It's a Punky Reggae Party - Part Two

03-02-2007

A Personal Tribute to Brum's two tone musical heritage by Pete Millington (check out part one here).

1977 was a very good year to be 16 years old

The year that the two sevens clashed was a year of contrasts:

There was celebration for the establishment as Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her silver jubilee with tours, inspections and 25-gun salutes from Edinburgh to Brighton Pier

And revolution for the anti-establishment as the young soul rebels turned in our jeans, pushed safety pins through our ears and went out in search of street parties to mock.

Whilst ELP's Fanfare For The Common Man, a rock interpretation of Copland's 1943 brass-section tribute to working people at ‘income tax time', burst from every hi-fi speaker on every suburban cul-de-sac tea party in the land…

…down at Barbarella's night club, punk rock mecca of the Midlands, we spotty, sweating, swearing little oiks leapt around uncouthly and pogo-ed to the Damned, the Jam, the Clash

… the Pistols and

…the Maytals?

Bunting, bondage trousers, royal hand shakes

… and movement of Jah People!!

I was 16 years old and searching for an identity, an upper working class boy at middle class grammar school. Trying to make some sense of it all.

Rich versus poor, left versus white and black versus right…

Some of my mates were into classic rock: Santana, Peter Gabriel, Lynyrd Skynyrd doing Free Bird on the Old Grey Whistle Test and Led Zep The Song Remains The Same

Some made the change and got into punk and new wave:

Ian Dury, now he was a good bloke, The Stranglers, Go Buddy Go

and that weird girl with the screaming voice and the distinctive brace

But strangely, those of us who liked Althia and Donna

Up Town Top Ranking

were in a minority of…

…two?

My musical tastes were rare for white grammar school boys. I had been nurtured on my brother's Trojan reggae 45s

John Holt, Ken Boothe and U-Roy

U-Roy was perhaps the one that did it for me.

My rite of passage

…rather like progressing from lager shandy to tequila

one step beyond into a very different landscape.

I didn't quite go uptown top ranking myself

But settled for the Athol Social Club by Senneley's park and the Millbrook Hall on Woodgate Valley…

hang-outs for real working class youths

kids who didn't care about no choice between

spitting Johnny and geetar Eric

or punch-ups between whistlin' Bob and angry Sid

because they had a different revolution going down

black meets white on the edges of new suburbia

Strange images of Ethiopean kings

and red gold and green amongst the high rise flats of

Bartley Green

I was kinda like a white boy groupie

Sometimes going alone to watch the way people danced

Cool looking black dreads in big knitted hats or leather caps trying to be discrete about their spliffs and hard looking white kids with battle scars doing a weird fusion dance somewhere between easy skanking and their older brother's moonstomp

It was exciting to me, this was on the real fringe,

There was a sense of danger, the unknown, something to be thought about, to be considered, something to do with social change.

Matumbi, Steel Pulse and Aswad

M.P.L.A. Natty going on a holiday

Ku Klux Klan and Prodigal Son

Urban British reggae breaking into the mainstream

But also white bands taking up the skanga riff

The Police, The Clash, The Members,

Ian Dury, Elvis Costello

Don Letts, rebel punky reggae producer based in London:

“reggae and punk were thrown together by being mutual outcasts, two fingers to society and the sense of an established order breaking down”

That was 1977, prophesised by Marcus Garvey as the year that Babylon would disintegrate

And maybe it did… for a while

Punk rock dreadlock Barbarella in her bondage trousers

Ranking Roger at the mic, pre-Beat,

The sweet smell of ‘erb

Rock Against Racism at the Bournbrook Hotel on Bristol Road

Listening to Messiah or Fashion (when they played white pub reggae)

And a Handsworth Revolution in the air

...and then I heard it

an echo of my brother's original 45

definitely Prince Buster, but speeded up

was this punk or something else?

Al Capone guns don't argue

But the voice was definitely white

This was really special …the gangsters had arrived!