There is Fire, Fire, Fire, Over Me

 

A wonderful, wonderful aunt gave me this for my (15th?) birthday, along with a Bob Marley cassette and a dub cassette. World-shatteringly weird to me at the time, this was like a book in a foreign language. I couldn't decode the specific anger, the blackness, the dubness, the Britishness (I thought they were British but they're Jamaican. No wonder I was confused), the percolating, throbbing electronic percussion, the deep ass-kicking drive of the Sly & Robbie rhythm section, Michael Rose's keening, moaning, snarling singing style. All of it was alien and offputting and ineffably addictive. I kept listening even though I didn't understand. It wasn't until sometime in the mid-90s that I was listening one day on headphones while walking a long way through a shitty part of town, and finally got it, somehow. (Nowadays I tend to think we never really get it. All music is someone else's prayer to a god known only to them- each of us is an occluded, inexpert eavesdropper and we bring what we need to hear to our shared experience.  But sometimes you feel it even if you don't understand it, and, as they say, who feels it knows it.)

I bought this on vinyl the other day from a loft sale in a warehouse, and brought it home excited. Then I realized I already owned it. It's a measure of my love for the album that I don't really want to get rid of either copy. (Want one? Let me know and we'll talk snail-mail options... Duplicate records don't belong in tiny Brooklyn apartments).

http://www.mediafire.com/file/b806wkdxav3vnse/Black%20Uhuru-%20Sinsemilla.zip

Songs of Joy and Praises

Among my all-time favorite reggae albums. This was mixed by Lee Perry (tho only intermittently in dub style), and the musicians include Sly Dunbar and Ernest Ranglin; but the real heart of the Congos is the singers, whose shimmering, gorgeous harmonies make every song a spine-tingler.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ucmzwkjyzoz/The Congos - Heart of the Congos - 1977.zip

Mixtapes for Mason- Out From Your Brain- Classic Reggae And Dub

The Mixtapes continue. This side is focused on reggae (of the old-fashioned, pre-rap kind). My knowledge of the genre is limited and my tastes too- so this is by no means a survey of the genre, just a bunch of stuff I like. Enjoy.

If you're just tuning in now, this series of mixes was originally put together for a teenager, so the content is designed to do a little educating and also a little aesthetic whomping. That is, the two goals were: shine a light on some of the musical giants who came before, and, make a listening experience that'll show why they matter.

These were formatted to fit on cassette, so each 'side' will be around 42 minutes.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/znmyz4ojmni/VA- Out From Your Brain- Reggae for Mason.zip

Coming next: Krautrock.

I Can Hear Sweet Music Playing

One of the most lovely, joyful records ever. I've been listening to this for at least 15 years, and will hopefully be listening to it for the rest of my life. Exemplifies the 'sing joy out of pain' blues aesthetic, and, though it's archetypally, fundamentally, roots reggae, sounds and feels more like a serenely tough Otis Redding album... or maybe some form of perfect secular gospel. Hell, even the covers of "Louie Louie" and "Country Roads" rock. The title track, "Funky Kingston", is reggae's answer to James Brown. The album's a treasure start to finish.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/vdjjjnanzoj/Toots and the Maytals- Funky Kingston.zip

I Hold the Sting... and Make it Sing

I bought this as a youngster from the local dread emporium, in a middle/working class neighborhood of Sandy Eggo across the street from the Safeway where my bike got stolen a couple years previous, where built into a garage and beside a similarly tiny shoestore, the shop wafted incense smoke and dub bass into the brains of impressionable youth like myself. I was terrified of the shop, scared that I'd get instantly stoned, and scared that I'd be outed as the redneck-heritage dweeb I was, by the impassive and mountainous Rasta who stood guard over the tiny shop (perhaps 5' by 10' inside). Of course, no one but myself cared whether I was there or not. Probably the dude was mildly amused at worst. More likely he was stoked to make a sale no matter who it was making the purchase.

I came to this shop a handful of times as a teen; I bought Black Uhuru cassettes, incense and a 'Free South Africa' T-shirt that I didn't really fully understand (well, I was 14, and my intentions were good); outside, I got hit on by an older white businessman who talked to me about how reggae was 'happy music'. This cassette is surely not happy music, though like any music worth its name it contains seeds of joy. But it also contains the word 'blood' hundreds and hundreds of time, in nearly every song. Violence and suffering pervade the album.

I'd read this sentence in the Rolling Stone Record guide review:

"Proof positive of poetry's power".

That was enough for me; I had to hear it.

What I heard when I got that cassette into my walkman wasn't poetry of the kind they teach in school-- this is pure dub propaganda, filled with blood, blood, blood, more blood, and calls for revolution. But endless subtleties pervade: LKJ was not a simple-minded advocate of violence or even peaceful revolt, but an observer of injustice all around and a caller to strength via activism. He sees the hurt in the community as a whole, when "there are wicked men sitting in the seats of judgement; there are people waging war in the heat and hunger of the streets".

I actually don't know anything at all about the unrest or oppression in England that occasioned this album, which makes for an odd listen, as this was clearly meant to be very specific to its time and place; but I know great music when I hear it. And this is some of the tightest, deepest, funkiest dub of all time. The band are among the greats and they prove their worth, with LKJ's coolly impassive baritone riding over the top of the beats.

In this case as in many others, art aimed specifically at a time & place yields true universality.

"All we have is bottles and bricks and fists".

http://www.mediafire.com/file/dikddz1imxj/Linton Kwesi Johnson- Dread Beat And Blood.zip

Don't miss "Song of Blood" sung by Junior Murvin, the toughest falsetto singer in all recorded history.

Declaration of Dub

Probably hands-down my favorite dub album of all time. Consistently funky, ghostly, joyful and haunted, with the warmest belly-vibrating basslines and the most glistening echoing brass and the most perfect crackling snare drums. I've listened to a lot of dub in my time but for me this is pretty much the top of the heap.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/gmeme4fw2nv/King Tubby- Dub from the Roots.zip