Shots in the Dark: The Adjusters "Otis Redding Will Save America"

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, or a fickle record-buying public, were lost in the fray.

(Appreciation by Steve Shafer)

The Band: The Adjusters, an overtly left-wing, mod-ish ska-soul band from Chicago who were heavily influenced by The Redskins (anti-fascist, socialist soul-rockabilly-punk skinheads, who released several singles and one classic album, Neither Washington Nor Moscow) and Billy Bragg (anti-fascist, socialist folk-punk rocker who still endeavors to write protest songs that are about both the personal and political, and has released a host of singles and albums, including my favorite Talking to the Taxman About Poetry, which sports the best-ever critique of Reagan's Cold War-era USA: "Help Save the Youth of America" (some of which is terrifyingly relevant again*)). This interracial, mixed-gender band was composed of Daraka Larimore-Hall (who is half-Jamaican) and Jessica Basta on vocals, Jason Packer on guitar, Matt Parker on organ/piano, Rench on drums, vocals, and samples, and Joshua Thurston-Milgrom on bass.

The Sound: The Adjusters' incendiary 1997 debut Politics of Style (Jump Up Records) veers between Stax soul, JB funk, rootsy reggae, and traditional (not 2 Tone) ska. Their 1998 follow-up on Moon Ska Records Before the Revolution (produced by Victor Rice) further refined the formula to greater effect with an even better collection of tracks (full disclosure, when I was at Moon Records I worked with the band promoting this record). 2003's Otis Redding Will Save America (blessed with a mind-blowingly good co-production by Rice and Rench) blended hip-hop, Big Beat, and trip-hop into the mix for a searing and unblinkered look at America in the years just before and after the Twin Towers fell.

The Release: The writing, recording, and mixing of The Adjusters' Otis Redding Will Save America  straddled one of the most dramatic paradigm shifts in American history: the immediate pre- and post-9/11 years. The relatively peaceful and prosperous Clinton '90s wound down with an absurd impeachment over lying about sex (and we didn't fully comprehend the portents of the 1993 World Trade Center attack and 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and how they would shape the next two decades). The first dotcom bubble burst and the Y2K freakout was (thankfully) a bust.

The George W. Bush years started badly with an election swung his way by the right-wingers on the Supreme Court and only went down from there. After apparently ignoring our intelligence service's red alert signals about the coming terrorist attacks, Bush led the nation into a particularly nightmarish and tragic period in the USA following 9/11. It all culminated in the appalling--and completely unnecessary and unprovoked--2003 Iraq War (that eventually killed around 4,500 American servicepeople, tens of thousands of Iraqi insurgents, and around 600,000 Iraqi civilians). Even as it was all unfolding back then, it was obvious that the George W. Bush Administration was lying that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attack. They simply wanted to justify a preordained invasion of that country (when it was likely that elements within the Saudi government helped the al-Qaida terrorists carry out their mission).

The 9/11 attacks did more than murder several thousand Americans. They shook us to our core and unleashed our darkest impulses in our so-called War on Terror--leading us to abandon our laws and values to assuage our security fears and nurture our lust for revenge. And our country did more to destroy itself and betray everything that America purports to stand for than 12 hijackers could ever dream of accomplishing.

(Just as a reminder, here are some of the appalling lowlights of our War on Terror: the torture--and waterboarding is torture--and indefinite detention of suspected terrorists; the use of extraordinary rendition; the illegal monitoring and wiretapping of Americans' e-mails and phone calls under The Patriot Act; the profiling and quasi-legal surveillance of American Muslims; the "unitary executive" theory and use of Presidential signing statements; the Bush Administration's deliberate misinterpretation and shredding of our nation's laws; and does anyone remember that insane psych-op weekend when Americans across the country freaked out after the White House suggested that Americans buy duct tape and plastic sheeting in case of a dirty bomb/bio-chemical attack?)

The Adjusters believed that America--which has never quite lived up to its promise in the Declaration of Independence that all people are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--had not only lost its shit but had badly lost its way.

While the band was recording the album in Version City's spartan basement studio on East Third Street in Manhattan, one of the band members visited the restroom of the bar upstairs and noticed something written on the toilet stall wall (in what would become their own Smells Like Teen Spirit moment): Otis Redding will save America.

Eventually, The Adjusters realized that this phrase encapsulated everything they were trying to convey with this album. Otis Redding, the "King of Soul," had attempted to goad America into locating its conscience as it staggered through one of its most turbulent, violent, and hate-filled decades. He was one of the first Black soul singers who broke through to the white rock audience (see this video from the '67 Monterey Pop Festival) as an undisguised, undiluted, and unbowed Black man (in the 1960s, Black men accepted within white pop culture usually weren't permitted to be regular human beings who could express, or be the overt object of, sexual desire--see the constraints placed on Sidney Poiter by Hollywood). This was at a time when America was forced to come to terms with its white supremacist/Jim Crow legacy and recognize and support the equal/legal rights of Black American citizens; endure a string of devastating political and racial assassinations (JFK, MLK, Jr., RFK, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and many lesser-known Civil Rights martyrs); and muddle through an unwinnable, imperialistic proxy war with China and Russia in Vietnam that killed 58,200 young US soldiers (average age: 23) and millions of Vietnamese. 

To give some context to Redding's extraordinary and unprecedented impact on American society, check out this appreciation in The New Yorker: "Marching in place to keep pace with the beat, pumping his fists in the air, striding across stages with a long-legged gait that parodied his “down home” origins, Redding’s confident yet unaffected eroticism epitomized the African-American ideal of a “natural man.” White audiences of the time had never seen anything like it. The effect was so powerful that Bob Weir, of the Grateful Dead, said, of Redding’s performance at the Monterey Pop Festival, "I was pretty sure I’d seen God onstage"...In the way he looked and the way he sang and the way he led his tragically unfinished life, this princely son of Georgia sharecroppers was a one-man repudiation of the depraved doctrine of "white supremacy," whose dark vestiges still contaminate our world." (After over 4,000 documented lynchings of Black Americans from 1877 to 1950, the US finally has the Emmitt Till federal anti-lynching bill on the books, which was signed into law by President Biden and defines lynching as "a hate crime that results in death or serious bodily injury.")

To heal the nation, Redding pleaded with everyone to "try a little tenderness," which isn't just about relations between the sexes. The country needed (and still needs) heaping doses of empathy for white America to see Black Americans as their fellow human beings. But Redding also insisted that respect be shown to Black citizens in his hit song transformed into an early feminist and Civil Rights anthem by Aretha Franklin. Notably, Redding's posthumous hit "Dock of the Bay" underscored the loneliness and aimlessness of being rejected by the society that birthed and (reluctantly) fostered you.

While Redding never finished his journey (he died in a plane crash at age 26 along with most of the members of his backing band the Bar-Kays), his music and insistence on being his unreserved self in public on stage offered the hope that America could be a pluralistic society that embraced diversity and recognized everyone's rights equally.

For Otis Redding Will Save America, The Adjusters expanded their sound to further explore/honor Black American music beyond their mod-ska-soul mix and incorporated hip-hop and its musical descendants filtered through British subculture: trip-hop and Big Beat (Lionrock's "Rude Boy Rock" and Sly and Robbie's Drum & Bass Strip to the Bone by Howie B influenced this record enormously). Of course, practically all American popular music was created by Black American musicians: jazz, blues, R&B, soul, rock 'n' roll, and hip hop (Black music is one of the United States' most powerful cultural exports and a primary driver of our entertainment economy). And The Adjusters were about celebrating Black American music.

