I've been teaching myself rudimentary audio manipulation recently, both for school purposes as well as entertainment. I've always enjoyed making mixtapes and such, but perhaps due to the talent and prodigious output of my roommate DJ Jewels, I never did get around to learning the ropes in college.

Well, I got super-obsessed with Audacity and made a genre-bending mix that was really fun, subsequently lost all my data in an program crash, and painstakingly re-mixed it for the beginning of the school year. I felt like I learned so much, but after listening to those songs a million times each, I needed to start something else pretty quickly. Right about the time we went to Sedona, I started pulling together this epic, three-suite mix that was to start with a sample from David Axelrod's The Human Abstract, that would reappear throughout the mix as segues. Suite II was to be called A Change of Heart, and would feature female vocalists in a variety of genres, but primarily uptempo. The third movement was to be a hip hop mix based around DJ Shadow's Midnight in a Perfect World, which samples the lonesome piano chords from Axelrod.

Basically, they all blew way out of proportion.

Suite I is languishing. At 36 minutes, it has run out of creative steam and I don't know what to do with it.

Suite III is still being worked on, but it's pretty well done. Clocking in at 79:20, this is a CD-R away from a good road trip. But it's not as carefully put together as...

Suite II has been re-named to Femmes fatale and teased out to feature length. Again, around 79 minutes of music, for those who still quaintly like to burn their music to CD. Perhaps more of a creative constraint than anything.

Listen up:
Femmes fatale by Bret Sikkink

The lynchpin of the mix is a track called "A Change of Heart" by El Perro del Mar, and a Rakamonie remix that appears halfway through. We detour through the off-key warbling of Nite Jewel, the droning sludge of Fever Ray, and back through the looped sampling of Star Slinger before a quick trip to the dubstep of Bristol, England. The mix finishes with a series of modern rock favorites.

The mix is hosted by Soundcloud, a really cool music sharing website which allows for timed comments. The tracklisting is posted via timed comment, with the song's artist and title at approximately the point that it starts within the mix. Enjoy.

Supplemental materials:

David Axelrod's The Human Abstract


DJ Shadow's Midnight in a Perfect World

I've been remiss in not posting before about my autistic (Excuse me, Tyler Cowen. Neurodiverse.) obsession with maps, charts, and graphs. I've been playing a couple of fascinating geography games of late, that I discovered a while ago. Every so often I get the jones for Sporcle.com, an HTTP-heavy site that let's user upload their own quizzes. Correct answers typed into a Google-like answer bar are entered into the table or onto the map in their spot. Here are the results from my "Nations of the World" quiz (I had previously done Africa and Asia by themselves).

I got something like 145 of 185 nations in 15 minutes. Here is the last column of the "most missed" page:

I also have been going through an old Google Bookmarks page that I don't use anymore. (I use a combination of Instapaper and Evernote for short-term and long-term site or article storage now.) A good one I re-found is called BibliOdyssey: Peep this chart of the respective lengths and heights of long rivers and tall mountains.


Then there's Atlas Obscura, which bills itself as a compendium of the world's wonders, exotica, and curiosities. The format isn't to my liking: too much mouse-clicking. Still, it's interesting, as this screen shot shows. I wish there were more information about each place, but I guess this could be considered the Twitter version of National Geographic.

Per special request from Derek, asking about accessible "world" music.

Posting the whole mix is a bit lazy, but school starts on Monday and this summer has been a bit hectic to say the least.

"World" music is a hard axe to grind, but I just compiled some easy-listening jams from around the globe. Very accessible for the most part. Sometimes, I just wanted to include an artist (e.g., David Byrne) for their contribution to worldbeat styles.

Others, such as Paul Simon's Graceland album, I simply don't have in a digital format handy.

Here goes the download. As always, check the tracklisting in the picture.

Sorry for the sheisty photograph, but I couldn't really find much in the way of Creative Commons licenses for this specific pose.

Miss Bee taught her first yoga class on Friday!

It was great - there were six students, and pretty much everyone knew what they were doing. She planned her series of poses in the afternoon right before class, and I made the 80 minute mix of songs she was going to play. I think both of us were very happy with our contributions!

