Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste - Lester Bangs [128]
I meet U Roy, who is not I Roy, and whose album, Dread in a Babylon, has just been picked up by Virgin Records in the U.K. We shake hands, and I tell him how much I like his record. I do not tell him that I thought on the first cut, “Runaway Girl,” his vocal sounded much like Mick Jagger circa Aftermath. It is interesting to note that on the album cover he looks like some ragged shaman, squatting on the ground almost hidden behind a giant cloud of ganja smoke, dreadlocks spearing out in every direction. Now, in person, he is dressed in a beret, red sweater, and brown slacks. He puts a record on a turntable and the unmistakable, cannonade-in-a-cavern sound of dub thunders from two giant speakers set up in the dirt in Tubby's backyard. A little kid dances in front of one of the speakers, on which “Tubby” is spelled in Chinese-style lettering, pressing his ass against the speaker cloth, getting off on the vibrations, looking at me and laughing. The record playing consists of a deep rumble of Echoplexed drums, out of which, every so often an Echoplexed and perhaps reverbed male voice (which I will later discover belongs to Big Youth, one of the most venerable dub artists) hollers, “What the world needs now, is love, sweet love …” I blink. Blackwell laughs: “I wonder what Burt Bacharach would think of this.” I suggest that Blackwell bring him down here and show it to him. One thing seems certain—old Burt is not going to get any royalties on this one. Not that he needs them. I think for a moment that perhaps there is a certain democracy in the ripoffs permeating Jamaican music, dismiss that as a dangerous notion, and start babbling to Blackwell about “folk technology.” We agree that dub is fascinating, but neither of us has any idea what to do with it. Which is perhaps as it should be. The young blacks sitting around smoking spliffs and listening to this record at the customary earsplitting volume ignore us, except for one who, later in the studio, introduces himself as Clinton Williams and beckons me outside, where he hands me a piece of paper, which looks like a blank invoice, upon which is printed “The Golden-Age Furnishing Co.,” along with a phone number. Williams has written his name on one of the lines, and this serves as his card. He tells me he is doing some independent producing in Kingston, has in fact produced five records, and has been a contender for the amateur lightweight boxing championship of Jamaica. I ask him how he finds time both to box and produce records, not bothering to mention that the number he has asked me to call him at seems to be that of a furniture store. He tells me that he wants to become a big-time producer, that the competition is fierce, and that established figures like Tubby and Scratch Perry pretty much have a monopoly on the scene, making it extremely difficult for a young cat to break in. Which sounds a lot like the States, actually. I press him on boxing vs. production; I mean, which is the sideline? He finally laughs. “Boxing.” I ask him if he can give me a percentage breakdown on record profits as split between artists, producers and record store owners. Sure, he says. “Usually, about sixty percent goes to the store, thirty percent to the producer, and ten percent to the singer. But sometimes the producers and stores get forty-five percent each.”
Back in the limousine and over to Lee Perry's. Perry is a big man in the island's music scene; he produced Bob Marley's early (and superior) sides, and his current star artist is Max Romeo, with “War in a Babylon” by Max Romeo and the Upsetters a hot item in both Jamaica and England. “The Upsetter” is one of Perry's aliases, and it is a measure of what stars producers are in Jamaica that the clerk in Aquarius had showed me an album called King Tubby Vs. The Upsetter, a kind of dueling-control-boards, mock-championship-match soundtrack consisting entirely of instrumental dub violence fit to shatter your eardrums. In Perry's studio, behind his house, he is a little potentate, mixing and playing back his tapes for a steady stream of admirers