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Q:In wich way you started working with reggae?
A:In 1974 when I left college I started a record shop called Old Change
Records, in London with a guy called Ed Deppo, that later founded Mo'
Jazz, a big jazz shop in London and a guy called Graham Griffiths, that
went to Mo'Jazz, and now is running the New Note distribution. Since
1975 I work with reggae: in october 1975 I started another shop called Daddy Kool. This shop became very successful since the first year: it was a tiny place but always packed of customers. We sold two thousand records in the summer of the '76.
Q:Was it a shop with the style of the today reggae shops?
A:Yes, I had a pile of records and I changed the records on the
turntable every ten seconds as people spent money...
Q:Did you sell mostly to black people?
A: No, black and white people, a lot of people: people like Johnny
Rotten, John Peel, Don Letts...
Q: Why you left that business?
A: My partner had the control of the business and he accused me of
stealing, wich was untrue. So I said "I don't want to work with you
anymore", and I left. I literally built the shop and spent all the time
at the shop, but that people just passed at the shop once a week on
friday, to pick up the money.
Q: What was the next step?
A:Next step was "Honest Johns" in Camden town. There was a big deal for
Jazz too...
And then another shop who was the first shop selling in London the
Bullwackie records from New York, Ray Wackies and Lepke's DBC, the Dread
Outta Control...There were the punk days....Then I went back at college
again. In 1979 Trevor Wyatt from Island approached me to put a
compilation of ska music together because the Two Tone thing was coming.
So I did this one called "Intensified". They sold sixty thousand copies.
So we did the volume two, "Too Intensified" and a Rock Steady one called
"Catch this beat"
Q: At that time what was the method of work? Try to find the original
master tapes?
A: Well, I didn't have the original master tapes. Island didn't have the
tapes: we just transferred simply. I didn't supervise, I didn't have
control over that process, I just had the cover concept and the track
listing of the record. I went back to college again and in 1984 I did
sleeve notes for Island on "Return of the big guns" (Skatalites) and in
1985 Trojan approached me. They found a tape called "Rhythm shower" and
they didn't know what it was, so I said "That's Lee Perry!" At that
time Trojan had a lot of tapes. They originally released some materials
and had those tapes, but they don't have the rights to hold those tracks
cause the property is of the Jamaican producer.
Q: This fact reminds me that in the Rob Chapman book there is mention of
a Trojan double album of Studio One materials done without any permission... One of the records is a simple reissue of a Studio One
album...
A: Yes, Trojan have the Mr. Dodd's tapes and the second album is a my
compilation from Studio One tapes like for example, Jackie Mittoo, that
they have. In 1991 Coxsone told me that in 1974 he had written to
Trojan a formal letter asking to desist manufacturing and distributing
his products. I was completely ignorant on that: Trojan assured me that
they had the rights for that material.
Q: What exactly is your work for a standard reissue now?
A:With Blood & Fire my method is really to do the job completely as we
can in every way, so we don't have to do it again. That means try to
find tapes, just listening to tapes and taking albums from that. We do
a lot of that.
For the first releases of Blood & Fire we went to Bunny
Lee's home in Jamaica. He was in England at that time, and he was buying
a truck for having a business. We went to Bunny's studio and played a
lot of tapes we ended up with more of 120 tracks and we made the "DJ Was
Your Trade" album with Tubby's mixings, because we felt that Djs music
is important, firstly because is great, fantastic alive music and
secondly is important because is being the influence on a lot of forms,
particularly the rap, jamaicans were the first to rap on riddim tracks,
from the sixties. They developed this from U Roy days, through Dennis
Alcapone and Big Youth, into the mid-seventies, King Tubbys where DJs
would voice version of songs. There was a lot of activity, a lot of
Djng: at the beginning there was a few Djs, but in the mid-seventies
there were probably fifty or sixty Djs working. Big Youth influenced a
lot of people as Rasta. He opened that door.
Coming back to the aspects of work we found a lot of stuffs that hadn't
never been issued, that never came out, the Jazzbo's title track, and
also "Good Memories" never been out. In the spring of 1993 we came back
and we thought long time about what we gonna do with that material and
we developed a program where we wanted to expose that developments in
Jamaica, in the 70's, some of the best Djs working with Tubbys, in the
King Tubbys studio. There was not only King Tubby, but King Tubby in my
opinion was one of the greatest guys in the XX century music.
His influence is been very large in the last twenty years, just in the
way he amplify the sound, magnify the sound: you can recognize King
Tubby like you can recognize soon as you heard a Phil Spector's record,
or others classics blues, r&b or jazz sounds. It's a distinctive studio
sound.
