JD On Coke
ireallylovemusic’s John Doran reports on his weekly quest to nice up his record collection.
Week Two: April 20th – April 27th 2004
Max Romeo And The Upsetters ‘War Ina Babylon’ Island
I have been trying to become a florist recently. Or rather, my landlord, Mr Filby, is trying to persuade me to become one. He wants me to work with him in a shop called Mr Filby’s Flowers. His friend used to play bass for a band called The Almighty and he used the money he got from an extensive tour with Motorhead to buy himself a little stall and a van. He now, according to Mr Filby at least, pulls in over 30k a year selling bouquets to media types outside Farringdon tube. Because the weather is getting better it sounds like and ideal way of earning money. Standing outside a tube station. Selling flowers. Making the world a more colourful place. “Just think John”, he says as we walk up to Leytonstone tube station to look at a little shop space which we think is up for rent, “We could eat cheese on crackers and drink wine while selling flowers. You could bring your record decks down and play reggae while people choose plants. It sounded wonderful but Mr Filby is what people commonly call a “handful” when he’s been drinking – as the alcohol mixes with the powerful prescription drugs he takes and send him psychotic. “You aren’t thinking this through properly”, I said. “What if a widow wants to buy a wreath from us? She traditionally won’t want to purchase it from a pair of drunks listening to ‘Under Me Sleng Teng’.” Then something else occurred to me. “And you always misread signals from women when you’re drunk”, I said shuddering while imagining the headlines in the Leyton/Leytonstone Guardian.
‘MR FILBY’S FIASCO! Local businessman gropes grieving widow. “He was like an octopus”, wept the 68-year-old grandmother of five.’
So when we reach the little shop and see that someone has beaten us to it; it comes as a bit of a relief.
Mr Filby and I bonded over a shared love of reggae, continental strength lager and root vegetables over two years ago. Between us we have a fairly impressive selection of dub, roots, lover’s rock, ska and the like. But it occurred to me the other day that amongst the many glaring omissions was this fantastic disc. In the late 60s Max Romeo was famed for his sex obsessed ‘rude’ cuts such as ‘Wet Dream’ and it was this disc that has seen him rubbing shoulders with the Sex Pistols, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and George Formby after getting banned by the Beeb. (He always claimed the song was about a leaky ceiling.) In the mid 70s, slightly embarrassed by his earlier sexually charged lyrics he set about recording more socially conscious tracks. And with the production skills of Lee Perry, this is one of the best reggae albums ever. Even people who hate this genre will be aware of the song ‘I Chase Devil’ from the sample of him singing ‘I’m gon send him to outer space/to find another race’ that crops up on The Prodigy’s ‘Out Of Space’. Other tracks, most notably, the title track, and ‘One Step Forward’ share that same delicate and dark sheen that Scratch brought to Junior Murvin’s ‘Police and Thieves’ the year before.
If you want to talk to Doran, use this fairly self explanatory email address: talktodoran@hotmail.com