This expanded musical palette may have been a bridge too far for hard-line ska fans, but The Adjusters never comfortably fit within the confines of the '90s US ska scene, which skewed more towards punk rock (it's worth noting that in its original '76-'77 incarnation, punk stripped rock 'n' roll of its Black origins in R&B and gospel). And The Adjusters' overt democratic socialist stance and political activism through Modern Action and the Democratic Socialists of America was sometimes a sore point among the reactionary, almost libertarian (barf) elements of the ska fan base (even though some of our country's most popular social and educational programs--Social Security, Medicare, Veterans Administration, public schools, public universities, public libraries--are all socialist in nature). But The Adjusters never cared about discomforting the comfortable and privileged (see Daraka's comments about the 1998 Ska Against Racism Tour in the Chicago Reader**).

Like The Specials, The Adjusters wanted their music to move your body and their message to stimulate your mind. So, Otis Redding Will Save America is equal parts party soundtrack and political rallying cry--both essential for surviving desperate times. And it's one of the best albums that the '90s ska scene ever yielded.

Otis Redding Will Save America opens with "WTF Ska" an old school-sounding tune that's laid over a decidedly new school drum loop (this ain't downtown JA!). It's the instrumental version of "When Things Fall," which appears later on the record and is an appeal for solidarity across race and class lines in the face of injustice and adversity--and pretty much sums up the theme of the entire album. The Adjusters' superb and powerful cover of Gil Scott-Heron's "Gun" is about the fraying of the social contract (to the point where every one of your fellow citizens is a potential threat) and a society where violence and killing are both way of life and entertainment.

Everybody's got a pistol
Everybody's got a .45
And the philosophy seems to be
At least as near as I can see
When other folks give up theirs, I'll give up mine

This is a violent civilization
If civilization's where I am
'Cause every channel that I stop on
Got a different kind of cop on
Killing them by the million for Uncle Sam

But Saturday night just ain't that special
Yeah, I got the constitution on the run
Yeah, 'cause even though we've got the right
To defend our home, to defend our life
You got to understand to get it in hand about the guns

"Can't See the Light," an original, traditional-sounding rocksteady cut (that features Dr. Ring Ding), is about being comfortably numb and disconnected as the world burns around you--and refusing to take sides or even recognize right from wrong (and alludes to The Clash coming to terms with reality with this lyric: So safe and warm in your nice suburban home). "Master Blaster" is, of course, a Stevie Wonder cover. It's his 1980 reggae tribute to Bob Marley that incorporates part of "Jammin'" and celebrates Zimbabwe's hard-fought independence from their colonial British overlords and Black self-determination, in general (Jessica Basta takes lead vocals here and really shines).

Sounding like a lost Public Enemy cut from It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, "If You" is an extraordinary and wickedly fierce hip-hop track featuring the mighty T.O.N.E. on vocals and built on a sample from Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" (most famously used during a brutal attack on a Vietnamese village just after the "Charlie don't surf scene" in Apocalypse Now). It offers sharp commentary on how bringing about real change demands so much more than performative gestures.***

If you're sick of seeing Black people gettin' shit
Raise your fist (raise 'em up, raise 'em up)
And if you're sick of seeing women gettin' hit
Raise your fist (raise 'em up, raise 'em up)
And if you're sick of seeing poor people gettin' dissed
Raise your fist (put 'em up, put 'em up)
And if you wanna do something 'bout it
You gotta do more than raise your fist to get pissed

The downbeat "Monkey Hate Reggae" is about a disaffected youth in a no-future rust belt town coming under the sway of a "right-wing libertine" and acting out violently as a result (shades of "Clampdown"). The ebullient "The Fightback, Part II" revisits and amps up this funk-powered Before the Revolution track, but recasts its lyrics to laud the massive antiglobalization protests at the 1999 World Trade Organization's meeting in Seattle ("Corporations split the world in two/Which side, which side for you?...You can't fight the man alone/Fuck with the people and the people fight back").

The instrumental booty-shaking dancefloor-filling portion of Otis Redding Will Save America is a collection of genre-bending trip-hop tracks packed with elements of reggae, funk, and hip-hop, plus samples galore (this entire album features some seriously deep grooves and crazy, next-level rhythms thanks to secret weapon Rench). The awesome "Mumia in Tibet" (which refers to Mumia Abu-Jamal) is like a drum 'n' bass mash-up with something off Jump With Joey's Ska Ba. "Boomstick" borrows Musical Youth's intro to "Pass the Dutchie" ("This generation...rules the nation...with version!") for this fantastic percussive workout. And "Supergoodlookin" brings the funk for when you want to get down and funky ("...take it home if you like it/Finger-licking good/Take it home if you like it").

Otis Redding Will Save America concludes with the sobering reality of "It's Like That." The struggle for equality and social/economic justice is far from over and must continue at all costs, despite people's apathy and the considerable power of the forces perfectly happy with/exploiting the status quo: "Can't tell the rich man to stop scheming/But we can change this shitstem/If only we look past the horizon...You may not feel the situation/But give it a generation/It's not gonna look good to my grandchildren."

The Ugly Reality: The Adjusters' Otis Redding Will Save America was released just a few years after the ska meltdown at the end of the 1990s when the scene was abandoned by the wannabes and driven/shamed back underground. So, the audience to enjoy it and the scene infrastructure to promote it was largely gone. And it didn't help that Otis Redding Will Save America was only available as an import from Grover Records in Germany. Right after The Adjusters finished recording the album, Moon Ska went under (on December 17, 2000), but Bucket was kind enough to release the unmixed masters to the band so they could finish and issue the record elsewhere. After the album was released by Grover, plans were in place to tour Europe in support (Daraka was living in Norway at the time and other members of the band took leave of their jobs or quit), but everything was canceled at the last minute. The band broke up as a result--and none of the tracks on Otis Redding Will Save America were ever played live.

It's also incredibly ironic that an album about the battle for America's soul has never been released domestically. But perhaps worst of all is that these songs about racism, hatred, inequity, gun violence, and the longing to change the power structure of our economy and political system are still painfully relevant almost 20 years later, maybe even more so now than they were in 2003.

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Notes:

* I happened to catch Billy Bragg at The Beacon Theater on his brilliant first tour of North America in 1984 opening for Echo and the Bunnymen during their magnificent Ocean Rain tour.

** [From the Chicago Reader's "Ska's Lost Cause" article:] "The Adjusters’ Larimore was more skeptical. “Not talking about racism as a system, or racism as something that you should be actively fighting against, but talking about it like, ‘You shouldn’t be mean to black people,’ is just ridiculous,” he said. “It’s like the 2-Tone take on racism, which in the 2-Tone context meant something completely different. There you had a racially diverse scene where people were beating each other up, so going out and saying ‘Hey, don’t beat each other up’ was a progressive thing and part of the more socialist agenda of the people behind 2-Tone. But going to a ska crowd that’s 99 percent white and pretty solidly liberal–especially on race issues–and saying ‘Don’t beat up black people’ is like going out and saying ‘Don’t molest children.’ They might as well do Ska Against Incest.”"

*** Here are some of my favorite verses from "If You" worth quoting here:

If I'm a villain
Let's love the penicillin
I'm not sick with crimes
I'm sick with rhymes
New gang bang
I bang slang for fame
Guiliani, ha!, punany
The same thang...

And

Smiling faces lyin' to the races
You got a facelift, but you're still a racist
You might like your blunder
My hatred alone will rend you asunder
I've got a mind to triumph my will
Look in my eyes, got expression to kill
Syllogisms for your fascisms
You won't find me in your high-tech prisons
Damn!

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Much thanks to Daraka Larimore-Hall for filling in a few of the blanks and providing several corrections.

