Loggings > North American Shortwave Pirate

Radio Diana Int. 6930 AM 1131 UTC 15 July 2023

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Pigmeat:

--- Quote from: Andrew Yoder on July 15, 2023, 1159 UTC ---Weird, but I just mentioned the band Symarip probably 5 min. before tuning in to "Skinhead Moonstomp" Then into IDs. Fair signal with deep fades

--- End quote ---

The first time I heard it was via a Specials cover in 1979 or 1980. Symarip recorded the original in what 1970-71 at the end of the Rocksteady era? The skinheads in Jamaica that took up playing reggae, smoking ganja, and talking about Jah soon after that were called "Baldhead Rasta's" Someone recorded a song in that era about them, it might have been the Wailers called "Crazy Baldheads". Toots and The Maytals were Baldheads. No dreadlocks for them.

Andrew Yoder:
I first heard Symarip about 10 years later, but I think the LP I heard was a repress during the two-tone era when you heard the cover. Not sure if more than a handful of ex-pat Jamaicans were listening to this stuff in the US in the '60s & very early '70s

Pigmeat:
There were a lot of those represses in that era. Bands got their names changed, it could get kind of funny when you heard the exact same tune, but it would be credited to two different bands. The Pioneers were the Pioneers sometimes, other times they were the Ethiopians. Same songs, same guys.

If I remember correctly, The Specials did their cover of "Skinhead Moonstomp" as commentary on right-wing skins coming into the clubs, breaking the place up, and beating up the Two-Tone fans and the left-wing skins that followed the scene? It's what the song "Ghost Town" was about, too.

There was record store in DC I can't remember the name of that carried a lot of Jamaican music in the late 60's, early 70s before reggae really hit in the US in '73/'74,they had a fairly large mail-order business I'm sure with the West Indian communities on the East Coast, it was being marketed in NYC and South Florida. Bob Marley was working in a factory in Wilmington, DE. in I believe 1967 or 1969, so likely the Philly area, too. A lot of early rap in NYC was by guys of West Indian descent. Jamaican records had a regular and a dub side for the DJ to do his thing over. Rap came out of a lot of those mixed African-American/West Indian neighborhoods in and around NYC where West Indians showed what could be done by talking over those 33 rpm. 12 inch club singles on the instrumental B side.

Reggae was the choice of Punks on both sides of the Atlantic for relaxing and having sex, or as the Rasta's called it, "Dubbing your daughter", the perverts!
 

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