10 February 2013 (Day 41) – Magical Melbourne Music Tour # 1

As predicted, I did not get to play anything today.  Not that I’m complaining as “M” and I spent it taking a relative and fiancée from my ancestral homeland on a tour around our fair city.  As I was doing so the thought occurred to me about whether I could pull a tour of Melbourne’s music heritage.

After a great deal of thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that I think I could construct a reasonable tour, however, in order to make it interesting it would have to be fleshed out with lots of great stories and footage.  Let’s face it; no one is going to be that interested in the sites of particular significance in my musical development.  But, a properly constructed tour would take someone to and around a number of Melbourne’s non musical sights.  Here are the candidates listed in no particular order.

The remnants of Melbourne’s “beer barn” pub venues

These are the venues in which the crowds flocked to in the 70’s and 80’s during the Countdown era and beyond when Aussie Rock was king and the likes of Skyhooks, Sherbet, AC/DC, The Birthday Party, Cold Chisel, Australian Crawl, The Angels, Hoodoo Gurus, Mental As Anything, The Church, Midnight Oil, Diyinyls, Hunters And Collectors, Dragon, Jo Jo Zep And The Falcons, The Black Sorrows, Split Enz, The Sports, Rose Tattoo and INXS among many other ruled.  Existing almost exclusively within pubs in Melbourne’s outer suburbs, almost all have closed their band rooms and have undergone major refits having converted both the entire venue and the band room into either poker machine venues or swank dining venues.  These include the Croxton Park Hotel in Croydon, the Sentimental Bloke in Bulleen, the Carnegie Hotel, the Mentone Hotel, the Middle Park Hotel, the Tarmac Hotel in Laverton and Bombay Rock in Preston.   In some cases, such as the Tottenham Hotel, little remains of the venue. 

The Kylie Sites

Obviously the starting point is Pin Oak Crescent in Vermont South, the real life Ramsay Street in Neighbours.  In neighbouring Nunawading is the former Channel 10 Studios now the Global Studios where the interior scenes were shot.  The studios were also where the originally Young Talent Time was shot and gave Dannii Minogue and Tina Arena their starts.

St. Kilda

Just outside of the inner suburban core of Melbourne lies St. Kilda.  Originally a seaside resort it contained arguably Australia’s first seaside entertainment strip, predating Surfer’s Paradise.  Among the attractions there is the art deco Palais Theatre.  With a capacity of close to 3,000 people it, along with Festival Hall, was Melbourne’s only major indoor concert venue in the 1960’s and 1970’s.  The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys among many others played their first shows in Melbourne there.  After a period of relative inactivity during the 1980’s it is still a major concert venue today.  Next door is a car park on which stood the former Palace which was Melbourne’s major club venue during the 1990’s.  Nirvana played all of their Melbourne shows during their only Australian tour in 1992 and live albums by Dave Graney and the Cosmic Psychos were also recorded there.   Nearby on the Upper Esplanade is a Novatel Hotel which previously was The Venue, arguably the city’s major club venue during the 1980’s.  Like The Palace, it was ultimately destroyed by fire.  Further along the Upper Esplanade is a long term venue, The Esplanade Hotel.  Gigs occur here in the public bar and it’s Gershwin Room, now famous as the location for RockWiz TV quiz show.  Turning around the corner from the Upper Esplanade into Fitzroy Street brings two icons of Melbourne’s alternative music scene.  First is the Prince Of Wales Hotel which has been hosting bands for decades although its future as a live venue is under constant threat.  Its band room appears to have originally been a burlesque house; patrons had to walk past a number of photos of performers from revues past as one ascended the stairs.  A refit around 10 years ago led to a slight change away from many alternative acts towards more heritage or Americana acts such as Solomon Burke, Los Lobos and Gillian Welch.  Finally, further down Fitzroy Street is The George Hotel.  During the 1970’s its ballroom was known as The Seaview Ballroom and is forever associated with The Birthday Party.

