REGGAE SOUND SYSTEM LIST (BACK IN THE REAL DAYS..)

Good to see a list with sounds like us from back in the day.

Hate to spoil the party but Penny is a bloke, long time reggae writer.  But I am sure you all knew that.  Kind of like Penny Rimbaud, C19 poet and late C20 drummer with Crass.  Thanks for the link tho Humble, I was trying to find this the other day but John Eden's site is a minefield.

Think your link should be like this Jah Whitey:

http://www.myspace.com/jahwhiteysoundsystem

Bless.

Greetings,

yes sound system people.... dont you know that ( Jah Sufferer ) is the only sound that should be in that line up.... BEST SOUND SYSTEM 1970-1978... ME A TELL YOU....

BLACK MUSIC JULY 1974: Vol. 1 / Issue 8

THE REGGAE UNDERGROUND: -
Ignored By The Mass Media, Often Beset By Hassles, The Music Scene Of London`s Black Community Is Nevertheless Alive And Grooving. A Six-Page Special Report
By Carl Gayle: -

Fenton gets up every day at around midday except Wednesday and weekends. He struggles out of bed, into his clothes, and down to the local cafe or Wimpy bar in Brixton Rd where he buys an Evening Standard and turns immediately to the horse racing page. From 2pm to 6pm he`s in and out of the bookies and the record shops in Brixton Market.

On Wednesday he strolls down to the Labour Exchange in Coldharbour Lane and receives about £10 which takes care of his food, rent, spliff, betting, and entertainment expenditure for a whole week. Fenton rarely spends on anything else. He can`t afford luxuries. Fenton`s been in and out of work for the last six years, two years after leaving school and home at age sixteen. Those two years were spent learning to be a Chef in a west end hotel. Sometimes it gets him down, not having a steady job, a good income, or a real sense of purpose. But like many others, most of his friends included, he usually makes it from day to day without thinking about it too much. Perhaps life would be much more depressing if there was no entertainment, no music. Fenton`s kind of music.

Fenton lives for the weekends. When he`s out of work and broke, he sleeps a lot during the daytime and goes out at night to a local sound system club in Stockwell or Clapham. When there`s nothing else to do he goes to see a spar (buddy) and plays cards, dominoes, and shares some spliff.

"I want to work for myself, I`m fed up of working for other people," he says defiantly. "Boy, I must have had about a hundred jobs since I left school but the people man, some people just want to tell you what to do all the f----- time, The best job I ever had was my first job as a chef. I used to come home with about £30 a week sometimes but they gave me the sack `cause I used to take too much time off".

Fenton rarely leaves the Brixton area except when he`s clubgoing, and tonight, Friday night, he`s sitting with a smartly dressed and attractive big-breasted chick drinking barley wine here in Mr Bees--South London`s most popular club along with the Georgian in Croydon.

"This is only the second time I`ve been here. I just decided to give Four Aces a rest tonight. This deejay Freddie is alright, he plays some good sounds."

Fenton`s a Coxson follower, an old timer on the scene, a real roots reggae lover. He doesn`t go for funk, never did, even when, in his earliest days of clubgoing, `soul` was the thing.

"The best times was when we used to go to places like Tiles and the Flamingo, then the Ram Jam. Soul is alright but I don`t dig too much of it, that`s why I go for clubs like the Crypt and Four Aces nowadays. All these kids now," he said with the air of someone who`d been through it all before, "they`ve just come up man. Me and you we`ve passed through all that jump up stuff. Most of these youths go for funky soul more than even reggae but that`s because a lot of them grew up in this country. A lot of them can`t even remember Jamaica!"

The kids on the dance floor were mostly between seventeen and twenty and had missed out on the birth of the black music scene in Britain. They`d never known ska or rock steady music, or what the house parties had been like then. They`d never been to the Ram Jam and seen the best Stateside and Jamaican artists of the mid `sixties. They`d never felt the thrill of going to the Flamingo, the Q, or the Tiles, and mixing freely with the introverted white chicks for the first time. It had been much more fun then: going to the Tiles for the first time, getting tired and sweaty, and high on Cherry B and spliff--there was always spliff. And then coming out of the club at around 5am on a Saturday morning and falling asleep on the tube.

"I fell asleep on a train once," said Fenton. "When I woke I was in Kent. They caught me and phoned the police `cause I didn`t have no ticket, and my old man had to come and get me out of the police station. I never used to get in no trouble really except when the babylon (police) just used to stop you on the street. The only other time I`ve been in a police station was when there was a big fight at the Ska Bar in Woolwich when the police raided the club."
Carl Gayle:
Part 1

BLACK MUSIC JULY 1974

Stepping Razor: