Duff Review: Horace Andy backed by Welders "Straight To Hell" and Big Youth backed by Welders "Pair of Dice" b/w Horace Andy v. Big Youth "Asylum Seekers" and Eric Blowtorch "Christmas in Ladbroke Grove"

Fe True Records
Limited edition 12" vinyl EP/digital
2017

(Review by Steve Shafer)

During The Clash's recording of Sandinista! in New York City at The Power Station and Electric Lady studios in 1980 and their extraordinary 17 show residency at Bond's in Times Square in 1981 (since an unhappy with this triple-LP album Epic wouldn't help finance a national tour, their only US gigs in support of Sandinista! with mind-blowing, Clash-selected opening acts like The Fall, Dead Kennedys, Bad Brains, Lee "Scratch" Perry, The Slits, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Bush Tetras, ESG, and others opening, according to the book "The Clash FAQ" by Gary J. Jucha), they had become completely enamored, if not obsessed, with the funky, druggy decadent, definitely crumbling, and oftentimes dangerous concrete jungle that was New York City in the late '70s and early '80s ("Ford to City: Drop Dead"; "Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning"). It was the greatest city in a nation still very much traumatized and disillusioned by the hubris, moral bankruptcy, deception, and madness of its leaders and failures of its institutions in the wake of the loss of the Vietnam War and the corruption/illegality at the highest levels of government in Watergate (as well as the more recent humiliations of the late '70s oil crisis, stagflation, America's "crisis of confidence," the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the agonizing Iranian hostage crisis).

While this societal breakdown and collective PTSD of sorts played out around The Clash during their exploits in New York City (whose ghettos they dubbed "an urban Vietnam" in "This Is Radio Clash"--this Don Letts directed music video features live footage from the Bond's residency, as well as fantastic shots of The Clash's somewhat real/somewhat romanticized version of NYC), it also was being reflected/reinforced in dozens of films in the 1970s, including Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter, Hal Ashby's Coming Home, and most significantly in Martin Scorsese's lurid, NYC-based Taxi Driver (about a deeply disturbed Vietnam vet who almost assassinates a presidential candidate after being romantically rejected by one of his female campaign volunteers and in a botched murder spree-suicide attempt to rescue a child prostitute he was obsessed with saving is mistakenly hailed as some kind of hero by the media), which was one of Joe Strummer's favorite movies (and The Clash loved their movies--during the recording of Sandinista!, they stayed at the Iroquois Hotel, because they'd heard James Dean used to bunk there). As well, Francis Ford Coppola's surreal and hellish Vietnam War take on Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," Apocalypse Now had a huge impact on the band and was the inspiration, of course, for "Charlie Don't Surf" on Sandinista! It's interesting to note how Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle and Apocalypse Now's Captain Willard are clear descendants of the ultra-violent, loner American Wild West antiheroes depicted in 1960s spaghetti Westerns by Sergio Leone and others which influenced The Harder They Come, Perry Henzell's JA rude boy/outlaw fantasy--Jimmy Cliff's character Ivanhoe Martin even goes to the cinema to see Sergio Corbucchi's Django in one scene. (The Harder They Come was so beloved by the myth-loving and self-mythologizing Clash that they referenced it in two songs: "Safe European Home" and "Guns of Brixton.") To the dismay of their British fans and the London music press (who felt they were losing one of their own to the Yanks), The Clash's growing infatuation with American culture, music, and politics (quite evident on London Calling and Sandinista!) was about to go full bore.

As The Clash began writing and recording their follow-up to Sandinista!, the real and (imagined) cinematic impact of the Vietnam War on America became a dominant, almost all-consuming topic of Combat Rock (its original title--and superior Mick Jones mix--was the even more explicitly American military-esque Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg)--see cuts like "Red Angel Dragnet" (which directly quotes Taxi Driver during a spoken word verse by Kosmo Vinyl channeling damaged Vietnam vet Travis Bickle as he drives his cab through all the porno theaters, sex shops, pimps, prostitutes, druggies, and scam artists in Times Square: "All the animals come out at night - queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets."--and also offers this revealing bit: "What is the dream?/I'll tell it/To live like they do in the movies"), "Sean Flynn" (about the photojournalist son of Hollywood Robin Hood/Captain Blood actor Errol Flynn who disappeared in Vietnam in 1970; Dennis Hopper's character in Apocalypse Now is based on Flynn), "Car Jamming" ("And then a shyboy from Missouri/Boots blown off in a Sixties war/Riding aluminum crutches/Now he knows the welfare kindness/Agent Orange color-blindness") and the extraordinary "Straight to Hell."

