"My purpose was simple: to catch the feel, the pulse of rock, as I had lived through it. What I was after was guts, and flash, and energy, and speed" - NIK COHN -
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "When the music was new and had no rules" -LUNA C
was listening to a 2step era pirate tape - Ice FM I think - the other day and heard the MC use the expression "fashion and style"
one of those buzzphrases that comes out of dancehall
"Dancehall cyaa dead yeah
Gyal haffi go spin pon dem head yeah
Fashion and style haffi set yeah
Star haffi born wa yo check seh"
It made me think of this drum and bass track by Mr Size
But also of the UKreggae label Fashion
which had popped back into my consciousness this week anyway because music press archivist Nothing Else On has got to early 1985 and these NME articles came up in his scan-tweet project
a piece on Fashion and Earthworks
and then the following week
Any excuse to repost the videos of Smiley's two top tunes
I've said before, a bunch of times, that "Cockney Translation" - Smiley Culture's 1984 debut single - is an important moment in the prehistory of the nuum. Not musically, but because its comparison of black and white slanguage, seems to herald an emerging hybrid youth identity that would blossom in the Nineties with jungle and UKG - complete with its own black-white accent where you can't tell the race of the speaker by the sound alone (if you happened to be sitting a few rows ahead of them in the bus, say).
I've said it frequently enough, that it's actually referenced in the Wikipedia entry on Smiley Culture
Well, here's a nice little confirmation of the thesis - "Marked Up" a jungle track by Psycho & Mr Man (alter-ego of the mighty S.M.F. - Jason Verrall and Peter Hudson) that pinpoints and pivots around a crucial juxtaposition in Smiley's lyric: "Old Bill / Dutty Babylon".
Black and white unite, against a common enemy.
In this song, Smiley's fame allows him to bypass systemic oppressions (a sweet fable that has a sad sour aftertang now given his demise).
Flipside of "Marked Up" also cool.
One day I will have to do the S.M.F. urrrv properly
For now, a tune by them that blew my mind when I heard it on the pirates in early 93
one of those can't believe people make sounds like these" moments
especially when the mad "Strong Island"-like noise comes in about 2.30
even more so when the insane stab riff slash smear shred noise comes in at 3.42 - "vhs tape all wound up and tangled. a flailing laviathon made out of dial up sound"(Sadmanbarty).
