"Jesus was a sailor when he walked along the water and he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower and when he knew for certain, only drowning men could see him he said 'all men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them' but he himself was broken, long before the sky would open forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone" - from "Suzanne"
Leonard Cohen is one of the few folky singer songwriters who stops me in my tracks and hang on every word he says. His distinctive monodrone voice and Spanish style finger-picking guitar perfectly suit his songs of love and hate. As far as songwriters go, Cohen is pretty much the penultimate truth (especially, his early stuff). His fixations are crazed women, sex, the Bible, the impoverished, the crazy, the lonely, the rich, the idle, the suicidal etc, and he spins a yarn unlike anyone else (he began as a poet and novelist before writing songs).
His early albums, 1968's The Songs Of Leonard Cohen and 69's Songs From A Room, are classics that have jewels like "Suzanne," "The Partisan" and "Stories From The Street" and are essential listening. HOWEVER, 1971's Songs Of Love and Hate, is the real business. Possibly the best A-side to an album ever with "Avalanche," "Last Year's Man," "Dress Rehearsal Rag," and "Diamonds In The Mine"- all visions of harrowing genius. (To Download or Play, Left Click and Follow Instructions) MP3- Suzanne
Mr. Oizo is a French electrodude who came onto the scene in 1999 with his song "Flat Beat" and it's video's classic headbanging puppet protagonist, Flat Eric. He expounded the song and character into a series of awesome French Levi's ads, but remained fairly underground on the music scene after, but he quietly amassed a quality body of work. Then came Justice. One of the group's first hits was their remix of Oizo's "Nazi's" and they took his distorted electro sound and made it their own. As Justice, Simian Mobile Disco, Soulwax all gained notoriety, so did Oizo, as they frequently included him in mixes and remixes.
Oizo's whole albums are a tad hard to get through from start to finish, so I'll give you the highlights. He's definitely one of those fleeting inspiration guys, and his glitchier stuff is too chopped-up for me. However, what I like, I LIKE. Love, even. Here's a selected discography to getcha goin. All these are winnars.
(To Download, Left Click and Follow Instructions) MP3- Positif (2008)
One of my sacred cows. The Stooges were BY FAR the rawest band of the late 60's "classic rock" era, projecting the dirt and squalor of late 60's Detroit where a burning building took the place of an organized "love in." The hellish din of the Stooges music, along with the MC5, juxtaposed the go-go-free-lovery of the trust fund hippies, with dirge and howl, with a handful of drugs and nowhere to go home to. Not that they didn't project love- Iggy's love was more ravenous, out of his mind and horny, he had to find that special one. If that meant some mud soaked flower child or a pill popper with a nice ass and a rotten tooth, it was all the same.
If you've never had your brain warped to The Stooges, here's to breaking yr. cherry. As essential as Dylan. The next logical step from the Stones. The precursor to shit and piss punk rock and metal, blah blah blah, just look and listen. 1969's self titled debut, 1970's Fun House and 1973's Raw Power are three of the most essential records in all of rock and roll.
Charles Bukowski is the fucking MAN. A writer, a poet, a genius, you know it, Bukowski is the slum god of the human soul. I've recently come across some of his spoken word set to classical music which works oh-so-well, because that's what he listened to as he drank and wrote. "The Genius Of the Crowd" and "Dinosauria, We" are absolutely bruising poems, the latter popping up in a recent MF Doom song ("Cellz"). All of these are seminal however, full of the haggard wisdom inherent in his novels. Speaking of which, I can't recommend you read Post Office, Women, and Hollywood, enough because all three of those are life changing, you'll reference them (at least cognitively) for the rest of your life.
Rick the rulaa! The best storyteller in the biz, England-born Slick Rick had a hugely influential style that enlightened Snoop Dog, Tupac, Biggie, Nas, etc. He had a career de-railed by a trip to prison for shooting a innocent bystander in a crazy gunfight, was released, and took a while to collect his thoughts. The difference between 1998's classic The Great Adventures of Slick Rick and 1999's true sequel, The Art of Storytelling in terms of quality is nothing. They're both awesome. He's got a few scattershot albums out there, but on these he's just about the best there is in terms of flows, lyrics, hooks, and his cool, calm delivery.
