Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Duff Review: Megative "Megative"

Last Gang Records
White vinyl LP/digital
2018

(Review by Steve Shafer)

Megative's tremendously good and absolutely searing self-titled debut is a concept album of sorts, focused on the breakdown or end, really the death, of everything--your own body and consciousness; inter-personal relationships; society/civilization; the sum of humanity; and the very planet that sustains us. These bleak Armagideon Time anxieties are expressed within a sparse, but powerfully realized and incredibly appealing mix of modern minor-key ska and dubby reggae (think of a mash-up of The Specials' Ghost Town EP with the Gorillaz's Demon Days or 2 Tone and punky-reggae Clash tracks given a modern, juiced-up Danger Mouse/Prince Fatty/Mungo's Hi-Fi production).

The album is bookended by tracks that incorporate the ominous wail of air-raid sirens (which, depending on your age, may remind one of the heavy "Two Tribes"-like 1980's Cold War trepidation of perishing in a nuclear holocaust that everyone carried with them daily). The opener, "Have Mercy," begs forgiveness for our accumulated sins over the ages that we now must pay for in a major Old Testament way ("There's something strange coming over this land/It don't have a face, still stares you down/Maybe it's the bloody history coming back and seeking revenge"). While the eerie final track "One Day...All This Will Be Gone," with its horror/sci-fi B-movie spoken intro (from the made-for-TV post-nuclear war movie "In the Year 2889": "Maybe there's no one left to hear my voice, no living being to record the end of the world...Down through the ages, the prophets forewarned us that in one day thousands of years of accomplishments would be wiped away by the destructive hand of power. Now that day has come..."), is about personal, emotional, and global apocalypse--from the perspective that everything is fated/designed to be impermanent, transitory, fleeting and we can't do a damn thing about it ("I never thought I was a fool for love/Until you broke my heart/And now I wonder if the end was not/Built into the stars" and "But monoliths will never last forever/Pyramids decay and weather/We scramble for eternal life anyway/I lie awake staring up at the ceiling/See the cracks and the dark gray feeling/We run from fear/But all our schemes are in vain"). It also may be about the terror of dying alone.

The songs that fill the grooves between are equally filled with dread.

In the shadow of looming mortality, the singer realizes in "More Time" that there are more days behind him than ahead--and regrets that he hasn't spent his time better ("Oh, I never gave a fuck about the youth I wasted/Oh, thought I had more time/Now I only seem to dream about/The fruits I tasted/Oh, can I get more time?"). It's an eventual lament for everyone living, but you'll sing with that chorus wherever you are in life. Fast-forward 10-15 years or so from Terry Hall's "Friday Night/Saturday Morning" and you have the protagonist of the very catchy "Can't Do Drugs (Like I Used To)," whose body is wearing out, expressing worries about the decline to come: "I can't do drugs/Like I used to/'Cause I know too much/And I might blow a fuse...I used to think I would live forever/They said that I was crazy/But when I dream of the future now/I wake up.../The sweat is dripping off me" (Screechy Dan hammers it home: "I remember when you used to be wilding/Club after club every night until morning...Time after time/You did line after line/To get dime after dime/It's crime after crime..."). The complete lack of empathy and failure/inability to recognize people as they actually are is portrayed in "She's Not Real" (with its echoes of "Stereotype"): "What she is/Is not what he sees/She's a figment/He wants to believe/Desire unquestioned/His heart is deceived/He wants to make her/Into all that he needs..."

The post-apocalyptic spaghetti Western reggae-ish "Beneath the Sun" (which features a fantastic Rico-like trombone solo) depicts a not-too-distant future when planetary climate change of our own making (that we failed to mitigate or reverse!) has transformed Earth into an unrecognizable hellish landscape of nothing but desert and salty sea--and triggered the disintegration of society and decimation of humanity. Extreme economic inequality at its ugliest plays out in "Can't Get Away," as the wealthiest have the resources to escape "a world charred to a crisp," leaving the desperate masses behind with no option but to face oblivion: "Oh, we watch those lucky few/Fly off into the stars/Never to return, while we cried/"Gotta get away!/Oh, can't get away!" (Think it's far-fetched scenario? What about the tech billionaires today developing their own private rocket programs?)

