Anthony B

After performing with church and school choirs in Clark’s Town, Trelawny throughout his youth, he made his debut as a DJ with the local sound system Shaggy Hi-Power. Relocating to Portmore in 1988, he befriended fellow aspiring DJs including Determine, Mega Banton, and Ricky General, issuing his debut record The Living Is Hard in 1993. Teaming with producer Richard “Bello” Bell, Anthony B notched a series of hits including “Repentance Time,” “Fire Pon Rome,” “Rumour,” and “Raid di Barn” before releasing his first full-length effort Real Revolutionary in 1996.  Universal Struggle followed in 1997, with the single “Nah Vote Again” viewed as a key factor in preserving peace at the national elections later that year. In my opinion, Universal Struggle is a modern roots reggae masterpiece and was a defining moment in Anthony B’s career. 

According to his website:

Anthony B’s rich vocals and audacious lyrics carry a depth and substance which is rare in the industry. Internationally, his fan-base has grown because he speaks about the universal concerns of suffering and salvation. “The greatest thing about reggae music is that it’s about concepts and ideas,” says the artist, “you are speaking to people on issues they live and can relate to.”

In January 2009, Anthony released yet another album with Greensleeves Records. The album, Rise produced by Frenchy Maximum Sound, continues Anthony’s legacy as he proves himself to be one of Reggae’s most prolific and engaging artistes, an electrifying performer whose music grips the public social conscience.  2011 saw the release of his latest album Rasta Love.

I share with you “Storm Winds” from Anthony B’s Live On The Battlefield album as an introduction to his sound (and because this tune performed live just blazes the place!).

“Storm Winds”

Anthony B tours extensively in Europe and North America.

Talking of his faith and music, Anthony B commented, “When we say ‘burn fire’ we don’t mean take a match and light somebody, we are saying ‘get rid of these things that are no good for humanity.”

I have included audio and video files of Anthony B’s fiery performance at the 2009  Sierra Nevada World Music Festival.  The audio files can be downloaded as lossless audio (FLAC).

Anthony B Live at SNWMF

Anthony B
Sierra Nevada World Music Festival
Valley Stage
Boonville, California
June 21, 2009

DOWNLOAD FLAC FILES

1.  Equal Rights
2.
3.
4.  One Thing I Can Do
5.
6.
7.  World A Reggae Music
8.  Gin and Juice
9.  Water Pumpee
10.  Good Life
11.  God Above Everything
12.  Don’t Worry
13.
14.  Smoke Weed Everyday
15.  Raid Di Barn
16.
17.  This Train/Rivers of Babylon/Rasta Chant
18.  Damage
19.  Higher Meditation//
20.  //Higher Meditation
21.  Warrior
22.  Give Thanks
23.  Survival

Burning Spear‘s conflict with reggae distributor Ernie B. recently took a turn for the worst, with the legal eagles entering the fray amidst allegations of piracy, bootlegging and threats of arrest.

http://unitedreggae.com/articles/n901/022212/burning-spear-going-to-exile

© Mathieu Roy

Marco is partial owner of www.bobmarleymagazine.com, the best site on the web for finding information on Bob Marley.

This interview was published in the Ann Arbor Sun on June 20, 1975.  Enjoy!

Click here to read interview from the Ann Arbor Sun.

Bob Marley 1975

© Neville Garrick

Vivien Goldman is, without a doubt, my favorite music journalist.  She covered Marley like no other because she really had a deep love for the man and his message.  This is abundantly clear in each of her pieces.  This is the most in-depth and detailed interview ever conducted with Marley.  Enjoy!

Click To Read On Issuu

Bob Marley:  In His Own Backyard
By Vivien Goldman
Melody Maker, August 1979

Just nicer in terms of living, development, opportunity. When you go to Africa you see how useful you can be to mankind.

You mean they need a lot of help out there?

Not in respect of the material element. It’s like – Africa awaits its creators. It needs a lot of people who know how to do things. This is just a little studio. Africa is capable of plenty studios, but it’s up to who really wants to deal with it.