Other Suburban Sites

There are two other locations that merit noting here.  Rippon Lea is the location of the ABC Studios, home to the majority of the episodes of Countdown during its existence.  The other is the Kooyong Tennis Courts.   Its Centre Court is an occasional concert venue, notable for gigs by Led Zeppelin and The Stones both in 1973 as well as the Bob Dylan/Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers shows of 1986.

Sunbury

Located down the road from Tullamarine airport, just outside the surburban fringe lies Sunbury.  Its chief claim to fame is as the site for the Sunbury Festivals of the early 1970's, festivals that were instrumental in showcasing the extent to which Australian music had developed to that time.  Foreign bands on the bill were a rarity and, as Queen can attest in 1974, not always appreciated.  Queen's sin apepars to have been to beat then local heroes Madder Lake to the coverted sunset spot.

Calder Raceway

This is an American type bowl and drag strip complex on the road to Bendigo which hosted the occasional megagig.  It was here that Fleetwood Mac performed on their Rumours tour, headlining over Santana and the Little River Band.   It was also the venue to the infamous Guns' N' Roses gig in February 1993 along with Skid Row and Rose Tattoo.  The infamy was not of the Gunners' making but rather the price gouging for water and food (after confiscation of same from patrons at the gate) on an extremely  hot day.  To top things off, patrons returning to the city after the gig found that the trains had shut down for the night, the transport authorities having refused to put on extra services for the gig.  This quite rightly led to an Ombudsman's enquiry.

[The Road To] Geelong

60 km from Melbourne is Geelong, Victoria’s second largest city.  Although it has produced a number of great alternative acts, notably Bored! And Magic Dirt, there are some interesting sights on the way there to catch our attention.  First there is the road sign that directs people to Little River, which served as the inspiration for the Little River Band as they journeyed to Geelong as an unnamed act for one of their first gigs.  The area outside Little River or nearby Lara was also the location where the cover for Johnny Cash’s American Recordings album was shot on 23 February 1994.  (I know the date because I was at his gig that night when he said he’d shot the cover during the day.)  Finally, the area alongside the highway and the seaside location of Avalon is where most of the scenes of the original Mad Max movie – much beloved by musicians – were shot.

Lorne

Beyond Geelong and along the Great Ocean Road lies the holdiay resort of Lorne.  A trip here is merited every New Year's Eve for the Falls Festival.  Patrons love the vibe here and are happy to buy tickets irrespective of the line up.  Arguably the best night came when 1998 was brought in by none other than  Iggy Pop who counted down the last seconds of 1997 before tearing into Raw Power.   Happy New Year indeed!

I’ll detail inner and central Melbourne in tomorrow’s post.

 

8 & 9 February 2013 (Days 39 & 40) – Fall[ing] Down

It was a good idea….really.  I had absolutely nothing planned at work on the Friday – no commitments, no meetings, nothing. As a result it was going to be one of those days where I would sit at my desk and read, research and write, getting up only for toilet breaks and lunch.  It was, or so I thought, the perfect opportunity to play what is easily the longest recording on the iPod. 

(112)  The Fall – The Complete Peel Sessions 1978 – 2004

This is the definitive 6 disc, 97 track compilation of all the sessions that The Fall recorded for English DJ John Peel’s radio show.  A Peel Session was highly sought after by musicians of the era and was ended only by his death.  The format was basically like a JJJ Live At The Wireless session recorded in a studio, without an audience with the act seemingly limited to either 4 tracks or a playing time limit.  The Fall, let’s face it Mark E Smith and whoever was in his band at a given moment, are one of Britain’s most singular talents and earned the admiration of Peel with a record 24 sessions.  It is an act that is difficult to describe in musical terms; post punk with extremely erudite lyrics will do in the absence of anything else.  For the Fall fanatic this is a treasure trove, a mixture of alternate (and frequently better) versions of Fall classics, obscurities, B-sides and one-offs.  Over the course of these discs you can hear the fractured music (and yes, there are tracks here that were to clearly inspire Pavement, check out Put Away and No Xmas For John Quays in particular) eventually smooth out, in much the same way Pavement smoothed out over their last couple of albums. By the last disc, admittedly a time when Smith had a stable band for a reasonable period, there is a richness and power that is undeniable.  Not that you’ll notice this too much because ultimately it is the sound of Smith’s voice, his method of delivery, his constant repetition of key lines in seemingly every track and his lyrical constructs that dominate the sound.  It is not music for everyone.  Anyone wanting a introduction to the sprawl that is the Fall catalogue should start with their 2 disc compilation 50,000 Fall Fans Can’t Be Wrong.  If that stimulates your appetite, go to this.

