Half An Hour Of King Tubby

The beach at St. Bees, Cumbria, has some interesting features as well as its own natural beauty. These two rings up the cliff face, presumably for mooring boats to, both well worn by the sea and time. The soft cliff face and rocks have been a haven for graffiti artists and people wanting to scratch their name, leave a reminder of who visited and when. There are lots of names from 1985 and 1986, the traditional so- and- so loves so- and- so (do they still? ) and some much older graffiti, some dating back to the holiday makers and day trippers from the 19th century (as seen below). 

The cross in the photo above is my concession to Easter. Happy Easter. Sunday, whether Easter or not, is always a good day for some dub and dub doesn't get more serious or better than when King Tubby is at the controls. I put this mix together with hundreds of King Tubby tracks, dubs and songs in front of me, hours and hours worth and almost all of it as good as anything that came from Jamaica in the 70s. 

Half An Hour Of King Tubby

• Tommy McCook And The Aggrovators: Disco Rockers
• King Tubby: We Rule
• Tommy McCook And The Aggrovators: The Dub Station
• Yabby You and King Tubby: Warning Version
• Augustus Pablo: 555 Dub Street
• King Tubby: Dub From The Roots
• King Tubby: A Better Version
• King Tubby And The Aggrovators: Dub Fi Gwan
• King Tubby: Declaration Of Dub
• Augustus Pablo: King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown

Tommy McCook and The Aggrovators' Super Star- Disco Rockers came out in 1977, the year two sevens clash. Tubby engineered it. Tommy McCook and The Aggravators Dub Station album came out two years earlier, one of the best dub albums there is- lush, melodic, dramatic, Tubby manipulating volume, mix and FX at the desk. It bounces. 

Yabby You and King Tubby's Conquering Lion dates from 1977. An expanded edition from 2021 on Pressure Sounds with all the dubs is serious summer music. Listen with a glass of rum and ginger on ice. 

555 Dub Street and the title track that closes the mix above both come from Augustus Pablo's classic 1976 album, King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown, one of dub's definitive texts with a line up of the best dub musicians at their peak- Robbie Shakespeare and Aston Barrett on bass, Carlton Barrett on drums and Earl 'Chinna' Smith on guitar. 

Dub Fi Gwan- clattering drums, endless rhythms, rimshots, echo and bassline- was the final track on Dub Gone Crazy, a 1994 Blood And Fire compilation of Tubby tracks from the 1975- 1979 era. It turned me on to King Tubby and dub in a big way. 

A Better Version is from an expanded version of King Tubby Presents: The Roots Of Dub, a King Tubby album from 1975, Horace Andy's Skylarking twisted inside itself and dubbed out into space. Strangely I've missed including anything from the original version of that album in this mix- a Tubby Mix Two will have to follow at some point. 

Dub From The Roots and Declaration Of Dub are both from 1975's Dub From The Roots, his first full length, self- titled album, dubwise versions of Bunny Lee songs. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Weatherdub

At the time of writing this I've no idea whether yesterday's DJ escapades at the Golden Lion in Todmorden were a triumph or a disaster or somewhere in between. I took a bag full of songs and tracks to play including a lot of Andrew Weatherall flavoured dub- remixes, his own productions, songs and poems that he sampled, songs he played out when DJing or on the radio which I thought might go down well on a Saturday afternoon in early October, a pre- David Holmes pint accompaniment. All the tracks below were in my digital record box.

Forty Five Minutes Of Weatherdub

• Jean Binta Breeze: Dubwise
• Dub Syndicate: Ravi Shankar Part 1
• Lark: Can I Colour In Your Hair (Andrew Weatherall Mix)
• Count Ossie and Mystic Revelation Of Rastafari: Poem
• The Sexual Objects: Sometimes (Weatherall Dub)
• Yabby You: Conquering Dub
• The Scientist: Lovers
• Misty In Roots: Introduction To Live At The Counter Eurovision
• Meatraffle: Meatraffle On the Moon (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
• Steve Mason: Boys Outside (Andrew Weatherall Dub 2)
• Andrew Weatherall: Kiyadub 45

Jean Binta Breeze's Dubwise poem came out on her 1991 album Tracks and was sampled by Weatherall on his legendary remix of Saint Etienne's Only Love Can Break Your Heart (he also sampled Jean from the same album for his earth shaking remixes Galliano's Skunk Funk, worthy of a separate post at some point soon I think).

