V.A. Saturday

Don Letts is a bit of a various artists compilation guru- the man who introduced the punks to reggae, who ran Acme Attractions clothes shop on King's Road, who filmed The Clash and then became integral to Big Audio Dynamite, who managed The Slits, and who made The Punk Rock Movie and Westway To The World. He put together two compilations for Heavenly back at the start of the 21st century (the Dread Meets B- Boys Downtown one I featured a couple of Saturdays ago and his Dread Meets Punk Rockers Uptown which pulled together the 7" singles he played at The Roxy between December 1976 and April 1977). 

In 2021 Don compiled an album for the Late Night Tales label and series. Late Night Tales is a rich seam of V.A. compilations in itself. Don's Late Night Tales, Version Excursion, is a tribute to the sound systems and sound clashes, to the music of Jamaica, the Jamaican diaspora and bass culture. It's also a compilation with a sense of humour, a celebration of the unusual cover version, an alternate history of rock 'n' roll with a dub perspective. 

The Beach Boys' Caroline No is for many the apex of mid 60s pop, the heartbreaker that closes Pet Sounds, the song that seems to foretell the end of innocence, the Kennedy assassination and the death of the American Dream, the end of the 60s, Vietnam, Nixon, Altamont, anything you want really... Maybe it is just the words of a man disappointed that his girlfriend has cut her hair short. 'Where did your long hair go? Where is the girl I used to know?'. It's not a song that naturally suggests a Lover's Rock cover but Zoe Devlin Love and Tim Hutton make it their own.

Caroline, No

Sixteen Tons, a coalminer's song written by Merle Travis but made best known in the Tennessee Ernie Ford version from 1955. It was a Clash favourite, a tour bus favourite and gave its name to a 1980 tour. 'You move sixteen tons and what do you get?/ Another day older and deeper in debt'. This dub cover is by OBF.

Sixteen Tons Of Dub

On his Late Night Tales Don finds the sound system spirit all over the place- Love Will Tear Us Apart, Black Box Recorder's cover of Uptown Top Ranking, covers of White Rabbit and Lost In The Supermarket- and also in this by the man himself as The Rebel Dread, a cover of Big Audio Dynamite's E=MC2 with Gaudi and Emily Capell, with the film samples re- created, and Mick's song turned into a skank...

E=MC2

Late Night Letts

Don Letts has compiled an album for the Late Night Tales series, a twenty one track dub excursion that pulls together all sorts of strands, strains and offshoots of dub, punk and post punk. Among the highlights are a bunch of cover versions.  Capitol 1212 and Earl Sixteen cover Love Will Tear Us Apart, a dubbed out version of the song with a cool vocal and buckets of echo. 

Wrongtown Meets The Rockers deconstruct The Clash's Lost In The Supermarket, bassline and FX, a snatch of melodica carrying the topline. The Easy Star All Stars break out the sitars for a very stoned version of Within You Without You. Gaudi and The Rebel Dread tackle Big Audio Dynamite's E=MC2, samples from Performance and a mangled, cut up vocal while the bassline prods and pushes Don's old band's song along. 

Black Box Recorder's cover of Uptown Top Ranking, a Prince Fatty cover of Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit (becoming Black Rabbit), Zoe Devlin Love's lovers rock take of The Beach Boys Caroline No and Yasushi Ide's version of Ain't No Sunshine further blur the boundaries, drawing wobbly lines between then and now. Matumbi and Dennis Bovell, Ghetto Priest, John Holt and Mad Professor all show up. None of this feels like a novelty or a joke, it's all part of a much greater whole, a celebration of the culture that has seeped from radios and Dansettes in the 60s and 70s to whatever device or platform you're using to listen to music at the tail end of 2021. 

Iron Chair

I started the week with an Orb related release and we're bouncing back in that direction today with one of the remixes from the Abolition Of The Royal Familia Guillotine Mixes album, out back in April. There's a host of Orb- linked names offering up new versions of tracks from last year's album- Youth's ten minute odyssey Shape Shifting Pt 1 is superb, a long drawn out ambient first half and a driving beat driven second. David Harrow contributes two remixes, both well worth the price of admission. Moody Boys, Andy Falconer, Sendelica and Kris Needs all turn up and then there's this beauty from Gaudi, the album track bent into all kind of new shapes and positions. 

Ital Orb (Iron Chair) Gaudi Remix