The one joyful and truly blissed-out moment on the entire album comes in the "They Live" referencing "Yeah Yeah Yeah (Yeah Yeah)." The verses of the song are in a minor key (as is almost every song on the record)--"The maniacs are in control/Aliens in human bodies without souls/We watch them on our screens like they're gods/And we smile while they feed us to the dogs/Now I fear I might do something rash/Watching lunatics build towers doomed to crash/They divide us up against our friends/How I long for the days when we'll all sing again..."--but everything abruptly shifts to a bright major key during the you-can't-resist-singing-along chorus of solidarity and rebellion against oppression: "yeah, yeah, yeah (yeah, yeah)!" Judge Screechy condemns the oppressors to death by guillotine for "crimes against humanity"--even though the end times are already here as a "wave of blood with crush the Earth." At least, humanity will be free to stand on their feet when Doomsday arrives.

Megative--vocalist Tim Fletcher (The Stills), producer/bassist Gus Van Go (Me, Mom and Morgentaler), producer/mixer/songwriting tandem Likeminds, AKA Jesse Singer and Chris Soper, and dancehall veteran Screechy Dan (Ruff Entry Crew)--have created a brilliant, if not deeply dark and profoundly disturbing vision of what's lurking on our horizon. The question is if we'll heed the alarm to change what we can (and even enjoy ourselves!) before it's too late.

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Thursday, November 15, 2018

Ska and Reggae Singer/Songwriter and Potato 5 Collaborator Floyd Lloyd Seivright Passes Away at 70

On November 6, 2018, ska and reggae singer and songwriter Floyd Lloyd Seivright passed away unexpectedly in St. Ann's Bay Hospital in Jamaica at age 70.

Third Wave ska fans worldwide know of Floyd Lloyd through his work with the Potato 5 on their classic 1987 debut album, Floyd Lloyd and the Potato 5 Meet Laurel Aitken (Gaz's Rockin' Records); read our review of it here. In addition to singing on side A of the album, Seivright co-wrote two of its fantastic tracks: "Tear Up" and "Big City" (one of my absolute favorite Potato 5 songs). He also appeared with the Potato 5 on Gaz's Ska Stars of the 80s compilation and with his own band on Unicorn's Double Barrel Ska Explosion live album, which was recorded at the second International London Ska Festival in 1989.

From the early 1970s through the mid-2000s, Lloyd wrote tracks performed by The Mighty Diamonds and Ernest Ranglin, in addition to the ten or so albums of his own songs that he recorded and released on his own Tropic label. Lloyd also founded Tropic Entertainment, Ltd., a music publishing business that represents over 500 titles, including songs composed by Justin Hinds, Lennie Hibbert, Ernest Ranglin, and Kareem Baaqi.

Back in my Moon Records days in the 1990s, I had the great pleasure of meeting the soft-spoken, but intensely focused Seivright in his Greenwich Village apartment in Manhattan to discuss the possibility of Moon doing some sort of deal to carry or license some of his ska albums. If I remember correctly, we ended up carrying several of his titles (including Tear It Up: The Ska Album and Better to Laugh) in our store and catalogue.

We extend our sincerest condolences to Floyd Lloyd Seivright's family, friends, and fans.