Dub Syndicate, a mainstay of Adrian Sherwood's On U Sound label, released Tunes From The Missing Channel in 1985. Opening track Ravi Shankar Part 1 was a Weatherall favourite and is often mentioned in connection with the famous Boy's Own party held on a farm in East Grinstead in summer 1989, Andrew coming on to the decks to play at dawn as revellers welcomed the sun and Ravi Shankar's unmistakeable intro bounced around the West Sussex countryside. 

Lark were a London band led and fronted by Karl Bielek. Weatherall's dub remix of Can I Colour In Your Hair was finally released on 7" vinyl in 2018, years after being played on Weatherall's radio shows and in his mixes.

Count Ossie and Mystic Revelation Of Rastafari's album Grounation album came out in 1974, a masterpiece of spiritual dub. The line 'Ever since I was a youth/ I've always been searching for the truth' was sampled by Sabres Of Paradise for their mighty Ysaebud track, which came out on one sided 7" in 1997, after Sabres had split and Weatherall had gone on to Two Lone Swordsmen. The track was discovered by Andrew Curley on cassette while clearing out the drawers at HQ and was felt to be too good to lie unreleased so came out as S.O.P. rather as Sabres (licensing issues or some such detail). I'd like to thank Dr Rob of Ban Ban Ton Ton for enabling me to track down the source of the sample. Another piece of the jigsaw slotted into place.

The Sexual Objects are/ were a band formed by David Henderson (formerly of Scottish indie/ post- punkers Fire Engine and Nectarine No. 9). Weatherall's remix came out on a wonderful  piece of 10" vinyl along with remixes by Boards Of Canada and WAVNE, only 1000 copies pressed. 

Yabby You was another Weatherall favourite, from Kingston Jamaica, a singer and producer from the golden age of roots reggae and dub frequently played by Andrew and mentioned in interviews. The same came be said of The Scientist, a protege of King Tubby, whose dub albums in the 1980s were a big Weatherall touchstone. 

Misty in Roots are British dub reggae pioneers, from Southall, London. Their 1979 album Live St The Counter Eurovision is a key British reggae album. The Introduction to the album was sampled to massive effect by Andrew on his Ultrabass 2 remix of The Orb's Perpetual Dawn, 1991.

Meatraffle's Meatraffle On The Moon album came out in 2019, a still superb sounding dissection of life in Brexit Britain (and much more). The Weatherall remix is bass heavy meandering dub, a remix of the band's song about un- unionised moon workers and the evils of late stage capitalism. 

Steve Mason's Boys Outside album came out in 2010. Weatherall remixed the title track twice, the second is a dub of a dub. 

Kiyadub 45 was a one off two track 12" only dub release on the Byrd Out label (with Kiyadub 47 on the flipside), 500 copies only, recorded with Nina Walsh. Heavy electronic dub business. 

Conquering Dub

Dub for Tuesday from Yabby You and The Prophets, the flipside to his debut single Conquering Lion. The album, also called Conquering Lion, was released in 1975, widely seen as one of the classics of roots era, with a cast of players including Tommy McCook, Aston Barrett, Earl Chinna Smith and Augustus Pablo. Incredibly Yabby and the band recorded it onto two track- one track for bass and drums and one for organ, with additional instruments dubbed on at Tubby's after. The original album has been re- released this year in expanded form with the original ten cuts and a further twelve dubs and versions. Essential roots reggae, full of the political, righteous and devotional fervour of mid- 70s Jamaica. You can buy the whole thing in a variety of formats here. 