Strummer's "Straight to Hell" is primarily about the estimated 50,000 sons and daughters of American GIs and Vietnamese women who were conceived during the war, but abandoned when the U.S. finally pulled out of Vietnam in 1975--though it also condemns Western imperialist nations' almost wholesale persecution/rejection of immigrants and refugees from their former colonies. These bi-racial children--who were so obviously fathered by white, black, and brown American soldiers--faced harsh discrimination and desperate poverty in Vietnam; many wound up in orphanages. To the Vietnamese, depending on your politics, they were children of the ally that failed/betrayed you or the offspring of your enemy; they stood out physically in a largely homogenous ethnic society; and a good number, but certainly not all, of their mothers had been sex workers. In 1980, a number of articles in U.S. newspapers and a documentary by Bill Kurtis titled "The American Faces" began to raise national awareness of the plight of the Amerasian children of the Vietnam War; clearly Strummer was paying attention. This was another (very real) example of the folly and failure of U.S. imperialist Cold War policy for Strummer to comment on (and it was an indirect swipe at Reagan, who--terrifyingly--was heating up things again with the Russians in the early 1980s). "Straight to Hell" went on to become a fan favorite, generated great critical acclaim (Jucha opines that it's the closest The Clash came to writing their own "Armagideon Time"), and has been covered, sampled, and versioned by other artists, including Skinnerbox, M.I.A., Elvis Costello, and Lily Allen and Mick Jones.

Several decades pass and Strummer ends up co-writing the title song for Horace Andy's great 1999 Living in the Flood album (released on Massive Attack's label after Andy came to widespread attention due to his work on Blue Lines, No Protection, and Mezzanine); at the time, when he'd come to town with the Mescaleros, Strummer mentions to Milwaukee reggae musician, producer, and Clash fanatic Eric Blowtorch that he thought "Straight to Hell" would be a perfect song for Andy to cover. Years later, when Blowtorch was corresponding with Andy, he asks if he has ever covered any Clash songs and Andy tells him that he has recorded a version of "Straight to Hell," but wasn't satisfied with the results. This sets Blowtorch on a mission--and this four-track EP is the spectacular result.

Horace Andy and the Welders' roots reggae take on "Straight To Hell" takes on renewed meaning and relevance as millions of immigrants and refugees across the globe ("It could be anywhere/Most likely could be any frontier/Any hemisphere") flee war, violence, extreme poverty, and man-made or natural disaster in the hope of finding peace, stability, and opportunity for themselves and their families--all while America extinguishes Lady Liberty's beacon and rolls up the welcome mat through Trump's despicable (and un-American) white supremacist/nativist/xenophobic Tweets, utterances, and policies, which gives cover to ethno-nationalists throughout Europe ("No man's land/There ain't no asylum here/King Solomon, he never lived 'round here/Straight to hell, boy/Go straight to hell"). In this version, the violin-sounding synth and lead guitar lines are transformed into bright horn riffs and the rhythm section keeps the pace relatively brisk--but it's all sparse enough to leave space for Andy's plaintive vocals to deliver the devastating lyrics. Since The Clash purposefully shed much of their reggae sounds on Combat Rock with the explicit goal of reaching a broad American rock audience--which they found and then some--it's wonderful to hear this track in a full-on reggae setting with Andy's beautifully expressive voice (Joe, of course, was spot-on about him singing this song).

