jb welda wrote:well he gets pretty good "sound" out of dub syndicate and aside from one LP scientist has nothing to do with that.
but then theres adrian sherwood who (many may disagree) has a great ear for a crucial mix himself, and even styles self produced records sound pretty good.
those you mentioned though, definately lower quality material and like you say the production is definately nothing to write home about, very lackluster, as is the engineering. i dont think ive played either of those releases once since i originally heard them and i believe ive brought in little johns album to radio shows but then found nothing worthy of play on it!
one (maybe) final note: those two live in the studio charlie chaplin/roots radic albums that ras released, two sides of charlie chaplin and take two, were two exceptions to what i said about "mixdown" being the death of radics. both used that style extensively (one record had a lot of "the sting" riddim to it and the other was more varied) but it sounded really great to my ears for some reason. in fact, and this is blasphemy to me in some ways, i liked those two sets as much or more than anything else radics did, especially in that later time period. i forget who mixed and engineered those two, but i would guess it was jim fox and somehow it really captured the best of the "mixdown" radics sound to great effect and charlie chaplins at his best on them too.
anyway thats a far digression from the original topic...
Dave K wrote:
The author of so many reggae drum patterns. one that immediately comes to mind is "Stalag", which was Santa and Fully Fullwood as the riddim section. He said in a recent interview that he was trying to recreate the nyambinghi pattern You hear that pattern so often in Hip-hop now, it's a shame that you can't copyright drum patterns. He'd be a rich man by now.
That right there is enough for me. Whoever came up with Stalag is genius.
Santa and Fully groove like hell!
Interesting cause is actually a very unsual drum pattern in JA music: is more funk than reggae, is like one of those early James Brown around 65 where the rimshot is used more than the snare (I think that funkyness is what makes it so popular with the HipHop audience.)....also that double kick is kind of burru syle too ( my jamaican drummer reckons the rimshot syncopation is like bossa!)
I'm Like way late with my response to this topic but i just had to chime in. Although i love Santa Davis, I prefer the Radics era with "Ratterdam" on it. For years, "Style Scott" has been under appreciated because he played a basic drum pattern in most occasion but i tell you that man can drum. Dub Syndicate live sessions can validate that.
For all who saw Gregory & The Radics in the early 80's are lucky as hell. Music like that will never come again. I have only like 3 live sessions with them from 79 to 84
Live In Connecticut, 1979
Live @ The Roxy, August 1982- One Murderous Concert
Live In Brixton, 1984- Alot of people have heard this.
I wanted to know if there were any more from that era that were record
that reggae greats gregory isaacs live lp with radics is a killer as are the live israel vibration releases on RAS again with radics as the backing band (though to tell the truth im pretty tired of israel vibration but at least radics is on point). the gregory isaacs live at brixton academy vols 1 & 2 (i think rough trade and/or kingdom put them out back in the 80s) are ok but to my ear the island release is much better.
whats REALLY great is to watch the ja sunsplash video from who knows when with radics backing bunny wailers doing camouflage and two other songs (i forget the other titles). now thats a killer. these three tracks came on a compilation sunsplash vhs and i dont know if it was ever reissued on dvd. but beware there is at least one other bunny wailers sunsplash performance that is pretty weak.