Some people in England regard Rasta as another offshoot of the colonial mentality, something that holds people down.

What one man thinks is great. But only a fool leans upon his one understanding. The truth is there. King Solomon and King David are the roots of black people and the roots of creation – they are Jacob’s people. So when a black man says that Rasta is colonialist, he’s turning it the other way in a sense of diplomacy, he’s putting down his own thing, because he’s learnt how to do it. Who teaches him? You dig what I’m saying?

Just like they say that it’s more important to confront the reality in England, for example, than to think of going to Africa.

I could agree with that, but why fight to stay in a place that’s dirty, where the rivers are polluted? Why stay in a place where if God shook two earthquakes, all these stones are gonna fall on you and kill you? Africa for Africans at home and abroad. Like England for English people, America for Americans, Asia for the Chinese…but we’re not saying that people can’t mix together. But this world is funny, because you claim you’re white and I claim I’m black, and we have a fight, because if you’re not sensible, it becomes a barrier. But the truth is the truth, your father’s name is Noah and my father’s name is Noah and Shem’s father’s named Noah, so we all three people come from Noah so we’re the same people. But right now it’s just a few who search out their roots.

Do you feel you could exert a lot of power in Jamaican politics?

Me can do a lot of things, anywhere.

But, for example, after Claudie Massop (one for the organisers of last year’s Peace Treaty in Kingston) was shot by the police, how did you feel about the Peace Concert?

I and I is RASTA, and the struggle continues.

But where do you struggle? Do you feel that a Rasta musician should never get directly politically involved?

I don’t involve myself. We don’t support either the JLP or the PNP. Rasta is different. Claudie was my brethren. And a lot more people. But we know that we are Rastafarians, that we have something to offer. We have the 12 Tribes of Israel, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the Theocratic Government. If a youth wants to go out there and fight politics, he can go. We have something that demands rights if you stand where me stand. If you don’t do that, you’ll be dying in the streets with your dreadlocks on, because you’re not defending the thing you must defend. You can’t be strong, you must be a weakling. It’s just the truth. We defend His Majesty’s philosophy. It’s not political – it’s only words that make it political. It’s life – people – action.

When you sing about militancy what do you expect people to do?

I expect if you’re living by the gun, if gun is the fight, then FIRE gun. If where you come from, you fight with sticks and stones, then fight with sticks and stones. If the fight is spiritual, then fight spiritual, because everywhere the fight goes on. We don’t have any alternatives. If a man fights you with machine guns and you throw stones, then – machine gun for machine gun! So the struggle continues. A lot of people defend South Africa, some secretly, some openly. A lot of white people defend South Africa, and when you keep the black man down in South Africa you keep him down all over the earth. Because Africa is Solomon’s goldmine. So – war! Either I and I lives, or no-one lives. You know what the big fight is? It’s that black people – and only black people – mustn’t say the truth about Rasta.

I disagree – you can get lots of information about Rasta.

Of course, but say you love Rasta, and see a chance whereby mankind can set up something new to live by so that we can all say: THIS is how we want to live – the system won’t support that. If all the leaders were to get up tomorrow morning and say they defend Rasta, what do you think would happen? But all of them can get up tomorrow and die. (Rastas reject the concept of death, won’t attend funerals.)

In the mid-Sixties you worked in a car factory in Wilmington, Delaware. What was that like?

As a youth I was always active, never lazy. I learnt a trade, welding, so dealing with those things is part of my thing. I enjoy dealing with parts, part-work, and I never really mind because I just did it as much as I wanted to do it. Any time I felt fed up, I didn’t really look for a job. I come from country, and country is always good. You grow everything. You don’t really have to go out there and kill yourself to get a place or have money, you can eat and bathe and make clothes and build your own house, but in a strange land you can’t find a place or settle down to find a way to leave. The best way out is to organise and leave.

Do you regard Jamaica as a strange land?

