Dubhouse

This Hollie Cook and Prince Fatty cover version has got everything needed to make a great little dubby reggae song- snaking melodica, dub bass, some echo, sound effects and a lovely vocal. All the boxes ticked. I could listen to this all day.

You Know I'm No Good

The Fatty Fatty Sound

Bagging Area loves the reggae and dub of Prince Fatty. He's currently in the States with Hollie Cook (whose album from two years ago was a joy, as was the offspring dub version lp). Prince Fatty has a ton of stuff up at Soundcloud, including a stream of the full ska/surf/spaghetti Western lp he did with The Mutant HiFi, The Return Of Gringo. It is as good as that sounds, chock full of skank, twang and samples...



There's also this, a mixtape by Dave Bongo, to celebrate the release of Fatty's Supersize album back in 2010, including the man himself, Danny Ray, Dennis Brown, Barrngton Levy and Cutty Ranks and others...



Or how about this one, highly recommended, a recent 45 minute live set- amongst it all you get Hollie Cook singing reggae versions of Kraftwerk's The Model and Amy Winehouse's You Know I'm No Good, a cover of Cypress Hill's Insane In the Brain and Eric B and Rakim chucked in the mix as well, free download...



There's loads more at Soundcloud. Get searching, get skanking.

You're Wondering Now

I was going to start Sunday with some dub- it's ages since there was any dub round here- but scrolling through stuff I chanced upon this and thought we should start Sunday with some ska. You're Wondering Now is probably best known to people my age as a Specials song and is maybe best known to people twenty years younger than me as an Amy Winehouse tune. It was originally a Skatalites instrumental; this later vocal version was recorded by Andy and Joey in 1964.

Ska now, dub later.

You're Wondering Now

More Monkey Man

Following the previous post here's another song called Monkey Man, this one written by Toots Hibbert of Toots and The Maytals though rather than Jagger/Richards, and sung by the recently departed Amy Winehouse. She released an e.p. of ska covers several years ago, songs that had been covered by The Specials, with whom she sang live a few times.

Monkey Man

Twenty Seven Forever

I posted this A Certain Ratio song last October. It feels fitting somehow this weekend. Poor old Amy.

27 Forever (Jon Da Silva remix)