Gregory Isaacs & Roots Radics

[flashman]

Well, I play drums, but I wouldn't volunteer to play reggae drums anytime soon; simple as they sound sometimes, it is NOT easy to sound good playing reggae drums, and so many amazing precedents have been set, I would be timid to throw my hat into that ring. The patterns might be simple to play, but it is easy to sound quite shitty playing them.
I can't think of any reggae drummers that don't blow me away. I think Carly Barrett's funkiness, the ease with which he throws in these creative fills that are like a conversation between rim and kick, are really unique and brilliant, so I'm often blown away by him. I also really like Fish Clarke, who I think had a creative style and great sound.
AS for Style vs. Santa, I'd say that Style often seems a bit straightforward, and, yeah, take an album like Wailing Souls Inchpinchers, where he begins nearly every song with the exact same fill, and he can get a bit boring.
But for me, one of the hardest things to do is to pull off that stripped down, but extremely tight and consistent type of playing. I personally find that fills and variations actually free you up and help keep you on time. The more simple and repetitive you play, the more difficult, for me at least. You hear these speed metal drummers who just go off on their kit and do a million fills at top speed, but, to me, that is way easier. Ask one of these guys to play a solid and simple one drop, and I bet they sound terrible. The other aspect of this, is if you are playing that way your drums and cymbals have to sound amazing; be tuned well, etc. There is so much nuance in the way you hit your drums and cymbals that contribute to how they sound. So, it's more than just the pattern you play, it's your touch on the skins and hi hat and your 'swing' (which is hard to explain) that contributes to how you sound. And when you are so stripped down and naked like the radics often were, your every touch is under the microscope, so to speak. Which makes it all the more impressive to me.

So, Style's metronomic consistency is impressive to me; and the way he sometimes plays these perfect 16th notes on the high hat over a slow and simple kick/snare pattern (he didn't do it often, but I'm thinking of this one Dub Syndicate song in particular, but can't remember what it's called).

But, really, degree of difficulty isn't much of a determinant of what we like to listen to, is it? I'm just saying that Style impresses me with that. But I get bored with it, too.

I don't feel like I have a good sense of Santa's style for some reason. I always associate him with the 'flying' cymbals, but that's it. I want to listen to the tracks you mentioned, Dave, and see what I think of him compared to Style. I have a feeling his style changed a bit between the Bunny Lee years and the Radics years?

[Dave K]

*I don't feel like I have a good sense of Santa's style for some reason. I always associate him with the 'flying' cymbals, but that's it. I want to listen to the tracks you mentioned, Dave, and see what I think of him compared to Style. I have a feeling his style changed a bit between the Bunny Lee years and the Radics years?*

Thanks for the thoughtful post.

Flying cymbals was really just for a time. A good indication are the releases on Freedom Sounds, including the dub LPs that Blood & Fire put out for them. He is pretty versatile, and perhaps not as readily identifiable as Sly or Style. Of course any tapes of live Tosh shows from that era feature him as well.

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.

[vtov]

Brent Dowe - What Love Can Do
http://www.roots-archives.com/release/4703

The first track, "Don't Lose Your Soul" is an absolute head-turner. (I have no idea why we have it in Roots Archive labelled as "Dance Hall"....who decides these things? It's not dancehall in the least).

Probably following the classifications from the Rough Guide, which has 80s pre-digital stuff under Dancehall and Buju, Capleton etc. under Ragga. (These make sense in some ways but weren't widely adopted. So a bit more confusion arises when meeting a recent reggae convert using these terms - respects to them, you can tell they've devoured the Rough Guide.)

[DonBanyan]

oops didn't realise there was a 2nd page.

I did the exact same thing.

DB

[flashman]

I don't think Junjo had much to do with the musical production (and even less with mixing) more like an executive production.
In my experience, 90% of the what we hear on records is the musicians and the engineers. That's another story...
( some exceptions of course: Lee Perry, Augustus Pablo,Sly & Robbie, etc... they are real producers)

Yeah, I agree it wasn't necessarily Junjo, more like Scientist and/or the engineers and techs. I know this sort of clashes with what I said earlier, but, I used to think that awesome early dancehall channel one sound was down to the Radics. But have you ever listened to them on record post-Scientist era? Like Gregory Isaacs' Dancing Floor, Little John's Boombastic, or Roots Radics' Hot We Hot? They sound pretty damn weak by comparison, to be frank.
Which leads me to think the studio, tuning, mic-ing, engineering, mixing, mastering, etc. was a huge part of their sound.

[informer]

Inyaki wrote :I don't think Junjo had much to do with the musical production (and even less with mixing) more like an executive production.
In my experience, 90% of the what we hear on records is the musicians and the engineers. That's another story...
( some exceptions of course: Lee Perry, Augustus Pablo,Sly & Robbie, etc... they are real producers)

Yeah, I agree it wasn't necessarily Junjo, more like Scientist and/or the engineers and techs. I know this sort of clashes with what I said earlier, but, I used to think that awesome early dancehall channel one sound was down to the Radics. But have you ever listened to them on record post-Scientist era? Like Gregory Isaacs' Dancing Floor, Little John's Boombastic, or Roots Radics' Hot We Hot? They sound pretty damn weak by comparison, to be frank.
Which leads me to think the studio, tuning, mic-ing, engineering, mixing, mastering, etc. was a huge part of their sound.

that's definetely true. i really rate the freedom sounds dubs on b&f and the first scientist dub albums on greensleeves, but later on radics get booooooooooooring imho. too monotonous for me.

[flashman]

I also think the stripped down super heavy radics sound had to do with the rise in popularity of DJs. DJ's were taking over around then, weren't they? and that sound was the perfect backing to let the DJ take center stage.

[jb welda]

when that "mixdown" sound became popular, the whole thing went to crap.

but radics backing singers in person was often a different matter. i never found them "boring" though they had better nights some than others. i think it was that bingi bunny, basically their musical director and the one who always *cared* how they sounded, was not feeling well some nights and the band could sort of just drop back to bare bones backing. but when they were doing lively music, like israel vibration, they rarely were boring to my ears. now backing some djs yeah, but i put that down to doing that mixdown style with the (now i would call them boring) djs over the top. radics even looked bored on stage during those sort of things. much of that was with santa on drums.

but for sure some of it was production values and scientist could mix them well...their solo albums never came up to my expectations at least. had their high points but really they were a backing band. that said, both bingi bunny and dwight pickney had very good voices, they just had not much inspiring material on their own.

dwight pinkney wrote "how could i leave" just for one example of excellent songs in their catalogue but too often on their own albums their singing material was not up to par.

boombastic and dancing floor were just plain weak albums; i dont call that radics fault, there just wasnt decent material there for the most part.

one love
jah bill

[flashman]

They were just plain weak albums, but despite the lack of good tunes, it is the musical production that I was mainly focussing on. I mean, if those same songs had been done at Channel One in, I don't know, 1982? they would have sounded much better, just in terms of the 'sound'. The drums are mixed low and very plainly EQd and mixed, for example. Even a great drummer sounds just ok if there is no production quality. When I was younger I used think the 'sound' of Style's drums was mostly him; now I think it was a lot to do with the production. That's what I mean.

[jb welda]

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 love
jah bill