Jamaica is a place we know, but the system change and it a gets strange. It just change, and get strange…because I’m tired of saying it, I and I are tired of saying this: RASTAFARI! I and I not trying to push myself; it’s just the truth, God knows…that’s why sometimes I don’t even bother to talk because it’s just a waste of time, but I still have the urge. But when I talk to People, it seems sometimes we’re not on the same wavelength. From Pope Paul’s time, we knew we’d be under pressure. White man doesn’t have any sympathy with Rasta, but he has to hear that, and perish in his own fornication that he deals with, his own fuckery and his own atomic and his own S.A.L.T….(Marley’s voice sneers – he’s referring to the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, and punning it with salt, which Rastas are forbidden to eat according to their dietary laws.) We haven’t really come to save the white nation. But they are some of the people on earth, and they have to hear the truth. The white man has nothing he can give us, you know – only death. That’s why I & I is Rasta, because we know death has nothing against I & I.

But you’re working within those white man’s systems. Would you have got to be an international star if Chris Blackwell (head of Island Records) was a black man?

Watch me. If I wasn’t capable of being something…Chris Blackwell didn’t help me. I had to work hard while Blackwell flew out and enjoyed himself. But he had the contacts at the time that we felt we needed, and perhaps we did. But Blackwell did a lot for himself. I remember a time when he had 19 Jamaican acts signed, and before my days he wouldn’t touch one. The pressure of the way we had to work was why the Wailers (Marley’s referring to the trio of himself, Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingstone) didn’t agree, because we didn’t get any help, we were out on tour under some steep conditions that first time…because if it was my raasclaat I’d have blown up the whole earth already, with its corruption. It’s just pressure from all sides, we’re born to get pressure, we come upon the earth to get pressure. You get pressure from your family, pressure from strangers, pressure from all over. So you’ve got to be mindful.

One of the biggest pressures on you is being THE international reggae messenger. That’s why I felt ‘Running Away’, where you defended yourself against people accusing you of doing that when you left Jamaica for Miami after they tried to shoot you, was Kaya’s most penetrating, sincere track.

People don’t understand that we live in this earth, too. We don’t sing these songs and live in the sky. I don’t have an army behind me. If I did, I wouldn’t care, I’d just get more militant. Because I’d know, well, I have 50,000 armed youth, and when I talk, I talk from strength. But you have to know how you’re dealing. Maybe if I’d tried to make a heavier tune than ‘Kaya’ they would have tried to assassinate me because I would have come too hard. I have to know how to run my life, because that’s what I have, and nobody can tell me to put it on the line, you dig? Because no-one understands these things. These things are heavier than anyone can understand. People that aren’t involved don’t know it, it’s my work, and I know it outside in. I know when I am in danger and what to do to get out. I know when everything is cool, and I know when I tremble, do you understand? Because music is something that everyone follows, so it’s a force, a terrible force. Someone like me, now – if I want to be a loudmouth, I’m a loudmouth, and someone can come out one day and BOOGAAAA! – shoot me. So, I’m a loudmouth – and then I’m cool. Then I’ll come out again. So someone might say, Yes, we have to defend this youth, because he deals with the right things, or else I go – WAWAWAWAWAAAAAAA! And one day – know what I mean? But I am a man that can sing any song, because I can never change. I’ve even tested myself to see if I can change, and there is no change.

I don’t know what you mean – everyone changes, all the time.