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Duff Review: "Rudeboy: The Trojan Records Story" Documentary

(Review by Steve Shafer)

Pitched somewhere between a hagiography of sorts and earnest truth-seeking documentary, "Rudeboy: The Story of Trojan Records," directed by Nicolas Jack Davies, had its US premiere last night at the DOC NYC Festival at a nearly sold-out screening at the SVA Theatre in Chelsea. Commissioned by BMG (which currently owns the Trojan catalogue) in celebration of Trojan's 50th anniversary this year, this 85-minute film employs a mix of short, talking head interviews with a number of often charming key players and commentators (Roy Ellis, Lee Perry, Derrick Morgan, Pauline Black, Don Letts, Ken Boothe, Toots Hibbert, George Dekker, Marcia Griffiths, Bunny Lee, King Edwards, Freddie Notes, Dandy Livingstone, Lloyd Coxsone, Neville Staple, and Dave Barker); archival footage of Jamaica, London, and TV/concert appearances by some of the featured artists; and truly artful recreations of past events with actors portraying various protagonists in this story, such as the late Trojan co-owner Lee Gopthal, Jamaican producer and Trojan sound system owner Duke Reid, and younger versions of Dandy Livingstone, Derrick Morgan, Bunny Lee, and more (they aren't given any lines and are usually shown in fairly ordinary situations in offices, studios, or dances, but nonetheless provide compelling visuals to accompany the audio of some of the interviews or samples of essential Trojan releases).

In sum, they provide a very cursory, but completely appealing outline of the label's history from its founding until it went under in 1975 (the origins and history of ska and its evolution to rocksteady and early reggae receive short shrift, too). Newcomers to Trojan will be intrigued and enlightened by what they learn, but anyone with a deeper knowledge of the label and its affiliated artists will be left wanting more (there's enough to cover here for a doc mini-series). Notably absent from the film is Trojan co-founder Chris Blackwell (after the viewing and brief Q&A with the audience, I asked director Davies about this as we were being ushered out of the theater and he told me that he very much wanted to include Blackwell, but was prevented from doing so, as Blackwell was contractually committed to telling his story for another project; Trojan label director and manager David Betteridge and Rob Bell stand in for him in the film) and with so many stellar artists released on Trojan over the years, one had the nagging feeling that far too many voices were left out (no doubt due to availability, budget and time constraints, and--most tragically--the deaths of many musicians).

At the heart of this film is the story of how a commercial enterprise (the joining of Chris Blackwell's and Lee Gopthal's similar ventures licensing reggae singles from Jamaican producers for release in the UK) unintentionally ended up influencing a generation (or two or three) of youth in the UK and beyond. And the film is most successful at conveying Trojan's enormous cultural and societal impact, as well as showcasing some of the label's finest music (which, of course, is released on the accompanying soundtrack album, full of superlative early reggae/skinhead reggae; a good reminder of how much extraordinary music came from this poor and tiny island nation).

Trojan's string of UK top ten charting pop hits in the late '60s and early '70s (including The Upsetters' "Return of Django," Harry J All Stars' "Liquidator," Boris Gardiner's "Elizabethan Reggae," Dave & Ansell Collins' "Double Barrel" and "Monkey Spanner," Desmond Dekker's "Israelites" and "It Mek," The Pioneers' "Long Shot (Kick De Bucket)," Bob and Marcia's "Young, Gifted, and Black" and "Pied Piper," the Melodians' "Sweet Sensation," and Nicky Thomas' "Love of the Common People") and success with its budget line of Tighten Up compilation albums was a result of skinhead reggae's massive popularity among both black and white youth. The sons and daughters of the Windrush generation (in the '50s and early '60s, over 100,000 Jamaicans emigrated to England after WWII after they were invited to help rebuild the nation and its economy) who largely felt alienated in Britain's overly racist society (there's a scene in the film where soundman Lloyd Coxsone recounts looking for employment at a government job center and finding that every listing was marked with a NCP, an acronym for "No Colored People") found that they shared a deep and common love for reggae with their white working class peers, which enabled all sorts of social connections to be formed (and making that generation of white Britons a bit less racist than the previous). Indeed, as reggae/punk DJ, filmmaker, and musician Don Letts reminds the viewer, the white skinheads of the late '60s/early '70s were, "the fashion kind, not the fascist kind," who were emulating the look of the black working class reggae fans and musicians. As well (as both Pauline Black and Neville Staple note), Trojan's artists and releases helped young, first-generation black Britons find validation and a sense of cultural belonging through the widespread embrace of reggae music and the representation of black British and Jamaican artists on the radio (even if it was usually pirate radio!), TV, and in the press.