My favorite moment of the class was a transition that Miss Bee was very proud of. It was right in the middle of the class, and we had made our way back to Downward Facing Dog (there's a lot of that in Ashtanga). Then we did something called a Half Wild Thing, which means that we took one foot off the ground in Down Dog and twisted round. Then we took that foot and brought it all the way forward into Pigeon pose, seen in the picture. As we were doing that, a DJ Shadow song was playing called "Midnight in a Perfect World". I was so proud of Miss Bee's transition and happy at how my song seemed to be working with the class!

Listen to an extended mix of "Midnight". Highly recommended for yogic activity!


She got compliments and an ovation from everyone in the class when she was done, and one of the students who is also in the yoga teaching training asked for a copy of the mix!

Click here to download "Yogurt".
Tracklisting:

Member of the illustrious Tribe Called Quest, Q-Tip has had an extraordinary career for someone who's stage name is so poor.

For this song, he's enlisted A-list producer Mark Ronson for the beat. This is supposedly off some sort of new album called The Renaissance. Look for that in November. Meanwhile, this single is really good.

Ronson flipped the sample from an old Black Ivory tune called "You and I". Listen to the oldie before proceeding to the goodie.

Black Ivory: "You and I"


Q-Tip (featuring Kamal the Abstract? I can't tell.): "Gettin' Up"

...is very rewarding. There're just not that many free things in the world.

Here's the branch we go to. I saw a little dude from Miss Bee's old class (!) there today with his family. We looked at science movies together.

School, for those who wonder, is going very well. Mr. S. seems to be getting a little better each week. I'm starting to hit science on all cylinders, since it's pretty easy to interest kids in simple science projects. So far we've had "Movie Fridays" each week, which seems pretty trashy to me, but I've showed a related-to-our-Science-Topic video every time except when we watched the 45 min. Sideways Stories from Wayside School movie.

Any further work-related questions will have to be submitted in writing.



On the lifestyle side, Miss Bee is now attending yoga teacher training courses, for those who don't know. This means that twice a week Mr. S. is sitting alone in the apartment for several hours. So far I've done a little work, watched a lot of Twin Peaks, and gone to the gym while she's away.

So that's life. I'd love to tell more, but I don't want to ruin any good stories I might have to tell in person. Cheerio!

P.S., I picked up World Psychedelic Classics, Vol. 3: Fuzzy Sounds from West Africa on hold at the library, and on impulse I snatched the Criterion Collection DVD of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. The gym might have to wait tonight...

New album out by the original g's, Mssrs. Brian Eno and David Byrne. This track is a free download, available at their website here. I like the song a lot, I'm sure the album will be nothing but the best. Catch up to date.

So my idea of focusing posts in long form on one musical artist really fell by the wayside. I am also spending far too much time working on these long posts with entire mixes, complete with all the uploads, etc. It's taking up a lot of my online storage resources as well. So I'm going to transition to shorter mixes, mix up the format a bit etc. But I'll try to keep the Pickle mixes coming as well.

This week we venture over to Africa, specifically Nigeria. I wrote once before in a long post about Fela Kuti, check that post out for some more recommended sites and a few downloads. I believe all the music links still work. I spoke a bit about Afro beat there, so I won't get too windy again, but he pioneered and popularized the genre, fusing jazz, R & B/funk, and African rhythms into one heavy style. Today we got what I like to call "Afro-Pick: Pickle's Afro-beat Favorites".

I'm going to pull a shocker and start the mix with a Fela tune. This one's appropriately titled "Let's Start" and features rock drummer Ginger Baker (of Cream fame). Live in 1970:




Up next is King Sunny Ade. While not an Afro beat musician, he was the face of juju music, a direct precursor to Afro beat, along with Nigerian highlife music, which we'll cover a bit of.

Check this instrumental from King Sunny Ade: Ja Fun Mi




Track 3 is again not Afro beat, but a contemporary and another major player in African pop music, mbalax in this case. Mbalax was a Senegalese creation, very similar in style to Highlife, but I could find a picture of Youssou N'Dour. Just know that highlife is quite similar, if not usually this insistent. Neither is mbalax, I chose a very Afro beat-y jam to showcase.

