things and time will tell.

Ghetto Priest with Skip McDonald & Adrian Sherwood – Auld Lang Syne c/w The Slave's Lament Not On Label (Graham Fagen Self-released) CD Single, UK, Feb 11, 2005 This New Year's Eve share might be too somber for a party night... but I'm hoping I'm still on good paper after the Louie Vega Xmas disco records and that you'll forgive me if this is less aimed for the holiday dancefloor. I'm no expert, but it seems that Scottish artist Graham Fagen has produced a number of works over the years exploring the history of connections between Scotland and Jamaica (especially via the slave trade). He has collaborated with musicians to produce music and sounds to accompany his installations and visuals, several times working with members of the On-U Sound family. For a 2005 exhibit called Clean Hands Pure Heart , Fagen asked that team to produce a recording that combined the New Year's standard  Auld Lang Syne with another song, The Slave's Lament , also written...

Lee "Scratch" Perry – Makumba Rock (2019, 10" vinyl) Adrian Sherwood X Lee "Scratch" Perry – Time Boom X The Upsetter Dub Sessions (2019, CD) Lee Perry stayed very active in his later years, but plenty of music industry attention was always spent playing up the wild image he had built. Not making light of it at all, but at times it could leave the impression of his antics walking the line between mental health crisis and marketing scheme. In a lot of ways, many Lee Perry albums starting at some point in the 80s were selling "Scratch" the character as much as anything he necessarily contributed to the music. The result was more than a few CDs released under his name and featuring his vocal ramblings over music produced entirely by others that were far from essential (and far from the heights of Perry's most inspiring, innovative or beautiful work from earlier days). (Confession: That " Lee Perry meets Andrew W.K. " album? I admit to buyin...

Simply Red – Infidelity Elektra – 0-66807 Vinyl, 12", 33 ⅓ RPM, US, 1987 info For those who are already giving me side eye, here are three reasons Simply Red are potentially cooler than you remember: 1. Durutti Column - I'm pretty sure "Simply Red" eventually became the name for "Mick Hucknall plus whoever he has backing him these days." In their earlier years that we all remember them from though, they were real band with a pretty steady lineup. Three of the founding members of that lineup had also been founding members of the Durutti Column . "Durutti Column," by the time their first records were released in 1980, had essentially come to mean "Vini Reilly plus whoever he has backing him these days." But for a brief moment, Durutti Column had existed as a traditional band, assembled by the bosses over at Factory Records to play arty, post-punk rock. When Riley decided that wasn't for him and planned to quit the group, Factory inste...

Little Axe ‎– Bought For A Dollar/Sold For A Dime Echo Beach ‎– EB 133C Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Remastered, Germany, Sep 2018 (original release: digital 2008/CD 2010) info This is the 2018 vinyl version of Little Axe's sixth LP, Bought For A Dollar/Sold For A Dime . Skip McDonald's blues-dub-hip hop hybrid "band" again features the rest of Tackhead (Doug Wimbish on bass, Keith LeBlanc on drums, and a mixdown by On-U Sound main man Adrian Sherwood) on nearly every track. But this is Skip's show, with the guitarist leading the group in some subtly different directions on their second set of recordings after signing to Peter Gabriel's Real World Records.  Bought For A Dollar...  is probably the slickest and most commercial sounding Little Axe production, but that's not a critique (and it may be my favorite of their records). Cutting to the chase: it's a remarkable record. I promise you'll love it with no background, history lessons, or color commen...

A Keith LeBlanc and Adrian Sherwood production from 1984, paying tribute to the massive Miners Strike then taking place in the UK. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this is probably the greatest pro-union, electro hip-hop single of all time. (I dream of a world where it would have more competition!) The Enemy Within - Support The Miners Rough Trade - RTT 151 Vinyl, 12", 45 RPM, UK, 1984 More info on Discogs Tracklist A        Strike B        Strike (General Mix) Keith LeBlanc is an American drummer, probably best known for his 1983  No Sell Out  single, released by a still new Tommy Boy Records. The record was credited to Malcolm X, whose  cut up speeches were set over a LeBlanc produced beat . Although claims that it was the first record to use "sampling" or the first to use a DMX drum machine are laying it on a bit too thick,  No Sell Out  is rightly celebrated as a key moment in hi...

I mentioned this 1981 On-U Sound classic in the last post, so we'll go with it as the next record to share. Low hanging fruit seems like a good idea while I try to get back into the swing of this... New Age Steppers - Action Battlefield Beat Records ‎– BRC-96 CD, Album, Reissue, Remastered, Paper Sleeve Japan, 2004 (Originally released in 1981 on Statik Records in the UK) More info Tracklist 1 My Whole World 2 Observe Life 3 Got To Get Away 4 My Love 5 Problems 6 Nuclear Zulu 7 Guiding Star "Bonus Tracks For Japan" 8 Wide World Version 9 Unclear New Age Steppers, like many On-U Sound "bands" from the early years of the label, featured a rolling roster of the musicians and vocalists working with producer Adrian Sherwood at the time. The center of the group's orbit though was Ari Up, fresh from her years singing for the Slits as they dove from the punk platform at the end of the 1970s into the noisy dub, reggae, and funk experiments that chri...

Again, I didn't intend to drop this project for so long. Work got hard, houses flooded, and sending out music felt a little trivial as the world was bursting open with racial justice struggle, exposed violence, pain and inspiring actions. The pandemic and quarantines had already left me feeling disoriented and that many of the yardsticks I used to measure progress and possibility had changed. The past month -George Floyd's murder, the uprising and movements sparked, the reevaluations of our needs and strategies, etc.- confirmed that times 100. I'm not the world's deepest thinker and I don't know how to write, so no real contributions to those discussions are likely to be found here... But maybe, as I dip my toes back into this, a few of the songs that soundtrack my processing, panic and occasional progress will do something for you too. Bim Sherman ‎– My Whole World Pressure Sounds ‎– PSS 017 Vinyl, 7", 45 RPM, UK, Released: 2007 info A My Whole World B D...

For the three of you still following these, sorry for the absence! I'll be trying to catch up a little this week. A request: Even if you are pretty sure that a group of white, British (and German?), punk rock women doing noisy covers of classic reggae songs could not possibly be your thing, give this one a chance. If any of you enjoy it, we could go some interesting new directions with this little music exchange... The Slits ‎– Man Next Door Human Records ‎– YUS 1 Vinyl, 12", 45 RPM, US, 1980 A1 Man Next Door A2 In The Beginning There Was Rhythm B Animal Space The Slits ‎– Man Next Door Y Records ‎– Y4, Rough Trade ‎– RT 044 Vinyl, 7", 45 RPM, UK, 1980 A Man Next Door B Man Next Door (Version) The women who formed the Slits as part of the original 1976-77 wave of London punk bands stood out in the decidedly male dominated scene. There were some lineup changes along the way, but the band remained almost entirely women until they ...