Various Artists - Rastafari: The Dreads Enter Babylon 1955-83

Not my album, this – it’s my wife’s.

Not my anecdote – it’s also my wife’s: she was teaching adult education in Birmingham. The class was mainly men from a Caribbean background, including a couple of rastas, and one white lady in her fifties with a west country accent, who's a bit of an odd-one out.

Anyway, one day the woman tells this story to her classmates. As a little girl, she lived in Bath. She used to walk to and from school through a park and would stop and talk to an old gent who used to spend his days sitting in the park. She’d go home and her family would say, “Did you see your friend today?” and she’d tell them about their chat. (It was a different age.) Anyway, that old gent was Emperor Haile Selassie, who was exiled in Bath at that time. Collective jaw-dropping.

My anecdote: our band had given up supporting big name acts. It was almost always an awful experience. Then someone offered us the support for Laurel Aitken at the Market Tavern in Kidderminster and we made an exception.

Aitken, who appears on this album, was making a living playing to the ska/skinhead/scooterist crowd around the UK.

So, we turn up at the venue and there’s Aitken, in a pork pie hat, bomber jacket etc, looking like the full rude boy. I think, rather cynically, that he must be dressing to impress his audience, you know? Anyway, he was really delightful and friendly to us - which he didn't need to be.

Just before he plays, he pops into his dressing room and changes out of his rude boy clobber into his stage gear: a Val Doonican sweater and slacks.

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#SoulJazzRecords
#Reggae
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Various Artists - Blow the Man Down: A Collection Of Sea Songs & Shanties

If you want my opinion, there’s far too much flag-shagging going on at the moment, especially in my country of birth, where it seems to be all the (Fa)rage to paint the St George’s cross on every surface, Shankhill Rd style.

When I grew up in England, flag-waving was looked down on as something that was only practised in inferior nations who didn’t know they were the best. There is no greater indication that England is floundering than painting flags on mini-roundabouts. Also, surely no-one who loved their flag would paint it on the ground, amongst the dog shit, phlegm and fag-butts, would they?

The problem for English nationalism is that English culture is an eclectic culture. Its primary cultural achievement is taking on other people’s culture and re-purposing it. I’ll give you some examples: London – invented by the Romans and built by the Irish; The Beatles and The Rolling Stones – co-opted American music; fish & chips – brought in by Jewish refugees; baltis – adapted from Pakistani food; Farage – copying 1930s Germany. The important thing to say is that’s OK. The English can be proud of this.

The reason I’m stating the bleeding obvious here is that I’m playing this CD of sea shanties (work songs) and forebitters (chilling-out songs) from England’s great seafaring past. Nothing more English than that. Except there’s Irish, American, and Portuguese influence galore. And that’s the way it works.

Incidentally, there’s some fucking beautiful songs on here. For instance, Lovely Nancy, from the 18th Century, sung by Ian Campbell acc. Dave Swarbrick – a song that reprises an ancient theme of a woman who dresses as a man to go to sea. The fucking tofu-eating wokerati right there.

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#CD
#BlowTheManDown
#VariousArtists
#Folk
#Shanties
#CD
#FlagShaggers
#englishnationalism
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