Ndakaru, by Youssou N'Dour






There is an absolute ton of information available about Fela and his legacy. Please check out some of the sites I posted in my original post (link available at the top of this post). Also, a favorite blog, Diddy Wah, just posted a few Felas on his blog. Check them out here.


This is part one, looking at the origins and early/golden years of afro beat. Look out sometime next week for part two, focusing on the bands that have internalized the afro rock stylings, mostly modern.

Tracklisting:
Download the mix here.

We finally turned the air conditioner on last night. After two weeks of hitting 100+ during the day, it was no longer even cooling down much at night. Goodbye to seven months or so of having no temperature control whatsoever.

Here's a song about the hot, hot heat:
Third World, 1865 (96 Degrees in the Shade)

Welcome to the sixth installment of Pickle's Picks. Today we're operating on a Jamaican tip once again, but this time we're speeding up the tempo and turning back the clock just past reggae and stopping on ska. A progenitor of the roots reggae and rock steady scenes, ska typically has a swinging beat that features jazz instruments like the trombone and trumpet. Legend tells that summer heat-induced lethargy among the islands musicians and dancers lead to the slowing of the beat and the development of rock steady, and ska's popularity faded, especially when compared to the career paths of some of its stars, including Bob Marley and the original Wailers and Toots and the Maytals. The latter group is actually credited with the first use of the word 'reggae' in their 1968 smash "Do The Reggay".

Here's Toots and the Maytals in their heyday. Note the generally formal dress, which is typical of the early years of Jamaican pop, and is indicative of how much the performers initially were influenced by big band, swing, and jazz in general.

After the first major rush of ska in the early to mid '60s, the genre was resuscitated by an influx of interest in the late '70s by British punk rockers, notably The Clash. In the 1990s, there was an American revival of ska that featured big horns and swinging beats, but that was very slick and geared for a music market oriented towards alternative rock.

Hmm. I guess on to the music. Once again I've got the Divshare player up for streaming the individual songs, and I will post the whole thing as a zipped download for those who may want to put it on a CD or a playlist on your computer. I have done significantly less research for this project than Pickle Is The Controller, so here's my off-hand knowledge.


One of my favorite reggae albums is Culture's "Two Sevens Clash". This track is the first on that album, and such a great opener that I have highjacked it for my mix as well. This is roots reggae at its finest, but the peppy beat and quick tempo definitely have ska overtones.

"You old hypocrite. You old hippopotamus, you old hypocrite." It doesn't even make sense, but it's so catchy that you'll find yourself singing it at the oddest times. Desmond Dekker is an absolute master of ska music, a huge ambassador for reggae, and Jamaica in general. Here's "Hippopotamus", unfortunately this won't stream, as it's in m4a format here.

Burning Spear really should have made the Controller mix, but I'll take a late pass and post him here. Definitely more of a roots artist, this little "skank" was in tribute the sound engineer John Burns who mixed a dub version of "Garvey's Ghost" for Spear and the band. Read more about John Burns' credits here. And peep the "John Burns Skank" right 'chere.

I know very little about Tommy McCook, but the Aggrovators were a popular Jamaican backing band, specializing in dub instrumentals, very similar to King Tubby and Augustus Pablo or the Revolutionaries. "At The Dub Market" is a nice little uptempo jam not outside the vein of dub music but a bit peppier and less spacy than the Aggros typical sound.

"Time Marches On" is not only the title of this super-smash song by Derrick Morgan, but also the name of his greatest hits retrospective and probably a number of biographical pieces. This song made his career, and it's pretty easy to see why. Another superstar of ska, here with his biggest hit. Again, an m4a for download. Sorry.

Prince Buster is widely considered to be one of the most influential of the early sound system owners, both on the island and in Britain. "Respect" is a single that shows off the sound of most of his recording: rough around the edges, but lively and fun. I find it catchy.


The Skatalites are another majorly influential group of Jamaican musicians, definitely considered a top pick as far as instrumental reggae is considered. Insofar as their names contains the word 'ska', they are the first name on many people's tongues when original ska is mentioned, and their long career is testament to their versatility and marketing savvy. The two disc set "Foundation Ska" contains many of their early hits that anchored their careers, and is widely available at public and university libraries. Download Addis Ababa here.

