Yellowman: Alive and Kicking

Yellowman at The Globe, Cardiff, photo by Paul Seligman.

Last Thursday I went to see Yellowman. King Yellowman that is. Dancehall legend. His appearance is what you could call remarkable: he's tall, skinny, athletic and albino. In 1986 he was diagnosed with cancer of the jaw and was told he had only 3 weeks to 6 months to live. Thanks to surgery he is still among us, but it left his face disfigured. Being raised by nuns at the Alpha Boys School orphanage in Kingston, Jamaica (it fostered many famous musicians, like Desmond Dekker and four members of the Skatalites), you could say his life hasn't been all beer and skittles, cakes and ale or a bed of roses.

But all these misfortunes didn't stop Yellowman. On the contrary! He rose to fame after winning a toasting competition and had some big hits in the 80s. He became one of Jamaica's biggest stars and was the first dancehall artist to be signed to an American major label.

So you can understand I was very excited that this living legend was coming to my humble town. As with all artists whose heydays were decades ago the show could either be a hit or miss. Well it was no miss. Yellowman is 54 years old, but he is very much alive and kicking, literally! And no DAT or backing track, no he had a full live band, his Sagittarius Band. There was a nice mixed crowd of old balding, slightly overweight men, who obviously have adored Yellowman since 1982 (they went nuts), and younger folks, notably from Cardiff's hip hop scene. Yellowman has been a great influence on American hip hop artists from the 80s (and later), as prove these tracks that sample two of Yellowman's greatest hits: Zungguzungguguzungguzeng and Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt:


Masters of Ceremony - Keep On Moving. Get it here (YSI).


Eazy-E (of N.W.A. fame) feat MC Ren - Nobody Move. Get it here (YSI).


BlackStar (Mos Def and Talib Kweli) - Definition. Get it here (YSI).

I'll let you go with the wise words Yellowman sent us home with and which have been my motto ever since:

"Be nice. And if you can't be nice be good. And if you can't be good be careful. And if you can't be careful.. you're on your own."

For Gore Lovers: vintage x 3

So I've been watching scary movies again and there's some great badness that I'd like to share with you!

I: Summer Of Fear (1978)
This one stars good kid gone posessed; Linda Blair. She lives a carefree life with her parents, brothers and horse untill all is disturbed by a new house guest; niece Julia. At first she is very happy with her brand new ‘sister’, until strange things start happening around the house. Soon she discovers that there’s something very scary and disturbing about Julia and that she’s not who she says she is....


Apart from the huge perms, and the scary high-wasted pants there’s nothing really frightning about this film. The make up was quite bad and the plot was not that surprising. But I really enjoyed watching it anyway. Was it the cozy family that gets torn apart but eventually makes it because they stick together? Or was it that yellow seventies sauce? Or the tiny role of Fran Fine? I don't know, it’s just my favorite era for films and Wes Craven is still a hero. If you’re into vintage horror and don't have the need for that sadistic new skool gore.. definately one to watch!

II Slumber Party Massacre (1982)
The film starts as a bad mix of Prom Night, Halloween and Teen Wolf with girls in a shower, picking on the new girl who turns out to be pretty cool after all. So she gets invited to a Slumber Party at the popular girl’s house, which off course turns out to be a bad idea. In the mean time, we see a dude with a van that has some suspicious things going on. When the night falls all elements come together and the killing begins. Leaving very little to the imagination (meaning: wearing no mask or whatever), the ‘driller killer’ comes to business drilling holes in all the girls and the walls and also some furniture. A shame to see 100 hours of aerobics go to waste? Neeh, very entertaining!


III: Slumber Party Massacre II (1987)
Terrible but crazy cool, they had me within the first 5 minutes. It’s about 4 girls that are in a band together (a cheezy version of The Runaways). The girl that plays lead guitar is a survivor of the first massacre and we can tell she’s still slightly confused. As they get together in an empty house to practise for the next show, the trouble begins. Lead guitar girl starts having horrible nightmares starring a killer that sings, dances and carries a bad ass guitar with a screw drill on the neck while he chops of hands and drills holes in everyone. Leaving the spectator with questions: is the director pulling a freddy Krueger?? Why does this guy look like John Travolta? Are these people really dead?? Why do I even like this?


