“love the life you live. live the life you love.” – Bob Marley
Hello all
Going to carry on from where I left off from A Frankie View – Reggae Vibe 1.
An old school mate of mine Gordon St Louis & me had arranged to meet up during the summer school holidays. It was 1982, The Specials had split up, Fun Boy Three where now the order of the day, UB40 had released present Arms, and Present Arms in Dub and the Beat had released Special Beat Service, and I was starting to listen to Bob Marley and the Wailers.
Gordon came around my house, and the thing I remember was my mum just loved his afro, and just kept on asking him questions about it, and when I say afro, Gordon’s was perfect and always kept its shape, he was proud of it.
Gordon was a very funny bloke with who I had some really great laughs in school. He was a pretty mild manner bloke, and the only time I really saw him lose his temper was over his afro, and he blamed me.
Let me explain, we had a teacher in school called Mr Ashworth, one of my favourite teachers in school, there were also others that I on got well with, not going to name them all, but must point out Miss Watson, and there where a few I did not get on with who I will not name and shame, end of the day they were doing there job and looking back, it may not have been easy trying to educate me.
Mr Ashworth put it like this, “ Francis you act like a clown, and its a very good act”
Anyway, we were in Mr Ashworth history class, and I can’t remember what I was up, most probably no good knowing me, poor Gordon was sitting behind me, when Mr Ashworth throws at me the cloth that he had been using for cleaning the blackboard.
Now, this thing was full of chalk dust, and somehow I duck out of the way, and watched this cloth hit Gordon and it just explode all this chalk dust into his afro!
Well, Gordon just went mental at me, it was Darnell you this, Darnell you are this, Darnell you #@@##, well the names he called me, he was mad.
We did makeup in the end, so that summer he came around my house, my mum feed and water Gordon, while we listen to music in my bedroom, I try to impress Gordon, with the records I had, and my pride and joy at the time, an Amstrad music tower, but Gordon was not impressed with the Amstrad, Darnell this things has no bass, and he kept on turning up the bass, and messing with my pride and joy, its got no treble and he would start messing with that. He kept on turning on the loudness button on and off and messing with the small graphic equaliser the Amstrad had, but he was not getting the sound he wanted.
“Wait till you get around my house, I will show you what bass is!!”
“ And wait till you see my dads reggae collection”
To be continued.
I have also been putting together these playlists, I normally make up a playlist from a variety of different music genres and see if they fit together. So lately I have restricted myself to the albums I have posted about and have decided to share it with you, as we did in the old days with tapes
The only way I can think of sharing playlists these days is with something like Spotify.
