Roots Archives Forum

Lee Perry was certainly a genius and his sound is one of the best around. But you would be wrong to right off the work of many other 1970s producers and arrangers. The point about the 60s being the foundation is obvious. Especially when you see how many times Jackie Mittoo's name appears on 1970s music - and he wasn't just playing the ivories, he was arranging and influencing the direction fo the music.

But before we discount the 70s as a mere follow on, remember King Tubby...

Where would we be without Blackwell, who knows? Where would we be without Studio One? Who knows. It's tempting to argue that if Dodd and Studio One hadn't done it, someone else would have. And if Blackwell hadn't done his bit in his way, someone else would have done. But it's all pure speculation and we can never be sure of anything.

The Studio One dubs are, as Oras points out, well worth finding. They have a unique flavour that is very much to my taste. But then I can just as easily get off on an early 80s Scientists tune. Or just about anything by King Tubby.

As for fruits, the UK has the perfect climate for the production of apples (countless thousand varieties!), pears, plums, cherries, damsons, greengages, gooseberries, strawberries, blackberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants, raspberries - and many more that you'd have to ask the old people to name. And yes, the Tomato grows easily here, even in my northern garden without glass, no problem.

Sadly, no one wants to eat them any more as they are all addicted to animal flesh and heavily processed Babylon food.

I am a little surprised at your lack of understanding here Oras, as you are obviously an intelligent and educated man. We don't live in the Arctic circle here in the UK and many UK people are really very decent folk indeed. Just like in the USA (and Africa!), you shouldn't judge a population by the lack of quality shown by their leaders.

hi oras, gotta agree with you about lee perry/black ark. absolute genius at work. re blackwells involvment with the wailers, what do people think of the second wailers LP 'burnin'. theres no added mix on this, and i think bunny wailers vocals on hallelujah time are up there with anything the wailers recorded. also its strange that bunny, having left the wailers, still managed to strike a deal with island for his solo work. how could blackwell market him if he refused to leave J.A.....
on another point, virgin must have seen the success island was having with reggae, and got on the bandwagon too.how do people rate the virgin releases? to me they are top notch. then again johnny rotten of the sex pistols, a keen reggae fan, handpicked the artists, from what i've read. good choices too

ital kemar

Like many labels that released lots of stuff, there's a load of good stuff on Virgin and some not so good.

Burnin' is a brilliant LP and I've always loved Bunny's vocals on 'hallelujah time'.

The way Blackwell marketed Bunny after he had refused to leave JA was obviously by piggy-backing his onto the Marley bandwagon. Bunny's records were always placed close to Bob's in the record stores back in the day. Helped of course by the similarity in alphabetical ordering that Bunny Wailer or Bob marley and the Wailers would produce! But even on promo displays, I remember seeing Bunny's records next to Bob's on the walls of my local record store in the late 70s.

Now what was this thread about?
Pizza?
Actually the thick base pizza is so called Chicago style or 'deep dish'. Not to my taste at all.
Here in NY it is all thin crust. Some good, some bad, some excellent. Both the best and worst Pizza I ever had was actually in Italy - they're well capable of cocking their own recipes! All that said I hardly ever eat the stuff.

Which dovetails nicely with the fact that the whole Blackwell debate seems irrelevant to me.
If you don't like the stuff Island released, don't eat it! I mean don't listen to it. I don't.
While Island was in the process of creating an internationally palatable rock/pop star in the form of Bob Marley countless Jamaican producers, singers, musicians were releasing truckloads of phenomenally good music. The music Bob Marley and the Wailers were releasing to an international audience in the late seventies was not a contender in the vibrant scene that was dominated by Gregory, DEB, I-Roy, Trinity, Dillinger etc. etc. etc. - they weren't playing the Wailers at the dances.

I have read and heard the opinion which I accept as fact that while Bob has been accepted as an icon, an heroic figure to many Jamaicans - few Jamaicans then or now actually listen to the music. He certainly had a cultural impact but not much of a musical influence or impact - other than to show that there just might be an international market for this music.

Jamaican music then went on to change in the ways that it did throughout the 80s up to the present day for many reasons, social, economic, technical and no one figure can either be applauded or blamed for the many rapid developments that took place.

