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TromBonus - 73 - Jamaican Music Primer
140 Plays9 days ago
What better way to come down from a bracket about Ska Standards than by exploring the rich musical history of Jamaica? Rob, Celine and Joey sit down to run through the music of the Carribean from the regional folk music it started from to the copious subgenres of reggae to its wide-ranging international influences. We wouldn't be a Ska History podcast without a little Ska History!
Spotify Playlist
Hosts: Celine, Rob and Joey Engineer: Joey Editor: Joey Theme Song by Keelan Skassociate Producer: Chris Reeves of Ska Punk International Special Thanks: Mega Michi and Adam the Ska Mailman
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Transcript
Introduction to Trombonus Edition
00:00:00
Speaker
wa wa It's another Trombonus episode. It's just Rob, Celine, Engineer Joey, and a pocketful of dreams as we take a trip around the Western Hemisphere, clocking the multitude of genres that originated from non-SCOD Jamaica on Checkered Past, the SCODcast.
00:00:20
Speaker
It's such a bonus episode.
00:00:42
Speaker
What up, Checkerheads? Welcome to Checkered Past, the Scottcast with Slyn and Rob. The show where a Lord Kitchener, Ontario, and a Chico Me Tipo man explore the history and impact of a different band each episode. Hope to bring in new fans along the way.
00:00:55
Speaker
I'm Rob and this is my sister and co-host, Slyn. Scott in Canada? Kitchener, Ontario?
Jamaican Music's Cultural Influence
00:01:03
Speaker
Jamaican music in Canada.
00:01:05
Speaker
Jamaican music in Canada. Specifically like Calypso. Okay. just And you were just Calypso songs? Yes. No, artists. Artists, artists, artists. but Whatever I can come up with.
00:01:20
Speaker
Whatever I can make a pun out of. i Just curious what the formula More Kitchener Ontario is funny. i like to Is it? I think that I... What was the second one? Chico Mi Tico? Chico Mi Tico Man.
00:01:33
Speaker
Chico Mi Tico Man. yeah It's a sublime thing. Plus yeah the yeah Chico. Plus man. And this is our co-host with the most toast, Engineer Joey.
00:01:46
Speaker
It's me. I'm here. ah Yeah, but that's ah Ontario's a big Calypso time place. love that there. Ontario is a big Calypso time place. Yeah, just Caribbean. Yeah, it's a thing.
00:01:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's wild. yeah it's wild A lot of all of the Caribbean. Yeah, literally. yeah And that's ah that's relevant to today because we're not we're talking about not just Jamaica, but other Caribbean islands.
00:02:14
Speaker
that's just And and little like just so everyone knows, there are other kiwi Caribbean, Caribbean. Do you know what I mean? think it depends on the context of the sentence, I believe. Because I realize we say Mayan Riviera, but it's Riviera Maya.
00:02:32
Speaker
Yeah. Right. That's kind of incorrect. And you know what? ah You guess what? See, that's that borders but the Caribbean sea, the Caribbean sea. I don't know. Pirates of the Caribbean, pirates of the Caribbean.
00:02:45
Speaker
You know what i mean? Yeah, I think i like i know what you mean. I do know what you mean, but I think it depends on the sentence. Like, I think depending on the sentence, you say it one way or the other and it sounds correctly.
00:02:57
Speaker
I don't know. will Name countries. Name countries. Name, oh God, no. St. Lucia. Nice, good poll. Trinidad and Tobago. The only country named after a woman.
00:03:11
Speaker
Which one? St. Lucia. It's the only country named after a woman? Well, that's what Below Deck said. Below Deck that. Below Deck said that. Well, then it's got to be true. got to be true. It's got be true. They fact check. I know that. That's something I know about that show. Probably Google's. Trinidad and Tobago is one of them, right?
00:03:32
Speaker
Dominican Republic. Hey, there's another one. yeah the lo Lopez. Something Lopez. Isn't there? you saying St. Tropez? Maybe St. Tropez. The Bahamas. Jamaica. I've never been who you want to take you.
00:03:49
Speaker
to i've never been to who you want to take or yeah ma yeah I've never been there. I'm fascinated by the Bahamas. Yeah, I've been to come on pretty mama. Say it again. but I'm fascinated by the Bahamas. I don't really like understand it. I'm sure if I Googled the history, it's probably dark. It's an archipelago. Yeah.
00:04:07
Speaker
And that's just a trio of islands. Don't, don't look into the history. Don't look into the history of any Caribbean island. It's just like, it's just like mostly like the British being awful.
00:04:18
Speaker
Oh, 100%. Not just the British. All of Europe going over enslaving everyone, taking all of the things that are nice about what they have. Just taking those beautiful places of the world and colonizing the shit out it. With slavery. Lots of slavery. Yeah. Learn our shitty language. Yeah.
00:04:36
Speaker
Yeah, pretty much. ah Not just our shitty language. French? and Haiti? There's another one. yeah and That's true. Spanish? To be fair, they did make it better and more fun. i feel like Haitian French is prettier. Haitian French is sweet.
00:04:50
Speaker
yeah I love voodoo French. like That's the best kind of French. You know what i mean? like yeah yeah Way better than Canada French. Way better than poutine French. Anyways, if you're from the Caribbean or the Caribbean, you can just listen to us fucking rattle off nonsense. it's not true. And you're probably screaming at us. And that is Yep.
00:05:09
Speaker
Segway I could possibly ask for. day and ah Today is a fun trombonist. This is the come down episode, the companion piece from the Trojan War that made everybody thrilled with us.
00:05:22
Speaker
And so this is what
Evolution of Jamaican Music
00:05:24
Speaker
we're going to today. This is another primer because we can't get enough of them. This one is going to be all about Jamaican music, not necessarily ska.
00:05:34
Speaker
ah We want to talk... Because ah i what I realized is we spent a lot of time talking about, you know, reggae or rocksteady on the show.
00:05:46
Speaker
and I realized that, you know, if you're a listener and you don't know what any of that means, it's not relevant. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's it's a thing that...
00:05:57
Speaker
i'm i was I'm sure a very more cultured or historical person would be able to explain more, but I think it would be fun for us to just kind of roll through a lot of Jamaican folk music, like where the Scott sound came from, what it turned into, and then where it went from there.
00:06:13
Speaker
Right. Like it went beyond just Jamaican music and it influenced a lot of other things. And I kind of want to dig in on that a little bit, too. So this is very non-comprehensive, for sure.
00:06:23
Speaker
But it's just I kind of just followed my own brain through music. And some of it might make sense, some of it might not. But I think it all kind of flows together in ah in ah and a good way. So it it'll be a bit of a different episode. Another another episode where we play very little ska.
00:06:41
Speaker
But we just went through playing the most skyy ska of all time for the last five weeks. So I think we we owe it to to us to do this. Hell yeah. So the the music of Jamaica is long and... It's not.