Back in 2007, Blowtorch spent a summer volunteering at the Alpha Boys' School in Kingston, JA (which fostered many of the island's greatest musicians, including Tommy McCook, Johnny Moore, Lester Sterling, Don Drummond, Rico Rodriguez, Theophilius Beckford, Headley Bennet, Cedric Brooks, Vin Gordon, Leroy Smart, Eddie Thornton, Yellowman, Horsemouth Wallace, and more!). While there, he met U-Roy (and later recorded and released the Groping in the Dark/Groping in the Park 10" in 2010), who eventually put Blowtorch in touch with Big Youth (though this collaboration has all been long-distance; they've never met). On the terrific deejay version "Pair of Dice," Big Youth serves up some wordplay on the "Straight To Hell" lyric "this is your paradise" and great commentary on the high stakes gamble immigrants and refugees are taking: "If you're seeking asylum/Then paradise is a pair of dice/ICE stands for immigration and custom enforcement/Minutemen...racists/Trouble on the borderline/You've got to sell your heart/Sell your soul/You have to sell your kidney sometimes."

"Asylum Seekers" (AKA "Reason Pan Babylonian Delusion") is an amazing mash-up (by Shane Olivo) of a version of Horace Andy's "Straight To Hell" vocal track with Big Youth's singjay performance (Andy: "Let me tell you about your blood family, kid/It's ain't Coca-Cola..." Youth: "...It's racist!"--though mostly Big Youth urges asylum seekers to "Do right/Be right/Live right/Live good"). This mix includes some choice electro-synth percussion reminiscent in what has to be a nod to M.I.A.'s "Straight To Hell"-sampling "Paper Planes" (which also is about the challenges of immigrating legally and the stereotyping of immigrants).

The EP is rounded out with Blowtorch's haunting "Christmas in Ladbroke Grove" (performed with Cecilio Negron, Jr.), who was inspired to write this very Clash-like reggae track when he learned the heartbreaking news of Joe Strummer's death as he was in London around Christmas in 2002 to perform at Gaz's Rockin' Blues with The Inflammables.

"Running from Ankara to Tehran
In the school cafeteria someone left the radio on
Older brother just 19 and gone, his only solace in a song

He only just stopped squatting, said something ‘bout a boy named Rotten
He used to sweep the factory floor, then he ran off to join the peace war
He led the charge into the terror zone then left us on our own

He used to make the breeze a blow
He used to be your hero
Where did that gravedigger from Tehran go?
Where is Woody? Where is John? Joe?

Christmas night so quiet on Ladbroke Grove
Not one soul in sight on Portobello Road
Someone turn the radio on
Give us solace, give us song – where he gone?"

It's quite affecting and one of the best songs about Strummer I've heard--and is perhaps a track to pull out every December 22nd (or whenever the feeling strikes) as you hoist a few in Joe's memory. I imagine he'd be very pleased with this EP and touched by the tribute.

+ + + +

10% of each Straight To Hell purchase goes to Doctors Without Borders/Medicin Sans Frontiers, who provide medical care to human beings in dire circumstances in the most dangerous parts of the world.

+ + + +

Postscript: It wasn't until 1987 that America finally recognized the Amerasian children in Vietnam--our own kids--and established refugee/immigration status for them through the American Homecoming Act. While it was in effect (from 1988-1990), approximately 23,000 Amerasian children and 67,000 of their next-of-kin were resettled in the United States.

+ + + +

Update: Washington Post, 8/31/18: "Thousands of Vietnamese, including offspring of U.S. troops, could be deported under tough Trump policy"

+ + + +

Shots in the Dark: The Offs' "First Record"

Editor's note: Shots in the Dark spotlights third-wave ska releases that should have been massive hits on the scene but, due to bad timing, poor luck, a fickle record-buying public, or other, unforeseen disasters, were lost in the fray. 

(Review by Steve Shafer)

The Band: The Offs were formed in San Francisco in the late '70s by openly gay Don Vinil (vocals) and Billy Hawk (guitar) with Chris Olsen and then Bob Steeler on drums--and a shifting set of bass players (including Fast Floyd, Olga de Volga, Denny Boredom, and Eric Peterson) and horns (Bob Roberts, Roland Young, and Richard Edson). While they were very much a part of SF's nascent first wave punk scene that spawned Crime, Nuns, The Avengers, Pink Section, Tuxedomoon, Vktms, Mutants, Lewd, The Dils, The Zeros, and more (the Dead Kennedy's first show was with The Offs at Mabuhay Gardens in 1978), there was ska and reggae in The Offs' wild mix from the start (according to a 1978 interview in Slash magazine, guitarist Billy Hawk was the one in the band who loved his reggae). The Offs' 1978 debut single featured a great punky cover of The Slickers' "Johnny Too Bad" (think of how The Clash covered "Police and Thieves")--though their follow-up single in the same year, "Everyone's a Bigot," was much more representative of what would become their almost unclassifiable post-punky, no wave, ska/reggae sound.