So that was the idea.  With relentless predictability, it seemed that everyone at work chose Friday to see me, ask advice or raise urgent items that required my immediate attention.  By the end of the work day I had only got past the first 23 tracks. 

No problem, I thought, I’ll catch up when I got home.  Now “M” got into the act insisting that we needed to get the house in order in case her returning sister and family accept her invitation to dinner the following night.  For the rest of the night the only time I had was when I hand washed the car and that took the total up to track 36.

There was no “quality time” on Saturday morning as we were up at a very early hour to drop off Lady at her place (sob) and then to greet her owners at the airport.  By the time we eventually returned home, I had enough time to take total up to track 48 before they took up the dinner invite.

My goodness.  Two days gone and I’ll only at the half way mark with the strong possibility of Sunday being a music free day.

7 February 2013 – Love Will Keep Us Together (Day 38)

Let’s face it.  It’s become apparent I’ve started to select albums thematically to fit the blog entry I’ve decided to write on the day. Then there are other days, like today, where I take some albums, play stuff as the mood hits me and then try to make sense of my selections whilst in the act of writing the post.

I knew today wasn’t going to provide much opportunity as I had a number of commitments and meetings.  It could possibly explain why the two albums I did play were both albums where there is a sort of variety to the song selection.  No real point in playing a conceptually linked album or something that is designed to be consumed whole, is there?

But then I had to think of a title for the post.  Ideally, I try to link something to a song, album or band title or my own rituals such as delving into the plastic pending crate.  Nothing came for a while until I realised there was sort of a family connection, expect in one instance, the couple concerned are not married.  So I though some more and all I could come up with was the reference to the Captain And Tennille’s hit which seems quite perverse when today I’m writing about:

(110) Dave Rawlings Machine – A Friend Of A Friend

Rawlings is the musical and life partner of Gillian Welch.  Theirs is a true partnership; he plays on her albums and appears on her CD booklets, and she does the reverse.  They both co-write many of the songs that appear on their albums and play at each other’s shows.   Although this album is credited to the Dave Rawlings Machine, it is really a Rawlings solo album, or a Rawlings/Welch album in which Rawlings does most of the lead vocals.  (Why they don’t release all of their albums under a Rawlings/Welch or Welch/Rawlings moniker with each of them singing the numbers they predominantly wrote, a la using one totally inappropriate example, the Bob Mould/Grant Hart songs within Husker Du is totally beyond me.)  To me it is another excellent album with a great combination of bluegrass, Americana and country styled tunes. The Rawlings/Welch tunes are of their usual high quality, especially the opener Ruby which sounds like a great undiscovered song by The Band.   Other highlights are covers; Method Acting/Cortez The Killer welds a Bright Eyes track to one of Neil Young’s classics with a change in lead vocalist at the appropriate moment and To Be Young (Is To be Sad, To Be High) is Rawlings version of the song he and Ryan Adams wrote and performed on the latter’s Heartbreaker album.

(111) Martha Wainwright – Self Titled

This is the debut album by the daughter of Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III and sister to Rufus Wainwright.  It is a great mix of soft rock, soul and folk.  It’s notable for two things.  First the sheer power of her voice that is clearly able to adjust to songs with varying degrees of difficulty. Anyone who can, on my version of the album, take a song in French such as Dis, Quand Reviendras-Tu? and make it her sound like own clearly has a talent.  (And, yes, being born and raised in Canada helps too!)  The other is the unforgettable Bloody Mother F***ing A**hole, a song reputedly aimed squarely at her father. 