Songs like "Children's Story" and "Mona Lisa" are two of the best songs in...aw hell, the entire pantheon of Western music. The Art of Storytelling has some classics too like "I Own America Pt. 1," "Street Talk (W/OutKast)," "Who Rotten 'Em," "2 Way Street" and "Unify (W/Snoop)." Thus making them both essential. Go buy/steal them. Just absorb them and compare all wack Mc's to Ricky D.
P.S. Slick Rick is now a landlord in the Bronx.
To all good artists and albums in 2009- it ain't over yet. A challenger approaches. HEALTH's Get Color is a droning, percussive beast reminiscent of only a handful of other stuff I've heard (the Liars' Drum's Not Dead is it's closest sonic neighbor). The insularity of HEALTH's early work was allowed becasue they're avant gardists who have a safe scene in LA's the Smell, yet touring with Nine Inch Nails probably showed the dudes that they need to get some "bigger" sounding songs that don't devolve into a clusterfuck of noise every other 16 bars. The batch they've concocted here is easily their best work and one of the best you'll hear all year. "Die Slow" will most likely floor you, assuming you have a soul. It's rockin' and danceable and (thank God) too weird to get on the radio. Happily, I can now report, the rest of the album follows suit.
HEALTH have not so much toned down the din of their noisy parts, but tempered it to work within songs better (aka no songs that are just creepy noise passages like on the Wavves album). Get Color is pretty accessible thanks to the amount of melody in the vocals and geets and the fat tribal stomp of the drums. It's rough but often beautiful. Seriously can't say enough good about this album, yet another reason 2009 owns as far as music is concerned.
P.S. As in the case of "Crimewave" with Crystal Castles, I'm sure these songs will be the basis for a fuck ton of good remixes and other songs.
Clipse, for those who don't know, are brothers Pusha T and Malice, two Virginian ex-crack dealers who hooked up with the Neptunes in 2001 and have cranked out a pretty impressive body of work since. Fully utilizing Pharell's clout in the record business, the group has made two modern classics in hip hop- 2002's Lord Willin' and 2006's Hell Hath No Fury. Both have the two MC's waxing existential about the drug pushing lifestyle- the good and the bad. The dark subject matter of their lyrics are matched by the production which is really top notch. It's easy to forget just how good the Neptunes can be when they have quality stuff to work with, but Hell Hath No Fury is as convincing an argument as they've made. The beats bump but are sparse and have an almost industrial feel, that match the cold reality of the lyrics. That said, this shit is danceable and is meant to be cranked on a good system.
As much as haters will point to their subject matter being repetitive and glorifying of the lifestyle, the duo really are more about the pusher lifestyle as background and context to the situations their put in, much like Biggie did. Their lyrics are often riddled with guilt, pathos and a feeling of being trapped like on "We Got It For Cheap":
"The walls removed and now I see,
My leg was pulled the jokes on me,
So heartbreakin' like lovin' a whore
Might hurt you once but never no more
Like tryin' to fly but they clippin your wings
and that's exactly why the caged bird sings"
They're readying a new album, due later this year that has Def Jam founder Rick Rubin at the helm. The first single, "All Eyes On Me" is dope and hopefully is an indication of how good the rest of the album is going to be.
Blur is one of those bands that largely passed me by in their heyday. "Song 2" was rediculously awesome when I was a kid and I loved singer Damon Albarn's other project, the Gorillaz, but Blur was a little too mature for me when I got Parklife, their supposed best album. I just kinda of discarded it, and didnt think about the band much after. Big mistake. This compilation has shown me I'm an idiot and missed out on something I would have been obsessed with on the level of Radiohead, their mid-90's Brit-pop rivals. "Coffee and TV" is one of the best songs I've ever heard, and has revealed the side of them I hadn't seen- the rhythmic chord strummin' beast of a band that writes brilliant, wry pop songs the way the Kinks did.