00:06:55
Speaker
It's not. Not a basketball short around this part. These parts. Yeah, I'm thinking about even the later songs, and I don't think there's a lot of basketball shorts. That's a game to play at home.
00:07:09
Speaker
If you think that this song reminds you of basketball shorts, take a shot. The the last one might be a little basketball shorts. It might be. We'll get there. Maybe. Okay.
00:07:23
Speaker
We'll get there. We'll get there. The music of Jamaica is long and vast due to the combination of ethnic groups, including indigenous peoples, European colonists, and African slaves, unfortunately.
00:07:34
Speaker
The abolition of slavery by the English in the 1800s opened up the country to develop its own identity, and lots of folk music, or religious music, and in particular, drumming patterns developed during this time before the end of World War II expanded the musical palette to include music from the Americas as well as other West Indies countries.
00:07:53
Speaker
This episode is to talk about Jamaican music and how it spread over the centuries, beginning with Mento in the 1950s. ah We certainly won't cover everything. We'll specifically be ignoring the many ska offshoots, since we do that all the time anyway.
00:08:05
Speaker
We'll also be mostly focusing on the West Indies, the Americas, and the UK, so other regional variations probably won't be covered. So... Let's start at the tippy top. Mento. Mento is like porn. It's I don't know how to describe it, ah but I know it when I see it. You know, yeah I guess I've never heard that ever. Never heard that about porn. That was like a judge. no But I know when I see it.
00:08:33
Speaker
No, know when i see it no an upsetity other I've never. That's insane. Yeah. ah But Mento and Calypso and calypsso get like mixed up all the time because what was happening was Calypso was really, really popular.
00:08:49
Speaker
And all these Mento artists, um ah they made a music that kind of sounded a little similar. so But Calypso was way more popular. So they would just say they're Calypso, even though they weren't.
00:09:00
Speaker
yeah But it is also kind of difficult to describe, but you can definitely understand where Ska comes from it. It is really hard also to find a quote-unquote famous Mento song because there really isn't that many, except for one guy...
00:09:17
Speaker
Mr. Harry Belafonte, who was basically the biggest, like, export from the Caribbean. ah And he brought Mento and Calypso with him.
00:09:30
Speaker
ah And the most famous song I can think of of his is the one and only Banana Boat song. work all night oh yeah.
00:09:41
Speaker
this is a banger. hell of banger. Tell that to Beetlejuice. Right? on i just love beettle juice I just love that he's like, um hey man, count up these bananas. I want to get the fuck out of here.
00:09:56
Speaker
Also, that's basically the whole plot of the song. Hey man, count up the fucking bananas. I want to go home. I'm tired. Long day work. um I feel like the 90s had a lot of like Jamaican music in them. Don't you think?
00:10:13
Speaker
I think the 2000s. I think the late 2000s or mid 2000s. I'm just thinking a lot of classics have one kind of...
00:10:23
Speaker
very obvious jamaican song that you like often relate to that movie you know i feel though like songs like this and like a handful of um um is that like bob marley songs and like i feel like there is a ah like canon of songs from jamaica or even the caribbean in general that just shows up in media and people just like associate it with that but it it I don't know if it's like the media is specifically looking for
00:10:54
Speaker
a Jamaican song. You know what i mean? like I feel like just canon of... it It can be, but the other thing to remember with like music rights is that some songs are very expensive and studios don't want to pay for them.
00:11:06
Speaker
And some songs are very cheap. So there's a reason why Sweet Home Alabama is in everything because Lynyrd Skynyrd charges fucking nothing for it. And because of that, they throw it into everything because it's just cheap and everybody he knows it. Just like ringtone. Yeah.
00:11:22
Speaker
it's like a ring toe yeah As opposed to like the reason why you don't see Beatles songs in anything is because it costs like an absurd amount of money. Right. They have to pay a lot of money to get the Beatles into something. So. Right. And i mean, but I mean, the Beatles doesn't need to help. Across the universe must have cost a lot of money.
00:11:38
Speaker
Yeah. Across the universe. Isn't that the one where the guy. All musical Beatles songs. Oh, okay. Yeah. I thought it was one where the guy writes the Beatles songs, but the Beatles
Rastafarianism and Cultural Identity
00:11:48
Speaker
don't exist. No, that's yesterday. Yesterday is the one the guy who, like, whatever. It goes to the past where no one's ever heard the Beatles before, and he writes the Beatles songs. I hate that. yeah Which is the worst concept any of them. sure people love it. can't get past it. This is like, whatever, I'll be fast at this. so with like a lot of these, ah like the Caribbean and stuff, a lot of these islands, I know there was one island we were looking at that like didn't have...
00:12:16
Speaker
I guess to their knowledge, like indigenous people and an indigenous culture. like I wonder if that's a lot of the history of like, cause it's like not to get dark, but like, it's a lot of like enslaved Africans like brought from Africa to these places. Yes.
00:12:30
Speaker
Correct. Yes. Yeah. And then I think they create their own culture within that. Which island is that? don't know. No, but yeah, I'm just curious if there was like, like, I'm sure there's different islands with different history and some may have indigenous people and some don't, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah.
00:12:44
Speaker
Rastafarianism specifically is about going back home to Africa. Right. Right. That's where the like God emperor was born. Haley Selassie. Right.
00:12:55
Speaker
And so Rastafarianism is a direct correlation between Jamaica and Africa. Right. Like it they're Jamaican, but dotted line back to where they came from. Right.
00:13:08
Speaker
Which was due to slavery. that's very cool but yeah i know but fucking real real for that one but but i think i think man white people look like an idiot they really look like an idiot rasta hats right i i think but i think what you're getting at where like uh the islands each island's culture was kind of its own microcosm of of the slaves that were there and who was colonizing it and who was there at the time. And then the popular music came in. That dictates the sound. Yeah, definitely. The specific sound given all of that history. So, and yeah, it's a shocking melting pot. And it's one that was driven by, like, don't know, it's not like Métis where it's a culture built from two people collaborating. It's a culture that unfortunately built from lot of
00:13:58
Speaker
Not great things, but it's very much a melting pot of culture. it's usually pretty vibrant and celebratory and kind of happy sounding. It's feel like, yeah I don't know. Right.
00:14:09
Speaker
let's yeah We've only touched on one genre and I think we'll build on this. So the thing with Mento is that it is a folk music of Jamaica. It is a it is a it is not built on like American music at all.
00:14:21
Speaker
That's why the drumming pattern is the way it is. And that drumming pattern is the drumming pattern youre hear in ska and reggae. So that's the biggest thing from Mento. And it's all syncopated, right? It's on the offbeat. And it doesn't sound like ska necessarily, but when you just focus in on the drums, you get it. You see where it's going.
00:14:40
Speaker
So the next one we have... This is a song written by Lord Kitchener. And he is from Trinidad and Tobago. So we got there, Joey. yeah Trinidad and Tobago has a huge music scene.
