Two Tone
Imagine, if you can, a dark club, preferably underground, 400 shaved or spikey heads, a cloud of smoke wafting over their heads (some of it tobacco) all bouncing up and down to the rhythm of the syncopated beat of the 10-piece band crowded on a stage that a folk guitarist might find small. The Mosh Pit the slam dancing, sharkskin suits Dr Marten’s boots pork-pie hats, braces, Fred Perry shirts. That’s how I like to remember my youth spent skankin’ to ska, one the few that I still recall.
Perusing the national newspapers last week I noticed a small mention that there might be an event happening across this country which would re-kindle my affair with this pre-reggae Jamaican pop music.
So I threw the barest necessities into a suitcase and sallied forth. This, I’ll have you know, is no small feat. I trudged down the road from my cliff side mansion overlooking the verdant valley, far above the turbulent world of industry and commerce, to my neighbour’s house, we left on a pair of his burros wending our way down the narrow mountain pass to the village where I caught the night bus to the railway station – the train track was severed mid-way to where I hoped to take refreshment,(by mal-contents no doubt – venting their spleen on the means of transport). But I managed to journey part of the way until .. This train terminated and I was loaded onto another bus to skirt the area of damage, so bumping along unpaved roads on which donkeys would refuse to tread I was lodged at another station to wait for a train to come for my collection. This train seemed to arrive early and destined to leave well ahead of schedule as well – this can happen when half of the employees of that state-owned railway system are drunks and the remaining 50% are anarchists who believe that timetables are a tool of the bourgeoisie infringing on their right to run the dilapidated machinery as fast as humanly possible with neither pause nor respite or any common sense. I tried to sleep on this run to the city an impossible task, being shaken and stirred bounced from the walls subjected to wild screeching and an odd light show as the internal electric power flickered,hissed and spat, US interrogators at Guantanomo Bay would have been mightily impressed by the train driver and his assistant’s dedication to the task of ‘distracting’ the passengers who dared ride this train on this route. I’m guessing that comfort and safety were also bourgeois affectations.
The train arrived and everyone ran, the two guys at the front of this contraption shot out, jumped a fence and disappeared into the crowds. The passengers adopted a strategy of all rising as soon as the carriage approached a standstill and rushing the doors simultaneously, those that manged to stay on their feet swept en-masse to the exits.
So 26 hours, no sleep, no food but I am close to an airport only a short hop across the state line and I am more than ready to D.D.d,d.dance !
Why did I undertake such an arduous and dangerous journey ?
Well I am by no means a young person. When I was the headlines screamed hymns of hatred and violence. It was the era of Thatcher (in Britain) and her chum Reagan (in the rest of the world). Maggie was giving the Miners a kicking Reagan wanted a nuclear solution to the Cold War. This was no Summer of Love and we weren’t putting flowers in our hair.
In 1976 Eric Clapton openly supported the views of the racist Enoch Powell and supported this arch-conservative’s “Rivers Of Blood ” speech
“In this country in 15 or 20 years time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man. Here is a decent, ordinary fellow-Englishman, who in broad daylight in my own town says to me, his Member of Parliament, that the country will not be worth living in for his children. I simply do not have the right to shrug my shoulders and think about something else. What he is saying, thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking – not throughout Great Britain, perhaps, but in the areas that are already undergoing the total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history.”
“We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. So insane are we that we actually permit unmarried persons to immigrate for the purpose of founding a family with spouses and fiancées whom they have never seen”
and Blah Blah Blah more of this excrescent white-is-right racist crap
When this made the news quite a few people were, quite properly, angered. A rock photographer ( that’s not a person who photographs rocks but someone who captures images of people involved in that particular musical genre) – Red Saunders and an activist for anti-capitalist anti-racist capaigns – Roger Huddle (you could probably call this guy a socialist, he went on to become a photographer of some note and was employed by a trade union). this is him now and some lads from a band so obscure I don’t recall hearing any of their music ‘Kartoon Klowns’ anyway Huddle wrote this article – have a read. Anyway they wrote a letter to what was then the premier Rock Magazine (that’s not a magazine about rocks nor a magazine printed on rock but a magazine on the subject of a particular musical genre) “New Musical Express’ or what we groovy and wild kids called NME which in part said that Clapton had his first hit covering a song he stole from a black man
”
When we read about Eric Clapton’s Birmingham concert when he urged support for Enoch Powell, we nearly puked. Come on Eric… Own up. Half your music is black. You’re rock music’s biggest colonist… We want to organise a rank and file movement against the racist poison music… P. S. Who shot the Sheriff Eric? It sure as hell wasn’t you!
They called on people to join a movement they called ‘Rock Against Racism’ and hundreds of people did just that almost immediately. Support for this campaign increased after David Bowie was photgraphed making the nazi salute from the rear of a convertible. Clapton stands by his position but Bowie now blames this period on an excessive interest in occultism and his drug use of the time he says of the incident
“I have made my two or three glib, theatrical observations on English society and the only thing I can now counter with is to state that I am NOT a facist.”
Then, and significantly for me, the RAR (along with the Anti-Nazi League) started to hold marches that terminated with a concert to demonstrate against the growing influence of the National Front. It was these events that were reported in passing by local media, but imagine 80,000 people marching the 6 miles from Trafalgar Square to the East End of London to see The Clash, The Buzzcocks, Steel Pulse, X-Ray Spex, The Ruts, Sham 69, Generation X and the Tom Robinson Band. Or maybe if you were up north there was a rally/march concert at Manchester with The Buzzcocks, Graham Parker and the Rumour, and Misty in Roots.
These concerts inflicted such a blow against the National Front that they were rarely mentioned in the press, perhaps a few individual nazi skinheads might get a mention from time to time but as a political force they were pretty-well a spent force.