Apparently there is a sixpack of Massacre films, that show us 2 films in 3 different subgroups: Slumber Parties, Sorority Row and Cheerleaders. All of them packed with a typical B-movie visual spectacle and crazy plot twists. The interesting thing about the 1982 Slumber Party Massacre part I is that it was written by feminist activist Rita Mae Brown. Who obviously got so wrapped up in the story of a dude sticking his screw drill in all these innocent half naked teenage girls, that she forgot all about her beliefs.

Heaven is a place in Wales

As it happens I live near one of the best places on the planet. It’s called Hay-on-Wye and it’s a beautiful little town on the border of Wales and England (population: 1469). It surrounded by glorious hills and it has 30 (!) secondhand bookshops.

So when we had friends visiting last week we took them to this quaint village. Unlike my Canadian friends I didn’t have to worry about excess baggage, so I came back home carrying kilo's of books (and extra body fat - a full English breakfast at the B&B and a delicious meal at the Old Black Lion were to thank). These are a couple of the books I got...

From the Honesty Bookshop (unattended outdoor bookcases, you just put the money in a box) I picked up some great cheap old books with lots of pictures of flowers and (extinct) animals for making collages.

I got a book by pop culture whiz Chuck Klosterman Killing Yourself to Live. I thoroughly enjoyed his other books, and so far I’m really enjoying the tales of his road trip visiting places where rock stars died. Though it’s not so much about the dead artists or their deaths; Chuck gets easily sidetracked by memories of his childhood, of songs, scenes from movies, ex-girlfriends and drugs. Chuck is funny.

As some of you will know I got more and more obsessed with patterns since I moved to this country, an obsession which has been particularly fueled by carpets in pubs and other unlikely places. So I bought myself English Printed Textiles 1720-1836, published by one of my favorite museums in the world: the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It contains some great patterns with birds!

My biggest gem must be The Royal Family Pop-Up Book, published in 1984. Oh it’s so great, the royal family portrayed as cardboard puppets! I wanted to make a video while flipping through the book, but when I googled the book I found out some Chinese person already did that. With dramatic orchestral music!



And for a tenner I picked up a dented (hence the price) copy of Dancehall – The Rise of Jamaican Dancehall Culture by Beth Lesser. I already own the 2 cd-box set that goes with it, so I was overjoyed to find this beautiful book. The book focuses on Jamaican music in the 1980s, the "golden age of dancehall". It has loads of pictures and interviews and stories about the biggest artists, producers and sound systems of that decade. And Lesser provides us with some historical context. I’m always quite fascinated to read about how the political, economical and geographical situation of a certain place influences its music. For example one of the reasons that there is so much emphasis on the bass in Jamaican music can be traced back to the fact that Jamaica was a poor country and not a lot of people could afford a record player or a radio, or go out in clubs. So they would gather outside (as it's always good weather in the Caribbean) where some people had set up a turntable and a speaker. These soundsystem parties were extremely popular, sometimes thousands of people would turn up. So the music had to be really loud, and had to have a lots of bass! And then Dub was, as King Tubby stated, his attempt to recreate the natural effect of the delay you would be experiencing when you're in a large open space surrounded by multiple speakers.

There’s also a section about what was hot and what was not, fashion-wise. Well the clothes that were hot were literally hot. Apparently preppy clothes from the UK were all the rage. Pretty bizarre to see all those men in woolen sweaters and hats in what must have been a blazing heat!





Well, I leave you with two of tracks from this excellent Soul Jazz Records compilation...


Tenor Saw - Pumpkin Belly. Get it here (YSI).


Barrington Levy - Here I come. Get it here (YSI).

Dedication to the max

Love love loved that tacky record cover my Dollegue put up here a couple of days ago! Well last week I found quite a unique sleeve myself while I was charity shopping in London (in a completely different genre though):Being a big Morrissey and The Smiths fan myself, my heart started to melt when I spotted this embodiment of pure Mozzer dedication. This fan just couldn't stand having this great single sitting in a dull, plain white sleeve! I love the back cover even more. The His Masters Voice dog is there (twice), plus production and photo credits ("Smash Hits" - haha). Too bad there are no credits for the artwork!


