As a young lad I tended to operate within defined guard rails. I know you might find that hard to believe listening to the exquisitely well-rounded middle-aged version, but it’s true. Just released and uncommercial? Immediately interested. Four white boys playing bass, guitar, drums with one on vocals who might also play the guitar, a good start. Keyboards were maybe OK in the right hands. Brass was immediately suspect and saxophones were right out.
(Could I just stress at this point that my tastes have broadened considerably over the last forty years, with the broad exceptions of thrash metal, opera and opportunistic formula. You’re meant to narrow your horizons as time goes on but I’ve found the opposite to be true. I can now handle cauliflower if it’s smothered in cheese, though sprouts are still a struggle).
So when John Peel played Lee Perry or Augustus Pablo, I didn’t hate their music but I invested little interest. Others paid much more attention – Peel used to get hate mail, even death threats, when he started playing reggae. You’d like to think the world has moved on but, to quote Paul McCartney on Silly Love Songs, “I look around me and I see it isn’t so. Oh no.”. (Were those last two words a little dig at Yoko there? Probably not).
I wonder what was wrong with my ears. Dub, emerging as a reggae sub-genre in the early ‘70s sounds fresh, brooding and timelessly magnificent now. Take a listen to the Sex Pistols album, then consider how much more intriguing and diverse Johnny Rotten’s next project, PIL, with Jah Wobble on dub bass, turned out. Dub’s influenced hip hop, trip hop, electronica and inveigled itself into the grand old lady of rock’n’roll.
But one of its first influences was on those white boys with their guitars back in the late ‘70s. One track we didn’t have room for on this episode was 5.45 by The Gang of Four. Listen to that mellotron at the start – a direct borrow from Augustus Pablo, as Andy Gill was only too happy to acknowledge. He described dub music as the most innovative music of that time. And though I can’t play The Fall on every show, more’s the pity, listener David Hughes has reminded me of their great dub track, Tempo House, off Perverted by Language.
But symbolically as well, dub is important. It’s a common language that helped dissolve borders and alert the world to what Jamaican music was all about. I hope you feel equally stirred by this episode.
Tracklist:
Black panta, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry
Armagideon time, The Clash
Michael Talbot Affair, Keith Hudson
Searching for Mr Right, Young Marble Giants
All night party, A Certain Ratio
Spying glass, Horace Andy
Graveyard, PIL
Cool, Pylon
Zion gate dub, King Tubby and the Aggrovators
Launderette, Vivien Goldman
Claps like thunder, Jah Shaka and The Mad Professor
The eternal, Joy Division
Lichtenstein painting, Television Personalities