6 February 2013 – Music For Solo Road Trips (Day 37)

My job occasionally takes me into country Victoria to visit one of three locations.  Today was the first trip for the year and I was off after dropping “M” at the train station.

Unless I’m going to the footy or “M” has a day off, these trips are usually the only time I get to drive alone.  Given that we spend our travel time talking, these solo country trips are usually the only time I have the car stereo to myself.  My trips take a minimum of an hour to complete one way, so it provides a great opportunity to listen to a lengthy album or multi disc set and without “M”, I can also play some of the more extreme music (to her ears, not mine) in my collection.  In any case I like the idea of bring gratuitous urban noise to the peace and quiet of the country.

But, for once, I was in no doubt what I was going to play first, having decided the night before:

(107) My Bloody Valentine – Loveless

This is one of the absolute cornerstones of my collection,  an album that redefined the way I conceived of what constituted music. Is it a psychedelic album? Yes.  Does it revel in noise? Absolutely.  Feedback?  Yep.  Other things you can’t make out? By the bucket load.  It is an ambitious sprawling behemoth of a record melding sheer noise with effects, differing styles and song craft.  To these ears, there are effectively two layers of sound.  First there is an outer shell of continuous noise and effects which appears to never let up – there isn’t a note of silence anywhere on the album.  The songs constitute its inner core and these emerge, at times almost magically, from the abyss.  (The prime illustration is the last 40 seconds of rhythmic noise that marks the end of the delicate To Here Knows When as well as the start of the brilliant When You Sleep.)  This pattern is more or less continuous for almost the length of the album.  The penultimate track What You Want ends with 60 seconds of presumably a loop of electronic effects foreshadowing the dance beats that underpins the amazing closer Soon.  After listening to this the first time, suddenly a whole lot of music made a lot more sense to me.  For example, I was finally able to listen and appreciate PsychoCandy and Sonic Youth started to feel a lot more conventional.  It provided a form of framework that has allowed me to comprehend and appreciate a range of other acts that were even more extreme, such as Swans, Sun o))) and Boris and to distinguish them from lesser acts. And all that is before considering the range of acts that have no doubt been influenced by it.   No wonder it took 22 years for Kevin Shields to think about, conceive and record a follow up.

(108) Primal Scream – XTRMNTR

Kevin Shields was more or less a member of Primal Scream when they recorded this album.  It has a much harsher tone than the band’s previous output, one that is more in tune with Loveless.  At its best – and make no mistake, this is Primal Scream’s best album – tracks meld the Loveless sonic attack with great rock.  As a result the album is, among others, home to the extraordinary Accelerator, the relentless Swastika Eyes and the soundtrack-esque Blood Money.  But as great as this album undoubtedly is, it paled into insignificance when the band (with Shields) toured this album.  The show I saw at The Palace on 29 January 2000 is close to the very best gig I’ve ever seen with each track played with an intensity that bordered on the insane.

(109) Mogwai – EP + 6

Mogwai is a Scottish band that plays often heavily distorted instrumentals and has plainly been influenced by My Bloody Valentine among others.  This CD brings together 3 EPs for one 70+ minute album. The longest track here, Stereodee stretches for 13 and a half minutes sounding for the most part like The Beatles final cord on A Day In The Life played by massed guitars complete with feedback and effects.  There are wonderfully nuanced slower and atmospheric tunes such as Stanley Kubrick as well as tracks like the 11 minute Xmas Steps and  the wonderful closer Rage: Man which utilises the slow/fast/slow template they were to perfect on subsequent albums and especially on their classic track Like Herod.