When I sing a tune like ‘Kaya’, do I change? No. I’m more…wickeder! That’s how the earth gets tricked. There are a lot of people just come upon the train, and me just say, right, it’s this direction I’m going in, let’s see who follows me, and who does their own thing. So I just say “KAYA!” and everybody just goes so, and now I come back and say “BLACK SURVIVAL!” and – pure idiots, all they do is follow. Not one of them is a leader, they’re all followers. So I hear people say, Bob Marley’s gone soft, all he is, is a traitor to Bob Marley’s cause. But how could they know who Bob Marley is, and how could Bob get soft? Bob grow inna this thing, the things that Bob sings about are his life, it’s how he lives. I couldn’t get any education that could change my way of thinking, you dig? I live the way I live. My struggle can never ever change. If it could have changed, it already would have, because I’ve been everywhere. I live in Miami the same way I live in Jamaica. But people don’t understand that we’re in contact with our own people, everywhere we go, our people come. It’s not the place, it’s the people. In Miami, my brethren are there, same way. So it’s not a feeling like children waiting for Christmas, we’re just natural people, soldiers, we just live a war every day. Because just imagine being a Rasta in this world which doesn’t like Rasta. We could be enjoying being something else, but no. We say – “WE ARE RASTA!”

How come you’re aware of the danger of being assassinated when you say there’s no such thing as death?

Hold on, now. You think you can go out there and lay down in front of the car and let it run over you? If I go outside and see the big bus coming and put my head underneath it, what do you think will happen?

Your head will be crushed. And what will you be then?

(yells) DEAD! This is where people make a mistake. They say that the flesh doesn’t value anything, but that’s the biggest lie. This flesh is what you’ve got, what God put inside you is your life. That’s the way I think, that’s the way I’m organised, because I don’t stray from my roots, and my roots is God. But sister, I understand what you’re saying. You’re saying a man can be dead in his flesh and his spirit still lives, but I respect my flesh too, and I know my spirit and what it’s like…

So when you say you don’t believe in death…

(firmly) I don’t believe in death neither in flesh nor in spirit.
But I don’t understand, because one minute you’re saying you don’t believe in death, and the next minute you say you’ll be shot, and…

Yes, but you have to AVOID it! Some people don’t figure it’s such a great thing, they don’t know how long they can preserve it.  Preservation is the gift of God, the gift of God is life, the wages of sin is death. When a man does wickedness he’s gone out there and dead.

Oh, I thought you felt death didn’t exist at all.

Death does not exist for me. I truly know God. He gives me this (life) and my estimation is: if he gives me this, why should he take it back? Only the Devil says that everybody has to die.

Someone from Inner Circle told me that the money from the Peace Show never got to all the right people. Did you know about that?

All I know is that it went to everyone that wanted it. Too much people involved, too much people have too much thing to say and they don’t know anything. So many people go on about how they’re roots, and when did you last see them in the ghetto? They hide from the ghetto, they’re not in contact.

But you must find it difficult to keep in touch with the ghetto…

(incredulous) Find it difficult? Watch now. You look into my yard. It’s a ghetto. This is a ghetto you’re looking at. Look out there. I’ve just brought the ghetto uptown. My thing is, why must I stay in one place every day of my life, and all the days of my life I have to run from the police? Look in any other yard along the road and see if you see any one of my brethren out there in any other yard. When I lived in the ghetto, every day I had to jump fences, police trying to hold me, you dig? So my job all the while was to try to find one place where the police wouldn’t run me down too much. So I don’t want to stay in contact with the ghetto, in contact with the ghetto means in contact with a prison, in contact with everything that’s bad all the while, not the people. When the law comes out, they send them into the ghetto first, not uptown. So how long does it take you to realise – boy, well they don’t send them uptown, y’know! So we’ll make a ghetto uptown. EVERY DAY I jumped fences from the police, for YEARS, not a week. For YEARS. So me get afraid now, me have to make some type of move. You either stay there and let bad people shoot you down, or you make a move and show people some improvement. Or else I would take up a gun and start shoot them off and then a lot of youths would follow me, and they’d be dead the same way. I want some improvement. It doesn’t have to be materially, but it can be freedom of thinking.

But the material things have helped you to spread a little bit of freedom out to a few people, but it hasn’t helped all the people in the ghetto. Don’t you think that only more direct political action can do that?

Something more direct would be if Queen Elizabeth would take her raas away from Jamaica, take away her Constitution, call away those ways of life they have down here.

I thought that was supposed to happen when Jamaica became independent.