By 1980, The Offs were living part of the year in Manhattan on Prince Street (while maintaining their home base in SF--they were there to open for The Specials in February of that year at the Wharfield Theater) and had been quickly embraced by the downtown/underground Manhattan music and art scene (that brought together musicians and artists of every color and from every scene), where The Offs regularly performed at the Mudd Club, Danceteria, and Max's Kansas City, which released their third single, "You Fascinate Me" b/w "My World," also in 1980 (the former a loungy-jazz punk cut, the latter straight up ska). At some point in 1983, The Offs had their debut album in the can for San Francisco-based CD Presents (the CD standing for Civil Defense, not compact disc; the label was also home for The Avengers, D.O.A. and Billy Bragg in the US), but singer Don Vinil overdosed on heroin in NYC--prior to the record's release in 1984--and The Offs were no more.

The Sound: Think of Sandinista-era Clash plus the angular post-punk funk of Gang of Four, all heavily influenced by the early 80s NYC no wave/art jazz scene (see James Chance and the Contortions). The Offs are challenging and certainly not for anyone put off by transgressions of musical boundaries and genre conventions--but they had punk attitude to spare and a sound that was rebel music/ska 'n' reggae to its core.

The Release: I picked up The Offs' First Record (which has only ever been available on vinyl) in the late '80s at Bleecker Bob's based almost solely on the fact that it was in the ska section; there just weren't that many ska releases available at the time. Of course, it also helped that the back photo of the album clearly identified it as a ska record and NYC downtown artist Jean Michel Basquiat had illustrated the cover in his punky/primitive graffiti style. Even though The Offs' music exists in an uneasy, often dissonant intersection between funky post-punk, no wave jazz, and ska/reggae--and was like nothing else I was listening to at the time--I was hooked from first play and 30 years later find that First Record still holds up.

The album kicks off with a second stab at the "Taxi Driver"-like "You Fascinate Me" (about watching young hustlers: "I said all you kids/Out on the streets/Hunting around now/Trying to make ends meet/Hanging out on corners/Outside of bars/Cruising Johns drive by in their cars/I said, you fascinate me/I don't know why/You living your life, honey/It's live or die...You bringing me down")--which had evolved from its earlier incarnation into a funky ska-like track with a fantastically ragged "oh, oh, oh" line in its chorus and a sweet guitar flourish at the end of the song that resolves all of the previous musical off-kilterness and lyrical ugliness. The fantastic keep-a-lid-on-it "Cool Down" is a Augustus Pablo/Far East sounding reggae track that wouldn't be out of place on a punk re-imagining of "West Side Story" ("When he was young/It was so much fun/No cares in the world/Nothing tied him down/Today, he keeps it straight/For the fun that is done/For tomorrow he's a poor man/So, tell me, what's the poor man done?"). The tightly wound-up punk-no wave-funk of "True Story" (with drummer Steeler on vocals) is all bitter with betrayal ("Told me a true story/Said it was fiction/The girl you seem so sad about/I know that you're the one/You changed most of the names and places/But still the innocent have faces/Do I see through you and him/Just like a pair of aces/What are you expecting?/A true story?"). Side one concludes with the jazzy ska of "Why Boy," which is their "Friday Night/Saturday Morning," about a kind of aimless night on the town for a misunderstood youth just looking for something approximating fun ("People wanna know/Where you come and go/They don't understand/'Cause it's not their way/'Say, 'why boy?'/You go down to the park/As the night begins/You got money in your hand/You're looking for the man...Some strangers from the suburb/Wanna push your around/They don't understand/'Cause it's not their way/You better fight back boy...You go to the club/To see the band/The people there seem to understand/Tonight...").