I've found a slew of songs I love on this collection, and am now legitamately into their albums. Parklife has kinda of turned around for me in the context of their career, but it's not their best. I like their fat, three or four chord droning rockers the best like the aforementioned "Coffee and TV," "Pop Scene" and "Bugman" and most of the songs on this collection. Shit's rad. Re-issue of the year for sure. Enjoy.
Dan Deacon's video for my favorite song off this year's Bromst, "Padding Ghost," is RAD. Props to it's creator Natalie Van Den Dungen! Note to other prospective film-makers: puppets are underutilized.
Lemme tell ya a little story about Wire. What began as an art school final project, became one of the lasting legacies of post-punk and birthed one of the greatest albums of all time, 1977's Pink Flag. Wire came out of the post punk movement in Britain that spawned Joy Division, Gang of Four, The Fall, Siouxie Sioux and others, but Wire was it's own beast. Their fractured songs tore up rock cliches and started anew, embracing a more minimalist sound from the epic jerk off sessions of late 70' classic rock, and did away with all the posture and fashion of punk rock. The result- a sound and style all their own. Sparse, rhythmic and full of fleeting ideas, Wire were radical for their time, but history has smiled on them, and their records sound better now than ever. Pink Flag is the best, but 1978's Chairs Missing and 1979's 154 are champs as well. Seriously some of my favorite music ever and a serious diamond in the rough. Some of my favorite lyrics ever:
Sometimes a mix comes along, and it's the mix that summarizes the time and place surrounding the creator. Sometimes a mix comes around that completely transcends that time and place and terraforms the minds of those exposed to it. Sometimes there's a mix...sometimes...huh...lost my train of thought. Suffice it to say, this is the dopest dope, one of the best mixes I've ever heard by a wide margin. Very glad to share it with you. Flying Lotus is the fucking man, plain and simple. A mix of hip hop, jazz, reggae, electro, and dubstep that will warp your brain forever for the better.
With all the good bands hailing from Brooklyn, Yeasayer have been pretty overlooked and underrated since their debut in 2007 with their LP All Hours Cymbals, but I've come back to them a lot more than bands that critics have pushed on me in the time since. They've steadily gained my respect and other followers the old fashioned way: by writing good songs and outperforming the over-hyped bands they've played with (MGMT, namely). Their psychedelic sound takes as much from world music as it does from traditional rock/reggae/R&B/etc, and their album benefits greatly from the dynamic, never stagnating. They have chanting melodies, polyrhythmic drumming and and overall tribal feel, and they can bust out on a wide variety of instruments. Their lyrics are well sung and well written as well:
"It's a fresh spring, so let's sing
And the moon shines bright on the water tonight
So we won't drown in the summer sound
Yeah, yeah, we can all grab at the chance to be handsome farmers
Yeah you can have twenty-one sons and be blood when they marry my daughters"
( From "2080")
So check out All Hours Cymbals, see them live, and cop their new album when it comes out.
Somewhere amidst my non-homo love affair with Grizzly Bear, I found out that their guitarist Daniel Rossen has a side project called the Department of Eagles. I got their more recent album, 2008's In Ear Park, first and it's pretty rad. It's sounds like Grizzly Bear because it's basically Grizzly Bear without Ed Droste which is still a very good thing.
Yet 2003's The Cold Nose LP is my focus here, because it's just so goddamn creative and awesome. Though it probably wont reach that many ears on it's own merits because it's a bit inaccessible and is now a few years old, it's a goldmine for the open-minded listener. Danny and bandmate Fred Nicolaus met as assigned roommates at NYU and started fucking around with samples and recording guitars and vocals. The result, The Cold Nose (originally called The Whitey on the Moon LP), is a diverse collection of hip hop beats, string section swells, and Radiohead-esque rock songs, all arranged in a trippy, psychedelic way.
