Posts tagged Jamaica

Ken Boothe - Down By The River

While it doesn’t have its own parade, its members are legion and its influence pervasive. Yep, like it or not, misogyny is an alternative lifestyle all of its own. We here at the ol’ Deadly Deaths Underwater Megaplex don’t subscribe to this worldview personally, mind you - women are to be cherished, to be thanked for their delicious sandwiches, to have their hair surreptitiously sniffed in the elevator, names written and encircled in hearts on the outside of Trapper Keepers. Women Appreciatin’ is central to our platform, as you’re likely aware if you’ve read the pamphlets we’ve been pamphleteering with.

So with that proviso, I humbly submit for your Saturday afternoon consideration, a jaunty little roots reggae number about shooting your old lady. In or around the face, possibly. With a gun. In close proximity to a tributary.

Originally performed by everybody’s favorite disheveled smelly uncle Neil Young, who apparently wrote it while feverish in bed, ‘Down By The River’ is one of many takes on the age old trope of a guy killing a girl due to infidelity. Oh, those mischievous, XX-chromosome havin’, cheatin’ wimmins!  Studio One stalwart Ken “Mr. Rocksteady” Boothe made quite a career of reggae-fying popular tracks by other musicians, and turns in a fuzzed-out version of this classic, which kinda rules if you ask me. Great music to fly into a jealous rage and make life-altering mistakes to.

Boothe pictured shortly before shooting his baby.

Gregory Isaacs - Front Door

Earlier this year, reggae legend and possessor of the best nickname ever, Gregory “The Cool Ruler” Isaacs passed away, and it’s only now that I can write about it without tearing up, and definitely not that I just didn’t get around to posting one of his many amazing songs. Throughout his multi-decade career, Gregory Isaacs dropped more gems than a jeweler with Parkinson’s. In true DD:LD fashion though, he wasn’t just a prolific and relatively unsung reggae hero, he was also a world-class badass, possessing both well-documented ‘struggles’ with cocaine and crack, and a penchant for illegal firearms, which all told netted him a toothless mouth and 27 arrests, and contributed to his early passing at 49 this October. Don’t take this the wrong way, Jamaica, but to be a notable drug user in Kingston is like being the smelliest guy in Brooklyn. It’s an award nobody wants, but is impressive nonetheless. Jamaica is often portrayed as a sort of seemingly idyllic paradise with an inescapable, menacing undercurrent of violence where illicit substances are ubiquitous. That’s because it is. It rules there, you should check it out.

‘Front Door’, from 1981’s ‘More Gregory’ is Gregory’s take on the musical monomyth of the unpleasant breakup. It’s a story close to my heart; packing everything you own into a shopping bag and moving out of your old lady’s house because your relationship sucks, and maybe settling for the next thing that crosses your path rather than being lonely. Now that’s what I call romance! So much of what made the music of Gregory Isaacs notable is here on display in this classic - almost uncomfortably lascivious moaning, a dozy, dawdling backbeat, awesome little synthy burbles, and the dulcet tones of the Lonely Lover, Mr. Gregory Isaacs.

I’m not trying to suggest that I’m more fabulous than you (I am, check out this scarf!), but I’ve been to Jamaica a few times and one thing that always strikes me is the ratio of their creative output to their size. They’re to music what Sweden is to cellphones. There are dozens of bonafide international stars that call this relatively tiny island home, and just driving down the road you’ll see sign after sign for small events featuring talent like John Holt, Marcia Griffiths, etc. It was at one of these small shows that I was lucky enough to see Gregory Isaacs in 2009. I couldn’t feel my face at the time but he really kicked my lilly-white ass. True story: I was sitting having lunch in Negril the next day and Gregory Isaacs walked in with the largest Jamaican I have ever seen and sat down. I nearly shit my pants, but that was really more a factor of my diet at the time. I was excited too, though.

