The Poor Listener & The Poor Barber

Awful isn't it? Same ol' complaint - you get to 'a certain age' and it's harder to find new music that excites you. Same ol' complaint people have made since Pop music was old enough to be pored over by those of the first generation who probably mourned the demise of Elvis. Apart from the still with-it crowd who got excited by...Frank Zappa? 

Anyway, I'm wondering where all the great new music is over the last few weeks. Feels like it's all over (electronic dept) - though it's not, of course. I fully expect my jaded ears to prick up some time soon. So, thankfully, the mass of historical sounds we've all collected serve a good purpose. You always knew they did but it's a double-edged sword, basking in brilliance form the past. On the one hand you can't believe how good Bernard Parmegiani was, but on the other, how lacking in equal imagination/creativity most modern electronic music is by comparison. It's probably a stupid comparison to make anyway but I can't help myself when people like Aphex Twin are regarded a 'geniuses'.

Enter King Tubby, who I've been listen to again lately. I've just found this version of the John Holt classic, Ali Baba, which Tubby has mixed into a dub at least twice counting this. Killer machine gun/drum salvos!

Set The Controls For The Heart Of Dub

Listening to Sherwood At The Controls, Vol. 1: 1979-1984 (On-U Sound) last night I made the mistake of flipping from that to Joe Gibbs' African Dub Almighty Chapter Three which, as you know, is like flipping from a Ronnie Scott record to Sonny Rollins - cruel - I mean the act, not the comparison, although perhaps that's cruel too...unless you're incredibly generous-minded, or rate UK efforts compared to pioneering (spiritual) home-based brilliance in reggae and Jazz equally. They each have their merits, of course. Sherwood at the controls of those classic On-U albums is unlike anything else, especially his greatest work with Mark Stewart. Hold on, comparing Gibbs to Sherwood is stupid; they're different. You'll understand, hopefully, why I did so...the influence of Jamaican sound scientists on Sherwood being obvious. The treasures of Sherwood At The Controls are dub versions of Liberty City and Learning To Cope With Cowardice. Oh, this is great too...

...so I got to thinking about some of my favourite dub tunes and rather than bore you with too many I've just picked five...

Hugh Mundell's Dub & Sun Ra's Solar Drums In The Echo Chamber...plus a Sun Ra Poem

Hugh Mundell's Africa Must Be Free By 1983 was a big album in 1979. After the Punky Reggae party some of us were still buying reggae albums and singles. How much we cared whether Africa would be free is debatable but the quality of that album was not. So there was the dub version too, which I've been playing today having just downloaded it, being reminded of why some of us went so mad for it the first time 'round. Some dubs are ordinary but these do it right, all ingredients mixed to perfection...drum-bass-boom-drop cavern of sound coming on warm and strong.

Proto-dub echoes from who else but Sun Ra because, as you know, he pre-dated/dicted everything from Free Jazz to Fusion and Improv, didn't he? More or less. Solar Drums is from 1962. 1962. Yes. 

Here's a poem he wrote, which is like a condensed version of those 'be positive' help books for aspiring creative people. Come on, let's join hands with our 'friends of skill'...

The Friends Of Skill (1972)

We must not say no to ourselves

When there is a greater deed to do

We must not say can't

If it is not imperative that we should

But we never should really believe that we can't

Whenever it is for our necessity good

We must not synchronise with anything less than art-wise dignity

It is either that we are natural-constructive-achievers

or something less than the natural self.

The rendezvous time is here

I see a prophesy:

Across the thunder bridge of time

We rush with lightnin' feet

To join hands with those

THE FRIENDS OF SKILL

Who truly say and truly do.

(from The Immeasurable Equation, which is a bit pricey but worth every penny/cent)