Highlights of the album are "Romo Goth" a unique rollicker, the trip hoppy "Gravity's Greatest Victory/Rex Snorted Coke," and the cluserfuck pieces "The Origin of Love" and "The Curious Butterfly Realizes He's Beautiful." The quality of the rest of the album is just as good as those highlights, but those are the one's that caught my ear first. The whole thing is a meandering stoner treat that was pretty much just meant to please them and their friends so don't blame it for seeming a little insular. I'm sure if you give it a little time, you'll dig it a lot.
And, not to undermine the greatness of In Ear Park, here are some samples of that, too. It's really great but it speaks for itself, whereas the Cold Nose requires a little explaining.
Zomby is dubstep's mystery man in that his/her/it's identity is kept a secret. "Helter Skelter" sounds like a dancable solution to the electronic soundtracks to old Italian horror films or an easy upgrade from John Carpenter's electronic muzak from his 80's films. The video mashes the song up with George Romero's films and the Italian B-horror classic, "Zomby 2" as well as a melodramatic makeout scene and more. All good stuff.
Rather than wax wistfully about how great summer was/is-for-a-few-more-days, I'd rather let others speak for me. So, here are some ripping summer songs to to wet yr. whistle before the autumn void of dark skies and dead leaves makes you break out your "Wristcutter Jams '08" mixtape.
MUSICALLY speaking, it's been quite a good year. There's been some very kickass albums that I haven't gotten to take a look at on here so I might as well round them up. I've given much love to Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective, MF Doom, Jay Reatard, Wavves, Andrew Bird, Black Lips, etc but here are some bands I have, for whatever reason, omitted. So many apologies...
1. The Dirty Projector's Bitte Orca: Bringing to mind the Talking Heads is a good thing with me. Being endorsed by David Byrne, personally, is even better. Doing a reinterpretation of Black Flag's Damaged on last year's Rise Above sealed the deal- this band is pretty rad. Mastermind David Longstreth is apparently bursting with ideas, as every song on Bitte Orca seems to jump out of the speakers and shift gears on a dime, from lush jangly strumming to crashing cacophony. It's potent and may not all register the first time, but give it a few spins and you'll see something of genius is at work here. A grower.
2. Dan Deacon's Bromst: Another album bursting at it's non-literal seams with energy and ideas. Dan Deacon cooks up a good sophomore stew to 2007's Spiderman of the Rings. Though Bromst has it's atonal overload moments ("Red F"), it still has "Padding Ghost," Snookered" and the better portion of the album, basically. His songwriting and drum production has improved drastically and I'd imagine most of these songs would kick ass live (with a good crowd).
3. St. Vincent's Actor: An album of amazing lyrical depth which also bring some heat and rocks out from time to time. A former Sufjan Stevens collaborator, Anne Clark establishes her own aesthetic and I like it a lot more than some of her contemporaries like Regina Spector and Fiona Apple, because it has teeth and she has chops, being also a former member of Glenn Branca's 100 Guitar Orchestra. The songs "Actor Out Of Work" and "Laughing With A Mouth of Blood" will definitely be on a lot of year ends lists so here they are.
4. Birdy Nam Nam's Manual For Successful Rioting: This shit is bananas, just makes me go nuts like listening to Justice in 2007. It's in the same vein as Justice and Mr. Oizo- hard, fast distorted club bangers (and they're all from France). Dance punk if you will. Plus they do all of their instrumentation live, plus they're really hard, did I mention that?
5. Mos Def's The Ecstatic: Mos Def finally get back to his Black Star/Black On Both Sides form and that's a good thing for everyone. The Ecstatic seems a bit tossed off, but that's just what's endearing about it- everything sounds inspired, as if he's following his instincts instead of over-thinking like his last couple solo outings. He gains a lot from embracing Indian and Middle Eastern music via Madlib and Oh No and discussing the war like on "The Embassy" and Slick Rick's (dope) verse on "Auditorium." Mos Def sounds focused on making music and let's hope we can get a few more good albums out of him before his acting career takes over.