I already own a copy of the 7", but I was happy to pay 50p for this amazing piece of teenage cut-and-past-work. Plus it is a truly great single. Suedehead is nothing short of brilliant, but I Know Very Well How I Got My Name on the flip side is so beautiful it makes me cry.


A. Morrissey - Suedehead. Get it here (YSI).


B. Morrissey - I Know Very Well How I Got My Name.
Get it here (YSI).

Tacky to the max

It has been yeeaars since I've been to a festival. But last weekend was my first in about six years: Reggae Geel in Belgium.

White folks with dreads, hippies, stoners, red-yellow-black and green, it was all there. Including my heroes Busy Signal and Mavado, the ones who were supposed to rock my world. Apart from the backspins that drove me absolutely BONKERS, they really did rock my world.


But crazy enough, something else rocked my world even more. For a musicfanatic, finding a rare record might have the same effect as going to a concert. And it was just sitting there, in a box, waiting to be found: Dancehall Daughters, a compilation of female dancehall from the eighties. The best thing about this record is the cover, obviously. Which must be the tackiest thing I ever saw. Take a look at it above (and please click to enlarge). I have tried to find this record on discogs, and I have tried to find mp3's from the artists that are on it. But no such luck (I don't know if it's that rare, or that bad), so for now you'll have to settle for a similar sound by Yami Bolo. Who isn't a daughter, but sure sounds like one!

Yami Bolo - When a man's in love -get it here(ysi)

MC Laren

My trip to London last week was kind of a last minute decision. And as you need to book your train tickets three months in advance in this country to get an affordable fare, I was forced to take the bus.. Which sucks because by train London is just 2 hours away, by bus it takes over 3 hours. But then again I kept £45 in my pocket (which I could spend in London on 2nd hand records, books (bought at a gem of a bookstore, Bookmongers in Brixton), the most delicious sourdough pizza at Franco Manca, several pints of ale, and on seeing Mats Gustafsson. Plus I was able to put a good dent in the 600-page book I'm currently reading: Last Night a DJ Saved My Life - The History of the Disc Jockey. It's very entertaining, very informative and I can highly recommend the book to anyone who is interested in dance music, whether it's soul, disco, hip hop or techno.

I'm half way through the book and so, as the bus made its way onto the M4 on Thursday morning, I continued reading the chapter Hip Hop Roots. I read about the pioneering work of DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa in the Bronx in the '70s. I read about the relationship between disco and hip hop and the links between punk and hip hop, in which Malcolm McLaren played a big role. I chuckled over this part where McLaren goes to some block party in the South Bronx in the early days of hip hop:

"In August 1981 McLaren had been introduced to Afrika Bambaataa by Michael Holman, a black video artist who had taken him up to the Bronx to witness this amazing new music scene. The Sex Pistol's ex-manager was then steering the fortunes of pop band Bow Wow Wow, and formulating an ambitious album project based on smelting together the world's folk-dance music (this would become this Duck Rock LP). Despite a harrowing night during which he was, by most accounts, completely petrified, McLaren was mesmerised. 'It was like Heart of Darkness,' laughs Holman. 'I go to the hotel and I'm about to take them up to the Bronx on a summer evening - McLaren and Rory Johnston from RCA - and they're dressed like fucking pirates, in all that Vivienne Westwood gear. I thought we were gonna get stuck up or shot at any second. We finally get there and we go from a place that's completely deserted to masses and masses of kids, nothing but teenagers running from one corner to another, watching fights break out in the crowd. It's insane. Bottles flying everywhere. Malcom's dressed like a pirate - and nobody noticed us.'"

Watch and listen to McLaren's own account of this event in the 1984 BBC documentary Beat This! A Hip Hop History. Hehe I love it...

Back at my hotel I learned Malcom McLaren had died that morning.