I'd be more pissed off at the guy for foisting bloody U2 on the world - gack!

With regard to the Classic Albums: Catch A Fire.
Very interesting to watch, but a bit saddening. Because to my ears the masters without the over dubs just sound better. But it is really cool to see video of rehearsals of the tracks from the time at (I think) Harry J's.
A piece of history with some really important players, with an outcome that appealed to people who didn't really like reggae!
In fairness to Blackwell, in this video I think he is being genuinely frank and open and stoically accepts the criticisms that have been leveled at him over the years.

lol pizza? haha

Blackwell do what??? delivery???

ACEtone wrote: Which dovetails nicely with the fact that the whole Blackwell debate seems irrelevant to me.

maybe you missed some important point...

ACEtone wrote:Bob certainly had a cultural impact but not much of a musical influence or impact - other than to show that there just might be an international market for this music.

the whole debate here is not about bob's influence but blackwell's one...

ACEtone wrote:Jamaican music then went on to change in the ways that it did throughout the 80s up to the present day for many reasons, social, economic, technical and no one figure can either be applauded or blamed for the many rapid developments that took place.

you probably underrate blackwell's influence because many of social and economic changes in jamaican music happened because of him.
the dream to become rich thru reggae never existed before blackwell put marley on the international market.

oras wrote: the dream to become rich thru reggae never existed before blackwell put marley on the international market.

Mostly sensible and accurate comments Oras. But the above statement doesn't seem right somehow. I wasn't there, so I don't know, but wasn't the dream of international stardom already in JA long before Marley got big with Blackwell's direction? I know the earlier 'world famous' reggae artists weren't nearly as big as Marley but Desmond Dekker was very well known in the UK even as far back as the late 60s, wasn't he? And what about Johnny Nash with 'I can see clearly'. And is it not apparent that 'watering down' the ital stew was happening long before Blackwell/Marley in an attempt to achieve exactly the same result as Blackwell did achieve, get the JA music outernational, not just to the JA ghettos in a foreign, but into the 'white' marklet.

The same thing happened to just about every type of music that came out of cultural enclaves that were not part of the '(white) western music economy' - such as soul music with the influence of Motown. Many soul music 'purists' were horrified at the candy coated offerings of this label. And yet the Motown label did exactly what Marley and Blackwell did, they took the formula and 'niced it up' a bit and sold it by the truckload.

Before we judge all this commercial approach to our precious musical fancies we need to ask ourselves this:

If faced with more poverty and no future unless we 'white' up our tunes a bit, who wouldn't sell out?

I think those who claim they wouldn't aren't genuinely poor or they are genuinely detached from human endeavour and really indifferent to their own personal suffering. These people are generally called 'Saints'.

leggo rocker wrote: I wasn't there, so I don't know, but wasn't the dream of international stardom already in JA long before Marley got big with Blackwell's direction? I know the earlier 'world famous' reggae artists weren't nearly as big as Marley but Desmond Dekker was very well known in the UK even as far back as the late 60s, wasn't he? And what about Johnny Nash with 'I can see clearly'.

being famous doesn't mean you got paid a lot of money. desmond dekker got a percentage of the records he sold in the uk? by that time jamaican singers got paid for recording a track and there were no royalties planned at all.
desmond dekker, millie small and others were good example for some renegade to understand how to make easy money... you buy other's work for 1 $ to sell it to another one for 10 (distribution, copyright owners etc).

leggo rocker wrote:Before we judge all this commercial approach to our precious musical fancies we need to ask ourselves this:
If faced with more poverty and no future unless we 'white' up our tunes a bit, who wouldn't sell out?

make money with your work is one thing, making money with others' work is another... I mean... how could blackwell deserved that much money? he just exploited jamaican music and people

leggo rocker wrote:I think those who claim they wouldn't aren't genuinely poor or they are genuinely detached from human endeavour and really indifferent to their own personal suffering.

blackwell turned the jamaican music into a national lottery where a few people could get very rich and the other ones were just dying of jealousy. he corrupted what was a genuine job into a greedy rat race.