Favorite Things Playing in My Stereo Right Now

It’s been a while since I did one of these lists…

1.  Wicked - Mutant Sound Systems (Mostly Steve Gurley Remixes) - This was a surprisingly good find from the super-cheap clearance table at J&R Music World ($1.99!).  Steve Gurley was one of the people in UK drum’n’ bass who veered off into this British dance genre called UK Garage, which apparently had its biggest day at the turn of the millennium, and had a lot to do with the birth of grime (which eventually stole the spotlight) and dubstep.  I wasn’t so hip in the late 1990s (even if I did know a lot about the global music and the Asian underground stuff), so I’m just now learning about UK garage, which I am very much enjoying.  To me, the Steve Gurley remixes - mostly of artists even far more obscure - are particularly intriguing because the stuff being done with the rhythm and the electronics is so much more experimental than most of the vocals, which much more closely resemble conventional soul and house singing, at least from what I can tell.  (While the electronics are more like some of the more interesting drum’n’bass that I’ve heard, but quirkier, more eccentric, and probably more stripped down.  Sometimes, I would like to filter out the vocals altogether and just enjoy the electronic music as “instrumentals”… )   I find this UK Garage sound, especially on this CD, to be more fun, also, than most of the dubstep and grime that I’ve been hearing lately, which seems more self-conscious by comparison - but not more experimental… Some of the stuff going on in the background is really, delightfully way out there.  (Wish I could come up with a more competent description, but that’s the basic impression I have.  A more technically precise description of this UK garage music can be found at Wikipedia.)

2.  Original Garage Selection - So, due to my fondness for the strange Wicked disc, I decided to splurge on this $11.49 bargain compilation over at the Virgin music store. (It’s part of a whole Original Selection series, apparently.)  As an overall compilation, I don’t like this one as much as Wicked, but it does have a couple of great songs.  My favorite is “Almighty Father,” by Sunship, which is really just fast dancehall music only slightly removed.  It has a very compelling beat and also interesting and unusual lyrics, which I’m still trying to figure out.  If I’m not mistaken, instead of being about the familiar garage topics (e.g., love and horniness), it’s more about war and death.  And it might be somewhat political.  But it’s kind of hard to figure out these words at first, so I can’t commit to any complete interpretation.  Anyway, it’s not the words themselves that are really getting my attention so much as how they’re delivered.

I also very much like another song that involves this guy Sunship (yeah, it’s one guy, and he’s some kind of producer), as well as a number by Scott Garcia called “It’s a London Thing” (which apparently is known as a UK garage “classic”).  Also somewhat intriguing, but not as good as the rest of the stuff, is a remix of Lady Sovereign’s “Random.”  And don’t get me wrong, I do like the SOV.  But she doesn’t exactly stand out on this disc; I think she’s sounded better on her own EP and LP.

3-5.  Dillinger - CB 200/Bionic Dread and Some Like It Hot - It’s funny that while I’m in no mood these days to listen to the punk rock that I liked 30 years ago, I absolutely love listening to this particular reggae.  CB 200 first came out in 1977, and I first heard it in ’78, on the pioneering Philly punk (college) radio show, “Yesterday’s Now Music Today” (where I also became an unofficial late-late night DJ for a short while).  Back then, it was natural to think that if you were a punk rocker you would also love reggae (as I did), which wasn’t really the case in later years, ska punks notwithstanding.  So, anyway, I went and bought the album CB 200 after hearing the hit song “Cokane In My Brain,” and I loved it.  I held onto that album for more than 25 years, but it literally broke in one of my recent moves and it was already too worn down and scratched anyway.  It was impossible to find for a while, so it was very exciting a couple of months ago when I stumbled upon this Limited Edition 2004 release from Island/Def Jam (found over at Other Music).  It was also nice to hear the following album, also contained on this disc, called Bionic Dread.  Actually, I now like listening to Bionic Dread even more.

Dillinger was one of the original Jamaican DJ/toasters, lifting other people’s music and rhythmically talking over it (which was a much more distinctly Jamaican practice back in these days when rap was still in its infancy).  And a lot of what Dillinger said had to do with Rastafarianism, which I really can’t take to in a serious way (to me, it seems as absurd as any other religion).  However, within the context of this religious preaching there was a recurrent social revolutionary message, speaking directly about defying the ruling class and its ruling principles and creating a better world.  As I’ve said in the past about the words of Bob Marley, the frequent descriptions of the overthrow of Babylon often can be appreciated apart from the religious message, as references to the overthrow of colonialism and even capitalism itself.

So, the lyrics, for all their strange (to me) Rasta content, are actually very inspiring.  (There are so many great rebellious lines I could refer to… Right now, I’m thinking about those lines in the song “The General,” from CB 200, about how “I won’t follow the Roman policy,” because “the Roman policy is a fallacy.”)  But I also am so captivated by Dillinger’s style of toasting/rapping, especially from this period of time three decades ago, that I think I would enjoy listening to almost anything he said in his music, unless it was something truly horrible (which it never was).

Recently, also sifting through a used/bargain bin (this time at Kim’s on St. Marks Place), I found another Dillinger release, Some Like It Hot. I’m not sure exactly when this album was recorded. The CD copyright date is 2004 and the songs are all copyright 1976 (like so much of Dillinger’s other work), and the recording seems to have been made somewhere in between. The slightly confusing liner notes describe him going back to record this album after some failed attempts at “fusion” and “electro” in the 1980s, so my guess would be late 1980s.  Most of the songs are actually based on the music of another famous reggae star, Dennis Brown.  In any event, I find this CD likeable but can’t help feeling Dillinger had lost a little something since those two albums from 1977. This one isn’t as compelling but it’s not bad, either, and I imagine it will grow on me.