House of the
rising sun”, strips the lyric about brothels from the piece. Drops the chord
structure down two tones to a G Sharp tuning, and speeds up the rhythm from 125
BPM to 143 BPM. The chords are Dbm / Ebm / Gb / Abm / Db / Bbm / Bd / Eb
The mix favours the drum and bass end. Pleasing but the vocal is
missed, being too recognisable to the original.
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