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Duff Review: Perkie & The Co-operators "(Mumma Was a) Bankrobber" b/w "Dubbers Delight"

(Reviews by Steve Shafer)

I'm always crazy for well-done Clash covers and the boss new single from Perkie & The Co-operators, "(Mumma Was a) Bankrobber" (7" vinyl single, Happy People Records, 2022), is no exception. According to Tony Fletcher's book The Clash: The Music That Matters, after London Calling--which was a bit too America-centric and American-sounding for many UK fans and some in the British music press (though the record was a bit hit in the USA because of it all)--The Clash intended to release a series of singles in 1980 in the UK to placate all the disgruntled naysayers.

Initially (and bizarrely), CBS refused to release "Bankrobber" as a single and only did so after it appeared on a B-side in Holland and sold rapidly as an import in UK record shops. Once it was issued as an A-side in the UK, it shot up the charts to the #12 position. Sadly, The Clash decided to scrap the rest of the series of singles, even though they were vindicated in their selection of "Bankrobber." Instead, they then decamped to NYC to record the magnificent, if messy, triple-LP Sandinista.

As much as I love "Bankrobber," I have to admit to never examining the lyrics of this song closely (I could always make out the chorus, but Strummer's oftentimes ragged enunciation obscured some of the verses for me--I always thought "someday you'll meet your rocking chair" was "someday you'll meet your rocketeer" and couldn't make out the rest of that verse!). In addition to being another in a long string of Clash rude boy/rebel/outlaw-glorifying tracks (see "Guns on the Roof," "Rudie Can't Fail," "Guns of Brixton," "I Fought the Law," and many others), "Bankrobber" slips in a fiercely anti-capitalist message about the exploitation of workers--which sort of provides a rationale for the banditry, but definitely gives it much more depth and meaning. (And the bankrobber's gender has been switched for this cover because women can be just as equal opportunity bad-ass and rebellious as men...)

Mumma was a bankrobber
But she never hurt nobody
She just loved to live that way
And she loved to steal your money

Some is rich, and some is poor
And that's the way the world is
But I don't believe in laying back
Sayin' how bad your luck is

So, she came to jazz it up
Never learned to shovel
Break your back to earn our pay
Don't forget to grovel

Old girl spoke up in a bar
Said, "I never been in prison
A lifetime serving one machine
Is ten times worse than prison"

Perkie's laid-back/matter-of-fact and almost delicate delivery can be read as world-weary--certainly not a bad thing since it contrasts so well with the crisp, bright 'n' brisk music underpinning it.

The flip, a take of sorts on "Rockers Delight," is a sweet dub version of the A-side, with long instrumental stretches ripe for toasting over when the soundsytem is set up, should anyone be up to the task.

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Additional reading: Check out my reviews of Perkie & The Co-operators' "Concrete, Steel, and Stone" single, The Co-operators & Friends' LP Beating the Doldrums, and the Phoenix City All-stars' LP Clash Version Rockers. 

Fun fact: Tony Fletcher also wrote the liner notes that appear on the back of The Toasters' Thrill Me Up LP.

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Duff Review: The Clash & Ranking Roger "Rock the Casbah" b/w "Red Angel Dragnet"

Editor's note: On May 20, 2022, Sony/BMG is releasing an limited edition, picture sleeve 7" single of "Rock the Casbah" b/w "Red Angel Dragnet" that features The Beat's Ranking Roger (RIP) toasting over these cuts. Previously, these tracks only have been available as bootlegs, one of which I reviewed back in 2013. So, I'm reposting this review for anyone who may be interested in picking up the legit version. I should also mention that an expanded 3xLP and 2XCD version of The Clash's Combat Rock with a few unreleased cuts is being issued at the same time.

Ska Boots Series
2013
Fuschia vinyl 7" record (with Go Feet paper label)

(Review by Steve Shafer)

God, if these two tracks had seen the light of day back in 1982--say on a 12" single, which were all the rage in the 80s--my head probably would have exploded from the sheer euphoria of experiencing this union of The Clash and The English Beat (two of my favorite bands, both then and now). Truth be told, I didn't even know that these demos existed until I read about them in the Marco on the Bass blog last summer. But it makes complete sense that some sort of collaboration was inevitable between these bands, as they both loved and successfully mined similar musical territory in ska and reggae.

Whether due to some wonderful cosmic coincidence or a brilliant pairing concocted by an unusually savvy promoter, The Clash and The Beat shared the stage for seven shows in Paris at the Theatre Mogador in September 1981 and the bands got on so well that The Clash invited Ranking Roger to toast during their covers of Willie Williams' "Armagideon Time" and Junior Murvin's "Police and Thieves" for the duration of the Paris residency (and a few years later, Mick Jones joined Dave Wakeling's and Ranking Roger's post-Beat group, General Public, though he almost immediately departed to form Big Audio Dynamite with Don Letts). When it came time to record The Clash's follow-up to the extraordinary Sandinista, Strummer and Jones invited Ranking Roger to toast on two of their new cuts, "Red Angel Dragnet" and "Rock the Casbah." Initially, the title for this post-Vietnam War-obsessed double album was Rat Patrol from Ft. Bragg and Mick Jones handled all of the producing and mixing. However, when the rest of the band heard the results, they were less than thrilled--and classic rock pro Glyn Johns, who had produced albums for The Who, The Rolling Stones, and The Eagles, amongst others, was brought it to finish the job (with only Strummer at his side). In the process, the double album was culled down a single LP and retitled Combat Rock (and the Rat Patrol mixes were later repeatedly bootlegged and now can be found, of course, on the internet).

The unnamed Brits behind the Ska Boots series (which has released ska and reggae covers/tracks by Joe Strummer, Amy Winehouse, The Specials, Madness, Lily Allen, No Doubt, Billy Bragg, Ian Dury, The Pogues, Jools Holland, Eddie Vedder, and a pre-Madonna Madonna) have released Mick Jones' demo mixes of the sweet, dubby extended versions of "Red Angel Dragnet" and "Rock the Casbah" with Ranking Roger toasting over these cuts. While the sound quality is what you would expect for a demo--and Roger's vocals aren't fully integrated into the mix of these songs, they're riding on top--I doubt most Clash/Beat fans will mind, since it's so cool to have these versions in such a nice, tangible package. (Cheeky of them to use the Go Feet paper label for this bootleg, but it works well and in plays out a crossover fantasy that I'm sure exists in many a fan's mind.)

Of the two cuts here, the "Taxi Driver"/Guardian Angels/Jack the Ripper mash up "Red Angel Dragnet" works better; there's more menace in Roger's chatting and vocal effects--and it's far more effective than Kosmo Vinyl's Travis Bickle imitation (though here I miss his recitation of "One of these days, I'm going to get myself organizized" that appears right before the end fade of the Combat Rock version of this song). Also, the loping song structure of "Red Angel Dragnet"--somewhere between reggae and rockabilly, courtesy of Paul Simonon's songwriting--lends itself better to a dub version and gives Roger the space to do his thing. I've always had a soft spot for this deep album cut, as it taps into and reflects the seamier, lawless, and dangerous side of New York City in the early 80s (and celebrates a movie that revels in it) that was very real to me. I was seeing Curtis Sliwa's red windbreaker and beret outfitted Guardian Angels (the police shooting of Guardian Angel Frank Melvin inspired Strummer's lyrics for this song) who were citizen patrolling the grimy and decrepit (but sometimes stunning) subways I had been riding alone since fifth grade beneath the burning South Bronx, back and forth between Manhattan and Yonkers, and I had survived my infrequent, but unpleasant and nerve-wracking trips through Times Square, which was packed with porno theaters and heavily populated with con artists, drug dealers, and pimps and prostitutes--all of whom were depicted pretty accurately in Martin Scorcese's vigilante movie "Taxi Driver."