Another rootsy theme here: "Nobody knows the Age of Creation, nobody knows," sing the Cultural Roots. Try them out here:

Not much info about Dandy Livingstone, except that he released this song in the 1970s on Trojan Records. Here's "Big City":


Robert Nesta Marley. There's more than enough information and misinformation to go around about the big guy in reggae circles. Here's an early one from the album 'African Herbsman' called "Duppy Conquerer":

"Tall and handy, sweet like candy. Hit me now!" Winston Williams on Trojan Records:


Tenor Saw's classic mid-'80s album 'Fever' included some dub cuts at the end on the reissue. "Rub-a-Dub Market" is a nice little uptempo dub exploration. Download here.

Virtually no information online about GG's All Stars. All Music Guide lists all of one song credited to the band. This is not it, but was tagged by this band, who AMG claims is similar to the Roots Radics, the aforementioned Aggrovators, and Lee Perry's house band The Upsetters. Listen to "The Man from Carolina".

Eek a Mouse's cover of Led Zeppelin's "D'yer Maker". This song is pronounced, in the British patois, "Jer-maker". This means "Did you sleep with her?", as in "Did you make her?" Little known fact. Listen up:

Major Irie was an obscure act working in the Bronx in the '80s. On the same label as Wayne Jarrett from the Controller series, for a man nicknamed Bullwackie. Here's "Keep On Running".



Mr. Rock Steady himself, Ken Boothe first rose to popularity as a ska duo with Stranger Cole. Found on "Foundation Ska" along with the Skatalites hits. Download "World's Fair".

Rude boys, or rudies, refers to Jamaican gangsters living in Kingston's slums. These next two songs refer explicitly to rudies, and are off the Trojan Rude Boy Box Set.

Joe White's "Rudies All Around":

The Pioneers' "Rudies Are The Greatest":
Barrett Strong (of "Money" fame) wrote this song, but never recorded it himself. The original version is by The Temptations on 'Puzzle People', it was also recorded by the Whatnauts, Byron Lee and the Dragonaires, and others. Derrick Harriot with "Message from a Black Man":


Freddie McKay was a popular rock steady singer who worked with producers such as Coxsone Dodd and Prince Buster. Here he goes with "Love is a Treasure".

Another one that's super obscure, recorded on the Wackies label. Apparently this is the only song recorded by this band. Here's Itopia, with "Do You Really Know".


The Love Joys were a pair of cousins from Brixton, England. One of the very few all female roots reggae groups, they only released one album, called 'Lovers Rock (Reggae Style)'. This song "It Ain't Easy" is on a 12" record called 'Gimme Back', also released by the Wackies label.


Slim Smith, another Coxsone Dodd singer, sang in a beautiful falsetto until his untimely demise at 25 years old. Here he is with "Please Stay".

John Holt and the Paragons smash hit "The Tide Is High" redone by a modern quartet of white men. Here is 007's remake of "Tide":

Another of the Rude Boy box set, Henry Buckley has only two original credits to his name. Listen up to "Beware of Rude Boys":

Finally, Toots and the Maytals, from their 2004 album 'True Love'. The premise of the album was that Toots' many friends in the rock, country, reggae, and R & B worlds would remake classic Maytals jams. This track features producer U-Roy and the Skatalites on horns. Download "Never Grow Old" from 'True Love'.


Bonus beats:

The Whatnauts version of "Message from a Black Man":
Producer of the Wu-Tang Clan, the RZA is well-versed in old R & B breaks. On "Can't Stop Me Now" he samples the Whatnauts version:
The Temptations original recording of Barrett Strong's "Message":
Finally, Led Zeppelin's original recording of "D'yer Maker":

Here's the tracklisting for the mix, click here for the download.

Enjoy, soul children.

Welcome to the fifth installment of Pickle's Picks. The first four mixes under this name were the result of a three-week listening and tagging session with my music library's "R & B/Funk" heading. This mix takes its cues from both the re-organizing and tidying aspects of the original Pickle's Picks series, but switching up the genre to the Reggae Music umbrella.

