The Ones That Got Away

It is a truth universally acknowledged that hindsight is a wonderful thing and nowhere is this more true than in the world of reggae music. It's a lot easier to decide that a Wailers record is better than one by the Maytones and that the Skatalites are better than Byron Lee and the Dragonaires than to decide whether that tune by an unknown DJ you heard last Friday night is any good or not. The reason? Hindsight. Twenty or thirty years for a critical consensus to build up and tell you that a certain artist is OK to like and safe to purchase.

There's no such certainty on a Saturday afternoon in your favourite record shop hearing a seven inch single just in from JA by someone you've never heard of. It's being touched for maybe thirty seconds and you're wondering whether you should buy it or not in the knowledge that the shop probably has just three or four copies and by the time the stylus comes off the disc they might all have been sold, never to come back again. You don't have twenty or thirty years of hindsight to guide you then, not when the music is flying out of JA at a hundred records a week.

Of course, hindsight will sort out much of the music being made right now into some sort of canon that people in the future will feel safe with. There's already a consensus about certain artists and it's fairly safe to assume that people in the next millenium will be paying silly money for records by Beenie Man, Sizzla, Bounty Killer etc. But what about the ones that get away? The classics that nobody buys and which sink unrecognised without trace? What legendary status will they have attained by the year 2029? I'll be paying homage on this page to just such tunes.WOMAN by MARCIA GRIFFITHS and LADY G.

This came out on the Penthouse label towards the end of 1996 and for me was indisputably the record of that year. It promptly disappeared, in the UK at least, and made not a ripple as it went. The other cut to this, Beres Hammond's KING AND QUEEN, received slightly more attention but, in this writer's opinion, was not the better of the two. If you still think that Lady G only sings slack lyrics, then listen to her match Marcia Griffiths for power and heart on this record. She was on something of a roll around this time, making the haunting SYCAMORE TREE on the Joy Ride rhythm for Mad House. And if you're one of those who thought that Jamaican music neatly divides itself into (good) roots music and (bad) dancehall music, this record should knock that misconception firmly on the head. Two reggae generations, reggae legend and I Threes veteran Marcia Griffiths and pushy newcomer Lady G, work with and against each other like two sisters in this passionate tribute to the power and strength of women in Jamaica. This is a genuine vocal-DJ partnership, not one of those mechanical efforts where a rhythm is half heartedly recycled, is half heartedly voiced over and then a DJ half heartedly drops by the studio and knocks out a few stock items off the DJ shelf over the top. Could this be the best record Marcia Griffiths ever made?

WARM AND SUNNY JAMAICA by COLLAR.

This gem came out in 1995 on Burning Spear's Rasta Business label and is a DJ workout by the obscure Collar to Burning Spear's THE YOUTH on the Spear label. If you want to hear real nineties roots music, this is the genuine article. Collar's inspired, ecstatic chant lifts itself over a driving crazy horse rhythm, an ethereal organ wafts in and out of echoed fragments of Winston Rodney's vocal, and riffing horns punch holes in the musical fabric. There's nothing remotely revivalist about this record, but it has the warm rural feel of Burning Spear's classic seventies work and the inspired craziness of such seventies workouts as Sylford Walker's LAMBS BREAD or Dr Alimantado's BEST DRESSED CHICKEN.

GHETTO YOUTH by BOOTIELERO.

This 7" also came out in 1995 but there's nothing remotely rural about this one, which is a piece of hard core dancehall DJ attack. Who Bootielero is I couldn't tell you beyond the fact that the name his mother knew him by was probably Byron Broderick, since that's the name in brackets under the title on the label . Whether he made another record after this one, I couldn't tell you either, or even whether other records have been made on The Linx Label and "Produced by Jane Reid for Link-Up Management Productions." Suffice it to say that in the musical bearpit that is Kingston, Jamaica there are hundreds of obscure youths who might get no further recognition than to have their name in the smallest type at the bottom of the most ephemeral dance hall flyer or make just one record and then not be heard of again outside their own community but still have DJ skills to make the jaw drop. Bootielero is one of them and this is one of those records. This is a hard dancehall piece with a brutal, uncompromising rhythm, which Bootielero attacks without mercy and at top speed, as though his studio time might run out at any moment, running in harsh and militant style through those many problems that beset the ghetto youth. So many Byron Brodericks, so little recognition outside the pens, yards, and gullies where they have their lives.

So there you have it. Three classic tunes that have come out over the last three years to insufficient acclaim. I'll be posting new reviews at regular intervals. If in the meantime you have any comments to make, questions to ask, or similar records you want to tell the world about, e mail us on: geoff@zincfence.demon.co.uk