Jay Stay Paid is the best posthumous release ever, and I say that without fear of hyperbole. J Dilla is a national treasure to hip hop heads now, but he will go down in history as one of the greats, mainstream, underground, whatever. His leftovers are often better than his albums (besides Donuts) and in this case, fellow great Pete Rock puts together a full fledged album out of his scraps. The result is the best hip hop album so far this year. The best beats of the bunch have that quality that only Dilla can conjure: they're so good it almost makes you tear up, you miss him so much, even if you weren't a fan during his life. "Mythsysizer" is case in point, it's just beautiful and fleeting. "On Stilts," also known as "Smurfs on Shrooms" on other compilations, is more bumping yet has an ethereal quality that transcends hip hop. The whole thing is worth BUYING because the proceeds go to his mom, Ma Dukes, who's suffereing from the same type of lupus that took Dilla from us. It's worth it.
What's to say about the Fall? Mark E. Smith and crew have been going strong since 1977, without a break. No matter the line up, the Fall is about one thing: Smith's hyper-literate, cryptic lyrics which are sung/rapped through a Clockwork Orange-y British accent. What began in 1977 as more of a poetry reading and a punk band double booked at the same pub, became a phenomenon when the music got to like minds, such as influential British Radio DJ John Peel, who frequently took the opportunity to cite the Fall as his favorite band. LCD Soundsystem rips the Fall off gleefully as do Pavement. Enough dicksucking for one blog post, just listen to them and make sure you don't look up a recent picture of Mark E. Smith (ughhh- don't take speed!). Enjoy.
(Right Click and choose "Save as" or "Download Linked File" to download)
P.S. Good starting off points are the greatest hits collection 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong: 39 Golden Greats, and then move on to their classics Hex Enduction Hour and This Nation's Saving Grace.
The premise of a new batch of Memphis' Jay Reatard's songs is like Christmas morning for that crazy N64 kid for me. Fortunately, Jay's a prolific lil guy, churning out albums or singles collections at least once a year since the early 2000's. The Memphis product's proficiency at melodies and tunes is equal to his vitriolic punk guitar attack, resulting in a style similar to the early pop punk pioneers such as the Buzzcocks, Stiff Little Fingers, Descendants, The Ramones, The Damned, etc.
On his newest, Watch Me Fall, Jay and his band bring the heat as usual, yet temper it with great pop instincts and a good ear for melody. He juxtaposes his hurt lyrics with sunshine and bubblegum on "I'm Watching You," and the single "Wounded," while "It Ain't Gonna Save Me" and "Hang Them All" are more straightforward, propulsive rockers with anthemic choruses. The song that makes this album a considerable step forward to Jay is "There Is No Sun," which may as well have been produced by Phil Specter with it's beautiful wall of fuzzy sound and harmonic buildup and chamber of echo. That's the difference with this album, he now has songs that can rock stadiums as well as dingy clubs, so he has a ways to go before he peaks and thank god, the radio needs him.
Long out of print for whatever reason, Penelope Spheeris' look at the So-cal punk scene of the early 80's, The Decline Of Western Civilization, has been a bit of a white whale- until Youtube. Spheeris (who directed Wayne's World) has a knack for letting these kids rattle off and act natural, which makes it a disarming look into what music has been and should still be- raw, desperate, and dangerous. No band better exemplifies that aesthetic than the almighty X.
X marries punks aggression and romanticism with Chuck Berry/Bo Diddley riffage and rhythmic shuffle. Los Angeles, Wild Gift, and Under the Big Black Sun are all cold classics in rock and roll history, and- unlike most punk of the time- remain timeless. I could go off for days on their brilliance but I'll let the light and sound do it for me.
Seriously, buy or steal all these albums, they are front to back brilliance.
God DAMN this shit is dope! Definitely reminds me of Parliament/Funkadelic, Herbie Hancock and Sly Stone- all influences of Prince- but Prince avoids being derivative by spinning a prescient yarn about the rumors about him at the time concerning his sexual preference, his race, etc. The song was, indeed, controversial in it's day for using the Lord's prayer to remind people that good Christian folk are supposed to forgive the trespasses of others (this was condemned as blasphemous). The chicken-scratch, staccato guitar and fat funk rhythm help make this one of the best funk jams ever.