The Offs' mash-up of musical styles and subcultures (note the hip hop/graffiti reference in the lyrics) is at its most Sandinista-like on the first track of side B with "Body Hesitation," a more reggae-ish "Magnificent Seven," if you will, written and sung by their saxophonist Roland Young ("This ain't no/Misguided energy/It ain't no/Running wild style/This ain't no/Lack of thinking/For our society/It is a sinking..."). The horrific misogyny/gender politics of The Heptones' sweet-sounding "I've Got The Handle" ("I've got the handle, baby/You've got the blade/So, don't try to fight me, girl/'Cause you'll need first aid, yeah") is blunted a bit when The Offs shift the song into a broadside against then President Reagan: "Ronald Reagan is Babylon/Babylon must fall/You must find the resistance to kill 'em/Fight 'em back, to resist him!" The tension of the funky James Brown-ish workout "One More Shot" (of booze, that is, and he'll be ready) is almost unbearable. Everything finishes with The Offs' incredible ska cover of Mary Wells' 1960 R and B cut "Bye Bye Baby" ("You know, you took my love/Threw it away/You gonna want/My love someday/Well, a bye bye baby"), which is somehow the appropriate bookend to the twisted opener "You Fascinate Me."

(Fun fact: Character actor/downtown musician Richard Edson--who was Sonic Youth's first drummer and also a member of Konk--played trumpet on this album; you'd probably recognize him as the parking garage attendant from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," as well as from "Desperately Seeking Susan," "Stranger Than Paradise," "Do the Right Thing," "Platoon," "Good Morning, Vietnam," "Dirty Dancing," and many other movies and TV shows.)

The Ugly Reality: Back in the late '80s, I always wondered why The Offs simply seemed to have vanished, since I never read about them anywhere or ever came across more of their music (it was like that in the pre-internet days; some questions would just never be answered). Don Vinil's 1983 death from drug overdose years certainly explains why. I would have loved the chance to see The Offs live and how they might have been embraced (or not) by the growing NYC ska scene in the mid-to-late '80s and in which direction their next album might have gone.

It's a sad but true story that drugs have killed off many a brilliant band. And The Offs' tale is yet another one.

+ + + +

Despite being reissued a few years ago, The Offs' First Record remains pretty rare and expensive, so you might be stuck buying a digital copy on iTunes or listening to it on YouTube. There's also a 1997 German compilation of The Offs' singles and compilation tracks called Californian Skapunk Pioneers out there (I happened to have bought a copy of it in 2000 at the Virgin Megastore in Union Square) and a much cheaper and easier to find live recording of the band, Live At The Mabuhay Gardens Nov 7 1980.

+ + + +

Duff Review: J. Navarro and The Traitors "Criminals and Lions"

Asbestos Records
2016
CD/digital download

(Review by Steve Shafer)

Detroiters Jay Navarro (of The Suicide Machines) and Eric Abbey (of 1592) are the masterminds behind J. Navarro and the Traitors, which has just unleashed a collection of powerful, pissed-off protest songs--delivered in a sharp modern ska/punky reggae style--on their fiercely excellent debut album, Criminals and Lions (mixed by Agent Jay of The Slackers/Crazy Baldhead). Things have been rough going in middle America since the Wall Street/housing meltdown/debacle of 2007, but the rot has been setting in ever since the supply-side/voodoo economics of the Reagan era. Detroit, AKA "Motor City,"--once America's fourth largest metropolis with the highest per-capita income in the US, when it was the auto manufacturing capital of the world and the unions were strong enough to ensure that the workers earned middle-class wages--has been hit particularly hard. In the first decade of this new millennium, Detroit's population decreased by 250,000 people (leaving great swaths of it abandoned); the city went bankrupt in 2013; and the 2014 census revealed that almost 40% of its residents live below the poverty line (making it the poorest big city in the USA). Living in the American-dream-gone-bust, post-apocalyptic shell of a city like Detroit has to significantly color your world view--so, it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that J. Navarro and the Traitors' response to all the suffering and devastation around them is to make rebel music. And, boy, do they do it well.