5 February 2013 (Day 36) – My Bloody Coincidental Valentine

It was an extremely busy day at work and was able to listen to only one album.  It was:

(106) Steve Wynn – Dazzling Display

Steve Wynn has made a number of albums since the demise of the band with which he originally made his name, The Dream Syndicate.  (That is, The Dream Syndicate, one of the leading lights of the 1980’s so called “Paisley Underground”, not 1960's The Dream Syndicate, the avant-guard act containing underground legends such as La Monte Young and John Cale.)  This is the second album released under his name and arguably his best.  There is more light and share in these songs unlike the denser sounds of, especially the latter albums, his former band with only the single Drag and the track 405 sounding like outtakes from a Dream Syndicate record.  Bonnie And Clyde continued the tradition established on his first album, Kerosene Man, by talking the form of a duet with Concrete Blonde’s Johnette Napolitano.  My version is a deluxe edition containing six live tracks recorded for various radio stations, among them Sonic Youth’s Kool Thing, Paul Simon’s Boy In The Bubble and Bob Dylan’s Watching the River Flow.

Late in the afternoon I was finally able to check my work emails.  After dealing with the ones that required immediate attention, I saw one from a former colleague of mine who now works elsewhere.  He altered me that over the weekend just passed, My Bloody Valentine had released their new album (titled m b v) over the internet.   As soon as I read this, the sound  “ahhhhh” escaped from my lips as I realised one of life’s bizarre coincidences. 

On 15 November 1991, I was in the audience at the Prince of Wales Hotel, St Kilda for the third night of the band’s first Australian tour.  Their album Loveless was released a week or two prior to that night.  I remember that show well as it was my introduction to the band after agreeing to take a punt based on another colleague’s recommendation.  The venue was absolutely packed and it was difficult to see the band as the show took place during a time when the Prince Of Wales had a very low stage.  But despite this, the band blew me away. I’m not completely certain how much of Loveless was played that night, but I knew I was impressed by the immense power (and loudness), particularly of “that really long number” which was later identified for my benefit as You Made Me Realise. I was standing not far away from the mixing desk; on top of a speaker there was a projector which ran super 8 footage over the stage making for a psychedelic effect that meshed brilliantly with the music.

So what’s the coincidence?  On next Saturday, 16 February, My Bloody Valentine will be appearing in Melbourne for the first time since that 1991 show.  And once again, it will be about 2 weeks since the release of their last album.

It’s also given me an idea for tomorrow……

4 February 2013 (Day 35) – Weekly purchase update

It was a long day at work in the office as my colleague Jack had the day off.  Still it was a good opportunity to catch up on my purchases from the past week.

(101) Ornette Coleman – Twins

I’d never heard of this album when I came across it on Saturday.  According to the liner notes, this was an outtakes album released in 1971 of sessions made during Coleman’s brief time on Atlantic Records between 1959-1961.  All tracks were made by a quartet led by him and also featuring trumpet player Don Cherry (father of Neneh).  The main reason to hear this album is its opening track, an alternative version of First Take, an epic track also featuring Eric Dolphy and Freddie Hubbard.  It seemingly starts off at a random cacophonous point and susequently rises and falls in intensity for seventeen minutes.  At times, it employs a bare bones approach that reminded me very much of the later and equally intriguing Don Ellis movie soundtrack to The French Connection, a real favourite of mine.  The remaining tracks are all good but pale in comparison.  Perhaps these should have been sequenced first.

(102) Kaki King – Dreaming Of Revenge

Like many, I first became aware of King when she toured Australia with The Foo Fighters around 2007 and played on their instrumental track dedicated to the Beaconsfield miners.  That has coloured many people’s perceptions of her music, obscuring some of the stylistic shifts she has made.  For this album, she employed Malcolm Burn as producer and his production values are very much in evidence here.  A warm sound is wrapped around this combination of instrumentals and gentler songs making the latter sound eerily like an Ani DiFranco recording.  Her renowned guitar playing is subdued here, basically limited to subtle flourishes and it is only on album closer 2 O’Clock that she appears to let fly.  But the highlight is the preceding track, a lengthy instrumental with one of the longer titles in my collection; Can Anyone Who Has Heard This Music Really Be A Bad Person?