The inspiration for this mix (not to mention the bald rip-off of a title), by the way, is a compilation put together by Jonny Greenwood, guitarist for Radiohead among other pursuits. I bought Jonny Greenwood is the Controller on Amazon a couple of weeks ago and it's been a fairly lop-sided winner in the "CD Spun In The Car On The Way To Work And Driving Around Town" sweepstakes.


Mr. Greenwood worked closely with Trojan Records for the comp, and had access to an ass-load of high quality reggae records. I thought to myself that with what I've compiled so far from Internet forums, boards, blogs, and so on, I could make a pretty listenable mix of sounds that like my new favorite mix could serve as introduction, body, and conclusion to the sounds of Jamaica. I haven't confined myself to a particular style or studio, so it's a bit scattershot, but it was still a lot of fun to listen through all my reggae jams and make this little blog post.

Pickle is the Controller starts off with an absolute classic of ska music and a fire-starter for reggae. "Get up in the morning, slaving for bread, sir. So that every mouth can be fed", starts Desmond Dekker & his Aces' "Israelites", recorded in 1968. Desmond Dekker probably did more to showcase Jamaica and its music than any musician before Bob Marley, and was a major influence on countless reggae artists regardless of origin. This jam's a bit of a chestnut to reggae fans, but if anyone catches it here for the first time in their life, it was worth it.



Track 2 is called "Missiri", recorded by an Ivory Coast-born musician named Tikeh Jah Fakoly, and produced by a great originator in the reggae production scene, U-Roy. Mr. Fakoly released this album, "Francafrique" in 2002, and I found the whole thing remarkably consistent and entertaining. There is not much deviation from this kind of groove on the album, but it's a good one to get swallowed up in, much like anything with U-Roy on the boards.



Next up is the great dancehall toaster Barrington Levy. I'm not a huge fan of dancehall and ragga music in general, but every so often a track catches my ear in a different way from any of its influences like ska or hip hop. I don't believe this was found on an album by Mr. Levy, other than compilations of hits and that sort of thing, so I've listed "Here I Come" as being from the 'Broader Than Broadway' comp from 1990. It seems that the "broader than Broadway" line would be a subtle jab at the singer's hefty weight. This was a major hit in Mr. Levy's rise to stardom.



Track 4 stays in the same era of the early 1980s, although the reissued album wasn't released until 2002. "Who Me (Zim Zim)" was a major departure from the reigning sounds of the time, as can be determined by comparing the previous track with this one. Much more dubby and slow, Billy Boyo was only a teenager when he cut this track, full of confidence bordering on arrogance. Basslines aplenty here while Boyo toasts away at his own pace. This carved a bit of a niche for him, away from the slick Lover's Rock and the grittier dancehall popular at the time.



Another song that sounds about as far away from the time it was recorded as could be possible, "Panic In Babylon" thrust Lee "Scratch" Perry back into reggae stardom after nearly a decade of subpar and strange albums. While 'Panic' is no less strange, it's very well balanced by tough riddims and engaging sound effects. Seven and a half minutes of world-class dub here. Perry should need no introduction to reggae fans, and a quick Google search should satisfy a newbie's needs. 'Panic in Babylon' takes its backing from a Swiss reggae band named White Belly Rats, who do a great job keeping the focus on Scratch's half-insane intonations.



Wayne Jarrett, on the other hand, appears to require significant introduction. Although recorded in the '70s along with a host of other artists on Lloyd "Bullwackie" Barnes eponymous Bronx-based label, it took 25 years for a reissue, from a German label no less. 'Showcase, Vol. 1' appears to mainly follow the formula shown here on the first track, "Brimstone and Fire", which consists of powerful, slightly dubby riddims with some horns in the back, and the occasional goofy sound effect. The most important part to me would be Mr. Jarrett's fine tenor soaring above the fray. I just ordered 'Showcase' and Jarrett's other album 'Hot Chip' on Amazon and I'm excited to see if the whole oeuvre matches the promise of the few tracks I've been able to download.



