Cassette Culture
with Stretch Armstrong
Many years ago, I heard that Jamaica produced more music per capita than any other country on the planet. It’s one of those unproven factoids that I have, on occasion, repeated as truth. I have no idea if it is true, but it certainly sounds interesting and elicits surprise. It also feels right from my experience as a DJ and an on-and-off collector of records—reggae and otherwise—since the 80s.
I must want it to be the case because I have a soft spot for all things Jamaican, especially the music. I’ve always been in awe of the sheer amount of it (enter “Studio One” in discogs and enjoy 1,543 pages), but more importantly, what in my experience seems to be the absurdly high ratio of good to bad records. I felt this in my wallet and back every time I went on a record-buying excursion to Super Power Records in Brooklyn or VP Records in Queens, back when DJs played strictly vinyl. My guide for buying records then was, in a nutshell, if it’s good, I must have it. Leaving the record shop with a stack of records so heavy that I could barely carry it was not uncommon. The supply of quality records seemed endless, my thirst for this music never quenched. There were just so many that I had to have and so few I didn’t want.
As life turned into a series of 0s and 1s, I spent a lot of time digitizing records and collecting digital copies of music I loved, not just for DJing but for enjoyment at home. Of all of them, my reggae library commanded the most attention, and after several years, I ended up with a continually-evolving collection of high quality mp3s, with artwork, immaculately labeled, the size hovering in the low six figures.
Recently I wanted to listen to I-Roy’s “Prophesy,” one of thousands upon thousands of truly great 45s that are not available digitally. I had made a file from my original 7-inch pressing, which I then put back in storage. I clicked the song title in iTunes and quickly realized something was very wrong. The file was corrupt. I randomly jumped around my library, randomly sampling other files to hear if they were intact, and couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I played track after track, each sounding like someone tuning a radio dial, jumping from station to station with static in between. After painstakingly going through the collection album by album, single by single, I separated the healthy files from the corrupt, concluding that nearly half the library was inexplicably ruined—unlistenable and useless. Talk about disheartening. Such is one of the downsides to life in the digital age.
Records, treated respectfully, will never let you down, and cassettes, twenty years old, sound chunky and warm, hiss included.
Through the 80s to the early 90s, if you were a fan of hip-hop, club or Caribbean music, there were very few options: nightclubs, which could seem to the uninitiated to be uninviting, hard to get into, and sometimes, realistically, dangerous; or record stores that carried independent labels and imports, if you knew where they were and frequented them enough to get the attention and preferred treatment of a regular.
In the case of dancehall reggae, the records that artists released only told one part of the story. The real vitality in reggae music was in the venues that hosted dances, the most exciting being the soundclash, where reputable music crews battled head-to-head with special customized recordings known as dubplates or specials. Sound clashes date back to the 50s in Jamaica and just about any and every artist from every corner of the reggae world—from rocksteady to roots to lover’s rock to dancehall—has voiced specials for sound systems, perhaps the only major exception being Robert Nesta Marley. These soundclashes were recorded on cassette and disseminated throughout Jamaica and internationally through West Indian enclaves, over time incubating a voracious audience that paid as much attention to dancehall clashes as to the actual records being released commercially. Tapes of the better clashes became bonafide classics that, had they been released officially, would have undoubtedly achieved some kind of RIAA certification.
One of the most enduring and influential international personalities in reggae is London’s David Rodigan. Known to fans as “Ram Jam,” he is practically synonymous with reggae in the U.K., having been a radio broadcaster since the 70s, interviewing the greatest legends from the live band era, most notably Bob Marley. In addition to his 30-plus years (and growing) on the radio, Rodigan has been a fixture on the international soundclash scene, putting his sound to the test against systems in the U.K., the U.S and Jamaica. With dubplates that span from the contemporary all the way back through the 70s, Rodigan’s versatility and depth is astounding. What makes Rodigan intriguing is the fact that he is from London and not of Jamaican heritage. As a teen, he fell in love with Ska, and his passion for Jamaican music never let up. When he started doing radio in 1978, he emulated the style of Jamaican heavyweight Barry G “The Boogieman,” a colossus in Jamaican radio and to this day considered the greatest radio DJ/personality ever on the island. Ironically, in the late 70s reggae was receiving more airplay in the U.K. than in Jamaica, and Rodigan rode that wave to prominence. In 2014, there are competing sounds from all over the reggae-loving world, but in the 70s and 80s Ram Jam occupied some pretty rare space as a pale-faced non-Jamaican.