But it never happened. We still have a Governor-General. No one gives Jamaica people a chance, that’s why we say that the earth is corrupted and everyone has to die and leave we. It’s a selfish way of thinking, but… (mutters) fuck it…how long will they pressure we? We are the people who realise the place where they thieved us from, so we say, AH, you took us from there, AH, this is what we are. But they still tell us, no, no, this is what you are! This is what you must be…This yard (house), they call it Freedom Ground. Hardly anything can happen here. The greatest thing that could happen would never happen, so you could say God has we for a purpose and a reason.

‘Ambush In The Night’ contains the clearest references you’ve ever made to colonialism.

(absently) We always try. There’s a lot of good music we have in there, a whole heap of good stuff…I don’t like to talk, because the way I talk, I don’t know if I can be understood. Or maybe somebody might understand me the wrong way. There’s only one thing we have to say, that is, we are Rastafarian people the same way some people are Catholic. Some people are this, some people are this. They always want to interview I and I, but they don’t want to know what we really want to say. It (Rasta) becomes unreal, like something we try and make…raas…truth is like food, man – when you say food you know you mean food, and when you say truth, same way. You know, Vivien, sometimes me no get over too straight, because you are a woman, and you see things…me understand how you see things, but I can’t please you by talking to make you feel pleased. Me just have to show you say – you have to be strong.

Since you’re always covering old tunes, I thought you should cover the tune ‘Rude Boy Get Bail’. It’s still so relevant.

Well, Bunny did that in ’66, when I was in America, but me did other rude boy songs – that rude bwaoy business, bad, bad music. Only them shouldn’t have said “rude boy”, them should have said “Rasta”. You dig me? But in them times, me didn’t know Rasta. Something was going on, you felt it, and didn’t know if you were bad bad or good good – then I understood it’s good, you’re good – it’s Rasta!

When, or what, made you realise it was Rasta, not rudeness?

What is there to benefit from badness? I wondered, I looked at it and thought, boy, bloodclaat, if I thump this man here I feel the contact too. And then I said, it’s the same God that lives in my hand lives in me, and that means that it’s not him I thump, it’s God I’m really thumping. So I used to wonder about this human feeling business…the whole thing is Rasta. The way I tell you, it’s a whole experience, but you break it down and it’s just – Rasta.

Did you used to play lots of gigs in the early days?

Not a lot, just like Christmas morning and Easter, we’d be there up at the Carib Theatre. But we was always the underground, always the rebels. We came from Trenchtown. So you’d hear about Byron Lee and all that society business, but we came from down so named WAILERS, from TRENCHTOWN. So we stay, and we’re glad of it. You’ve got to be someone.

Bob Marley 1979

www.bobmarleymagazine.com

As a follow-up to my recent rant about Black Uhuru, I share with you the best Michael Rose show that I own.  Recorded in Amsterdam in 1994, this live performance features an excellent set list and a lively Michael Rose.  This audience recording has a great sound quality and is well worth the download.

Throughout the first half of the 1980s, Black Uhuru, fronted by Michael Rose, achieved international success with albums like Sinsemilla, Red, Chill Out, and Anthem, along with compilations, dub albums, and live albums. They became the best-known reggae act since Bob Marley and the Wailers, and won the first reggae Grammy Award for Anthem in 1984. Even today, Island continues to capitalize on the group’s success by re-compiling and re-releasing the group’s Island years material.

Michael Rose

© Dennis Morris

With lead singer Michael Rose seemingly at the top of his game, he parted ways with Black Uhuru in 1986, with the intention of redefining his musical direction as a solo artist. In the early 1990s, Michael Rose suddenly appeared on the scene with new material including Jamaican singles produced by Sly & Robbie (“Monkey Business,” “Visit Them,” “One a We Two a We”), and three albums (Proud, Bonanza, and King of General) released in Japan.

As a solo artist, Michael regularly tours the U.S. and Europe, and has maintained his Jamaican fan base with hit singles on the island and abroad. He is a modern roots singer, and always stays true to his Jamaican roots.

