Prince Buster, Ska Pioneer, Dies Aged 78

[curious george]

Two-tone bands like Madness and The Specials owe their careers to this man's music.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/sep/08/prince-buster-dies-ska-jamaica-two-tone

[Pigmeat]

RIP Oh, Great Prince!  His "Ten Commandments of Man" is still one of the funniest things I ever heard. Not exactly PC by today's standards but then it wasn't by the standards of his day either.

[Josh]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOJSM46nWwo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRaO9112mco

[Pigmeat]

I'm not gonna tell you how long it's been since I saw that video, but I had the album about a year.

I was in a bar ages ago, '80-'81 maybe, and there are some Brits in there. One of them kept coming over trying to hit on my girlfriend every time I went to p!ss or get a drink. I finally had enough and said "You really need to back off." He comes back with "F-U, suedehead!" and stepped towards me. I laid that boy out. His friends start heading over and I'm thinking I'm going to have to fight all of them? Nah, they were just coming to get him.

One of them said, "We were wondering when that was going to happen. He's always causing trouble when he's p!ssed. What did he say to you?" I said, "He called me suedehead. I don't know what in the Hell that means but I'm not takin' it off that p!ss-ant." The guy laughed and explained it to me. I remember thinking,"Well I'll be damned, I am suedehead!"

I wore my hair like that because I'd seen Suggsy and couple of other guys from Madness and the Specials in a bit roles in "Quadrophenia" at a midnight movie a few months earlier and liked the retro look. I didn't know it was connected to anything after 20 years? The English and their damned fashion tribes! It's gonna get 'em killed one of these days. And me a dyed in the wool Norton man. I'd have rather been shot than seen on a Vespa.

[MDK2]

Quadrophenia was a really good movie. Although I liked the Who from an early age I didn't actually get around to really checking out Quadrophenia (the LP) until about five years ago. Mind blowing. Then I found the movie on youtube, chopped into about 8 parts, but I connected my wife's iPad to the TV and watched them all that way, and it was really well adapted to the screen without any need to know anything about the LP or The Who. A young Ray Winstone was also in it, playing Jimmy's friend who had become a Rocker during a period of estrangement.

[Pigmeat]

Yep. Screaming out "Be Bop A Lula" and "You Really Got Me" in adjacent baths not knowing who each other was. Sting played the Ace, the Mod King who was really a bellhop.

The album was a little ahead of it's time when it came out. It was so geared around the Mod/Rocker thing, that a lot of the American audience couldn't really grasp it. When the movie came out several years later the album blew through the roof, with several tunes from the album getting heavy rotation on AOR stations around the country. It gave a Mod Revival started by the Jam in '76/'77 in the UK a huge kick in the pants on both sides of the Atlantic. The Mod scene in the States took some of it's deepest roots in San Diego for some odd reason? A lot of very late 70's "New Wave" had that Mod Power Pop sound, the Romantics and The Knack being prime examples here, with the great Joe Jackson's first couple of albums on the other side along with the Purple Hearts.  Joe Jackson, IMO, is a forgotten man who should be played on every radio station, what a friggin' talent!

Check out the soundtrack to the movie if you can find it. Mods loved that Stax and Motown Soul sound. When I first saw an article in the old Trouser Press talking about Northern Soul circa 1980, I thought "What the Hell are they talking about? That stuff was recorded in Alabama." Northern Soul meant Detroit, Philly, NYC and Chicago here. Who knew they were talking about what people liked in Northern England? At least they got Detroit right.