Though traditionally a live spectacle, some of the most legendary clashes ever actually took place on the radio when Barry G invited Rodigan, who was in Kingston recording local artists for Capital Radio, to join him on the air on JBC1 in 1983. Originally slated to be a guest, Rodigan was surprised when live, on-air, without warning, Barry challenged him to a clash. Rodigan happily obliged and what ensued was a trio of friendly clashes in ‘83, ‘84 and ‘85, the third being perhaps one of the most legendary and important. The broadcast was aired simultaneously in Jamaica and the U.K., on JBC Radio 1 and Capital Radio respectively.
Rodigan vs. Barry G ‘85 was a defining moment for the Brit but was also massive for the spreading of the reggae bug internationally. For many in the U.K., knowing about Bob Marley, or maybe even Gregory Isaacs or Dennis Brown, was the full extent of their reggae knowledge. Many credit this live in-studio clash, broadcasted over the FM signal and then disseminated hand to hand with cassette dubs, with sparking a robust curiosity of a musical world about which they previously had not known.
In 1985, reggae music was smack dab in the middle of an aesthetic sea change. Hip-hop had already made the leap from using live studio bands to creating rhythm beds, and by ‘85 it was strictly drum machine music (think Run-DMC and early Def Jam records). R&B club music also adopted drum machines over live drummers, morphing into what would be known as house music. Reggae moved in this direction as well, but not as quickly. In ‘85, dancehall reggae was only just beginning to use computer-based drums, most of the recordings used live drums that would often trigger analog snares and hand claps, a taste of what was to come with the full implementation of drum machines, synthesizers and sequencers.
The clash between Rodigan and Barry in 1985 is commonly referred to as the Sleng Teng clash because it was on this show that the first computerized reggae records were exposed to the public en masse. The story behind this record is worth being told because it revolutionized dancehall reggae almost overnight, both aesthetically and in the new freedom from having to rely on and pay studio musicians. Singer Wayne Smith was experimenting with keyboardist Noel Davey’s Casio MT-40 synthesizer, and over one of the machine’s preset drum patterns, played a bassline that emulated “Somethin’ Else,” a 1959 rockabilly number by Eddie Cochran. He brought music to King Jammy (sound system chief, dub specialist and legendary record producer) who slowed it down and added piano and analog claps. Wayne recorded his vocal, which was essentially a reinterpretation of Barrington Levy’s massive ode to ganja, “Under Mi Sensi.” The result would change everything.
Tale of the Tape
Rodigan vs Barry G, Sleng Teng Soundclash, 1985
The broadcast starts with Barry G asking various towns and parishes in Jamaica if they are ready, shouting out Ocho Rios, St. Thomas, St. Elizabeth, Morant Bay, Montego Bay, Negril, and Port Royal, followed by Rodigan doing the same with London City, Wembley, Brixton, Harlesden, Streatham. They declare that they both have big bags of dub plates with a lot of trouble, ready to play a lot of music that has never been heard before. To start the clash, at 1:40 Barry G calls the Halfway Tree police station live on air, where Constable Baxton picks up the phone and tosses the coin. Rodigan picks heads and heads it is. He draws first, dropping a very British intro at 3:33 in which a fictional chief inspector of New Scotland Yard declares that he has issued a summons for Barry Gordon “who has threatened to bury David Rodigan in the dubplate clash of 1985.” He then selects a dubplate by an unidentified artist.
It’s a bit of slow start for Ram Jam, perhaps a bluff to get Barry G to draw big first, which he does. In clash mode, at 8:05 Barry G asks why Rodigan didn’t start better and drops his own intro. In what has to be one of the earliest recordings of someone rapping New York style over a popular reggae rhythm knows as the Taxi Riddim: “Ain’t calling no names but you know who you are / You move too slow, Barry G’s too fast / Ain’t none o’ y’all in Barry G’s class / Barry G’s gonna rock the house, the G-man’s gonna turn it out / He’s the hip yes hop, he’s on the top…” and then bam! He draws a Sleng Teng dubplate at 9:00 by Echo Minott. Big!