00:14:54
Speaker
And they had it before Jamaica did. Like their music scene was already built and ready to go. Calypso is a ja is not a Jamaican or Cuban thing. It is a Trinidadian thing.
00:15:04
Speaker
And so Lord Kitchener wrote tons of Calypso music and it built a huge scene in TNT. um But then it wasn't until it was like covered by other artists that we got Calypso to where it kind of became now ah with ah like steel drums and all that stuff.
00:15:23
Speaker
ah So the next song is Harry Belafonte again, playing a Lord Kitchener song, but it's extremely popular. So I figured we might as well play it. This is the only going an artist twice. Jump in the line.
00:15:34
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Now we gotta call Be There we go.
00:15:40
Speaker
And I find Trinidadian music is like a part of the rain. This is very celebrated. Yeah, for um When I first moved to Edmonton, I worked at Home Depot for a while with this yeah you know lady who was a couple of years older than me from Trinidad, and she was like... Just like, she was just like, you have to go. you would love it. It's a party all the time. And she was just like so, just super pumped on the culture and like her culture and stuff. It sounded really fun.
00:16:12
Speaker
yeah's Yeah. Yeah. the best man at my wedding, and his family's from Trinidad. Yeah. Vance? Yeah. His dad would always talk about Vance. Yeah. Shout out Shout to Vance. His dad used to call ska old people music.
00:16:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:32
Speaker
Sometimes old people know what's up. yeah They have wisdom. we should respect them more. Yeah. I mean, maybe. Well, maybe not right now. I think right now, specifically right now, old people are getting a little more respect than they need. There's some nice old people.
00:16:49
Speaker
going to rip the bandaid off on the next song. So we talked about Mento. We talked about Calypso. We do have to talk about Ska just to put it in context, but i'm not going to talk about it. talk about Ska all the time. This is one of the very, very first Ska songs ever.
00:17:02
Speaker
This is Mr. Prince Buster with the song Judge Dredd. Whoa, here it is. Spooking the weed. like I have thought about putting Big Six in. Just as a joke.
00:17:18
Speaker
What year would this have been? like 1961, too. That's pretty good, though. Just the toast. Just chillin'. song is just chillin'. Tellin' you a little story.
00:17:43
Speaker
chillin the song is just right chillin blood telling a little story
00:17:57
Speaker
But it was fun to play the Mento song the Clipso song and then play this. Because there's a little bit of a one, two, three with it. You can kind of see where all came together. George Kevin Free present.
00:18:18
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And Prince Buster's the best. And then, yeah, Judge Dredd would pick up that mantle, and he would become Judge Dredd. but we got do that we We gotta do a Judge Dredd trombonist, I think, at some point.
00:18:33
Speaker
Did we? Done. Twist my rubber arm. It's a wild story. i think I'm sick that day. Yeah. To listen to Big Six, Big Seven, yeah Big Eight. Yeah, we're just going to listen to the big songs and talk about his album
Influence of Judge Dredd on Ska
00:18:50
Speaker
covers. That's it. that's That'll be like a full hour and 20-minute episode.
00:18:54
Speaker
Just one of the craziest, honestly, maybe one of the craziest stories in Sky. I'm into this idea, actually. Because it's just absurd. When I read how he died, i was like, damn, I think we got to do an episode on this guy. Yeah.
00:19:10
Speaker
All right. All right. Let's do it. Okay. So you heard it here first, listener. Judge Dred Trombonis is coming down. It's coming eventually. Yeah. And you can also, and listener, you can be sick that day too. but Yeah. We can all be sick that day together. And if you're not sick, you'll be smoking the weed. All right.
00:19:30
Speaker
So, Ska, what does it do next? gets all slow ah because the soul music from the U.S. s that was kind of flowing in was also slowing down.
00:19:40
Speaker
wasn't like you know super upbeat. And a lot of the Jamaican music really owed to American sort of top 40 music, especially black radio.
00:19:52
Speaker
And so their interpretation of that is what would become Rocksteady. And that's what you get when you basically strip ska of most of its horns, ramp up the bass lines, and focus on the lyrical content. So no more toasting, ah just a lot of smooth singing.
00:20:07
Speaker
um So one of the earliest examples of this is Hopetown Lewis's Take It Easy, Rocksteady. Rocksteady.
00:20:21
Speaker
Man, the Eagles really went a different place with this song. This has got the Ascot energy. Yep. Just no horns. More soulful. You feel it right the heart. Yeah. The vocals are lovely.
00:20:34
Speaker
Yeah. She's spitting bars.
00:20:40
Speaker
soulful you feel it right in the
00:20:52
Speaker
vibrato watch on high. Which artist was this? Sorry. Hopetown Lewis. Yeah, it's really good.
00:21:04
Speaker
The sound quality on this is very good. yeah Yeah. a difference like 10 years makes. Yeah. yeah harm Yeah, like this sounds great.
00:21:16
Speaker
It sounds vintage-y, but it sounds like really could be modern
Reggae's Global Impact
00:21:20
Speaker
almost. Yeah. Yeah, and when you think about the difference between, yeah, like let's say 1961, when that first Prince Buster song was, and like 1967, let's say, what for this song, it makes a difference, yeah. like I mean, Jamaica didn't really have a music scene before Skala Music, and then it kind of blew up, and I guess that's where the money and the money comes in. You improve everything, you make it better. and Well, yeah, and I mean, between early 60s mid-70s was like,
00:21:48
Speaker
The explosion in recording technology at that time was like crazy. You know, like that was huge. And then it slowed down kind of ways. And we got different tech through the 70s and 80s. But it wasn't as like explosive as that beginning time, like from the 60s to the mid 70s, for sure.
00:22:06
Speaker
And then that goes naturally into the next genre we'll talk about, which is reggae, the one and only the big genre, I guess. i don't know if is it the biggest genre of Jamaican music? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know.
00:22:20
Speaker
don't know. When people think Jamaican music, I think they probably think reggae. They think reggae, right? Okay. Yeah. but's let's say Let's say it is. um This is basically just what do you get when you drop the tempos even more and make it all about the bass, basically.
00:22:35
Speaker
And then you get reggae. So this Toots doing Do the Reggae.
00:22:42
Speaker
This sounds so much like Dirty Reggae by the... aer lighttes as Oh, yeah. sounds so much like dirty reggae. I feel like they definitely... Hold that theory.
00:22:53
Speaker
Hold that theory? Yeah, hold that theory. Don't you think? And this was even before they they had a codified way to spell reggae. Yeah, this is the first mention of the word because at the time, reggae was a dance.
00:23:09
Speaker
I was going to say, it sounds like a dance. Right.
00:23:15
Speaker
What was the reggae? I don't know, actually. have to find a breakdown. Yeah. Because I would assume the ska is like the Bunky and Skanking. So what happens... You do the two-hand thing with the ska, and they get down real low.
00:23:30
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. don't know what reggae would be. We'll have to find out. Listeners, send us in. Send us some videos of people doing the reggae. No, I don't want that. Listeners, send a video of you doing the reggae. You send me a video of a different person, I'm not watching it.
