It's a Punky Reggae Party (Part One)

03-01-2007

Pete Millington offers a personal tribute to Brum's two tone musical heritage

It's never a nice feeling when other people inadvertently knock your musical tastes

Being a big reggae fan, especially a white reggae fan, no I'd better re-phrase that, a white person who loves reggae (as opposed to a fan of Culture Club, The Police, 10cc and other white reggae tracks), one regularly comes up against the derision of those with more (supposedly) sophisticated musical tastes

Generally I quickly forgive people who don't have the reggae bone, gene or whatever it is in their body which engenders a feeling akin to love.

In a way I can understand the reasons people don't like reggae, let's put it this way there are many shades and variations between Burning Spear's Slavery Days and Dandy Livingstone's Suzanne Beware of the Devil - someone with the musical equivalent to the Babel Fish in his or her ear will feel the difference in their soul but to someone without it… they're both just reggae tracks

I think I have my older brother Den to thank for turning me onto reggae music, not that he willingly or knowingly let me within ten metres of his extensive record collection, but in a small terraced house occupied by eight people you can't help notice it when someone is blasting Bob Marley's Catch a Fire album out of the box room upstairs at full bass

In fairness to Den, his own tastes were very eclectic from the Stones to the Stranglers via Aretha Franklin and Deep Purple, but he did have a very extensive collection of reggae 45s, including such classic names as Winston Groovy, the Cimarrons, Judge Dread, Ken Boothe, Johnny Nash and Prince Buster

The one that always fascinated me the most was an original version of the skinhead classic Wet Dream by Max Romeo, Den had even scratched off the cover of the record, presumably so our mom wouldn't suss the rude title, not that she would have had the tiniest clue what a wet dream was

I'm not sure the old man would have known either for that matter

“Every night me go to bed an me ‘ave wet dream” and so on, you get the general drift

Max Romeo was a name that stuck with me because a couple of years later I went to my first black discotheque in the unlikely venue of Bournville and heard another of his tracks, this time the haunting War ina Babylon back to back with Junior Murvin's Police and Thieves

Sublime records of their time, I can almost hear the roars of riot, is it permissible to be nostalgic about a riot? Well, perhaps to the soundtrack…

I'm not sure exactly how old I was when I went to the disco at Bournville, maybe 13 or 14, I think when my mom heard it was in Bournville she said yes straight away to me going off on the number 11 bus with my mate Mark, without thinking much more about it

After all, what possible dangers could there be in a nice place like Bournville, the only town in Britain that doesn't even have a pub, the worst that could happen would be I'd get mugged by a Quaker.

“Listen son, hand over your chocolate buttons and I'll make a donation to your favourite charity”

Little did she know that every Saturday night throughout the 1970s the church hall next to Cadburys became the scene of the biggest dreadlock gathering outside of Handsworth and Kingston

This was the original White Man In Hammersmith Palais experience. When Joe Strummer sang “so many black kids here to listen”. I'm convinced he was talking about Bournville church hall of a Saturday night - the place was rockin'.

These were the days when young angry disenfranchised black dreads really were young angry disenfranchised black dreads.

None of your hip-hop turf warfare over a disagreement about a pair of £300 Nike trainers in those days my brethren. These guys were the real deal

There was always an edge at the Bournville discos, sometimes you felt slightly threatened and there were some pretty tough looking guys inside that place … but the music seemed to cut through all that.

On the stage there would be a huge bank of speakers, not like at the white kids discos, these DJs didn't throw money at bubble blowing machines and kaleidoscope projectors when the same dosh could be used to pump up the bass another ten notches.

So that was the start of the love affair.

Next came the king, the late great Mr Marley, the ragged minstrel superstar from the third world.

It's easy to be clichéd about Bob Marley nowadays, listen to one of his rare television interviews, the naivety of his politics and world views dressed up in stoned interpretations of Old Testament scripture mixed with the ramblings of a crazy old Jamaican prophet of the early 20th century named Marcus Garvey…

…yet at the same time mourn the passing of such simple radical truths, the power of the man's voice, the hypnotic rhythms, such raw musical talent…

A friend of mine named Karen once told me that her mother had actually entertained Bob Marley at their home in Handsworth in the mid seventies. Apparently the Wailers were supporting Johnny Nash on tour and when the roadshow came to Brum, Nash looked up his friend knowing she was renowned for her Jamaican culinary skills.

Karen was maybe about 12 or 13 and she remembers this strange looking Rasta man sitting at their kitchen table and declining her mother's best Jamaican jerk pork because he only ate I-tal vegetarian food.

Karen remembers being aghast that a black brother would dare to come to their house and refuse to eat her mom's best dish, so she spent the rest of the meal giving Bob Marley dirty looks across the table on her mother's behalf.

I met Karen at a reunion recently and we chuckled about it, the thought of giving dirty looks to a world class superstar, a musical and spiritual legend. It was tantamount to putting your tongue out at Ghandi or burning off Martin Luther King at the traffic lights

But then again, maybe this was part of the attraction of reggae music, not just to angry young black kids but to their white counterparts in the 1960s and 1970s - reggae was music for the people, by the people and from the people…

Even big players like Trojan and Island records seemed connected to the community, this music was evolving from the people and manufacturing, commercial influences were therefore at a minimum.

To a large extent it's a working class thing too, which explains why right wing skinheads were ironically attracted to black reggae in the late 60s and early 70s, why so many skinhead classics like The Liquidator, Double Barrel, Guns of Navarone, Monkey Man and Skinhead Moonstomp were made by black artists sometimes specifically for white working class kids.

There existed a transcending commonality between the bald head and the rude boy.

Rather like punk rock, which is perhaps why these two genres also made such a quick if initially surprising alliance back in 1977, a year prophesied by none less than Marcus Garvey himself who foretold the year when the two sevens would clash as being a year of fundamental change.

The Jamaican band Culture had a track by the same name: Two Sevens Clash.

In the next article, I want to move on to 1977 to explore the impact of and importance of reggae music in the West Midlands, the two tone phenomenon, the Handsworth revolution and the post-punky reggae era

Wha' appen?

Go on then, wot's yer face reggae track? Has Pete missed out any of the greats? Leave a comment on the messageboard