Lyrically, Ranking Roger's toasting in "Red Angel Dragnet" makes reference to the horrifying January 14, 1983 London Metropolitan Police ambush and shooting of Stephen Waldorf, whom they thought was escaped prisoner David Martin (it should be noted that Combat Rock was released in May of 1982--so this track could not have been part of the pre-Glyn Johns Mick Jones mixes). Roger also refers to the very real threat of the Cold War and nuclear annihilation in the early 80s (a few years earlier, the UK government had disclosed that American cruise missiles with nuclear warheads were being stored on British air force bases and could be launched against the Soviets from British soil; this, of course, made England an obvious target for the Russians in the event of a nuclear exchange between the superpowers): "Di Russian, di American/Dem both have a plan/and if we no careful/They involve a England/So what's the worry?/It's the cruise missile/Cause if we not careful/We end up in a pile." Not surprisingly, Roger makes a plea for "love and unity" at the end of the song, which was a repeated (and very much worthwhile) theme during his tenure with The Beat (see "Stand Down Margaret").

Mega-hit "Rock the Casbah" (The Clash's only top 10 single in the USA)--music by Topper Headon, lyrics by Strummer that were inspired by Iran's new(ish) religious fundamentalism that severely cracked down on popular music, amongst many other things--is almost too tightly wound of a pop/dance song for Ranking Roger's toasting; the backing track is too busy and dense. Having said that, it's still a great version of this song that should have been further developed (like "Red Angel Dragnet") and released back in the day. The audience was there and eager for this kind of experimentation, though the band (Strummer, in particular) was more focused on making a more mainstream hit album that would generate the financial reward and true fame in the USA that had eluded them (see Tony Fletcher's "The Clash: The Music That Matters"). I cringed when I learned that they were opening for classic rock dinosaurs The Who at Shea Stadium in Queens on the Combat Rock tour and didn't even try to go see them because of it. It's too bad that The Clash couldn't split the difference between Strummer's rock star ambitions and Jones' desire to further explore musical avenues in hip hop and reggae (and that Topper Headon couldn't quit the drugs and rejoin the band). They should have realized both the hit pop album and released Jonesie's more experimental dub/alternate versions as related singles--and maybe this might even have kept the band together long enough to release one more great Clash album with (most of) the original band (instead, we had to settle for Big Audio Dynamite's good to great Strummer/Jones collaboration in No. 10, Upping St. in 1986).

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Duff Review: Rhoda Dakar "The Man Who Sold The World" b/w "The Man Who Dubbed The World"

Sunday Best
7" picture sleeve vinyl single/digital
2022

(Review by Steve Shafer)

In celebration of what would have been his 75th birthday (January 8), David Bowie acolyte Rhoda Dakar has released a great reggae cover of "The Man Who Sold The World" that captures the wonderful grandiosity, drama, and tension of Bowie's 1970 original, while recasting it so fits right in with her recent output (see my review of her "Everyday Is Like Sunday" single). The song also takes on another dimension in these gender-fluid times, since Dakar doesn't alter the pronouns in the lyrics--which are about a man meeting his spiritual or corporeal twin/self (read a fascinating analysis of this song at Pushing Ahead of the Dame); though it should be noted that Bowie and his Pin Ups-era band backed Lulu's 1974 cover of this track, too (which Bowie and Mick Ronson co-produced). The repeating guitar riff of the original (performed by Ronson) is replaced here by Joff Watkins' harmonica--a fantastic touch--and celebrated reggae keyboardist Roger Rivas also contributes keys. Lenny Bignell's warm production and dub are excellent, as always. And Pete McKee's Clash-referencing cover art tops off a fine, heartfelt tribute to the Thin White Duke.

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Duff Review: The Bakesys "Sentences I'd Like to Hear the End Of"

(Review by Steve Shafer)

I'd been holding off on reviewing The Bakesys' terrific Sentences I'd Like to Hear the End Of (CD/digital, Do the Dog Music, 2021) as I thought its physical vinyl release on Jump Up Records would be soon forthcoming. However, since that label seems to have taken a bit of a detour as of late to capitalize on the 2021 resurgence of ska-punk, it feels like a disservice to the band to wait any longer. 

Like their single "Leaving the American Sector" (about the Cold War-era Berlin Wall, which I reviewed earlier this year), the songs on The Bakesys' Sentences I'd Like to Hear the End Of are concerned with significant figures and events from 1960s world history, while employing a late 1980s UK traditional ska sound crossed with electro/dance beats and toasting/rapping that was practiced by Maroon Town, Potato 5 (on True Fact), House of Rhythm, and others (it was a cousin to the brief 1989 ska-acid fad--see Longsy D et al--but better, with the exception of Buster Bloodvessel's killer mix of "This is Ska").

Most of Sentences I'd Like to Hear the End Of's uniformly excellent tracks judiciously incorporate offbeat found sound clips from contemporary '60s TV/radio news reports that hint at the event/figure being referenced without being obviously direct--and work exceptionally well (though some of their added spoken word/rapping bits play better than others).

The title track is about the model/showgirl Christine Keeler, who was sexually involved with both a married British cabinet member and a Soviet naval attaché, which, when came to light, became tabloid fodder and sparked all sorts of embarrassing national security concerns (The Skatalites, of course, recorded an instrumental named after her, and Keeler also was the subject of the 1989 movie Scandal, whose 1960s ska soundtrack was selected by The Trojans' Gaz Mayall). "638 Ways They Tried" comments on the number of times the CIA attempted to assassinate Cuba's communist dictator Fidel Castro; and the Clash-referencing "Atomic Invasion" ("When Ivan meets GI Joe/Well, we all know how this is going to go/The talking stops and the missiles flow...Well, if the blast don't kill ya/Then the fallout's gonna get ya") conveys the almost universal Cold War dread of nuclear war, which, of course, came very close to happening in '61 with the Cuban Missile Crisis. The horror show of both JFK and Bobby Kennedy's assassinations are captured in the tense and mournful "We Don't Need Another Oswald," where we hear snippets of Bobby's last speech and then the immediate, awful aftermath of his murder. We hear people urging others to secure the gun and to keep people away from Sirhan Sirhan; they don't want him killed by vigilantes before he is brought to trial, as in the case of JFK's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, who was killed by Jack Ruby.

The three dubs--"Go Dub Go," "Bernauer Strasse Dub," and "Desolation Dub" (a version of "Get Your Moon Boots On")--are exceptionally good. Buzz Aldrin, the second human to step foot on the Moon, described the moonscape as "magnificent desolation." One of the major--and ironic--discoveries of the Apollo Moon program was the realization of how precious our own life-sustaining planet is (William Shatner said of his suborbital experience that after leaving Earth's blue atmosphere, the black of space was like "death"). Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders, who took the famous "Earthrise" photo remarked, "We set out to explore the Moon and instead discovered the Earth."

I wonder if The Bakesys will take on the '70s next--there's lots of good material (Watergate, Vietnam War, Iranian Hostages, Jonestown, Camp David Accords, Three Mile Island, Reagan and Thatcher, and so much more!)...

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Duff Review: The Specials "Protest Songs 1924-2012"

(Review by Steve Shafer)

The Specials' new album Protest Songs 1924-2012 (CD/LP, Island Records, 2021)--their follow-up to 2019's excellent Encore (read my review here)--is a strange beast. It manages to be both a powerful and beautifully realized concept album and a huge sod off to their fans. Anyone who has faithfully supported The Specials through its various incarnations and diminishing ranks of original members, lo these 40+ years, is not unreasonably expecting some ska. But Protest Songs adamantly delivers none, though there's folk, blues, spirituals, soul, skiffle, rock, and post punk (having said that, I did catch a bit of ska rhythm guitar in "Listening Wind!"). What's odd is that as you listen through the tracks, it's quite easy to imagine at least some of them recast as ska or reggae songs. So, for whatever reason, the band--Terry Hall, Lynval Golding, and Horace Panter (plus Nikolaj Torp Larsen, Kendrick Rowe, Steve Cradock, Tim Smart, Pablo Mendelssohn, Jim Hunt, Michael "Bammie" Rose, Tony "Groco" Uter, and Hanna Hu)--opted to go in this direction, surely well-aware that it would dash fans' expectations and piss many of them off mightily.