Q: Who got the idea to create Blood & Fire?
A: Working on a thing for Island, called "Tougher Than Tough", the box
set, I finished my work in early 1993, and I got a phone call from my
friend Steve Barker on BBC radio, he's got a show called "On the wire",
he said Simply Red managment want to reissue some old reggae albums,
their favourites...
Q:Why? Because the Simply Red singer is a reggae fan??
A:Yes, they're all reggae fans, in the management, and they all got into
reggae in the late seventies and they remember the albums in that time,
all great albums and they want to put them on CD, like "Social living",
like "Pick A Dub", like "The Heart of Congos", albums that there wasn't
on CD yet. We had a meeting and I said "Yes you can reissue those
albums, you gotta start a company to do that and deal with Jamaicans
properly" and they said "Yeah, great! Let's do it", so Bob Harding, now
my partner in B&F, he came up with the name Blood & Fire.
Q: He particularly choose that name??
A: Yes...
Q: Why?? Because he was a Niney's fan??
A: No, not only because of the Niney record, there are a lot of other
records that mention Blood & Fire or simply just blood, or fire...
Q:It's a sort of symbology...
A:Yes, it was really a kind of a cliche, a couple of words choose for a particular sound. The words that evoke that music....there s blood and
fire in that music and that s we want to evoke...We named the company
the same as a record, a famous and brilliant record by Niney, the great
producer. We got vexed with that : In Jamaica Niney suddenly started a
company named "The original Blood & Fire". I think that this is a very
great compliment from Niney, fantastic...That's nice!
I had a contact with the design group Intro, we worked together since
Trojan days,
we did the "Tougher that tough" book. I wanted to work with them for
Blood & Fire, with the interest and the entusiasm that you can put in a
work for a top selling group for having everything OK. Me and my
partners in Blood & Fire are saying that if you think that this music
is so great, you must do with it the same way you would do with the
Beatles, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen or Miles Davis. It s music very
spiritual that come from poor people, but the fact is that poor people
knows how to live the life better than rich people. Tht s why rich
people are so sick...
Q:Concerning B&F records: wich work gave you more satisfation?? I bet the Congos...
A:Yes, the Congos is great, I love that. That was a nice idea because
that album has a lot in it, there is a lot of imaginery in this: we came
up with the idea of the puzzle of the cover. There is a frame of an F111
engine, we put Jamaican images, fruits, candles, pieces, vegetables,
fishes, and the original album cover as the center of the decoration.
I gave Matt the tape and he said "Let's do an ilustration for every
song" and I said "How do that?" and he did those illustrations in two
days, he and another guy.
(Steve show me some of the original sleeve works)
When Cedric Myton saw the finish thing he said that those things are in
his mind when he was singing those songs and that was brilliant. That's
exactly what we wanted to do: it was doubly satisfying, it's the right
thing. You know how you make money: you spend money to sell it, but
what we gonna sell is the truth about ghetto living for all people
worldwide, which is what reggae is.
If you listen those records you can
feel those vibes, wich is like getting together and dance and jump up.
Congos is one of my favourites, for me the Jah Stitch's album is a great
album, I love that record, Bunny s riddims are wicked and Stitch is at
his best on it. I like it because of the story behind Stitch: he got
shot, but 'Give Jah the glory' is before he got shot and the other
tracks are after he got shot. The record shows the guy coming back....
Q:How your work is considered by the Jamaican producers you're dealing
with??
A:Every producer we worked with likes what we've done, and every artist.
I think they're glad cause we recognize the efforts they put into it,
and we trying to do the best to put that music on the same level of the
other stuffs. Its a good investiment because of the relative cheapness.
This is a cultural question: I just want to say that one thing about why
we do that is a cultural question, and is a political question. This
is the truth from people who lives this life, who lives in conditions
wich most people in modern urban metropolitan environment wouldn't
tolerate for a minute, so this people goes for a lot of tribulations and
from then comes a very essentialized music, very essentialized thoughts
and that enables you to survive in that situation, like Bob Marley said:
'One good thing about music, when it hits you, feel no pain...
Q: It's a sort of fever...
A: Yes, it's a fever, and it's a mutual enjoinment, everyone enjoys the
same things.
Q:About the Arkology's work: did you personally choose the songs?
A: When I was doing 'Tougher that tough' Island spoke to me about
various others projects, but I got busy doing the Blood & Fire stuff.