00:23:45
Speaker
No, you have to do the reggae. You have to do it.
00:23:50
Speaker
um You need a boom operator. You need a full production camera. They do all of that stuff. So that's a very early version of reggae. So if you're like, huh, that doesn't sound like ah ah Ziggy Marley.
00:24:06
Speaker
but Well, that's because it was like 1969. but the yeah yeah You're like, wait a second. I went to Jamrock. It didn't sound like that when I got welcomed there.
00:24:19
Speaker
It's hard to say it because ah it just keeps going like five easy, like dancehall reggae moves. And it's a lot of like the wind. But yeah I have no idea what the reggae is. There will definitely be somewhere in some archive, there will be like a pictogram of how to do the reggae from the back of again those old ska records where it actually shows you how to do the ska. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Gotta be somewhere for sure.
00:24:44
Speaker
All right, next genre. we're get Okay, so we got through the big ones. We got through ska, rocksteady, reggae. Now we're going to get into sort of this the smaller sub-genres that pulled out of there, specifically like offshoots of of of reggae, reggae.
00:25:00
Speaker
ah So buckle in the next, like, let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine songs are all reggae offshoots. So if you're not a reggae fan, I'm just warning you right now. Get out So this next one, this is this is a this is one that I like. And there's two big ones from the 70s. There was King Tubby.
00:25:23
Speaker
And there was Lee Scratch Perry, and they did something called Dub, which is what happens when they have a production studio where they can fuck around with an existing song all they want. yeah They usually just take all the instruments out, leave the drums in, just throw a ton of reverb on it, and then just randomly throw the music back in.
00:25:44
Speaker
And then make the bass be like two notes. It's great. I love when it'll just be like a, like, it'll just be bass and drum, and then it'll be like... right but You know, they'll just bring up like a nonsense section of vocals for no reason for like a quarter of a second. And then that's it.
00:25:59
Speaker
That's one of my favorite dub things. And this is Scratch Perry's Blackboard Jungle, one of the earliest known dub songs. or One of the better known ones, I should say.
00:26:15
Speaker
And they EQ'd it like fucking wild. Like that the drums are literally just like just hat and kick pretty much. This is the original Chopped and Screwed.
00:26:27
Speaker
Truly. Yeah.
00:26:33
Speaker
Skrillex loves it. Oh yeah. He must. think he does. I think he does. He must have been inspired. i love this shit, but I can't... Shadow drop a new record? Yeah, he was listening earlier today.
00:26:48
Speaker
Literally. <unk> it's it's It's fun, because it's done like ah it's done like a mixtape, and so like a bunch of the tracks are like 40 seconds long, and he got either someone to...
00:27:00
Speaker
ah imitate the guy or he hired the like, damn son, where'd you find that? Or whatever. He like has that voice going all the way through it. It's pretty entertaining.
00:27:13
Speaker
Feldy has a song on there. don't know if you caught that. Maybe I didn't make it that far. I only listened to about half of it oh yeah, it's towards the end. It's one of the last couple songs. That's a good little groove. Scratch is the best, man. i love dumb music.
00:27:27
Speaker
yeah I love dub music so much, but I couldn't tell you a a song that I like. Because like when I listen to it, I always just find like a King Tubby collection with 30 tracks. You're not i meant to listen to the albums, because they would just like smash out songs. like it was It was a quantity over quality thing.
00:27:45
Speaker
For sure. And I know that Scratch is like a famously difficult person to deal with, um but he was prolific. Holy moly. And so was King Tubby. They just made music like in the 70s. Just bam, bam, bam, bam. Constantly.
00:27:58
Speaker
yeah Yeah, definitely. Dub is something else. But if you're listening to a ska record and you're like, hey, why is the song all slow and and weird and reverb-y? It's because they're trying to do a dub thing. Yeah, or if there's another version of it and it's in quotations dub, that's what they're doing. there It's like a throwback to that. All right, let's move on to the next little genre. So there's a when you take dub and you turn it into a factory version where you're just like...
00:28:24
Speaker
Hey, you know what people like to do? They like to rap over dub all the time. Why don't we just make stuff specifically for that? And yeah that's called ragamuffin or rega if you're nasty.
00:28:34
Speaker
And it's the foundation for dance hall. So which we'll talk about obviously later, but, uh, there's a lot they make the rhythms uh and so that's basically just an instrumental track that people can do songs over top of and some of the most famous ones were written in the late 70s and so this one is uh joey likes this one i mean it's uh it's the one it's one of yeah it's one of the this is arguably one of the biggest rhythms this is under me slang tang wayne smith
00:29:07
Speaker
and then people just use these rhythms and rap like yeah oh yeah so me i mean if you haven't heard that bass line in something it's good yeah
00:29:23
Speaker
I love this shit. Especially like the easy stuff, like the Inie Kamozi, like that type of stuff. Like, yeah, it's good. way in my brain And so, Ragamuffin hasn't quite, it's very electronic. Like, it is arguably an EDM style of music. Yeah, this is very EDM. See, I was on topic. You just didn't know I know my things, I know my things, know things.
00:29:50
Speaker
Yeah, this rules. This reminds me of the show I was at yesterday. and Yeah. There was a lot of this. This is like good skateboard music. I used to skate to shit like this all the time. It's great.
00:30:04
Speaker
Yeah, that's the sling tang. He was singing about smoking marijuana. Yeah, definitely music.
00:30:16
Speaker
Yeah, and and not doing cocaine because it makes him feel weird. That's what the message of that song preach. Honestly, I preach. Yeah. He doesn't like cocaine because it makes him feel weird, but he likes weed.
00:30:26
Speaker
Relatable icon. Yeah. Definitely. and Yeah. He knows what's up. Okay. But we're setting this the scene. If we're going to talk about regga, obviously we've got to talk about dance hall.
00:30:38
Speaker
ah And so dance hall, simply put, is what happens when you take the rhythms from regga and then you wrap over top of it and you have to put the dance hall beat on it.
00:30:48
Speaker
That's really important. Right. Yes. The beat is super critical to dance hall. We talk about prolific music. Dance hall artists will put out hundreds, if not thousands of songs a year.
00:31:02
Speaker
Yeah. It's wild. Because they don't have to write new music. They just have to write new lyrics. Yeah. And even some of those things yeah and even then the word new holding a lot of water in that sentence Yeah. <unk>s So, but if you are a dance hall fan, that's what you come for. Like, if you're if you're into dance hall, you're like, who's going to do this rhythm differently? Who's going to throw something new on top it? And I do like dance halls fun to go to. yeah. It's great. Love dance halls. Too late, though. They like to start things way too late. Two, three in the morning to kick it off. Yeah. What is fun about dance hall, late.
00:31:41
Speaker
Is that it's topical. It's like something can be on the news and dancehall song will be out on it tomorrow. The next day when Smith slapped. Fucking the South Park of music. When Will Smith slapped, there was like a couple different songs. Like the next day or the next two days. And they were good. It was so funny. They were good. They had videos for them.