Before the pandemic disrupted everything, The Specials had been planning to record a reggae album in Jamaica--and then the world-wide George Floyd protests erupted in the wake of Floyd's horrific murder at the hands of the police. So, they decided to record a covers album of protest songs in response (and one imagines that the resurgence of white supremacy and worsening cold civil war between Americans and seditious, anti-democratic forces in the US played a part, too), the majority of them by American musicians, as an interim project and to force them out of a post-Covid lockdown creative rut.

Once you set aside your disappointment regarding the absence of ska sounds (though the fact that these are protest songs is very much on brand), you may find that The Specials' Protest Songs 1924-2012 is a terrific album. The choice of tracks (with lyrics that pack a wallop), their interpretations, and performances are uniformly excellent. Some of the songs are direct in their messaging: The Staple Singers' "Freedom Highway" and The Freedom Singers' "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Us Around" are potent, raucous US Civil Rights Movement-era anti-racist anthems; Rod McKuen's "Soldiers Who Want to Be Heroes" ("...number practically zero/But there are millions/Who want to be civilians") is an anti-war earworm written before Vietnam, but reissued at its height, and relevant countless times since then; Frank Zappa's "Trouble Every Day," written in reaction to the 1965 Watts riots and decrying both the violence/looting unleashed in that neighborhood and ubiquitous racism that led to the social unrest; and Bob Marley's "Get Up, Stand Up" is a general call for solidarity in support of universal human rights--though this quiet, acoustic version sung by Golding seems like something one would pull in on shortwave radio while hunkered down in some secret hiding place as in The Clash's English Civil War. While others are more oblique in subject matter or less-known for being protest songs.

Leonard Cohen's 1988 track "Everybody Knows"--about how everything is inexorably corrupt--was tailor-made for Hall's resigned/deadpan delivery. While it wasn't specifically written as such, it captures the mood of a lot of people in the US (and elsewhere) who want to live in and are working for a more just, equitable, and inclusive world, but are stymied at every turn by those with all the power and wealth:

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Malvina Reynold's children's folk tune "I Live in a City" seems like a weird choice, but it's a strong endorsement of urban solidarity and multiculturalism: "Brown hands, yellow hands, white and black/All together built this town" (take that, rural MAGA-Again-heads!). And Reynold's proud rejection of American dog-eat-dog capitalism, "I Don't Mind Failing in This World,"  is positively punk rock in attitude, even if it's delivered via gentle folk song: 

I don't mind failing in this world
Don't mind wearing the ragged britches
'Cause those who succeed are sons of bitches...

...I don't mind failing in this world
I'll stay down here with the raggedy crew
'Cause getting up there means stepping on you, so
I don't mind failing in this world

...I don't mind failing in this world
Some people ride in a car so fine
While others walk on a picket line, so
I don't mind failing in this world

One of the cruelest injustices that Black American GIs faced after fighting fascism during WW II in Europe was returning to the US and being subjected to racist Jim Crow laws in their own country (the Nazis based their Nuremberg Laws--their racial purity edicts--and their "Final Solution" on Jim Crow and the American eugenics movement). Blues musician Big Bill Broonzy first recorded his song "Black, Brown and White" in 1947 about this and the general Black American experience with white supremacy (wryly sung here by Golding):

I helped build this country
And I fought for it too
Now I guess that you can see
What a black man has to do

They say if you're white, should be all right
If you're brown, stick around
But if you're black, oh brother, get back, get back, get back

I win sweet victory
With my plough and hoe
Now, brother, you tell me
Whatcha gonna do 'bout the old Jim Crow?

The inclusion of Talking Heads' incredible "Listening Wind" (from Remain in Light and used in The Americans) is an unusual choice--it's a Cold War-era anti-American imperialism cut from the point of view of a African freedom fighter planting bombs to drive out the Yanks from his country (singer Hannah Hu takes lead vocals here). I'm a little surprised The Specials' didn't work in a little of John Holt's "Man Next Door" into their version of Jerry McCain's "My Next Door Neighbor" (essentially a long rant about someone driving you mad by always borrowing all your stuff). Perhaps the most Terry Hall-ish song ever, the country lullaby "Fuck All The Perfect People" by Chip Taylor of "Wild Thing" fame--about prison inmates who have no agency while they do their time ("To sing or not to sing/To swing or not to swing/Hell fills up the silence like chalk on the wall")--was chosen as it "rails against all those people who are So. Damn. Right." (Hopefully, it's not a message to you.)

My imported red vinyl LP included an exclusive and exceptionally good 7" single containing their "Vote for Me" and a cover of The Valentines' "Blam Blam Fever," recorded live at Coventry Cathedral during the 2019 Encore tour. Admittedly, this helped take the sting out of the lack of ska on Protest Songs, but also reminded me of what was missing. One of The Specials' brilliant strengths has been their ability to offer up songs that make you both think and dance--their medium, 2 Tone, is also the message. But Protest Songs, as great an album as it is, obliterates half of that formula and may turn off a good portion of their audience as a result.

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Duff Review: Various Artists (Selected by Don Letts) "Version Excursion"

(Review by Steve Shafer)

For the uninitiated, Late Night Tales is a long-running series of compilations, each selected by a musician with the goal of creating what they consider to be their ultimate, mood-setting "late night mix." The latest release is Don Letts' mighty and marvelous Version Excursion (Heavyweight double LP, LateNightTales, 2021), which reflects his omnivorous musical tastes: '60s rock, Black American R&B and soul, punk and post-punk, and--of course--Jamaican and British reggae and dub. This is expressed through Letts' selection of dub covers (many of them exclusive remixes personally solicited by Letts) of songs by Aaron Neville, Jefferson Airplane, The Clash, Joy Division, Stevie Wonder, The Beach Boys, Lou Rawls, Marvin Gaye, Kool & The Gang, Bill Withers, Althea and Donna, Randy Newman, Merle Travis, The Bee Gees, War, The Beatles, and others.

Letts, the British-born son of Windrush generation Jamaican immigrants to the UK, grew up straddling the divide of white and Black music and culture--and during the advent of the mid-'70s punk scene, he was hired as the in-house DJ at London's infamous Roxy club (punk's ground zero), where he effectively introduced/turned on the British punk scene to reggae and dub in between sets by The Clash, Damned, Buzzcocks, Slits, Generation X, etc. (since so few punk records existed at the outset of his two-year DJ residency there in early 1977, he spun a lot of reggae!). Letts went on to film all of The Clash's music videos (as well as others for The Psychedelic Furs, Musical Youth, The Pretenders, The Undertones, Fun Boy Three, Eddy Grant,  Elvis Costello & The Attractions, Public Image Ltd., Bob Marley & The Wailers, and more); co-found Big Audio Dynamite (read my review of their reunion show in NYC in 2011) with The Clash's Mick Jones (he made BAD's music videos, too); direct many music documentaries, including The Clash: Westway to the World (which won him a Grammy), Soul Britannia, and The Story of Skinhead; and work as a DJ on BBC's Radio 6. Also his 2008 book Culture Clash, Dread Meets Punk Rockers is essential reading (and he has a new one out, too).