Love is one of the biggest hidden gems in the classic rock canon. Having always enjoyed a fair share of critical praise but never with the sales numbers to back it up, singer-songwriter Arthur Lee and crew played the music they felt and were disarmingly honest songwriters and among the heaviest in the 60's (definitely the heaviest in LA). Love got the short shrift in their day for the same reason the Kinks did with the Beatles and Stones, for being more oblique with the structure of songs and how they are sung/played/mixed/performed live, etc. They, like the Kinks, played songs that not everybody got but those who did we're blown away. The Doors and the Byrds are much more popular, historically, yet both those bands, plus the Stones and Hendrix all dug Love. Hendrix even tried to record an album with Lee.
Arthur Lee was an enigma, a black peace-and-love hippie, but one who should have been celebrated for having a mixed race rock band like Sly and the Family Stone were. He was too hard for most white people (basically the second hardest to Black Sabbath in the whole era, "7 and 7 is..." can be considered the first punk song) and too folky for most black people. He made the topic of race irrelevant, he only preached that we love one another (which was not the case with him and his band members who had drug fueled spats regularly before being disbanded and reformed several times). Lee curiously refused to play the Monterey Pop festival the year Hendrix burned his guitar, the Who smashed shit and Otis Redding owned like no other.
When I first heard Forever Changes, I had no expectations going in besides it being psychedelic and folky with an orchestra somewhere in the mix. "Alone Again Or" is one of their more famous songs and that's because people have heard so much about this album and it's the first song, or they saw Wes Anderson's feature debut Bottle Rocket, but suffice it to say it drew me into the bands sound.
In the liner notes to the CD there's an essay saying the album reflected every part of Los Angeles in the 60's with every culture represented equally, which I thought was awesome. I love music that transcends and relates to all of us and Love's songs hit you on every level.
Forever Changes is bottom-to-top, front-to-back brilliance, but it's the only one of theirs that is regarded as classic, which may be true but the others have songs that can hold their worth with anything out of the classic era whether it be the Beatles, Zeppelin, or fucks like Steely Dan and Foreigner and the largely worthless "second tier" of classic rock.
Love are different, they're one of my favorite rock bands ever up there with The Velvet Underground, The Ramones, The Rolling Stones, etc because they're not only great writers but great composers/arrangers. Their dynamics are best experienced live, as the newer live material that they performed right before Arthur Lee's death in 2006 is just as good a the album with totally different musicians- because the arrangements are all still cutting edge and unique, Lee's words still prescient. This is their concert in Glastonbury, with the fat crowd they deserve digging every minute of it.
Check out ALL this bands work, every album is packed full of amazing words and music, but definitely get Forever Changes, it may just blow your mind irrevocably like it has mine. Oh yeah, and this s one of those bands like X and Yes and Television that is hard to google, so look up the words "Love Forever Changes" in wherever you're looking.
Bonus video (cuz it's dope and check the drummer):
Dub reggae is a special thing to me. It's not a sub genre people recognize all that much, because it was always too psychedelic to get a huge following. If you've heard of it but still don't quite know what it is, it's best described as a fusion of roots reggae with technology that remixes it in such a way that the bass is the most important element in the mix. After it's invention in the early seventies, artists like Lee "Scratch" Perry and King Tubby, made all of their output dubbed out, and when they produced other artists (Perry produced Bob Marley and the Wailers and other luminaries) they made a normal version for the radio and a dub mix for a good stereo.
Dub reggae is generally trippier than roots reggae or the more popular reggae of the Bob Marley/Jimmy Cliff/Toots and the Maytals variety. It is even more weed derived than what is considered popular reggae and is more about rhythm (riddim) and even-metered funk. The bass and chanting vocals (usually processed with effects like echo or a wet mix), but what I really love about it is how locked in the drums are and how different artists deal with melody. Usually when there are lyrics involved, it's all about groovy guitar parts but artists such as Jackie Mittoo and Augustus Pablo use a lot of keyboard and even violin ("K.G.'s Half Way Tree" by Augustus Pablo and the Simplicity is a good example of this).