Rose re-joined Black Uhuru in February 2004, and performed several shows in Jamaica and Europe with the group. They also released a Jamaican single “Dollars” and reportedly have recorded a yet untitled and unreleased album. Yet, in spite of his reunion with Black Uhuru, Rose still toured, recorded and released material as a solo artist. In 2007 he recorded the #1 single “Shoot Out” for producer John John. His latest album, titled Great Expectations, was released in early 2008 on the Rhythm Club record label.

His distinct vocal style, his “tu tu tweng”, and other scats have inspired many singers.

Please visit Michael Rose’s website here.

Michael Rose by Nick Stelma

© Nick Stelma

DOWNLOAD

Set List:

1.  Intro_Sinsemilla
2.  Ganja Bonanza
3.  General Penitentiary
4.  Unknown
5.  Shine Eye Gal
6.  Unknown
7.  Party Next Door
8.  Plastic Smile
9.  Monday(a capella)_Solidarity
10.  Abortion (CUT)

Interview with Michael Stefanowski, Munich 1977

Give thanks to my good friends at www.bobmarleymagazine.com for sharing this rare interview.

Exclusive Footage from “Marley”

Interview with Kevin McDonald and Exclusive Clips from “Marley”

Ziggy Marley Press Interview

Thanks to my good friends at www.bobmarleymagazine.com for sharing the link to this footage.

Michael Rose, Puma Jones, and Duckie Simpson

The Classic Black Uhuru Line-Up

Black Uhuru has become nothing more than a bad cover band.

The once roots-heavy collective, backed by musicians such as Sly Dunbar, Robbie Skakespeare, Uziah “Sticky” Thompson, Mikey Chung, Bubbler Waul, and Dougie Bryan, are now sporting talent show winners and newspaper ad-responders.

And the power trio?  Well, it’s been reduced to two on one night, one on the other, maybe you get three if you are lucky.  But hey, who doesn’t enjoy going to a Uhuru show and watching Andrew Bees do his worst Michael Rose impersonation?

Michael Rose with Black Uhuru, 2004

I hate to bring negativity to such a positive blog, but someone must rip the band-aid off of this wound and reveal it for what it really is:  a bloody, infected mess with a risk of becoming gangrenous.

Timeline

• Claim to Fame: Waterhouse roots-reggae group which won the first Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album, with Anthem, in 1984. 
• Classic Line-Up: Michael Rose, Duckie Simpson and American Puma Jones.
• Original Line-Up: Duckie Simpson, Garth Dennis, and Don Carlos (1972)
• Critically Acclaimed Albums: Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, Red, Anthem, Brutal, Now
• Steven Van Zandt (of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band and later of The Sopranos) wrote and recorded the original version of Solidarity for Anthem. 
• Many critics blasted Uhuru for abandoning their hardcore sound on Anthem. 
• Toured with The Clash, The Police, The Rolling Stones
  
• Rose left the group following the Grammy success of Anthem. He was replaced by Junior Reid, another Waterhouse singer.
• Junior Reid and Puma Jones departed in the late 80s and the original line-up rejoined and recorded modern roots reggae classic Now in 1991.
• Puma Jones passes away in 1990.
• Andrew Bees is enlisted after Don Carlos and Garth Dennis depart in the mid-90s.
• Uhuru releases only 2 studio albums between 1994 and 2012:  1998′s Unification and 2001′s Dynasty, both critical and commercial failures.
• Duckie Simpson plans the release of As The World Turns in 2008.  The album never materializes.

Junior Reid, Glastonbury, 1986

© Andrzej Liguz

Gone are the days of the original, roots heaviness we all remember from the 80′s.  Welcome to the days of uninspired performances, marginal musicians, and struggling vocalists.

Word is that Duckie Simpson is still captaining this sinking ship, but he was nowhere to be found the last time I witnessed this atrocity on stage.  Oh, they put a “Duckie Simpson” on stage.  The problem is the Duckie they put on stage was not the Duckie that helped found this group.  It may have been Duckie’s son.  It may have been some other performer who vaguely resembles Duckie;  but it was not Duckie.