(103) La Dusseldorf – Self Titled

This was part of my first internet delivery from overseas for the year.  La Dusseldorf was the first project initiated by Klaus Dinger after the breakup of Neu! following their ’75 album.  Anyone wanting to get into 70s German experimental music (with or without exposure to Kraftwerk) might very well wish to start with this.  Tracks here are generally more up tempo than usual and, for the first time, I can distinguish non German influences at work, particularly on the title track which has a distinct Roxy Music feel to it.  This is understandable; Roxy’s Brian Eno recorded with Cluster and Harmonica, similar bands of the era but neither included Dinger. The highlight of this disk is the opening track, Dusseldorf, which is about as frantic as any track from this scene that I’ve heard to date.  (For the record, Dusseldorf does not feature in the titles of the two remaining tracks.)

(104) Laibach – Laicachkunstderfuge

Let’s break down that title.  This album is by the Slovenian industrial/prog act Laibach.  Included in the band’s name are the letters bach, as in the classical composer J.S Bach.  Separate the remainder and add a die and you have Bhe title of Bach’s unfinished piece, Die Kunst der Fuge.  Apparently Bach did not specify the instrumentation for this piece and so Laibach decided to turn it into a piece of electronica.  It’s another of the intriguing concepts Laibach has pursued over the years including their re-recording of The Beatles Let It Be album, an album with seven different versions of The Rolling Stones’ Sympathy For The Devil, and Volk, an album that seems to be about various countries of Europe based on their respective national anthems.  Once you become accustomed to the concept, the album does actually sound like an electronic version of classical music with about a 10-15 sequence where it threatens to become a fully-fledged industrial track.  An interesting listen and one I’ll need to come back to, although as I’m not a classical music buff in the slightest, I don’t know how radically the source material has been reinterpreted.

(105) Kathryn Williams and Neill MacColl – Two

Kathryn Williams is an English singer/songwriter with a wonderful voice.  I’d been impressed by her Little Black Numbers album and, as her albums seem to be rarely stocked here, jumped at the opportunity to get this.  The songs are all delicate with MacColl providing guitar, dulcimer and autoharp and Williams, guitars, organ, harmonium and melotron.  Given that combination, it is no surprise to hear that there is a Tom Waits cover (Innocent When You Dream) and that the overall effect of the album is not unlike the wonderful sounds made by Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings.

3 February 2013 (Day 34) – Marley, I and I

Last night, I finally started watching a documentary I’d had in my possession for a few months and then completed viewing today.

(Audio Visual 4) – Marley

Released last year, this is a documentary of the Bob Marley life story.   Given that it is released by Tuff Gong Pictures, presumably an offshoot of Tuff Gong Records Marley’s record label, it is probably the closest thing to a documentary authorised by the Marley estate.  Usually, I shy away from authorised biographies, visual or written, as these usually airbrush the subject who usually has had the final say.  However, it is to the credit of all concerned that nothing of substance appears to have been ignored (which, of course, is easier to do when your subject has been dead for 31 years).  This covers everything, including Bob’s childhood, his earliest adventures in the record industry, fondness for soccer, ganja and women, tours, the assassination attempt, his battle with cancer and eventual death.  There is great footage from key moments in his life including the Smile Jamaica Concert (held a few days after the attempt on his life), his final ever show and his funeral.   Everyone of note in the story is interviewed on camera including various Wailers, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Rita and Ziggy Marley and an honest Chris Blackwell justifying his decision to “rock up” the soul of the band’s debut Catch A Fire for the benefit of non-Jamaican audiences.  (The live footage in support of this is musically sensational.) Even one of his school teachers gets a word in.  A number of clever devices are used to maintain the story without ever needing to resort to a narrator.  These include, radio or TV accounts, simple statements placed on screen and, in a number of telling moments, Marley’s own voice.  Add this to some stunning shots of the Jamaican countryside that eloquently explain his roots and the result is one of the finest documentaries of a musical figure I’ve ever witnessed.