Anyway here is a short primer to dub reggae artists and my favorite albums.
1.) Lee "Scratch" Perry & the Upsetters- The "Godfather" of Dub, Perry got the technique down to a science of producing the elements of dub. He is also the genre's foremost artist because of it. Classics like Blackboard Jungle, Roast Fish Collie Weed and Corn Bread, and Super Ape are among the best albums in the whole pantheon of reggae, let alone dub. He was also a crazy, delusional motherfucker who was prone to odd, spiritual rambling and he burned down his own Black Arc studio, in a weird fit of paranoia. Don't let that scare you off, he is the genius all geniuses when it comes to the dub sound. He also produced classics such as Max Romero's War Inna Babylon, The Congo's Heart Of The Congos, and the classic Junior Murvin song "Police And Thieves" (covered more famously by The Clash). He is still around to this day, so go see him!!!!
2.) Burning Spear- A more politicized musician than the batshit insane Perry, Winston Rodney's obsessions were social politics. Praising the messages of black leaders such as Marcus Garvey and the messages of Rastafarian spirituality, Burning Spear had a rich, soulful sound in his music. For melody he uses more horns than Perry as well as keyboards. His songs have more variation and changes than Perry's rhythmic grooves. The classic of Burning Spears studio albums is definitely 1975's Marcus Garvey (or the more readily available reissue Harder Than The Best). Accompanied by backing band the Black Disciples, Rodney's politicized message ignited Jamaica just as Diego Rivera's murals ignited Mexico- by using history and spirituality to use as a unifying force for the people to fight against their oppression.
3.) King Tubby- Another aural scientist, King Tubby would be the man you'd say created dub, while Perry was the first to use it in popular music. King Tubby, aka Osborne Ruddock, worked as a radio repairman and diddled with lots of sound and speaker equipment. Fast forward a bit to the 1950's when there was social revolution in Jamaica and people moved out of the dancehall into the streets. Tubby was the man who fixed the speakers when they inevitably blew themselves out due to the fierce ghetto baster competition in the streets. He eventually opened his own speaker shop with huge rigs that could rock a party harder than anyone. The thing about good speakers is how much more they make you notice bass, and Ruddock took the idea and ran with it, and remixed songs until he arrived at the dub sound. He would cut up songs, strip vocals, away, fuck with the elements of the melodic parts and, of course, pump up the bass. This gave him a platform to start making and producing music of his own and people started wanting him to put his spin on their own records. As far as classic albums of all killer-no filler material, Tubby ain't got 'em (he was more a producer) but his compilations are ESSENTIAL. Dub Gone Crazy: The Evolution of Dub At King Tubby's 1975-1977 is amazing, as well as probably any of the other retrospectives.
4.) Augustus Pablo- A virtuoso keyboardist, Pablo instead popularized the Melodica, more known as a child's toy, in his music. The sound fit reggae perfectly, but Pablo's success was due more to his mastery of rhythmic variation married with awesome melodic overtones. He went on to produce and record a score of good shit, but he doesn't have quite the backstory as the other dub gods I chose. He merely made some of the best music reggae has to offer before suffering from a nerve disorder which finally proved too much for him and died in 1999. He left behind a seminal body of work, however, highlighted by the 1978, Lee Perry produced, East Of The River Nile.
Willie Williams- MP3- "Armagideon Time", Scientist, Jackie Mittoo- MP3- "Ghetto Organ", Mad Professor, Dub Syndicate, Twilight Circus Dub Sound System, The Skatalites, Alton Ellis, Etc.
Dub influenced hip hop in a huge way sonically, and it's only fitting that Madlib would return the favor with a mix called Blunted In The Bomb Shelter. It's an awesome crash course in dub reggae and it spans the whole Trojan records collection and features all these artists and more on it.
"Jesus was a sailor when he walked along the water
(To Download or Play, Left Click and Follow Instructions)
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