00:32:03
Speaker
Yeah. Instantaneous. So this song is Sister Nancy. This is Bam Bam. ah This is the Stalag rhythm, which is which was written by David Ansel Collins. So if we're talking about some ska guys.
00:32:16
Speaker
This is a the other rhythm. like This is the other one. The Stalag is huge. Yeah. yeah
00:32:25
Speaker
And this is the 80s, so it's going to be very 80s. Put your mind in that space. Yeah, I feel like this is ah another song where ah i'd be surprised if on most people haven't heard this somewhere in media somewhere. um so um i mean, Skate, right? If you've played Skate, you've heard this song. you make empty from lady vocals sometimes sometimes sister nancy yeah awesome dancehall dancehall has a lot more women yes like yeah um i find there's a either like i got into a lot like lady dancehall people obviously this is a pretty like
00:33:15
Speaker
Not as like energetic version. The slower, yeah. Like Dancehall can get very energetic, but this song is huge. Like Sister Nancy was... That's where you wind. Yeah. You do the wind.
00:33:26
Speaker
It should be a slow wind, but you could do it. Yep. Yeah, that's the Dancehall beat. But in the 80s, it was slower. It didn't really pick up in speed until like later.
00:33:38
Speaker
Because I feel like dance hall really matched the energy of rap. like It was always at the same kind of space with that. I feel like they were always kind of like up in the same echelon.
00:33:51
Speaker
and i could Yeah, I can go. like ah You just mean like timeline-wise as far as sort of the sound? yeah that Yeah, they didn't sound like rap, but they were just keeping up with it, right? Yeah, yeah that makes sense.
00:34:03
Speaker
Okay, before we take a break, we got one more reggae subgenre that I'll talk about, and that is something called reggae fusion. ah Not to be confused with reggae rock, which we did an episode on.
Commercial Adaptations and Fusion
00:34:15
Speaker
Reggae rock, as we know, is white guys playing reggae. Yeah, this is different. Reggae fusion is fully ah Caribbean, Jamaican, black people making reggae pop, basically.
00:34:30
Speaker
And i could have picked your Sean Pauls of the world. i could picked your Sean Kingstons of the world. There's any number of them that did it. I went with Shaggy. Yeah, Shaggy. Hell yeah. Mr. Boom Bastard. Because I mean, because this song fucks so hard. does fuck. And it was a much, it felt better playing this song than the other one.
00:34:50
Speaker
Yeah. He was fucking at this time. For sure. month fantastic love His voice is... Wild. Like, pretty crazy. He puts it on. That's not his real voice. But still, it's... Still? Yeah.
00:35:05
Speaker
So to be fair, this music is taking the reggae and the like dance hall and all the different Jamaican music and just filtering it so that white people could be okay listening to it. Yeah, like this is definitely like like, this song fucks, but it's also like, it sounds like an early R&B song.
00:35:27
Speaker
as well as being a reggae song, you know what i mean? Like, it definitely, like, it is filtered through early 2000s pop, North American pop music, for sure.
00:35:38
Speaker
So this is a dancehall beat, also, just to, like, follow up. Like, this beat is a strictly dancehall beat. It is good, yeah. so this is a dance hall beat you also just to like follow up like this this beat is a strictly dance hall be and night can take rich judge you son so you tell it is good yeah Dancehall, I feel like, is the easiest like to dance to that we've listened to.
00:36:00
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if... Yeah. Like, I think it's all dance music in some capacity. suppose so. Yeah. But, like i but you I think you're right. I think dancehall is...
00:36:17
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. i think that's its whole point is that it's dance music first and everything else second. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, it says dance in the name. It's right there. It's right there.
00:36:28
Speaker
And to me, it has the most specific mo moves. Like there's so many specific like dance hall moves. I've been to a lot of dance hall classes. Like there's so many specific moves and like the ways of dancing specific to dance hall. Like obviously there is in all of it, but dance hall has like a lot of specific dances.
00:36:46
Speaker
And that dance hall is where you get the crazy dances where it's like super sexual and someone's like jumping from something onto someone and it's wild. It's like wild humping. Wild humping. Wild humping. Totally.
00:36:59
Speaker
Nice. so Are we talking about Soka? It's coming up, but let's take a break first. When we get back, so many more Caribbean music. Music.
00:37:21
Speaker
Welcome back to Checkered Pass. The CPSC crew here is talking about Jamaican music. And Selin wanted to talk about it, so we're going to talk about it. It was the next one on the list. Soka. Soka. So what happens when people think Calypso is just too tame?
00:37:35
Speaker
wow They say, well, we want way more steel drums and we want to make it sound like Carnival on cocaine. And that's what Soka is. It is probably the most excitable music you've ever heard.
00:37:48
Speaker
And it's from Trinidad. Like I said, Trinidad really knows how to make some upbeat music. I did not know that. They're partying. I thought it was from Jamaica. No, it's Trinidadian. It's like Calypso Plus.
00:38:01
Speaker
Like New Game Plus, but Calypso Plus. ah And yeah, let's let's play the what the big hit. The one that everyone remembers from the 80s. This is hot, hot, hot.
00:38:12
Speaker
I didn't know this was Soka. That's funny. I mean, it's like a crossover. like I don't think Soka has crazy slap bass, but... For sure.
00:38:23
Speaker
This horn work, the like...
00:38:27
Speaker
Yeah, like the percussion. The percussion forwardness, yeah.
00:38:37
Speaker
This is pretty good. Yeah. A lot of dance hall classes ended up like transitioning to a lot of soca dances, but mostly, i believe, for like the fitness element. So soca dance class, there's soca fit. Yeah. so Because it's so energetic, so it's almost like a less cheesy Zumba.
00:38:59
Speaker
Soca fit. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, if is the music you have listen to. This where Celine's knowledge comes. No, but like I definitely preferred dance hall classes, because it was like a little more... And we would do like fucking routines to like major laser and and stuff. so was like Yeah, dance hall's a little greener. It's way like cooler, and there's more twerking and splits, and dance halls where people will... like literally stand on their head and twerk like that's a big dance hall thing like stand on their head and do the like dance halls just fucking like cool dance halls cool soka's just a little cheesy to me you're saying hot hot hot is a cheesy song yes but like yeah soka fit is a thing i know things sometimes yeah in a different world
00:39:50
Speaker
All right, let's talk about what happens when you make reggae into a bunch of sub-genres, ah so different kinds of reggae. Celine, you keyed this one up. I don't even think you realized what you were doing.
00:40:01
Speaker
What would do? Which one's reggae? Here it comes. Oh, really? Dirty reggae. Don't you think it sounds like that other song? Yeah, like Toots plays a lot of reggae. Yeah, for sure. So this is a very modern song, obviously.
