Optimo Podcast 14 - Bucky Skank (Jamaica 50) Live At The Sub Club, Glasgow

Optimo (Espacio) Podcasts

Hot on the heels of podcast 13 comes this one to celebrate 50 years of Jamaican independence. It was recorded live at the Sub Club, Glasgow on Sunday 29th July 2012 and is an edit of the 4 hours of Jamaican music played that night. Twitch did a one off night of all Jamaican music in 2011, that time only playing 7" singles and had so much fun that we decided to make it an annual event, this time allowing a few 12"s and album tracks in there and giving the night a name - Bucky Skank - named after a Lee "Scratch" Perry song. There is a very popular fortified wine on the West coast of Scotland called Buckfast that is known locally as Buckie so it seemed the perfect name. Twitch will also be launching a Bucky Skank record label soon to release his and others takes on Jamaican dancehall. It won't be a very prolific label. Alongside the records there was a Roland Space Echo, a dub siren, a very old percussion synthesiser and Maschine, used to trigger various sounds and vocal samples. JD Twitch was playing the records and triggering the samples while JG Wilkes was operating the Space Echo, dub siren and percussion synth. Listening back, we probably overdid the sirens and bleeps in places, but hey, it sounded good on the night. Musically it is all over the place and spans 50 years of Jamaican (and British-Jamaican) music but not in any chronological or even logical order. Reggae purists may well be horrified, but whatever, it was one of the best nights we put on all year. I got to play so many records I adore and the atmosphere in The Sub Club was fantastic, bringing in a lot of people who had probably never set foot in the club in their lives before. There were a lot of big smiles all night. Normally when I finish a dj set I am quite wired but after playing this music for 4 hours with only a quick bolt to the toilet mid way I was incredibly relaxed (as were all the staff in the club). Rastafarians believe Reggae is the music to bring world peace and unite mankind and even my in built cynicism finds that hard to argue with. You'll probably notice it starts off quite quietly and gets louder. This is simply due to the volume being turned up as the night went on and we thought it better to leave it how it was rather than mastering the audio. Mixing wise, well, there are a lot of crashing segues and some minimal mixing but this was most certainly a case of a night where the music was far more important than any technical prowess. Give me another ten years of doing this annually and maybe it will all be semi-seamlessly mixed. I'll end on a controversial note. Over the years I've lost count of the number of times I've heard people say they hate Reggae or that when I've played a single Reggae song in a set it has ruined their night. Apart from "hate" being quite an extreme emotion to direct at music I've always been bewildered how anyone can dismiss an entire nation's music that is so varied, joyous and original and whose DNA has become woven into so much other music, especially here in the UK. Just as I'm always suspicious of anyone who is a Tory I'm suspicious of anyone who can "hate" the entire musical output of Jamaica. Either they haven't been listening very deeply or possibly there is a fundamental flaw in their musical soul? Almost every track on this podcast was played from vinyl. Jamaican record pressings can be a little bit poor on occasion so there are a few tracks with quite low fidelity and the odd skipping record here and there. As usual we aren't making a track listing available for the podcast, simply because we feel that knowing the contents often precludes actually listening to it. But, if you want to know what anything is, feel free to get in touch and we will let you know. The mix is a 320kbps mp3 (330mb) and is 135 minutes long.