Mandril – watch this…!

Now, I know zip about this band, have only just discovered them second hand via you tube, but bwoy,… one to check out…

Non Stop Reggae Shoppe – Big mikey dread reggae radio

108 Bigmikeydread Reggae Radio – Non Stop Reggae Shopee

108 Bigmikeydread Reggae Radio – Non Stop Reggae Shopee
Yee Olde Reggae Shoppee opens for bizness in 2012 with a pure playlist, non stop Reggae pop not chat pon the mic speshy…
Hope youse guys enjoy the choice of sounds..

Tracklist
Dial M for Murder (Phil Pratt) – Who Gets Your Dub
Prince Far I – Big Fight
Larry Lawrence – See Me
Lennie Hibbert – Rose Lane
Techniques with Dave Barker – My Best Girl
Techniques – Your Love’s a Game
Barrington Levy – 21 Girls Salute
Leroy Smart – Love Life
Tenor Saw – Tonto and Lone Ranger Ride Again
Simple Simon – Go Barry G
Prince Buster – Trip To Mars
Luciano and Selive Wonder – Neighbourhood Watch
Junior Byles – Education Rock

Those of you wishing to further your contact with the Bigmikeydread Reggae Radio show can do so in a number of jolly olde ways, such as joining the Bigmikeydread Reggae Radio Listeners group on Facebook, now over 1000 strong – http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=5364049933
Or you might like to check out his Musical Blog – http://bigmikeydread.wordpress.com/.

HELP OUT THE SHOW????!!!?!If you want to help out the show, and boy do we need it! You can donate here at podomatic, look to your right, and fine the DONATE PAYPAL button, click it and send whatever you can, much appreciated thank you…

In the meantime thank you for listening, it’s a pleasure playing music for you, truly it is. Please get in touch, I love all the attention

Send to Friends | Leave a Comment | Download | Permalink

Alan Lomax Biography – Reviewed – The Man Who Recorded The World

The Man Who Recorded The World

Anyone interested in the history of American music should probably read this book.

Alan Lomax if you don’t know anything of him, was a music collector an ethnomusicologist and a lover of ‘Folk and Folksong’. His influence on American popular culture through his collecting of the ‘people’s’ music is unfathomable.

He virtually discovered Huddie Ledbetter, ‘Leadbelly’, in a Texas State Prison, he was key in the career and life of Woody Guthrie, and in so much as that is the case, Bob Dylan’s career too.

He recorded, archived, wrote about, translated, studied, transposed, annotated and spent his life creating a repository of knowledge about Folk Culture, mainly through that culture’s production of a musical history and heritage. Hence he was to be seen in the early days dragging heavy batteries and early recording equipment through the Appalachians, the Kentucky mining districts and the streets of New Orleans.

The book reveals his life’s history, through letters and first person accounts. The author John Szwed counted Alan Lomax as his friend and so we are treated to a knowing study of Lomax, not written in the first person, but edited so.

I learnt a great deal I didn’t know about the man, such as his difficult relationship with his father, the quality and depth of his education, the incredible level of collecting he did for the Library of Congress and the politically difficult negotiations and posturing required to be successful in a government department and to be able to continue the obsessive work of your life. I learnt of his doubts and worries, his whining and whingeing, his poor health and the singularity both of his character and of his purpose.

I learnt how involved he was with the early development of Radio as a creative and artistic genre in the 30s and 40s of pre, present and post war America, of his staunch defence of ‘the negro’ and of his political leanings and investigation by the USA’s federal forces. This included one scary moment when he is being frisked unknowingly by both the US and UK special forces at a concert he performed at for the English monarch!

The book can be somewhat dry at times and perhaps a little plodding, but given a basic knowledge of American Folk history you will find almost every step in the book exciting enough and certainly page turning.

His key involvement in the ‘movement’ towards an appreciation of America’s working people and their Folk music as Art of highest order makes this essential reading, and though you will wince at the innocence of early folk music posturing and middle class patronization of the working classes in America, you can forgive all that, because Alan Lomax virtually invented the terms we have now come to accept, albeit with some trepidation and turning of the collective stomach. He had to define styles, to grapple with the very nomenclature that we all require to describe something in order to begin to codify his subject of research and we therefore owe him a debt, if only for drawing the starting line in the sand, and once playing in a band with Jackson Pollock.