Last year they said 'Do you wanna do the Upsetter?' and I said 'Yes, get
the tapes' and they said We get the demos' and I : 'No no no, get the
tapes, not the demos.
A:You mean the old four tracks tapes?
Q: Yes, the original tapes, cause Island got a lot of original Black
Ark tapes... I had experiences with Scratch's tapes at Trojan, and
there s always extra stuffs and longer. When we got the Congos tapes
from Cedric, to do the Congos one with Blood & Fire, there was another
fifteen minutes more than the original album, so I was curious to see
and listen to the Island tapes, they got sixteen tapes from their
central archives.
When we listened to that it was a revelation because half of the stuffs
we listened to was music that I never heard before. It was variant
mixes, things like that, different from the jamaican or Island
release...
A:At the time you were a Black Ark expert?
Q:Yes, I love Lee Perry records but David Katz is the guy, he puts the
Upsetter magazine out, he knows Scratch really well and he was the ideal
guy...
A: Is he from the USA?
Q:Yes he's from the States, Dave knows a lot Lee Perry. So we sat down,
Dave and myself and we went through the tapes. As to the compilation,
basically me and Dave got the running order. I said the first track must
be 'Dub revolution' and the last one (Roast fish and corn bread'. I was
very pleasant about how the work came out . Personally, there's no my
design...
A: I think that they stole a little by Blood & Fire design...
Q:Yes, but if Blood & Fire done it, it wouldn't look like that. I would
done it completely different. I like some of the things that they did.
The Art Director of Island came with the title Arkology, and I said
"Right", cause this is what it was: listening to those sixteen
tapes...when we heard the tapes for the first time, me and Dave, we said
"WHAT???"...really discovering stuffs as you do with this music, every
day you can find something new with this music, every day. Because it's
so big, first of all!
With Arkology it was like going through James Joyce's papers and finding
a missing chapter of "Ulysses", cause this is a missing Lee Perry's
chapter...
A: True philology...
Q: Yes, is definitively that 'cause this was the Lee Perry guiding hand:
OK, there were other people, Max Romeo, Doctor Alimantado, but this is
definitively Lee Perry work as producer and he said "I'm the Dub
Sheperd". This is a very serious stuff, cause this is the guy who really
did Bob Marley, he wrote a lot of Marley songs. His contribution it was
great, and we can look for the contribution before Bob Marley, the
Studio One days...
Q: Do you think that the Scratch madness is just acting or that Lee
Perry is really mad?
A:I mean , no one can answer for what another man does, but Lee Perry is
as sane as you or I, in my opinion. He has a particular way of
expressing himself at this period of his life, wich he finds
satisfactory, but compared to what he was doing when he was in full
control of Black Ark, for me he lacks something, is directionless, in
my opinion. In conversation he can be seriously funny, or funnily
serious as well...
Q: What is the Reggae Archive Project?
A: It's a project that started with Chris Blackwell, with the aim to
collect in a video archive interviews with many people involved with
reggae music as possible. We started with old time movers and we did 38
or 40 interviews the first year and 44 the next year.
Q: Very long interviews?
A: Yes. I went to Jamaica with Don Letts, and we had Carl Bradshaw, the
actor that was a sort of manager and linkman. It was good. We got Prince
Buster, Count Matchoucki, Delroy Wilson, King Stitt. We got Stitt and
Matchoucki in Studio One, talking about Studio One, because Coxsone
doesn t give interviews, not so much.
We tried to approach him a couple of times. He's a really nice guy, I
like him and he likes me, but when I come for interview him it's a
different think. I mean for example: when I left Trojan I had to be in
New York with Bunny Lee and I met Coxsone and I explained him that I was
unaware of anything about contractual links between Trojan and Studio
One, and he was sure of the opposite, and he said "Fine" and he was
nice.
Q: What do you think about the Pressure Sounds releases as for example
'Voodooism'??
A: It's a good set! There are good stuffs on there..
Q: I think that they're working copying old records...
A: Yes they're all from disc, and it's a real pity. I would put that
material on a different order and I wouldn't included a couple of
tracks, cause they don't fit on there, they're wrong there. The same
with Heartbeat: there's a mix of materials done by Heartbeat. They just
released a Lee Perry dub album that is nearly all Black Ark except for
two tracks that I don't need on there. When you put together materials
and do some releases, you're asking people to spend money to buy it, and
if you don't do a good thing they don't do!. With reggae, particularly
re-issuing old back catalogues materials, there's always been something
wrong. For example, my dissatisfaction with the works I did at Trojan
personally is in the sound quality, it could be a lot better. The
problem was in vinyl quality.