He might have been a bit of a tosser, but credit where credit's due, his influence on pop culture is undeniable. So here's some ancient hip hop for you, including McLaren's go at rapping (from 1983) and Afrika Bambaataa biggest hit Planet Rock (from 1982). I'm also putting up Takin’ All that Jazz by Stetsasonic from 1988 because it nicely reflects on the state of hip hop at the time and the criticism it received (that it wasn’t creative because of the sampling and that it was a fad(!)). And look where we are today. In part thanks to that fucking pirate.

Malcom McLaren - Buffalo Gals. Get it here (YSI).


Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force - Planet Rock. Get it here (YSI).


Stetsasonic - Talkin' All That Jazz. Get it here (YSI).

It's all I can Talk Talk about

So here I went... off to my favorite record store in The Hague for some very necessary vinyl. I wanted to find some female hiphop and some ragga. But before I went to the 'urban' section I went through a pile of low-budget records and found something that would soon become a bit of an obsession. It has been for four weeks now, but we're still counting...


This Talk Talk record It's My life was only 2,50 and I knew I hated Such a Shame, but I knew I loved It's my life, so I bought it. I generally try to ignore tracks that get airtime at Arrow Classic Rock because that is better for my reputation. But this early eighties album is a gem. This sound is filed under New-Romantic or Post-Rock. Which are horrible horrible words that I identify with dirty old men and dried flowers. Besides that, I recognize the brilliance and intensity of Mark Hollis's voice and the tastefull arrangements and production. I can definately see that this album could have been a big influence on personal heroes such as Chromatics, John Maus and Caribou. In which case post-rock turns into experimental psychedelic electronic music which sounds much more artistic and intelligent. But either dried flowers or avantgarde, this record has become my anthem and on that note I'm playing it AGAIN.

Talk Talk - Tomorrow Started Get it here (ysi)

Talk Talk - It's My life Get it here (ysi)

Jah man!

Ras Kwame, one of my favourite Radio 1 DJ's, recommended the film Babylon on one of his shows. Now I know this man has good taste, and he was spot on about this one as well.

Set in South London during the early eighties Babylon tells us about the trials and tribulations of Blue, a 'toaster' (= an MC) for a soundsystem. After its screening in 1980 it was released on VHS, but copies were limited. Thus it was virtually unavailable, but it gained a cult following thanks to people making copies of copies of copies. Now 28 years later the movie has been completely restored, remastered and re-released on DVD! Not only the improved sound and picture quality should be a major leap forward compared to the (bootleg) VHS, also the subtitle option in the DVD menu is very welcome addition. At least, for people like me who find Jamaican Patois a little hard to follow.

I bought the DVD last week and I finally got around watching it last night. I thought it was a good. Grim and pretty depressing, but good. And it was great to catch a glimpse of the dancehall culture in London in the 80's...



It reminded me about another movie I watched a couple of months ago: This Is England. Also about troubled youth in the eighties and the way music played an important role in their lives...



The two movies kind of tell two sides of the same story, and the soundtracks have the same roots (reggae and the 2nd wave of ska). They're definitely not feel-good-movies, except maybe for the fact they make you happy the 80's are over. They also show music can be a source of consolation and hope. Thank JAH for music! SELAH!

my weirdest finds, part 3

Last weekend we discovered a new store just around the corner of our house, called the 80's toyshop. It is packed to the roof with vintage BMX and chopper bikes, Hulk Hogan action figures, Star Wars memorabilia, arcade machines, Amiga computers and much much more. My beau was drooling over the Kuwahara BMX in the window, but instead of laying down 600 quid he decided on spending £2,50 on a game for his Gameboy.

Now where was his ancient Gameboy? It had to be in one of these boxes that were still unpacked, gathering dust in our storage. Now comes the good part: in his quest for his Gameboy my man found my bag-that-looks-like-a-rock!! So here it is:

Does it look like a rock or what?!

And while I was doing some cleaning out over the weekend, I came across another great German fleamarket buy, that easily makes it into my top 3 of weirdest finds...


Now if it's true that the tie was designed to focus attention on a man's crotch, I think this tie definitely succeeds in that goal.