Bigmikey on House of Reggae with Reggae World Music Network

Mikey Inna House of Reggae Spesh…

December 08, 2011 12:16 PM PST

No track listing it’s all on the recording, one for the Facebook crew, enjoy…

Send to Friends | Leave a Comment | Download | Permalink

Bigmikeydread Reggae Radio Podcast – Moving Out Of Babylon

104 Bigmikeydread Reggae Radio – Moving Out Of Babylon

As Jimi Hendrix once said before launching into ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ by Dylan at the Monteray Pop Festival, ‘It has been a long time hasn’t it’.
Sorry for the slightly longer than usual silence, however normal service resumes with this one… hope you enjoy enjoy enjoy…
Thanks for listening.

Tracklist

Jonnie Clarke – Move Out Of Babylon
Ethiopians – Satan Gal
Ethiopians – Satan Boy
Madoo – Little Young Girl / 44 Magnum
Boris Gardener – Groovy Kind Of Love
Boris Gardener – I’m Alone
Dean Stone and Nagoo All Stars – Mighty and Dread
Willie Cobb – You Don’t Love Me
The Wailers – Diamond Baby
Clarendonians – You Won’t See Me
Wailing Souls – Fire A Mus Mus Tail
Jacob Miller – Tired Fe Lick Weed Inna Bush
Vivian Jones – Dustbin Material
Don Campbell – Wheel It Again
Carl Meeks – Haul and Pull Up Selecter
Anthony B – Fire Pon Rome
Burning Spear – Free Black People
The Pyramids – All Change On The Bakerloo Line
Johnny Osbourne and the Sensations – The Warrior
The Ethiopians – Gun Man
The Ethiopians – Everything Crash

Those of you wishing to further your contact with the Bigmikeydread Reggae Radio show can do so in a number of jolly olde ways, such as joining the Bigmikeydread Reggae Radio Listeners group on Facebook, now over 1000 strong – http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=5364049933
Or you might like to check out his Musical Blog – http://bigmikeydread.wordpress.com/.

HELP OUT THE SHOW????!!!?!If you want to help out the show, and boy do we need it! You can donate here at podomatic, look to your right, and fine the DONATE PAYPAL button, click it and send whatever you can, much appreciated thank you…

In the meantime thank you for listening, it’s a pleasure playing music for you, truly it is. Please get in touch, I love all the attention

Send to Friends | Leave a Comment | Download | Permalink

Studio One Lp Cover Art Book from Soul Jazz

Collected for your viewing pleasure

Just out from Soul Jazz, most recent purveyors of all that is Studio One related in the UK (music and otherwise) comes this coffee table booky wook, collecting some of the covers from Studio One’s catalogue for your viewing pleasure, though if you collect the Lps, you’ll have a significant amount of the artwork already.

No surprise there then?

It’s nice to have and there are a few you may not have seen before, such as the Tabernacle Gospel Lp covers or the Sri Chimnoy Lp (now legendary as a rarity) but there isn’t a lot here to stun an enthusiast for the label. Frankly that’s been the case with most of Soul Jazz’s output of Studio One material musically and so it is visually, also.

Odd

They (SJ) I think have missed a complete trick, in that on occasion they mention the sleeve notes and quote from them, they could have included many more, for the quirky nature of them are well-known and often amusing or enlightening. Including the cover of the Lp Pirates Choice (which has never it seems been reproduced as anything but a muddy turdish greeny brown of a poorly registered example of what NOT to do if you are a Litho printer) seems odd too. There are more Lps they could have chosen from, with more to offer the viewer, casual or otherwise.

I hoped for more

There is no logic or rhyme to the choices made and to the inclusion of some of the more recent Lp covers, which have little or no individually distinctive style whatsoever.

The forward by Steve Barrow is little more than yet another introductory level run through of Jamaican music history, though generally accurate for all that and still an engaging read for the newly converted. Though it should be mentioned that no Mento was ever to my knowledge released by Tewari on Down-Beat, only on sister label Caribou.

 

Bigmikeydread Reggae Radio – Obituary

103 Bigmikeydread Reggae Radio – Obituary

_5045792″ />

103 Bigmikeydread Reggae Radio – Obituary

Just a day after I posted the last podcast my Dad passed away.