The film glosses over the demise of Trojan, which was the result of many factors, including the transition to roots and dub in Jamaica (depriving the label of skinhead reggae to license), the business split between Gopthal and Blackwell (who went on to directly sign reggae musicians like Bob Marley and the Wailers, Toots and the Maytals, and Burning Spear to Island--and figured out how to successfully shape their sound for and market them to a white, rock audience), and the accumulated expenses from re-mixing, re-mastering, and adding pop strings to many later releases that never made it big. Also unmentioned was the common, but ugly and exploitive music business practice in Jamaica at that time--the music producer controlled the copyright/owned the recording. So, the producers of the licensed Trojan hits were paid all of the royalties due, little of which was ever shared with the artists themselves.

All criticisms aside, "Rudeboy: The Story of Trojan Records" really is a great (and fantastic looking/sounding) introduction to the legendary label and all of its stellar music--and longtime ska and reggae fans will enjoy watching it. But anyone seeking a much more detailed and comprehensive history of the label and its magnificent roster of artists will find it in Laurence Cane-Honeysett's newly released (also to mark the label's 50th anniversary) and absolutely essential "The Story of Trojan Records."

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Monday, November 12, 2018

The Duff Guide to Ska NYC Fall/Winter 2018 Ska Calendar #11

Linton Kwesi Johnson: Time's running out, so see some ska!
Friday, November 16, 2018 @ 6:00pm - 10:00 pm

100% Ska Selections with DJ Ryan Midnight

Otto's Shrunken Head
538 East 14th Street (between Avenues A and B)
New York, NY
No cover!

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Saturday, November 17, 2018 @ 9:30 pm

The Scofflaws, The Big Takeover

Diviera Drive
131 Berry Street
Brooklyn, NY
$10

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Saturday, November 17, 2018 @ 7:00 pm

Mustard Plug, Sgt. Scag

Bowery Electric
327 Bowery
New York, NY
Tix: Advance - $14/Day of show - $16
21+

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Saturday, November 17, 2018 @ 9:00 pm

Dubistry

Silvana
300 West 116th Street
New York, NY

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Saturday, November 24, 2018 @ 7:00 pm

Skarroñeros Farewell Show w/Días Azules, Perdixion, Escasos Recuros, Invading Species, and Lakras

Brooklyn Bazaar
150 Greenpoint Avenue
Brooklyn, NY

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Saturday, November 24, 2018 @ 9:00 pm

Caz Gardiner

Silvana
300 West 116th Street
New York, NY

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Friday, November 30, 2018 @ 9:00 pm

Ensamble Calavera First Anniversary Party

Maguire's Pub
5420 Roosevelt Avenue
Woodside, NY
$10/21+

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Saturday, December 1, 2018 @ 8:00 pm

Streetlight Manifesto, Mephiskapheles

Playstation Theater
1515 Broadway (at West 44th Street)
New York, NY
$29.50/16+

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Sunday, December 2, 2018 @ 8:00 pm

NYC Ska Orchestra w/Maddie Ruthless, Rho and The Nomads

Brooklyn Bowl
61 Wythe Avenue
Brooklyn, NY
$10/21+

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Saturday, December 15, 2018 @ 10:30 pm

Uzimon Holiday Danse with DJ Grace of Spades

Mercury Lounge
217 East Houston Street
New York, NY
$12-$15/21+

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Saturday, December 22, 2018 @ 7:00 pm

The Slackers, W.O.W., Pandemics, DJ Grace

Irving Plaza
17 Irving Place
New York, NY
$22/All ages

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Wednesday, January 2, 2019 @ 8:00 pm

Steel Pulse

Brooklyn Bowl
61 Wythe Avenue
Brooklyn, NY
$35-$30/21+

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If you don't see a NYC ska show listed here, send us all of the details to duffguidetoska@gmail.com!

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