00:40:16
Speaker
I this. I love the agro lights so fucking much. I cannot think of a better example of the boss reggae sound. Like, they've perfected it. It's perfect.
00:40:26
Speaker
This is dirty to me. This is like dirty. yeah dirty i i will The one time I saw the Agri-Lights was when there's a bar that was called New City in Edmonton and it moved into this little shitty basement for a while.
00:40:41
Speaker
And I saw the Agri-Lights in that little shitty basement it was hot as fuck. And there was like 35 fucking people there. And it was the best. It was one of the best shows I've ever seen. I got wasted. I danced all of the booze out of my body and then i got drunk a second time it was so good and so and so the way you know boss reggae or skinhead reggae is the the thing it's known by is the uh the guitar for sure it's a char like slams on the chop it's crazy and the keyboards are also a big part of it also almost never horns always keyboards yeah um and yeah the the kind of lo-fi uh sound is pretty normal in a skinhead reggae so yeah agri-lights is the best example if you want to know what it sounds like that's just any of their songs will sound something like the trunk very cool yeah fire it's good just so many yeah like literally literally pick any agri-lights album and just listen to it beginning end it's good
00:41:45
Speaker
The next reggae subgenre is roots reggae.
Bob Marley and Roots Reggae
00:41:49
Speaker
Roots reggae is all about Rasta, right? So ah this is probably the reggae people think of when they think of reggae, is probably roots reggae, which is a very specific kind of sound, but it's the one that just took off, right?
00:42:04
Speaker
Like Bob Marley did so much for reggae and so much for Jamaican music. Like you can't underpin it enough. Like, he broke it out to so many different ah areas. But, you know, what ends up happening is when you become extremely popular is everybody apes that sound. And so, you know, Bob Marley got gigantic.
00:42:21
Speaker
Everybody else wanted to kind of, you know, capitalize on that. And so just like summer in 96, man, just like summer in 96. Exactly. This is hit that version of it. And and you know what?
00:42:33
Speaker
If he didn't pass away, I don't know if it would have been because it was that like legend ah compilation was what blew him out, right? Yeah, and which is crazy yeah when you think about it.
00:42:44
Speaker
It was that it was posthumous and it was started in the UK and then it came over to the US s and then it just got so huge, right? So um not all of his music is necessarily Roots Reggae, but the best example is this one, Three Little Birds. You know this song.
00:42:58
Speaker
Everyone knows this song.
00:43:03
Speaker
I really want to eat this pretzel. Do it. Oh, I pretzels downstairs. This music's not rowdy enough to blend in my munching. So slow.
00:43:14
Speaker
Yeah, that's
00:43:18
Speaker
reggae. Yeah.
00:43:22
Speaker
slow yeah that's reg
00:43:28
Speaker
Yeah, Legend was so prolific that like my mom had Legend. Yeah, everyone had a copy. Everyone had a copy of Legend. It was best-selling like it was it was the one of the best until Thriller came out.
00:43:41
Speaker
Yeah. It's just wild to think about. What did Bob Marley pass away from? Cancer. Really? That's sad. I didn't know. ah know how I avoided that.
00:43:54
Speaker
I mean, he died in like the early 90s? 80s? 80s. Yeah. So it would have been like, kind of before your time. But he wasn't very old, hey? No, like 30s maybe? Damn, that sucks actually. He was young. Yeah. He was so, he did so much.
00:44:08
Speaker
yeah well i mean like when he first started young death skyrocket his fame or like legacy yeah yeah that's why that's why legend became huge um but he like he was uh like like the jacksons right like like he started when he was like 14 15 doing like ska so yeah like he already had 15 years of a career even even though he died fairly young you know what i mean like that's crazy exactly like He went through a lot of phases, like before he landed on being a roots reggae guy. And he was busy making children.
00:44:42
Speaker
busy. What happened to be in at another 30 years? There would have been more children. Yeah. He'd still be making children. That's crazy. There would be more coffee companies. There would be more cannabis companies. There would be more guitar companies. There would be more...
00:44:58
Speaker
Reggae oriented vegan food companies. There would be smoothie companies. They would all be under the Marley umbrella.
00:45:07
Speaker
All right. This next reggae sub genre is not even from Jamaica. It's from the UK, but it was made by Jamaican. ah This is but ah a genre that is made exclusively ah by women.
00:45:21
Speaker
And it's all. Lady vocals sometimes. sos This is a lady vocals all the time. Yeah. And it was like touted as like the most definitive Jamaican English style of music. Like they're like, this is something that Jamaicans in England made by themselves.
00:45:38
Speaker
This is one of the first examples of that, which I think is kind of critical. So the type of reggae is called lover's rock and it is exactly what it sounds like. it's ah It's a rocker's rhythm and it's all about love songs.
00:45:50
Speaker
regard So this song is called Silly Games by Janet Kaye. The Motown of Jamaican music is what it was called.
00:46:03
Speaker
I mean, it does sound like Motown. Yeah. This song is good. She does not hit a high note.
00:46:18
Speaker
Um, the joke in Femme Boy You, whenever I hear someone who's a really good singer, I go, yeah, but can they do
00:46:29
Speaker
this? This is good. Yeah. I don't think I really knew what lovers rock was before now.
00:46:41
Speaker
Yeah, I had no idea. For the girls. It's for the girls. That's crazy.
00:46:57
Speaker
Hell yeah. Yeah. I guess I don't, haven't heard her sing low, but she can sing is out of control. Yeah.
00:47:07
Speaker
Like I can't even joke do it, you know, like, yeah. And she was like fully control wiggling that note around too. That was that's wild. Sick. All right.
00:47:18
Speaker
This next genre, we're going to Panama City. Yeah. They had their own reggae. Did you know that? Is the canal is? Yeah. They went there. toward the They went to where the canal was. need Google things. And they made something called reggae en español.
00:47:35
Speaker
And that is the genre we're going talk This is by somebody named Chicho Man, who is one of the biggest exports of the style. There are no... Songs in this genre that I think are universally known Because it became more popular in Spanish language countries Not in like, you know, English speaking countries um But this one was one that came up a lot when I was researching ah This is La Noche Que Te Canoche Beautiful, beautiful, Rob It's not French, it's not French or Japanese Sorry yeah go hard to my Spanish listeners
00:48:09
Speaker
ah
00:48:13
Speaker
La quiero con todo mi alma
00:48:17
Speaker
Oh, wow. That's a real escape type sound going on there.
00:48:28
Speaker
This is very much like Spanish... autot watch very much um like
00:48:39
Speaker
like music influenced like that's crazy even the way that it's sung yeah like very the way the melody is is very typical of the way the beat is it's like uh like a reggae beat but also like really uh
00:48:56
Speaker
I want to say Mexican, but know it's not Mexican. It's more of a Spanish kind of thing. but Wow, that's I thought Selena could sing this. Yeah. If she put her line in.
00:49:08
Speaker
She may have. These drums are hilariously 80s, though. Yeah.