Tracklist

Dennis Brown – Created by the Father
Madoo – Have You Ever Been To Heaven
Ken Parker – Sad Mood
Leroy Sibbles – Garden Of Life
Beres Hammond – Music Is Life
Ken Boothe – Lonely Teardrops
The Royals – Heart In Pain
Higgs and Wilson – Gone Is Yesterday
Count Ossie – First Gone
Leroy Smart – Honour your Mother and your Father
Barrington Levy – Why Did You Leave Me
Carl Bradney – Slipping Into Darkness
Sylvan White – Mammy and Daddy
Big Youth – Weeping In The Night
Johnny Osbourne – Children Are Crying
Ken Boothe – My Heart Is Gone
Dennis Brown – Life Goes In Circles
The Ethiopian – When Will Be The End?
……………………………..
Barry Murphy and Dan Stewart – Kick Out De Debbel On A Holiday

Those of you wishing to further your contact with the Bigmikeydread Reggae Radio show can do so in a number of jolly olde ways, such as joining the Bigmikeydread Reggae Radio Listeners group on Facebook, now over 1000 strong – http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=5364049933
Or you might like to check out his Musical Blog – http://bigmikeydread.wordpress.com/.

HELP OUT THE SHOW????!!!?!If you want to help out the show, and boy do we need it! You can donate here at podomatic, look to your right, and fine the DONATE PAYPAL button, click it and send whatever you can, much appreciated thank you…

In the meantime thank you for listening, it’s a pleasure playing music for you, truly it is. Please get in touch, I love all the attention

Send to Friends | Leave a Comment | Download | Permalink

London’s Burning

Youth and the art of ignorance – The London riots and the riots elsewhere of 2011. A Top 20 soundtrack to their misery…

Yeah I know I know, those that are old enough have been here before, and you’re all bound to notice the Jurnior Murvin track in amongst this little list. I just thought that we could all do with a soundtrack, it’s one way of softening the blow, though I don’t suppose it will be any consolation to the children and parents and good people everywhere being terrorised by the bunch of self indulgent thugs currently on the streets of London and other UK cities. This is a trite idea at best, but given the way that Murvin’s Police and Thieves became the soundtrack to previous unrest in our beautiful capital, an obvious one to author.

Top 20 Tunes to listen to with Police Sirens wailing in the wind?

Culture – Stop The Fussing And Fighting

Junior Murvin – Police And Thieves

Johnny Clarke & U-Brown – Work For Your Money And Don’t Grudge Your Black Brother

Benjamin Zephaniah – Riot In Progress

Sons of Jah – Breaking Down The Barriers

John Holt – Police In Helicopter

King Tubby’s – Big Youth Fights Against Capitalism (??)

Jah Stitch – Cool Down Youthman

Prince Buster All Stars – City Riot

John Wayne – Call The Police

Peter Metro – Police Inna England

Joe Higgs – Wave Of War

Val Bennett – City Demonstration

Niney The Observer – Blood And Fire

Tappa Zukie – Stop The Gun Shooting

Pama Dice – Brixton Fight

Al Brown – Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City

Barry Brown – Politician

Congos – Children Crying

Roy Richards – Summer Time

Thoughts on the passing of Amy Winehouse

Dead dead dead, dead as a Dodo…

Lilly livered get out clause…

As I begin to write this I have to say, that I, know bugger all of the ‘truth’ in this matter and my perspective can only ever be that of a listener and as a digester of whatever the media cared to throw at me during Ms. Winehouse’s career. Only her family and those close to her will ever know the truth. Everyone though has their angle.

Mourning

Many will not mourn the passing of Amy Winehouse. Many will see her as an average talent amongst much else that is jaw droppingly mundane in the scene of British popular music circa the 2000s. She was undoubtedly disturbed, self-indulgent, inward looking, tearfully sentimental in that way only the lost soul of a teenager can be, without a backward glance or self-critical say so; but she was one great singer, she was a talent I believe to rival the greats, or could have been, given the chance and the opportunity.

On an off day she could vocally out manoeuvre her nearest rivals and I believe probably leave them wishing she do something as stupid as fuck things up. She did this, most royally of course. Talentless ‘squeekers’ like Duffy could never fill the fissures now that a true star has fallen from the firmament.

Above all though, and depressingly so, once success hit, she was a commodity bought and sold and then personally let down I believe by family, friends and her management, by her record label, her minders and everyone else INVESTED in her.