Gregory Isaacs, The Amish Statesman of Reggae

Ken Boothe - Strait of Gibraltar

Through the magical collaborative powers of the intertubes, I was put onto ol’ K.B. by some kind visitors to this very site, and I am better for it. Jamaica’s Ken Boothe made his name singing for Coxsone Dodd’s ‘Studio One’ label, releasing a seminal recording of the rocksteady era, ‘Mr. Rocksteady’ at the tender age of 17. Comparisons between Ken Boothe and Otis Redding as well as Wilson Pickett abound - and on few tracks of his are they more justified than on this one, ‘Strait of Gibraltar’, which appears on 1968’s ‘More of Ken Boothe’. I’m pretty counfounded, and I’m sure I’m not the first to feel so, at the sheer volume of quality output Jamaica produced in the 1960’s and 70’s. Something about the right combination of herb, sunshine, ocean and poverty made for some pretty incredible, landmark pieces of music (even if in Ken’s case, a lot of them were killer cover versions of American soul jamzzz) from a relatively small chunk of the world. I’m going to keep tinkering with the ingredients in this recipe until I get it right. Were there Rice Krispie squares in 60’s Jamaica? Hey did you just hear my phone ringing?

King Stitt - Lee Van Cleef

The warmer it gets the less I can help myself from dropping summer sounds from the tropics, and truly, what better for a sunny Friday than some rootsy-rootsy from King Stitt?  King Stitt is a soundsystem originator and according to Wikipedia, the oldest living deejay of that scene. The evolution of Jamaican soundsystem culture makes for a really interesting read and is a bit lengthy to go into here, but while cooped up in your pinstripe prison, I highly recommend you read a bit about its history here.

Stitt was born with a fairly grotesque facial deformity, which he ultimately turned to his advantage, styling himself as ‘The Ugly One’ after Lee Van Cleef’s character in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (once again, all roads lead to spaghetti westerns) and using his unique appearance to gain notoriety in the burgeoning Jamaican music scene in the late 50’s and into the early 60’s. Initially working as one of the “Big Three” deejays for Coxsone Dodd, Stitt was around for the genesis of the rocksteady and ska sounds that Coxsone’s Studio One pioneered, yet little recorded evidence of Stitt’s sizable influence exists today. Today’s song ‘Lee Van Cleef’, named after the famous Western actor, was among his first recordings, released as a single on New Beat in 1969. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to head to the big gun down and pop a Red Stripe. Brrap!

King Stitt (left) and Prince Buster

The Upsetters - Clint Eastwood

The descriptively and excitingly named ‘Songs Named After Actors Week’ continues here at DD:LD Inc. with this gem from Lee Perry’s house band, The Upsetters. It’s easy to forget sometimes amidst all the America-bashing that’s been so fashionable for the last ten years or so how influential some of America’s cultural output has been, and there are few better examples of this than The Western. The Western has inspired inummerable subgenres, splinter cells and knockoffs, from the spaghetti westerns of the 1960’s to Japan’s space-western ‘Cowboy Bebop’, and historians could be forgiven if they came to the conclusion that America’s cultural legacy was storytelling involving guns, leather and chewing tobacco.

One interesting example of cross-cultural broken telephone is the 1970’s Jamaican obsession with 1960’s Italian-produced Westerns that reworked and improved upon the 1930’s-50’s Westerns originally made by Americans. Guhhhh?

A few examples: Pre-Upsetters Gladdy’s All-Stars and their ‘Return of Django’, a reggae instrumental paying tribute to the 1966 Sergio Corbucci film (the theme from which we featured here a few months back), Johnny Lover & The Destroyer’s ‘Franco Nero’, a tribute to the lead actor in ‘Django’, even deejay Robert Brammer who took it one step further and performed as Clint Eastwood. In summary, Jamaicans liked Italian-made films about the early American frontier. ‘Clint Eastwood’, yet another example of the bro-mance between Jamrock and Jamerica, appeared on The Upsetters’ 1970 album of the same name, and as both your selecta and soundboy I hereby command you to wheel it!

Jamaica meets America: Artist’s Conception