00:49:19
Speaker
Oh, yeah. This is from the 80s. I don't know if I mentioned that. For sure. ah I don't hate that song. The sounds were incredible. Someone was telling me a story about like someone who was hanging out with them, showing them around. And I know we're on like, this is very fast. And someone just broke out into an operatic, like,
00:49:41
Speaker
Spanish song. Sick. Just broke out into it and just like, this matter just like an SNL skit style, just like, and they were like super unaware. Anyways, i was just like, that's crazy. What would you do? You know, just, just let down. Yeah, I guess you just have to wait until it's over. The only thing you can do is like, wait until it's over. You're like an extra in a musical at that point. Yeah. i Like, it was like almost in tears. And then after she was done singing, she did it a second time. oh Okay. That's a little too much.
00:50:10
Speaker
She was like an ex-pop singer like who had like one famous song. Anyways, it's crazy. i can't imagine. I love Wild. I love Wild. To do it again? Immediately the best part of that story. And then she said she got more emotional the second time she sung it. like She was like almost in tears crying. the First time was a warm-up.
00:50:31
Speaker
Yeah. Anyways. Because they sing with such like passion. why I don't know what that's like. I'm picturing Rob. but just like I feel like you'd be so uncomfortable.
00:50:44
Speaker
So uncomfortable. I might leave. That's so triggering. ah he That's so triggering to my spectrum. I just turn around and walk out.
00:50:58
Speaker
And you should. all right. We're done talking about reggae. Let's talk about EDM.
EDM Evolution from Reggae
00:51:02
Speaker
There's a whole lot of EDM that came out of reggae. And so let's go to England where they love to take things and make it EDM. um What happens when you take dub and mix it with a house and make the break beats super fast?
00:51:18
Speaker
Jungle. Something called Jungle. Yeah. yeah This is Inner City Life by Goldie. yeah this is innerity life by goldie
00:51:29
Speaker
is also called yeah drum and bass.
00:51:40
Speaker
Oh, yeah. and think I think I've mentioned them before, but there is a group called Nerve. ah And I believe the drummer in that group is called, his name's Jojo Mayer. And they like play this style of music acoustically.
00:51:55
Speaker
like Like they use actual instruments, like with a pedal board and stuff, but he plays like these drums. He plays this shit on drums for real. And it is fucking wild. This sounds cool.
00:52:06
Speaker
of This song has been like emulated I feel like a million times Oh yeah There's like a hundred songs I can think of that sound like this you know what i mean? I mean this is like It was foundational in like kind of ah Like UK electronic music in general right?
00:52:23
Speaker
Like through the 90s I also feel like I just sort of connected I feel like Grimes does a lot of like Similar sound to that actually Did you just and imagine you just say Grime?
00:52:34
Speaker
Yeah, I said Grimes-uh. But is Grimes the next one? Just take the S off. Yeah, and you get what we're going to do next. That's crazy. I'm locked in. I'm in, bro. Fucking segue master over here.
00:52:48
Speaker
fucking seggue mad hat row So what happens when you take dub and you throw a bunch of dancehall and hip hop on top of it? you are There's ah like a Bjork song that almost sounds exactly like that. That's what I'm thinking of. that anyway And that song, sorry, just to go back to that last song for one moment. um That song is very similar also to Trip Hop.
00:53:09
Speaker
Yeah, so trip hop is obviously the break beat is not as fast in a trip hop song. Like when you listen to a DJ Shadow or um any of that stuff, like it does use breaks, but they're meant to be like a little bit more ethereal.
00:53:23
Speaker
Yeah. Jungle beats are really, really fast. And it's for like a whole song usually. And the song is like a long song. Yeah. to today dred That for like four minutes. That's great. Yeah. It's love wild stuff. Yeah.
00:53:40
Speaker
So I think it has a lot income with trance. Trance does that a lot too. Yeah. The build and release kind of aspect of it. um but yeah let's talk about grime grime is like the coolest type of hip-hop and i've come at me it's awesome yeah you are correct and everybody who's associated with that genre is rad and boy in the corner is one of the greatest records ever released uh and that's what we're talking about this is if you have not listener if you have not listened to dizzy rascals boy in the corner before it's boy in the corner but it just feels weird to say it and dizzy rascal
00:54:13
Speaker
Yeah, and yeah it's it's a wild trip of a record, and it's it's incredible. His other records are good, too, but they're more poppy. But this is, like, what made Grime popular.
00:54:24
Speaker
And so let's listen to I Love You from that record.
00:54:29
Speaker
love love love you. I love love you. love you.
00:54:39
Speaker
yeah dude's got the wildest flow it's so sick insane
00:54:52
Speaker
har just thinking like' so much less cool to like wrap in a low class canadian accent Yeah, you didn't sound like a trailer park boy. Yes. Like a letter Kenny rapper. Like a letter Kenny? Yeah, that was the first thought I had. I was like, yeah. Truly, though, that is what we, like, if I'm hanging out with, like, the right people, that' it'll come out. Like, how if I'm drinking and hanging with the right people, I'll sound like a trailer. It's real. But it sounds so much cooler than that. What were you going say, Rob?
00:55:23
Speaker
I know. Nothing important. Not as cool as what you just said.
00:55:35
Speaker
Lower socio... Accents associated with lower socioeconomics. Just trying to think of something like politically correct. Yeah, just a real scientific way to say it. Yeah.
00:55:49
Speaker
ah That sounds really cool. Yeah, Dizzy Rascal. Dizzy Rascal. Oh my god. What's other big, good Grimes artists?
00:56:00
Speaker
I'm not from the UK, so I don't remember off the top of head. I just feel like only thing can think of is Dizzy Rascal. There's a dude who is huge. Yes, I think that's the person I'm trying to... There's a few huge artists.
00:56:14
Speaker
Craig will have to write to us. yeah i feel yeah I'm sure we could do a whole episode on just that. yeah On Dizzy Rascal? Done. yeah
00:56:26
Speaker
Alright, here's the other segue that you tipped off for fuck's sake. Yeah, I was listening to this guy earlier today when you talked about it. This is the guy threw a water bottle at him. 2005, because I thought his band from first to last fucking sucked.
00:56:44
Speaker
But he went to be... yesrylics Here we go. right Scary monsters and nice sprays.
00:56:53
Speaker
So this is dubstep. That's we're talking about. Specifically, bro-step, which is what Skrillex makes, which is for the pros. Let's get all hype on.
00:57:05
Speaker
I mean, it's... A lot of the times, it's just metalcore with electronic views like instruments, basically. Early Skrillex was literally just metalcore songs with electronic stuff.
00:57:17
Speaker
He's come a long way. His newer stuff is not so much that, but... Back in day, that's what was. But it's all about the breakdown. Just like Metal Gear. Yeah.
00:57:28
Speaker
Yeah. And he's always at right for it.