After the vocal ends and the riddim plays out, Barry bigs himself up, saying he can hear the crowd’s excitement all the way in England. At 14:00, we see what Ram Jam is up to, slyly telling Barry that he just made his first mistake of the evening in drawing the Sleng Teng because he himself has eight exclusives on the new riddim. He replies with the hot-off-the-pres “Jamming in the Street” by Sugar Minott. In this instance it doesn’t matter that the record isn’t a custom dubplate. The Sleng Teng at this point is so new and revolutionary that playing new tunes that haven’t been released yet is just as strong.
After the Minott tune, at 18:00 he comes with a different version of the riddim at hand, calling it the Sleng Teng Riddim computerized, and lets it play for minutes without any vocal. It’s so novel that the instrumental alone warrants airtime. It may sound like dead air now but people were undoubtedly transixed by what they were hearing. Barry G counteracts, announcing that he’s going to bring things back to Yard (Jamaican for Jamaica) and take us to Jammy’s studio where the Sleng Teng originated. At 20:33 he draws Wayne Smith’s “Under Mi Sleng Teng.” Ram Jam, not to be outdone, replies with yet another Sleng Teng, Tonto Irie’s “Every Posse Get Ready.”
At 25:25, Barry G gives a run-down of what has happened thus far in the clash and responds to Rodigan’s Sleng Teng warning, saying that he too has a deep supply of tunes over the riddim. He drops the brand new scorcher “Pumpkin Belly” by rising star Tenor Saw, who lit up the dancehall scene that same year with another one of the biggest dancehall tunes ever “Ring The Alarm”—recorded over what many would consider the biggest riddim in dancehall ever, the Stalag Riddim. As “Pumpkin Belly” winds down, Barry bigs himself up, declaring that if Rodigan can play Sleng Teng, so can he. He then chats a brief rhyme, giving respect to Rodigan and promoting himself.
At 28:45, it’s Rodigan’s turn, and he gives credit to the new computer riddim sensation that is taking over reggae music but adds a twist to the clash by dropping a live band (“human not computerized”) rendition of Sleng Teng, also out of Jammy’s studio, “Sting Me A Sting” by Patrick Andy. With this tune, Ram Jam has impressively played three different Sleng Tengs. He interrupts the music by making fun of Barry’s previous mic performance, telling him “I thought you said you can sing, Barry.”
At 32:39, Barry G answers, saying “Jamaica, this is the nastiest reply to any man that says ‘sting me a sting,’” drawing Wayne Palmer’s “Dem Nah Sting,” telling Rodigan that his selections “nah sting.” Ram Jam then replies by telling Barry to use caution when drawing against him and drops “Caution” by U.K. lover’s rock star Maxi Priest, backed up by more homegrown music with Papa Levi’s “Bonnie & Clyde” on the same riddim. After what’s been predominantly a clash of exclusive tunes that will be released that same year on record labels, Barry G rinses the first actual dubplate since dropping Echo Minott with a dub from Pampidoo, whose deep and gravelly vocal style foreshadows the next generation of Jamaican dancehall performers like Bounty Killer and Buju Banton.
As they move into the second hour of the show, they each drop clash tunes by two Palmers (Michael and Wayne, respectively). Rodigan comes with “Pull It Up” at 40:00 and Barry G replies with “Suzie,” but before he does, HE says to the listeners, “If you wish to call this a warm up, goodness gracious me… London feelin’ this clash ‘85 style, Jamaica feelin’ it!” He then states emphatically that all blank cassettes have been sold out in Kingston in the week before this broadcast, adding “as illegal as it is.” At 53:48 they trade selections by the UK reggae band Aswad and then continue to play tunes from all across the reggae spectrum, as Rodigan puts it, “from the U.K. to Jamaica, from lover’s rock to dancehall style to DJ to dub.” For the rest of the first 90 minutes they stay in the lover’s rock realm, playing exclusive tunes that have not been released yet, including a Sugar Minott cover of Heatwave’s “Mindblowing Decisions” and Gregory Isaacs “Private Beach Party” which Ram Jam says was just recorded a few days prior.
This recording is a cassette of the first part of a six hour broadcast, with Rodigan and Barry G trading jabs, musically and verbally, bigging up reggae music in general, and demonstrating why these two gentlemen were the premier ambassadors of reggae music. This tape is a window into a critical, kinetic time in reggae music when the rich tradition of musicians and bands was losing its footing to computers and electronic production. It also signaled that reggae music was becoming an increasingly international phenomenon, foreshadowing the global takeover of dancehall and its American sister hip-hop.
Follow Stretch Armstrong on Twitter @StretchArmy.
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