Many of the cuts Letts spotlights on Version Excursion are phenomenal reimaginings of their source material (though a few are so deconstructed as to be rendered almost unrecognizable, unless you consult the track listing--see Wrongton Meets The Rockers "Dub in the Supermarket" and Black Box Recorder's "Uptown Top Ranking"). Stand out tracks abound. Prince Fatty & Shniece McMenamin's "Black Rabbit" (their take on Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit," which I previously reviewed here) is an alluringly menacing dubby trip, while Zoe Devlin Love featuring (Dub Pistols') Tim Hutton's version of The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds track "Carolina No" is a gorgeous lover's rocker. The exclusive remix of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart Again" by Capitol 1212 featuring Earl 16 is stellar and may even top their original (I reviewed that mix here). Cornell Campell's recasting of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" as "Ital City Dub" is mind-blowingly good, as is Dennis Bovell's new remix of his old band Matumbi's "(Can't Get Enough of) That Reggae Stuff," which is their read of Kool & The Gang's awesome "Funky Stuff."

According to Letts' track-by-track liner notes, The Clash used to warm-up in rehearsals to Ernie Ford's "16 Tons," which is given an incredibly dread spaghetti Western reggae dub by French act OBF. Japanese producer Yasushi Ide enlisted U-Roy for a wonderfully melancholy cover of Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine" (love all those strings!). The Tamlins' read of Randy Newman's "Baltimore" (an indictment of everything that contributed to the decline of Black urban cities in the late '70s) is blistering. At one point in his teens, Letts had amassed an enormous collection of Beatles memorabilia, but once punk struck (The Clash: "No Elvis, Beatles, or Rolling Stones") he exchanged it all for a car (which he eventually got rid off, since the coppers kept pulling him over for Driving While Black). Having said all that, he never lost his love for the Fab Four and has included the Easy Star All-Stars featuring Matisyahu's wild dub of George Harrison's "Within You Without You."

The track that I keep coming back to here most is Gaudi Meets The Rebel Dread featuring Emily Capell's superb version of Big Audio Dynamite's "E = MC Squared" (which Letts co-wrote with Mick Jones). Part of it's nostalgia (it's a key cut from the soundtrack of late teens), but this mellow reworking is just perfect (the repeated descending piano riff toward the end of song is brilliant!).

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Duff Review: The Scofflaws "The Scofflaws"

(Review by Steve Shafer)

At some point in the latter half of 1990, the bottom fell out of the NYC ska scene. The packed March 26, 1990 "NYC Ska Craze" show at the now long-gone Cat Club on 13th Street and Fourth Avenue in Manhattan featured the best Gotham had to offer at that time—The Toasters, The Scofflaws, The NY Citizens, Bigger Thomas, Skinnerbox, Skadanks, and The Steadys—but instead of positioning NYC ska for success in new decade, it ended up being the last hurrah of the 1980s scene. The show yielded the excellent NYC Ska Live LP (read my review of it), but a planned Dance Craze-like film, which would have documented all of these New York bands for the world to watch and envy, fell through when the director Joe Massot pulled out at the last moment (Toasters/Moon Records main man Rob “Bucket” Hingley dubbed it "a fiasco"). In the months that followed, ska shows gradually became rare events and didn't draw like they had just a year before, and several of the groups big on the scene went dark (and others moved into other musical territory, like soul and funk). Some of this was due to demographics--many of the NYC ska groups in the '80s were made up of high school and college-age kids; by 1990, most were faced with navigating the stark adult world of 9 to 5 jobs and paying rent. But it was clear that it was in severe decline.

It didn't help that the band spearheading the NYC scene almost didn't survive 1989 and was still struggling to find its footing in 1990-1991. Even though The Toasters had managed to regroup and soldier on after the sudden, body-blow departure of the Unity 2 in the midst of promoting their superb second album Thrill Me Up (trombonist Ann Hellandsjo and alto saxophonist Marcel Reginatto also left in their wake), the band's future seemed tenuous. Since CBS/Sony had been courting The Toasters, they crafted a record full of pop-leaning ska songs—This Gun for Hire—that turned out to be "too commercial for the fans and not commercial enough for the majors," Bucket later admitted to George Marshall in Skinhead Times in August 1993. (CBS/Sony passed on the band and album.) More worrisome was the fact that this iteration of the band couldn't hold a candle to the Thrill Me Up-era band on stage. I saw The Toasters several times in 1990 and 1991 at CBGBs, The Cat Club, and SOB's, and while they put on a decent show, they just weren't the same and some of the new material strayed far from their patented "East Side Beat" sound. I always left a bit disappointed. The other dominant NYC ska/Moon Records act of that time was the NY Citizens, who released the excellent Stranger Things Have Happened EP on Moon in 1990, their terrific follow-up to their 1988 debut On the Move, but then seemed to go quiet for a few years.

The good news in the midst of all this was that after a series of near-disastrous independent distributor failures in the late '80s (that almost swallowed up entire pressing of Moon compilations like Ska Face: An All-American Ska Compilation and NYC Ska Live) and seeing Celluloid/Skaloid going under without paying any royalties for Thrill Me Up or Skaboom! (which had sold a very respectable 12K copies at that point), Bucket was more determined than ever to make Moon Records a viable indie label. And one that would not only represent the NYC ska scene, but the American one.

It’s worth noting/remembering that back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, recording, pressing, distributing, and promoting an independent album was an expensive and often daunting endeavor. It was the primary reason there were relatively few American ska releases in the 1980s. Without a label fronting the cash to print albums/singles/EPs that also had a connection to reliable and honest independent distributors who could actually get your release in the shops and then pay you for your product, you had very little chance of recouping any of your expenses (at the time, the major labels had control of their own distribution systems for their records and CDs which excluded independent releases). The Toasters’ first two albums had been licensed to Celluloid/Skaloid as a hedge against Moon’s ongoing cash flow and distribution problems, but they were still burned in the end when that label went bankrupt, with no royalties from either album ever making it into The Toasters’ pockets (and later in the ‘90s, the new owner of Celluloid flooded the market with bootleg copies of Thrill Me Up and the unauthorized Ska Killers on the Celluloid imprint Esperanto, which consisted of Skaboom! and Thrill Me Up).

While The Toasters’ This Gun for Hire may have been too much of an artistic shift from Thrill Me Up for the fans (I struggled to like it in 1990, but now think it’s a really great pop-leaning ska record), Bucket was able to secure distribution through IRD and the album sold 10k copies, earning the band and Moon Records a tidy profit. In turn, this allowed Bucket to start licensing albums from other ska acts (the deals back then were straightforward one-page agreements wonderfully free of legalese), since he had the capital to invest in pressing CDs (which was the format preferred by distributors and shops in the ‘90s) and could start growing the label’s roster in earnest.

In 1991, a rejuvenated Moon Records released two highly influential debut records that would help lay the groundwork for the 1990s ska boom and signaled the label's ambitious goal of establishing itself as the premier American independent ska label. Both bands had been perfecting their sound, songs, and live performances in the ‘80s (and were featured on Moon’s first-ever American ska comp Ska Face in 1988—read my review of it), and Bucket and The Toasters had been on many bills with each act. These albums, of course, were Let’s Go Bowling’s Music to Bowl By (read my review of it) and The Scofflaws’ The Scofflaws. Notably, they represented one of the directions that a segment of the US ska scene was taking beyond the new wave/2 Tone ska of the ‘80s—it was a new, distinctly American take on retro/1960s ska that incorporated a slightly off-kilter, modern outlook and an adventurous variety of influences. To give these groundbreaking albums context, the few 1991 ska releases similar in sound to Music to Bowl By and The Scofflaws were Jump With Joey’s Ska-Ba and Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra’s World Famous and Live albums.

Huntington, LI’s Scofflaws started out in the early 1980s as The New Bohemians and mostly played a mix of '60s R&B and TV theme songs. But as the ‘80s progressed, they incorporated more and more ska into their set. In 1988, Geffen Records bought their name for Edie Brickell, who wanted the rights to call her band the New Bohemians (and had a big hit with “What I Am”). They rebranded themselves The Scofflaws and bought new instruments and gear with Geffen’s cash. Later that same year, they burst into the national ska consciousness with their raucous, celebratory, and anti-racist Rude boy anthem "Rudy's Back" on Moon’s Ska Face comp, which helped all the scattered ska fans on the fringes of the underground scene feel like we were part of something bigger and something great.