00:57:32
Speaker
His vocal poles are good. Oh, yeah. He's a king of picking samples. Like samples, yeah. For sure. And where to put them in what parts. Yeah. But I gotta say actually that double album that he dropped last year or the year before, the Don't Come Too Close and whatever the other one was, those have such interesting mature songwriting for something that sounds like this. Like it's such... Some of those songs are so ethereal and weird and like not even really structured, but it all flows really well as an album. like
00:58:09
Speaker
i ah know At first, I made a lot of fun of dubstep, even though I was like, this music kind of fucks. But now looking back on it, I'm like... Dude's good musician. I have a lot of respect for Skrillex. I have enough distance from dubstep to not give as much of a shit. But at the time, it was obnoxious because the people who liked dubstep were the worst human beings. like And it was fucking everywhere. And it was everywhere. and that Yeah. Yeah, it was all like, oh, godll wait for the breakdown. Oh, bleh.
00:58:38
Speaker
As someone who literally was at a show last night, it's just like, there is something cringy and ah about like waiting for the breakdown and then death. It is natural and good, but like yeah yesterday, for some reason, was just very sobering.
00:58:52
Speaker
and not everything is like cool and electronic song no yeah and so i didn't actually say what dubstep is dubstep is like it's house like let's be honest it's not that much removed from house music uh but you take the dub elements and and grime and you just like there's a lot of production techniques uh and it's about that you know the the syncopation but it's on a really heavy beat like The syncopation is super heavy.
00:59:22
Speaker
that's what makes it dubstep. It's kind of difficult to explain unless you hear a lot of it. But that's that's an ultimate example. That one song has every element of dubstep in it. The song Bangarang by Scrubb. skrillex fucking is awesome yeah bang bang is such a good song and it's a house song so yeah you almost like are better off listening to that but also that fucking aesop uh rocky song that he did like that aesop rocky skrillex like didn't they do a whole ep or album together it was anything they did together is just crazy good yeah so i'm i'm past my hatred of skrillex
00:59:59
Speaker
Yeah. And Ace and Brockie not going to prison. Yeah. And I got to say, um the like dubstep is like the logical conclusion of pushing base further and further and further and further. Absolutely. It is it is though like it is where you get to when like when we started talking about dub even, where they were like they just started cranking up the base. And that's yeah like that's where you get to is is dubstep eventually.
01:00:25
Speaker
absolutely and like that like okay i know i know we keep extending this episode that's fine we're having fun the uh bass tester albums used to sell so well at the record store i worked at that like that was what they're for was testing the bass on your speakers they wrote music it was bass testers and we had we would sell out of them because people love that shit because bass was everything and treble meant nothing Which is weird because if you've ever listened to a song that had no treble and only bass, it sounds like shit.
01:00:58
Speaker
Tell Megan Trainor that. I did. She didn't listen. i got a cease and desist letter. ah She said if she wanted my opinion, she'd come to my house and punch me in the face. was like, whoa, that's so aggressive.
01:01:10
Speaker
That's fair. all right Or as Lizzo said, I'm a thick bitch, I need tempo. Slows songs need for skinny hoes. I can't move all of this here to one of those. I'm a thick bitch, I need tempo.
01:01:23
Speaker
I'm into it. Is that the next song? No. so go close. But you'll be into the next one. oh this is the This is the end. This is the last genre. And this is what happens when Puerto Rico gets a hold of reggae. And this is the one that might be a little basketball shorts for me. This one might be a little basketball shorts. this is and then pit if This is the rewind from Pitbull. You got Pitbull, Mr. Miami.
01:01:45
Speaker
And if you wind it back a little bit, you get a man reggaeton. So this is Daddy Yankee's Gasoline. I feel like, I wish reggaeton had more than sometimes like, jump daddy. But that's the though. what makes it is that It just gets repetitive. It does.
01:02:08
Speaker
But this song fucks. This song's amazing, but listen to a lot of reggaeton all the time. but This is back when it was kind of hard. like, it was more about the rap almost. Yeah, this is before it was really hip-hop. Before it was pop, yeah.
01:02:27
Speaker
Yeah, this was like one of the songs that kind of broke it. Lady vocals sometimes. Lady vocals sometimes. Huge plus. Huge plus.
01:02:39
Speaker
Same with Skrillex. Yeah. Actually, Skrillex generally uses a lot of lady vocals. Yeah.
01:02:52
Speaker
This is always one of those songs I think I know the lyrics to, and then it's like, I literally only know Gasolina. No, I don't know any of the words. There's a thousand words. How are you going to remember them?
01:03:05
Speaker
Like, I don't know how he remembered them. yeah Like, seriously. Yeah, we yeah ah we definitely had a Daddy Yankee moment in my old household for a bit there back in the day. The album that one comes off, yeah, for sure.
01:03:17
Speaker
It's good. It does get old, though. then So this is it. and to We talked about Jamaica. We talked about the music that came from Jamaica. This isn't just Scott today. What do we think? Wow.
01:03:28
Speaker
How do we feel about it? Good music comes from Jamaica. Yeah, it's it's all good. Or not Jamaica, the Caribbean. The Caribbean. the caribbean just yeah I don't think there was one of these songs where I was like, meh, not for me.
01:03:41
Speaker
You what I liked it all. Yeah, no flops. Zero flops. Soka's my toughest one. That's fair. I'm not surprised at all that that's still how I feel. yeah I should probably make a playlist, hey?
01:03:53
Speaker
Yeah, there you Yeah, yeah. It's a really insane playlist, but it is good. so curious. It's an insane playlist. It honestly has very little through line aside from you can trace it all back to Jamaica. I'm so curious though, Rob, about what this other last thing is that you have.
01:04:13
Speaker
Ah, yes. I'm serious. So Joey, play that after the after we play the outro because that's where that's going to go. yeah Okay. So well you teased it up. It's fun. Let's do this.
01:04:25
Speaker
We're teasing. Thanks for listening to Checkered Past. Hit us up on Instagram, Twitter, Blue Sky, YouTube, and TikTok at Checkered Past Pod or send us an email at checkeredpastpod at gmail.com. To support the pod and get bonus content including a full length and unedited video of this episode, sign up for the Checkerhead Patreon at patreon.com slash checkeredpast.
01:04:41
Speaker
We also have a merch available at checkeredpass.ca. This episode is edited and engineered by Joey and a special thanks to Chris Reeves, Megamichi, and Adam Ska Mailman for making this podcast happen.
01:04:53
Speaker
Thanks also for Keelan for his work on the podcast, including the trombonist theme song. Next week, it's the 200th episode special. And until next time, I'm Rob.
01:05:03
Speaker
So, Lynn. And Joey. And immortal words of Harry Belafonte. Listen to this podcast till the morning come.
01:05:24
Speaker
There's three kinds of reggae here, so steppers, rockers and one drop. ah Steppers with a kick in quarter notes.
01:05:38
Speaker
Rockers with a bass drum on the first and third beat.
01:05:48
Speaker
And one drop only on the third beat.
01:05:55
Speaker
and you have many different variations of it.