"Deeper" is a great, hard-driving ska track (that sounds like it could be from King Apparatus' debut album) encouraging the listener to find empathy for others and the capacity to see beyond the ridiculously superficial differences (read: skin color) that we use to divide/fear/hate ourselves:

"So, follow your heart and no one else
In this life, think for yourself
I have no time for your hate
what you give, not what you take
Man kills man most every day
Makes no sense, no sense to me
We're not black, we're not white
We're just human beings"

The furious ska/hardcore track "New America" offers a bitingly sarcastic critique (in the fine tradition of the Dead Kennedys or Fear) of what life in our country has devolved into (instead of what it could be):

"I hope the bank gives me a predatory loan
Along with school debt and they foreclose on my home
Give me war, give me family dysfunction
Give me freedom with rules and restriction
Capitalism, corporatocracy
All the grease the wheels of the war machine"

In a similar vein, "Right Apart" is a reggae lament about how we have the ability to address so many of our fellow human beings' problems, but greed and selfishness prevent the powers that be from actually doing something to resolve it all: "I see suffering everywhere/I see starvation/Looking for a better day/Hope a better day will come...The rich have it all/they don't want to share." (There's also a nice dubbed-out version of this track at the end of the album.)

"Water" refers to Detroit's 2014 water crisis (not the lead poisoning of Flint, MI's residents via their water system), which emerged after the city entered bankruptcy and was placed under the control of an emergency manager (appointed by Michigan's governor). In his search to find revenue for the city's coffers, the manager decided to go after Detroit's poorest black residents--again, about 40% of this city's population lives in poverty--who were behind on their water bills and turned off their water if they couldn't pay. This prompted the United Nations to issue this unusual rebuke: "Disconnection of water services because of failure to pay due to lack of means constitutes a violation of the human right to water and other international human rights." What was particularly galling was the it appeared that the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department wasn't pursing significant, overdue commercial and municipal water bills with as much zeal (and wasn't shutting off their water when payment wasn't forthcoming). After echoing the UN's declaration, "water is a human right--please don't stop the water," J. Navarro and the Traitors' terrifically upbeat track (very appropriately) segues into a spirited ska cover of Toots and Maytals' "Pressure Drop" that simultaneously recognizes and sympathizes with the plight of Detroit's residents, while calling out the powers that be for their inhumane actions:

"I say a pressure drop, oh pressure
Oh yeah, pressure drop a drop on you
I say a pressure drop, oh pressure
Oh yeah, pressure drop a drop on you

I say when it drops, oh you gonna feel it
Know that you were doing wrong!
I say when it drops, oh you gonna feel it
Know that you were doing wrong!"

The fantastic, buoyant ska cut "Oppressor"--it might be my favorite songs on the album--uses a quote by the (now retired) Anglican South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu (a celebrated anti-apartheid, peace and social justice activist) as something of a mantra to encourage people to take action if they see injustice around them, since doing nothing is itself a form of complicity:

"If you are neutral
In the situation
of injustice
You have chosen
The side of
the oppressor"

If you see something wrong, do something right.

"Youth Not Wasted" and the incredibly catchy "Rude" are songs of inspiration for the young (we only go around once, so learn from others' life experience while you can!). The former essentially advises kids to not be in an anxious rush to become adults, but to fully enjoy where they're at ("Not knowing shit or where to go/The best times in life are often now/So, sing along and join the crowd/The only way to ever be free/Is to dance along and sing with me"), while the latter posits that the best way to live your life is to be "rude"--to stubbornly be yourself and not be knocked off/lured away from your own path.

The track that perhaps best sums up J. Navarro and The Traitors' reason for being (and serves as their mission statement) is "Write for You":

"Listen up
The hardest thing in this world
is to find yourself and just be you
The lion never fears the jackal
in Babylon, yeah I'm true
I'll never stop bringing all the noise
of a protest song
It's a revolution of the mind
20 year's lion strong
Because these words and these songs
are all I've ever had
Revolution songs, these songs of freedom
These songs of defiance
Criminals and Lions"

I hope J. Navarro and The Traitors' fantastic songs of truth and righteousness find their way to many receptive ears and heads (the messages are delivered inside some terrific tunes!). These days--and I suspect even more so in the future--we need an army of lions to set things right.

+ + + +