Duckie Simpson 2011

© Floyd Celluloyd

I am reminded of the time I went to see Shabba Ranks at The Boathouse in Norfolk, VA in 1991.  I paid for Shabba.  I waited for Shabba.  I cheered for Shabba when he took the stage.  Problem is, it wasn’t Shabba.  It was a Wesley Snipes look-alike with a coarse voice and Jamaican accent.  I guess Shabba was “sick” that night.

I have been a die-hard FANATIC of Black Uhuru for more than 20 years.

I was there when Michael Rose departed just as they were peaking.

I was there when they struggled through Positive, a very lackluster record released upon the heels of multiple Grammy-nominated albums.

I was there when Puma died.

I was there when the phoenix rose from the ashes and virtually saved roots reggae with Now.

I continued to go see them perform throughout the 1990′s.

The Police on stage with Black Uhuru 1982

© Lynn Goldsmith

Then Duckie Simpson did the unthinkable.

He enlisted a bad Michael Rose impersonator, dropped an abomination of an album in 2001′s Dynasty, tried to recapture Puma’s magic by enlisting several different sub-par female vocalists, and now it appears that he has given up on the collective completely.

He is allowing a bad band to use the Black Uhuru name.

A terrible band.

A band with poor and uninspired performances.

I am therefore not torching Black Uhuru.  I am torching the collection of meager musicians who are using Uhuru’s name, all at the behest of Duckie Simpson.  I guess.

I am not even sure that this version of “Black Uhuru” even has a recording contract.  They have not released an original studio album since 2001′s abysmal Dynasty.  They have no website.  They don’t seem to have a regular tour schedule.  They show up at various festivals and small music halls and steal admission fees from fans who wrongfully believe that they are seeing Black Uhuru perform.

I tried to contact Black Uhuru’s last known management group to inquire about the status of the album, but I could not seem to locate No Joke Entertainment.

I was not a fan of Andrew Bees when he signed on, and I am even less a fan now.  I’m sure he’s a nice enough guy, as is Duckie Simpson, but the performances are just plain awful.

I was not a fan of the Sly and Robbie tour a few years back, where they laid down classic Black Uhuru riddims while Andrew Bees proceeded to butcher it for the fans.

Classic Black Uhuru w/ Sly and Robbie

I was not a fan of Duckie Simpson’s plan to release a solo album under the Black Uhuru moniker.

And I am surely not a fan of being told that ‘that guy’ on stage is Duckie Simpson.

Please Duckie, if you’re out there, do the fans a favor and retire the Black Uhuru name.  The jig is up.

Garth Dennis and Don Carlos 1996

The men who rescued roots reggae from the onslaught of late 80s dancehall slackness and invented a new genre, “modern roots reggae”, with the 1991 release of Now.

For a detailed biography and discography, please visit Wikipedia.

For all fans of the classic Black Uhuru collective, I have included a live performance download and classic interview from 1984.  The interview was conducted by Jack Barron during the 1984 Anthem Tour through Europe.

Click here to read this interview, exclusively shared on The Midnight Raver blog.

This classic performance, superbly recorded by an audience member on August 13, 1982 at the Santa Cruz Civic Center, is presented here in pristine  lossless (FLAC) audio.

DOWNLOAD

Set List

1.  [05:31] Shine Eye Gal
2.  [06:10] Plastic Smile
3.  [06:18] Puff She Puff
4.  [07:37] I Love King Selassie
5.  [05:44] Mondays
6.  [05:45] Youth Of Eglington
7.  [06:57] Chill Out
8.  [10:18] Darkness
9.  [06:25] Happiness >
10.  [06:23] World is Africa
11.  [05:33] Sponji Reggae
12.  [07:51] Sensemilla
13.  [08:08] Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner

I have included their legendary performance in Essen, Germany 1981:

Black Uhuru Live From Essen

DUBWISE GARAGE BLOG