27 and an adult?

Sure she was 27 and no doubt considered herself an adult and capable of making her own decisions when she passed away. Where were the management that professed love for her.. where was ‘love’ when handlers pushed her onto an Eastern European stage only half a month ago when SHE said ‘I don’t want to go on’ and was in no fit state to do so..? It seems as though those that should have cared weren’t there for her, or perhaps there was no opportunity to help. Whatever the true story behind the tradgedy of her addiction and struggle it seems to me, that she was let down.

So family have said that Amy was always a wild spirit who knew her own mind and couldn’t be controlled, I wonder if she was just looking, as young children do, for boundaries, for someone to love her enough to make up some rules, or someone to say ‘enough is enough’. No one did, and after her success no one wanted to dared, or could probably have got close enough to impose any single will upon her. However desperate the situation.

Of course there is always addiction, an affliction that she and many others have, but every addict I have ever known was in some way physically or sexually abused, or nurtured some deep schism in the dark recesses of their un-shared soul. It wasn’t so much the addiction in my experience as the need to plaster over the cracks that led to those that I have known harming and in one or two cases killing themselves as a result.

Devil at the Crossroads?

Many performers I believe are fractured people who ply their trade for more, much more, than financial reward. The average Joe doesn’t feel the draw or need to please other people and the love (supposed) that returns to them by way of this bargain. And will not understand the contract that Winehouse and others like her sign for themselves. Perhaps this is the contract, the very same one, that Robert Johnson who died at 27 years of age, or Jimi Hendrix who also suffered loss when his mother left the family home (and died at 27), signed with the Devil at the Crossroads.

Fractured

It is no surprise to me that she enrolled in Acting school in the same year as her father left home, one wonders what hole is created by loss and how it might be subsequently filled? The adulation associated with succesful performance seems a candidate fo gap filler. But no doubt, like many before her have found, once success comes your way, there is nothing real to fill the gaping hole of loss and sadness with, there is in the end, only you and if you have it, love for yourself. Is this who Amy Winehouse was? Only her family and friends will know, but I think it’s how I saw her and how I see her now.

But what I heard was someone with all the ability of Billie Holliday, (Tony Bennett likened her to Dinah Washington) but with the recorded output of a crowd pleaser. I think, had she lived to a ripe old age, circled by earlier successes and had re-negotiated the contract between herself and the World she might have had the opportunity to show us more than just a spark of genius.

She was that good. As it is, we’re left wondering and wishing.

Amy Winehouse was someone’s child, don’t forget that.

Bigmikeydread Reggae Radio – Signposts3

100 Bigmikeydread Reggae Radio – Signposts3

100 Bigmikeydread Reggae Radio – Signposts3

The fird in a series of shows celebrating my most loved tunes….

Tracklist -

1.Joe Higgs- Wave Of War
2.Early B -Ghostbusters
3.Cornel Campbel – Bandulu
4.Ranking Dread – Hard Times
5.Prince Buster – One Step Beyond
6.Earl Lindo – White Rum
7.J.D. McPherson – Fire Bug
8.Junior Byles – Pitchy Patchy
9.Blues Busters – Tell Me Why
10.Earl Zero – Please Officer
11.The Missionary Quintete – Dry Bones
12.Delroy Wilson – I Can’t Stand It
13.Bangers and Mash – Healing In Vain
14.Ketih And Tex – Stop That Train
15.John Holt – If I Were A Carpenter
16.Clint Eastwood & General Saint -Healing In The Balm Yard
17.Delroy Wilson – Sweet For My Sweet
18.Trinity – Sweet Sugar Plum Plum

Those of you wishing to further your contact with the Bigmikeydread Reggae Radio show can do so in a number of jolly olde ways, such as joining the Bigmikeydread Reggae Radio Listeners group on Facebook, now over 1000 strong – http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=5364049933
Or you might like to check out his Musical Blog – http://bigmikeydread.wordpress.com/.

HELP OUT THE SHOW????!!!?!If you want to help out the show, and boy do we need it! You can donate here at podomatic, look to your right, and fine the DONATE PAYPAL button, click it and send whatever you can, much appreciated thank you…

In the meantime thank you for listening, it’s a pleasure playing music for you, truly it is. Please get in touch, I love all the attention

Send to Friends | Leave a Comment | Download | Permalink