Club Reggae

This was the first reggae album I bought, in 1972. I loved it. It has been overtaken now by many, many more larger, more comprehensive collections, but this holds such great memories for me. It was, you see, the album that helped develop a deep love of reggae that has remained in my soul ever since. 

What is the style of reggae on here? Skinhead reggae, that's what. Stomping but poppy tunes that UK skins loved so much, perplexingly. The use of strings that so characterised much of the "sweetened" reggae that hit the UK charts in 1971-72 is absent from all but one of these recordings. They are more authentically Jamaican in style. This is the real thing.

So, let's get our cherry red boots on and start stomping!

We kick off with The Fabulous Flames' melodious cover of Neil Diamond's Holly Holy. Reggae bands seemed to like covering Neil, it seemed, even right up to UB40 hitting the number one slot in the UK in 1983 with their cover of Tony Tribe's Red Red Wine. Check out that funky organ and keyboard sound.

Up next is a true skinhead reggae classic - or "boss reggae" if you prefer - in Toots & the Maytals 54-46 (Was My Number), the tale of ex-con Toots Hibbert's prison number. Gospel-influenced Toots delivers the song like a totally wired preacher as he calls out "give it to me two times" etc. 

Dave (Barker) and Ansel Collins (sometimes spelled “Ansil”) took the UK charts by storm in the summer/autumn of 1971 with their instrumental (with additional vocal noises and outbursts) single Double Barrel. They were moonstomping examples of the “heavy, heavy monster sound”, full of cheesy but totally irresistible organ breaks and a typical “skinhead reggae” beat. It can still remember first hearing it (at a fairground in the summer of 1971) and being captivated.

Derrick Harriott's Groovy Situation is typical of the loved-up nature of some of the grooves to be found on here - smooth running tuneful, light and singalong. Dandy (not using the Livingstone surname as yet) covers Jimmy Ruffin's Take A Letter Maria nicely. This is the one number that does use strings and it does so to good effect, and brass. 

U-Roy (credited here as Hugh Roy) and John Holt are next on Wear You To The Ball, with Holt singing and DJ U-Roy "toasting/chanting" over the steady skanking beat, something that would soon become incredibly popular and stay so throughout the seventies and the roots era. The song was again covered by UB40 on their 1989 Labour Of Love II album. 

Rivers Of Babylon is known to many in the UK due to Boney M's 1978 number one cover of it. Here we have the devout Rastafarian original of the song by The Melodians. "How can we sing King Alpha song in a strange land" they sing -  I never knew what that line was, struggling to identify "King Alpha". I also thought they sang "over I" as opposed to "oh Far I". Forget Boney M - this is the real thing, my friends.

Andy Capp's The Law was an early example of the DJ ad hoc toasting thing I was speaking of earlier. It has a catchy, skanking beat and groovy percussion with improvised vocals over the top. Al T. Joe's Hitching A Ride is a cover of a sixties pop hit by Vanity Fare. 

The Pioneers deliver a killer in the singalong but still hardcore groove of I Need Your Sweet Inspiration. There is also a dubbiness to the sound despite the song's fast pace. Freddie Notes & The Rudies' skinhead classic Mo' Bay/Montego Bay is given a delicious steel band instrumental makeover by Selwyn Baptiste (it can't be just him playing!). I absolutely loved this at the time. Guess what? I still do.

Hopeton Lewis' Boom Shacka Lacka was appropriated in the late eighties by Apache Indian. This is the original. It is a sweet vocal over a tinkling piano, swirling organ skank, with an irresistible chorus.

Great, great memories. A better set of authentic early seventies reggae cuts you would be hard-pressed to find. Somebody in UB40 will have owned this album, I'm sure. 

Boom Shacka Lacka!!!!