Conquering Dub

Abandon

The number and sheer quality of Andrew Weatherall's remixes in 1990 is staggering, from Loaded (not to mention his production work on Screamadelica that was going on that year and the Jesse Jackson sampling, ten minute euphoria of Come Together) to a few lesser known remixes such as Word Of Mouth, Deep Joy and West India Company. Then there's the speaker rattling/ ghostly vocals brilliance of My Bloody Valentine's Soon, Jah Wobble (Bomba, twice), the massive siren laden reworking of Come Home by James, remixes of World In Motion, skanked out heavy beats for Meat Beat Manifesto, two long blissed out remixes of Floatation by The Grid, the debut release on Jeff Barrett's fledgling Heavenly Recordings (The World According to Sly And Lovechild... and Weatherall) and the dub magnificence of his version of Saint Etienne's Only Love Can Break Your Heart. For a man new to the recording studio its an incredible body of work. He was alos part of the Boy's Own collective that released at least one classic record that year, Raise which has his fingerprints all over it. Fired up by the spirit of the times Weatherall brought his ability to spot a sample in his extensive record collection and a lorryload of ideas about how someone else's record could sound. 

 Andrew Innes of Primal Scream had encouraged him to remix I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have and described his disappointment as the first version Weatherall delivered was just too tame. 'Fucking destroy it', Innes told him. That seems to have become the process- take someone else's record to pieces completely, keep an element from the original so the spirit of the song exists, but stretch it out and send it to clubland. In 1990 Andrew's technical expertise was limited and he relied on the studio nous and engineering skills of Hugo Nicolson, the man who turned Andrew's ideas into reality on tape. 

In 1990 That Petrol Emotion were in the aftermath of a line up change. Founding member, guitarist/ ex- Undertone John O'Neill had left in 1988 amid some tension and drummer Ciaran McLoughlin and guitarist Raymond Gorman took over writing songs with American skate- punk frontman Steve Mack. Their 1988 album End Of The Millennium Psychosis Blues was a mixed bag but in some ways prefigured what was about to hit- dance influenced rock music, guitar riffs and sampling, half- sung half rapped vocals. By the time they recorded 1990's Chemicrazy they had Scott Litt on production and were sounding a little like R.E.M., more alt- rock than dance- rock. But in 1990 it made perfect sense for them to be remixed by Andrew Weatherall. 

The remix of Abandon that was released alongside the body of work listed above was credited to Boy's Own, technically a Weatherall and Terry Farley remix but there are tales of one person being far more engaged with the project than the other. That Petrol Emotion were also suspicious at first, not sure that they wanted their song picked apart and re- assembled with a 1990 drum beat slung underneath. At least one member of the group, Gorman I think but possibly bassist Damian O'Neill, positioned himself in the studio to keep an eye on proceedings, to ensure that the guitars weren't removed completely and that it wasn't a sell out of some kind. Apparently as soon as Andrew queued up the sample that opens the remix of Abandon, the voice of Yabby You, the TPE man relaxed and knew everything was going to be alright. When the drums come in and then the low- slung bassline we're into the forefront of indie- dance, a genre Weatherall did as much as anyone to invent (and then run away from). The crunchy guitars and snatches of Steve Mack's vocals are tailor made for the dance floor at the Thursday night indie/ alternative night as much as for acid house. This being a 1990 Weatherall remix we're in for the long haul, seven minutes more or less, the guitars featuring more and more prominently as the song builds with a nicely distorted guitar solo at the end and that rhythm, the bass and drums, chugging away. It may not be the best remix he did that year but it also doesn't sound like any of the others- read the list at the top again and then play them back- to- back and you'll see the variety in Weatherall's work that year too. Those remixes do sound like the work of the same person (people I should say, Hugo was hugely important) but they don't sound like each other. 

In sales terms none of this- remixes, crossover potential, Scott Litt, line up changes- worked for That Petrol Emotion. The album stalled at number 62 and Virgin dropped them. Andrew went up and up, Screamadelica and a further slew of remixes on his to- do list and then Sabresonic and Morning Dove White. His remix of Abandon is just one of an astonishing list of records he made that year, the only limit seemingly his imagination. 

Abandon (Boy's Own Remix)