Rude boys! Are coming out tonight
They got the rhythm and they’re feeling alright
Hey, boy! Where have you been going?
I’ve got to water a little herb that I’ve been growing
Rude boys! Causing trouble downtown
The police don’t like them hanging around
Hey, now! I want to play my horn
Rocksteady, that’s why I was born

Some say that rudies have all gone away
But that’s just jive talk, I know they’re here to stay
Why do we do it, well it ain't for the dough
It’s cause we’re ska’d for life, man! Okay, boys, let’s go!

Rude boy! Collie in hand
He likes to party, likes to skank with the band
Rude girl! She’s all on the scene, yeah
She’s hanging out by the record machine
Skinhead! They like to stomp their boots
They dig that rhythm, ‘cause the rhythm’s got roots
DJ! Play it one more time
I don’t care if the lyrics don’t rhyme

Oh, dig that rhythm…I man got the beat…Can’t keep from dancing…
I got to move my feet…rocksteady, ska, blue beat, soul…
If you got the rhythm, you will never grow old!

Rude boy! Yeah, he’s misunderstood
The coolest guy in his neighborhood
Hey boy! Where have you been going?
Don’t you want a little herb that I’ve been growing?
Rude boys! They’re causing trouble downtown
The police don’t like them hanging around
Hey now, I want to play my horn
Rocksteady, that’s why I was born

It doesn’t matter if you’re black
It doesn’t matter if you’re white
‘Cause we’re The Scofflaws, rude boy
And we’re going to rocksteady tonight!

I first experienced The Scofflaws live at The Pyramid Club in Manhattan’s Alphabet City in May of 1989 with The NY Citizens (my friend and I were the only non-skinheads in the sweaty back room) and it remains one of the best live shows I’ve seen (both bands were on fire!), and took every opportunity possible to see The Scofflaws perform (their musicianship was off the charts and more than evident in all their solos—and they were always dressed to the nines in their two tone suits, skinny ties, pork pie hats, and shades—Victor Rice even wore a fez when he played the upright bass!). In October 1991, just before The Scofflaws was released, I reviewed one of their shows for the Bakersfield, California-based skazine Roughneck Business:

“New York City offers few bargains, but catching NYC’s finest ska band—The Scofflaws—for a mere four bones makes me realize why I pay almost half my wages in rent…When The Scofflaws opened for Bad Manners last year, Buster proclaimed them NYC’s best band. I’d take it further; The Scofflaws great original songs and their brilliantly tight live performances would give The Skatalites a run for their money any day—they’re that good. As The Scofflaws performed such soon-to-be classics as “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure,” “William Shatner,” and (what I think is called) “The Beer Song” [most likely “I Can’t Decide,” which was released years later on Record of Convictions], the skin/rudie crowd that filled the floor was packed for non-stop skanking and shuffling…Moon Records will soon be releasing The Scofflaws’ debut album—it should be one of the best ska records to flow out of the ska pipeline.”

Jump Up Records’ 2021 release of The Scofflaws marks the first time this album has been released on vinyl. Moon Records originally issued it on CD and cassette (when I first started doing promotions for Moon in late '91—that review above had caught Bucket’s attention—I was sending out review copies on cassette) and it’s a nice touch that the LP’s back sleeve prominently acknowledges that the album first came out on Moon.

Most of the originals on The Scofflaws were co-written by Richard “Sammy” Brooks and Mike Drance, who had a Lennon & McCartney-like push/pull between them that made everything work so magnificently (Victor Rice and Drance also contributed their own instrumentals to the album). Brooks’ knowing campiness/wackiness (he’s Macca in this equation) was balanced by Drance’s artistic aspirations and efforts at authenticity ("one foot in the door, the other one in the gutter,” as The Replacements so aptly put it).

The album opens with Drance’s moody instrumental “Daniel Ortega” (a nod to the leftist Sandinista who helped lead the Nicaraguan Revolution that overthrew the US-backed Somoza dictatorship and became leader of that country from 1979-1990; The Clash wrote “Washington Bullets” partly about this revolution and named their 1980 triple-album in support of it), followed by a more polished re-recording of “Rudy’s Back” (I prefer the rawer one on Ska Face, but maybe that’s because it’s the first Scofflaws song I heard and fell for). “Ali-Ska-Ba,” which the band always played at breakneck speed live—practically daring the dancing crowds to keep up, is a slightly Middle Eastern sounding romp, while “Going Back to Kingston” was a sincere (though winkingly awkward and intentionally white-boy cliched) expression of longing to return to/be accepted by the land of ska’s origins (“I’m going back to Kingston/Just like Haile Selassie…I’m goin’ up on the mountain with that Rasta voodoo man…and when I get there man, every ‘ting will be irie”). Rice’s “Guru” is a fantastically mysterious, slow-burning track centered around his bass line.

Like “Rudy’s Back,” “Paul Getty” is another take on the rude boy record, though this one is about the experience of being a down-and-out, outcast ska fan struggling to get by in a typically square American suburb:

My name ain’t Paul Getty
And I’m living on spaghetti
Potatoes, rice and beans
I’m a rudie, not a skin
I like Ital, I drink gin
I live my life to extremes

I got everything I need
A black suit and a bag of weed
I got a pork pie hat
A smile like a Cheshire cat
My landlord wants to evict me
He wants the judge to convict me
Just because I live my life
The way I do

It’s a total culture shock
I’m the only rude boy on the block
Got any ganja, Rasta man?
My boss said, “take a sabbatical”
He said, “boy, you’re just too radical”
Now I gotta go out and find another job, again!

I’m going to go down to the unemployment office
I gotta stake my claim
Gonna go there on Monday
Gonna sign my name

The Paul Getty referred to here was the extremely wealthy founder of the Getty Oil Company, who was named the world’s richest private citizen in 1966 by the Guinness Book of World Records. In contrast, during the 1990s Brooks paid his bills by driving a school bus in the Long Island suburbs.

There are a fair number of covers on the album (they’re in good company, The Skatalites covered many pop standards!), but they make them their own and, boy, what great and sophisticated selections they made from the classic jazz repertoire and American songbook. The Scofflaws do Art Blakely ("Moanin'"), Henry Mancini ("A Shot in the Dark"—also famously covered by The Skatalites), Elmer Bernstein ("The Man with the Golden Arm"—which has some real menace and bite in the bottom end—the movie is about heroin addiction, after all), George Gershwin (a sublime version of "An American in Paris”)—and they even make Danny Elfman fit in quite well with this esteemed bunch (with a manic take on “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure”).

James “Red” Holloway’s phenomenal 1959 R&B sax stomper “A La Carte” (where he shouts out odd items to eat off the menu during the musical pauses: “Grasshopper toes…liver-flavored ice cream…and baboon eyeballs…Hmm, somebody give me the baking soda quick!”) is given an amazing reading by The Scofflaws (and is a perennial fan favorite live)—but they substitute types of sushi (“Tamago!…Uni!”) and Japanese atomic age movie monsters (“Godzilla!...Rodan!”) for Holloway’s gross-out choices. And even though Earl Bostic’s “Night Train” is well-trod territory (weirdly, The Toasters were playing a version around the same time and included it on their 1992 New York Fever album), The Scofflaws’ take is just brilliant and includes an unexpectedly wonderful tribute to their (and what should be your) musical heroes in the opening bars: “Ken Boothe…Desmond Dekker…Prince Buster…Toots Hibbert…Lee “Scratch” Perry…Don Drummond…Coxsone Dodd…Sir Lord Comic…You are the greatest!”