Back to a big name: Augustus Pablo had the cockamamie plan of turning the marginalized melodica into a featured instrument. All Music Guide notes that this would be akin to having a "Lead Kazoo" in your band. (If you're not sure what a melodica is, just listen and it will be very clear.) Mr. Pablo had a long and fruitful career, despite or because of his uniqueness, mostly like this track focusing on longer-form dub explorations. Known as Rockers, this song was a 1987 reissue addition to 1980's 'Rockers Meets King Tubby in a Fire House'. King Tubby is the dub force behind much of Pablo's work (at least the good stuff), while Fire House refers to the Waterhouse section of Kingston, Jamaica, where King Tubby's studio was located.



And back to a very small name, or at least an obscure song and album. The information I found online was that this song was by a man named Bunny Clarke, and many people on the Nets refer to Mr. Clarke as William "Bunny Rugs" Clarke, the second lead singer for Third World, whose popular and rootsy jams were a bit too polished to bear inclusion here. I don't think that this information is true, so I'll note that a certain Bunny Clarke released a 7" album titled 'Love Time', featuring this dubby version of the title cut.



Dennis Brown is widely considered to have one of the finest collections of work in popular reggae. Nearly every album and single was well received and widely heard. Growing up in the Orange Street section of Jamaica that was also home to several prominent soundsystems, Mr. Brown was blessed with a soulful voice that translated well to a public that was being influenced by R & B heard over American radio stations broadcast in Kingston. "Westbound Train", cut by producer Niney Holness with the Soul Syndicate backing band is one of those classic sounds, incorporating a steady rhythm, good bassline, and dub touches. Released as a single in 1973, this was also on 1975's 'Just Dennis' album.



Big leap here, from the smoothness of Dennis Brown to the entrancing, menacing sounds of nyabinghi drumming at its finest. One of a few initial practitioners of the spoken word-plus-hand drumming style, Count Ossie's tunes found themselves on a couple of albums, including "Wicked Babylon" from 1994's 'Tales of Mozambique'. Probably recorded in the early '60s, Count Ossie and his band the Mystical Revelation of Rastafari influenced disparate circles of jazz through it's Afro-centric, simplistic approach to music making. You can hear strains of nyabinghi on period records by Sun Ra, a bit later with John Coltrane's freer jazz records, and certain Art Ensemble of Chicago albums.



To continue with the dub exploration here, I pulled this track from Trojan Records 'Box Set: Dub' release. The band, Velvet Shadows, appears to be quite obscure, with very little available information online, and virtually nothing on Trojan's website. "Dubbin' and Wailin'" is classic dub, with its heavy bassline, echoing guitar riffs, and ghostly vocals.




Lutah Fyah originally went off to play professional soccer after high school, but eventually his musical heritage caught up to him. His grandfather had owned a soundsystem when he was younger, and influentials including Dennis Brown had given young Lutah a lesson he couldn't escape. 2006's 'Phantom War' mostly avoids modern reggae's anti-homosexual/women are untrustworthy tropes, while hewing closely to the fire and brimstone of reggae's formative years. Nice toasting with a polished but inviting beat.



Another modern artist here. I Wayne's 2005 album 'Lava Ground' is derivative and repetitive, with many of the above-mentioned stereotypes. "Living in Love" mostly ignores these themes and sticks with I Wayne's best work, which is organic, Johnny Clarke-style, Lover's Rock-tinged roots.




"A Weh Dem a Go Du" is a mysterious track by Yellowman and Josey Wales, two superstars of reggae's second wave. I can't seem to find official literature for it, but apparently it's on an album cut by the two called "King Yellowman Meets the Mighty Josey Wales" from 1983. It's classic Yellowman, with his staccato toasting layed over a bouncing rhythm. Unity is a time-honored reggae theme, explored here.



One reggae theme that was more popular among Jamaican ex-pats in Britain was the rude boy, a slang term for a black gangster. Dandy Livingstone didn't produce a lot of music, but this bouncy little rock steady jam, backed by vocal great Pat Rhoden turned into a skinhead anthem in London and achieved some success in Kingston as well. It would appear that rudies ignored the lyrics, however, urging them to settle down and quit causing mayhem. "Rudy, A Message to You" wasn't included on any album offerings. Released in 1967, it is available on 'Suzanne, Beware of the Devil', a Livingstone hits compilation.