Although Marley is reggae’s most well known figure, I know that I didn’t develop an appreciation of the genre due to his mighty efforts.  I didn’t know enough about reggae generally or Marley in particular when he played his only shows in Melbourne during 1979.  I knew it was a big deal and, wanting to develop an appreciation, asked the only person I knew who was into reggae to loan me an album.  This turned out to his second live album, Babylon By Bus and I didn’t warm to it at all.  Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, I suspect this was due to my then hatred of disco which I found monotonous due to its repetitious nature.  Anything at the time which reminded me of that was automatically consigned to the same fate.

But, bit by bit, I started to develop an understanding and it was a range of rock acts that helped me get there.  At the time I listened to Babylon By Bus, Elvis Costello had already released Watching The Detectives which I didn’t realise was based on a reggae rhythm.  In the next couple of years came The Pretenders' Brass In Pocket which employed a subtler rhythm and the Peter Tosh/Mick Jagger duet Don’t Look Back.  (Yes, I know now that Tosh is a reggae act, but let’s face it, if Jagger wasn’t on the record, it wouldn’t have been played on the radio here.)  But it was two acts that really deserve the credit.  The obvious one was, of course, The Police, whose first couple of albums effectively took reggae and by mashing it with rock made it palatable enough for me to eventually investigate the real thing.  The other was The Clash, and more specifically, their criminally undervalued opus, Sandinista!  This was the record which opened my ears to dub.  I was fascinated by One More Time, and One More Dub from that record as well as the third disc of the original vinyl release.  I could hear sounds and rhythms that I hadn’t heard before and I suspect my curiosity constituted the first realisation there were beats or rhythms other than the standard rock could possibly exist that I would like to hear and like (and which wasn’t disco).  Eventually I obtained their Black Market Clash mini album too and gave that a battering.  Over the course of the next 10-20 years, I started adding basic reggae texts  into my collection; Marley’s Live! , Legend and the Songs Of Freedom box set, The Harder They Come soundtrack, Lee “Scratch” Perry’s Super Ape, Burning Spear’s Marcus Garvey/Garvey’s Ghost, the multi artist Tougher Than Tough box set, the Perry box set Arkology and compilations by Toots And The Maytals, Third World, Aswad, etc.  I appreciated these without feeling the need to delve deeper….

Then one day I was going through a JB HiFi bargain bin in the now closed Camberwell store on Burke Road.  I came across a sampler titled Dubwise And Otherwise issued by a British reggae label called Blood And Fire.  The music was extraordinary; a mixture of prime 70’s roots reggae, DJ and dub.  The liner notes identified the albums from their catalogue which included such soon to be discovered gems as Keith Hudson’s Pick A Dub and The Congos mighty Heart Of The Congos.  It began to dawn on me that a Blood And Fire album was a guarantee of quality and over the course of the next few years I accumulated the bulk of their catalogue, including albums by giants such as King Tubby, I-Roy and Yabby You.  I even lucked out and picked up a copy of their long deleted version of Burning Spear’s classic Social Living.

Blood And Fire do not appear to have released anything for a few years now.  Fortunately, other reggae reissue labels have emerged to fill the gap, notably Pressure Sounds, and the bottomless gold mine that fuels the Trojan Records programme.  Trojan has released an amazing variety of multi artist compilations, thematic two or three disc box sets and two disc anthologies of key artists such as Horace Andy, The Heptones, Prince Far I and many others.  And Tuff Gong has released the two disc Collector’s Editions of the key Marley albums, most of which contain live material far superior to Babylon By Bus.

There are some great guide books such as Lloyd Bradley’s Reggae On CD (now a little outdated but valuable in its time) and his narrative history Bass Culture.  Jon Savage described the vital role reggae played in the punk era in the text of England’s Dreaming as well as providing guidance in its awesome discography.   These sources have enabled me to isolate yet other classics; The Abyssinians Satta Massagana, Culture’s Two Seven’s Clash, Ossie Hibbert’s Earthquake Dub and Augustus Pablo’s King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown. 

Collectively, this voyage of discovery has made me realise that there is a great deal more to reggae than Bob Marley.  Although his legacy looms large, artists such as Lee Perry, King Tubby, Jimmy Cliff, Burning Spear, Toots And The Maytals and many others have produced music that is every bit as vital.