No offense to later iterations of the band, but this version of The Scofflaws really was the best. In addition to Brooks on tenor sax and vocals and Drance on bari sax and vocals (he also went on to form the awesome rocksteady-centric Bluebeats in ’94), the group included Paul Gebhardt on alto sax, Victor Rice on bass, Kerry Lafferty on piano, Brian Lavan on guitar, Tony Mason on drums, and Buford O’Sullivan on t-bone. Much of this extraordinary talent performed with numerous NYC-area groups later in the ‘90s and beyond, including NY Ska Jazz Ensemble, The Toasters, Stubborn Allstars, Version City Allstars, Crazy Baldhead, Easy Star Allstars, Brooklyn Attractors, and many more.

I’m forever thankful that I was able to see them perform numerous times and that everything in this small corner of the universe aligned so they could record what has become a true classic of ‘90s American ska. If you’re old now and loved The Scofflaws back then, it’s time to pick up this beautiful heavyweight LP—and if you haven’t heard this album before, what are you waiting for?! I’ve just spilled about three-thousand words raving about it!

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Duff Guide to Ska Fast Takes: Eric Blowtorch and the Inflammables "Quality Items"!

(Review by Steve Shafer)

Quality Items, the excellent new triple-LP (containing 36 songs!) from Eric Blowtorch and the Inflammables (3 x vinyl LPs, Bopaganda! Records, 2021--you can buy it through their Discogs page), brings to mind The Clash's Sandinista (also 36 tracks), not just for the album's length, but for the band's versatility and daring--they're going wherever their creativity and inspiration leads them. Like The Clash, Eric Blowtorch and the Inflammables don't limit themselves to any particular musical genre. There's some really fantastic ska and reggae here, but also a few mix tapes' worth of top-shelf jazz (big band/free form/no wave), soul, bossa nova, pop and rock, even disco (the musically omnivorous Joe Strummer would've been proud). Duff Guide readers will be most interested in the ska tracks "Bad Dream" ("...and you feel so lonely, lonely, alone/Like Margarita with one limp hand stuck inside the trombone/Bad dream...today was just a bad dream/This terror must subside/You'll feel better after you have cried"), a version of Leonard Cohen's cinematic and vengeful "First We Take Manhattan" ("...then we take Berlin"), and a different, stripped down take of "Mercy" (which was released as a digital single last year and reviewed by me here), and the reggae cuts "Hatred of Captivity" (a spectacular "Ghost Town"-y instrumental), a wonderfully ragged cover of Marley's "Dance Do The Reggae," and the jazz-inflected "Last Day of School." But less parochial music fans also will find much to devour, including the big band "She's a Pro"; the no wave/free form jazz songs "Set My Woman Free" and "Paz Para Vieques"; the Motown-ish "You Ain't Mad" and "Town for Sale"; the harrowing, defiant, and hopeful WWII/Holocaust (and Peter Ivers-sounding) ballad "Ghetto Resistance"; and the offbeat pop and rock cuts "Best of Times" ("Please pardon the expression/But we've all known great depression/Stop, look, and listen, pity party's out of session--not waiting for your blessing!/These could be...the best of times"), "Guzzling Gasoline" ("The first foot on the pedal seldom touches earth/Millionth customer at Citgo knows what life is worth/'This bucket is my birthright!' cries the bully in the pulpit/Give me the premium, let me gulp it!"), "Every Star in the Sky" (an end-of-the night-slow-dancer), "Never Too Far Away," and "Throw Open Your Arms." There's a lot to digest here (I've only scratched the surface), but like Sandinista, the longer you live with it, the more you discover, and deeper you find your love for it. 

(For a bit more background on Quality Items, check out this interview with Eric Blowtorch in Shepherd Express.)

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Duff Guide to Ska Fast Takes: Madness and T-Killas!

(Reviews by Steve Shafer)

As my friends at Stateside Madness recently pointed out, even though there have been loads of Madness compilations released in the UK over the years, only four have been issued in the USA--and none of them have included tracks past 1986! So, the release of the twelve song Our House: The Very Best of Madness (CD/LP, Union Square Music, 2021) is more than overdue and will help the casual Yankee Madness fan catch up on what they've been missing as of late. There are cuts from 2009's outstanding The Liberty of Norton Folgate (read my review of the album and film) and 2016's Can't Touch Us Now (read my review of it here)--wot, nothing from 2012's Oui Oui, Si Si, Ja Ja, Da Da?--plus the 2019 digital single "Bullingdon Boys" (read my review here), which has never previously received a physical release! Even though I have all of their albums, I'll sheepishly admit that I picked up this comp just to have "Bullingdon Boys." Such is the life of an obsessive vinyl collector. (Also make sure to check out Stateside Madness' brilliant interview with Madness guitarist Chris Foreman!)

I'm not exactly sure why Germans have such a knack for making really great ska. But if you like The Busters, No Sports, The Frits, The Butlers, El Bosso und Die Ping Pongs, Bleichreiz, Skaos, The Braces, Dr. Ring Ding, The Senior Allstars, Bluekilla, Masons Arms, Yellow Cap, etc. as much as I do, make sure to add T-Killas to the list. Their incredible new album Awareness (CD/LP, Fire and Flames Music/Grover Records, 2020; and available in the USA through Jump Up Records) is a mash up of melodic 2 Tone/early '90s Krautska (particularly The Busters/No Sports/The Frits), and The Clash, The Jam, and The Adjusters (and note that those last three bands were fiercely leftist). In the midst of seemingly everyday songs about going out and having fun, pursing women or men, and just trying to earn enough to get by in life, T-Killas pointedly include messages that are anti-fascist, and pro-socialist and gender equity. Ska fans longing for new protest songs to address some of the many injustices and evils out there have another album for their arsenal!

In what is clearly the single of the album (that I first heard through the Do the Dog Ska-A-Go-Go, Volume 3 comp), the irresistible knees-up singalong "Dandy and Rude" gleefully trades in bad-ass myth-making while celebrating rudies/workers' unity and purpose:

'Cause tonight I'm out with the most special one
When he's out he spills entire bars and more
He burns whole blocks dancing to the rebel sound
He roars like a lion until he sleeps on the ground

He's so dandy and rude--you will never get this fool!

'Cause tonight I'm out with the most special one
When she starts to rumble, the jungle is gone
She drinks the enemy's blood out of her red bowl
Who says you got to be tall to kick the shit out of an asshole?

Fight, drinking all night long
Chanting beloved workers' songs
Crew love, AFA skinheads
Nothing to prove--black and red

"Rudie's Struggle" challenges gender stereotypes--particularly rude boy/skinhead machismo: "'She's so soft and she's so sweet'/You think she's not a street warrior, oh please...He or she/Poor categories/Do you want to preserve the classic roles?/Or a counterculture without sexual harm for all?" Maybe a little is lost in translation, but you get the gist. "Gonna Go" is a sweet reggae love song about that special someone you can always rely on. "Riot Ground" sounds like a Billy Bragg/Joe Strummer punk rock collaboration sending up a flare to the powers that be to take note that not all is hunky dory with the masses: "You give 'em hope, you give 'em peace, education and disease/But is going on--if there's a fucking wake up call?" And perhaps the most powerful track on the album is the anti-capitalist/pro-socialist and shout out of solidarity with the workers of the world mod cut "Calling for Stars":

I don't get no money for my rent
I just keep on slaving till the end

This is another good goodbye
To our empty life
It's another calling for the black, black star
And it's another calling for the red shine
It's another calling for the red, red star
And it's another calling for the black light

As someone living in a country plagued by white supremacy and enormous income inequality--and where far too many people fear and don't understand--and don't care to understand--what socialism and antifa actually mean, it's both striking and heartening to hear catchy, positive songs about both. We really need them, so keep 'em coming!

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