I was then, and still am a great fan of The Clash, who were also big fans of reggae and so, by association and inclination, did I come to be a fan of reggae. All the ‘really big’ bands in my album collection were from bands that had signed to Two Tone records. Alongside The Clash were records from The Selector, Bad Manners, The Beat, Madness, The Special AKA the Specials and some UB40 (but they weren’t really two-toney)
And so I started to follow these second-wave ska bands, I’d travel many a mile to see shows from obscure local groups in these dingy out of the way clubs, blow a week’s pay to get tickets to as many Peter Tosh/Desmond Decker concerts I could lay my hands on. I was one of these bobbing baldies at the smoky underground clubs swinging my Dr Marten’s around to The Allniters, Strange Tenants.
But we all grow older and I eventually stopped going to see much live music, the venues were closed, the promoters didn’t bring the bands to these sunny shores. And the bands stopped recording so I started to listen to Japanese ska, French ska (very French/not very reggae) and there were a few bands from South America I started to like.
So last Wednesday as I scanned the ‘What’s On’ column I saw that one of the bands I had enjoyed was doing a gig half-way across this vast continent and I thought “I’ll have a piece of that !” and so this journey began….
…. To see ‘Ska Cubano‘ I had their album, liked their style. So I hopped on a ‘plane and flew (eventually) to distant South Australia a place not dis-similar to the wild west of the early US on the edge of two vast deserts where the fresh water is salty and the beer sold in small measures.
After coming through customs ( they don’t object too strongly to guns and hard drugs, but they’re adamant about bringing pieces of fruit into the place) I hailed one of their delightful cabs to take me into the centre of town. The driver, a lantern-jawed and laconic chap didn’t have a bad word to say about anyone or anything during the time I hired him to drive me into the town square, he didn’t say a word at all. maybe that’s part of the international brotherhood of cab-drivers rules). He deposited me a mere mile and a half from where I intended to de-cab. It gave me time to gather my thoughts and prepare mentally for the ska-fest I eagerly anticipated.
Right, I had heard this band, but knew very little about them, not a big deal – right ? How different can one band be to another. They all have a drummer, 2 or 3 electric guitarists, a horn section (with two trumpets, a saxophone or two and maybe a trombone) an electric bass player who hangs around with the drummer and is part of the percussion section and a show-off who sings a bit and dresses like a nob, he’s also supposed to keep the patter going with the audience some of the bigger bands have an extra percussionist and a specialist dancer, some back-up singers. Ska bands are quite big.
I walked past a hotel that rented rooms by the hour (well you would walk past wouldn’t you ?) and fronted the reception of the next place along the main street. ” Here for Wormaddled are ya ?” the person behind the desk said, I sort of mumbled in the affirmative because I didn’t know what that was. Grabbed the key and lugged my bags upstairs. I hung my suits in the wardrobe and logged into the ‘free internet for guests” which was an unusual description because it really meant you could disconnect the phone from the wall socket and plug your modem in, then dial up anyone who would be prepared to sell you a really, really slow connection for something like 2 quid a minute.
WOMADelaide is an annual cultural festival, which surprised me a bit, I suppose they have to import some from time to time. And the receptionist was indeed correct I was indeed going to this event, because that’s where the band was performing. This snippet of info cost me the equivalent of 3 euros, buying the ticket took another 10 minutes plus the price of entry. But I was now all ready to get up and boogie. I still had a few minutes left of slow and expensive internet left and this is what I found.
Ska Cubano has members from all around the world, Cuba, Jamaica, Montserrat, UK.
My time ran out (or I was cut off).
Anyway I ‘d be seeing them the next afternoon, Womadelaide is in the centre of town, all I need do was bed down, eat some food and be up with the larks.
Ha !
Jet lag is a kicker and I was in a foul mood when I woke up the next afternoon, with only time for a small sandwich and a glass of tepid salty water before I headed out
I got through the gate and fought the crowd to get to Stage 2,
They (Ska Cubano) had done their sound check so we were all ready. Now I should pause here. The gig was taking on some weirdness, firstly it was stinkin’ hot and the sun was still out (weird #1), I looked around the crowd for the two usual tribes that would come to such a performance (ska-skins or punks) there were none from either. the place was full of hippies and naked children playing in the dust drinking vegetable juices (weird #2) .
The band started taking their positions on stage, there were almost the right number of people, 4 people on stage right (2 x saxophone + trumpet + trombone) 2 people at the back ( a drummer and a percussionist) just in front of them was a guy with an acoustic double-bass and another guy with a semi-acoustic guitar, a singer took a microphone leaving a spare mic at the front. This spare microphone was taken up by a guy in a nice cream suit and a feather head-dress. So the right number (10) but not the expected types of instrument (weird #3)
They were good, different to other ska bands I had seen insofar as they were talented, disciplined and had learnt how to deploy the musical instrument of their choice. Weirdness No 4 might be that only the singer did the gags and conducted the banter between songs, usually everyone near a microphone has a crack at being a stand-up comedian.
This is them
Ans so I got to see an exquisite blend of Jamaican/Cuban musicians playing the music I grew up with, I wished they had done a gig in some small dank underground cavern and I wished they had a few electric guitarists, but you can’t have everything.
This post is called “Permanent Revolution” after the book of the same name by Leon Trotsky. If we are to keep a check on racism it has to be kept at the forefront of our consciousness it is pervasive and insidious. RAR may have defeated the National Front culturally and politically but there needs to be similar campaigns against the British National Party in the UK, Terza Posizione ‘the third postion’ in Italy and the far right in mainstream parties (notably the Liberal Party of Australia here and the Republican Party in the USA)
I didn’t really travel all the way across Australia to see Ska Cubano, my girlfriend (a constant source of delight and succour) lives there the band was the cherry on top
