“Make way for the positive day.” – Bob Marley
Hello all
Going to carry on from where I left off from A Frankie View – Reggae Vibe 2
As I said in the previous post, 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.
It was my turn to go to Gordon house. Gordon dad used to drive the number 7 bus, so before I start just wanted to tell you this little story.
For some reason your first week back at school, the school had this idea for the first PE lesson they would get the whole year to run around the block, when I say block, this was a big block, in all it worked out to be about 2 miles. Well, the number 7 bus went down St Marks road, Gordan and I were somewhere at the back, and as we turned into St Marks Road, well a number 7 bus came along, yep you guessed it, Gordon’s dad driving it. Lucky enough Gordon also knew the conductor, so we hoped onto the old route master and instead of running down St Marks Road like the rest of the year, we caught the bus.
I got into a bit of trouble when word got out and the teachers found out, but it did lead to me being in the school cross country team, but that is another story.
Back at Gordon’s, before I get into the music, one of the things I do remember, Gordon’s mum, a lovely lady, makes a mean fish cake, they were just to die for.
Yep, Gordon was right about the lack of bass on the Amstrad, wow was I blown away, Gordon was playing reggae song after reggae song, stuff that I had never heard of. I even got caught skanking in the front room by Gordon’s mum, who had a giggle at my moves. We did play some Specials, and Gordon’s favour Two-tone band The Beat. But it was the reggae that was mesmerising me, and the rhythm with that more defined bass. These days I can only guess what we were listening to, I know there was some Bob Marley, but I can only guess what stuff we listen to. I just knew I wanted to listen to more, and there I was on starting my long road to listening to reggae.
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.