Johnny Clarke. Another super-popular reggae star, Mr. Clarke was blessed with a ridiculous voice, and pursued his talent for many years. On 1975's "Enter Into His Gates With Praise", Clarke extols the virtues of the Rasta faith. This cut, "None Shall Escape the Judgement", was originally recorded by a vocalist named Earl Zero for producer Bunny Lee, but the original masters were lost and the unknown backing vocalist Clarke was called back to re-record the vocals. This was Clarke's first hit, and the first in a string of hits for Mr. Lee, who earned the nickname "Striker" a few major successes later. Lee's signature cymbal-driven sound was developed on this song by Soul Syndicate drummer Carlton "Santa" Davis, and used for great commercial success.



Back to ska-Rock Steady for a second here. King Sporty had a string of minor hits in Jamaica before moving to Miami and dabbling in electro and booty bass in the '80s. "A Year Full of Sundays" is very early in his career, and available on a comp called 'Deep Reggae Roots' from 1976. Sporty is best known for co-writing the Bob Marley hit "Buffalo Soldier" and/or being married to American soul singer Betty Wright.



Derrick Harriott's sad-sack anthem "The Loser" is another classic gem that helped propel Jamaican music to international attention. One of the first artists to also control the boards, Harriott was one of the major Rock Steady stars of the day, and also anticipated Lover's Rock in many ways, with his soulful, romantic production. "The Loser" was included on 1981's 'Songs for Midnight Lovers', and was a major hit for Mr. Harriott.



The Mighty Diamonds were a three-piece soul outfit from Kingston, specializing in romantic roots reggae. Backed here by The Revolutionaries, "I Need a Roof" is a very unique musical patchwork, with the refrain sampling another Diamonds track "Right Time" while the horn section solos on "Ol' Man River". Bassfully soulful, the Mighty Diamonds hit commercial success with this smooth recipe on 'Right Time' from 1976.



The Skatalites were major players in the early Jamaican music scene, when ska took over from calypso and other Caribbean styles such as soca. By 1984, they were considered passe, and 'Return of the Big Guns' was released to deafening silence by critics and the public. "Reasoning" is an instrumental track that I feel showcases the Skatalites strengths nicely: a swinging rhythm section forming the backbone of a fleshed-out, tight orchestral jam. Most of the popular Skatalites works you can find are from the '60s or '70s, usually with somewhat tinny production and antiquated sounds. Not to take anything away from musical pioneers, mind you. I just happen to dig this track.



Tenor Saw is an oft-ignored roots band that put out some kick-ass tunes in their day. "Ring the Alarm" was recorded after their hit record 'Fever' in 1985, but the Saw never connected the same way again. I love this song, with its hugely catchy refrain and bare-bones, classic reggae one-drop production. 'Fever' would definitely remain my go-to source for Tenor Saw material, but damn if this one wasn't hit out of the park, with its echoing vocal touches and Saw's melodious toasting.



Max Romeo co-wrote a lot of material with Lee 'Scratch' Perry, including this gem that re-uses a Perry classic riddim. "Chase the Devil" is insanely catchy, and caught the island population by surprise, as Mr. Romeo was best known for lewd pop songs like "Wet Dream" before releasing 'War Ina Babylon' in 1976, with Perry's house band the Upsetters on backing. With Scratch on the boards you know there's going to be solid work done, from the scratching effects and stitch-tight rhythms to the Babylon-destruction thematic lyrics. Younger heads may recognize this as the interpolation used by Kanye West in the Jay-Z track "Lucifer" from the 'Black Album'. Scratch Perry also has a classic dub version of this song called "Disco Devil, included here but not on the mix.

Chase the Devil:



Disco Devil:




Well, there's my introduction to reggae music. I hope you enjoyed it, or at least read most of it. In addition to all the songs I've uploaded in the post for you, there's the whole mix available in zip form, if you'd prefer to get all these out at once and put it on a CD to bump around town, giving me the royal treatment just like Jonny Greenwood. Right?

Tracklisting in the photo:

Download 'Pickle is the Controller' by clicking here.

All photos used under Creative Commons license.