Friday, August 7, 2009

Friday Flashback

A classic from 1969: Desmond Dekker and the Aces, The Israelites



And the 1980 Remix from Stiff Records:



Have a great weekend!

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

5 comments:

  1. Well there's a coincidence, I was listening to a Desmond Dekker cd on the way to town today, which had this track on it. I spent my teens listening to a lot of Ska and some Punk too. I still have a lot of it on vinyl, including a decent amount of early Ska like this.

    Even though I discoverd D&D at 13 or 14, I'm afraid I wasted so many opportunities to game because I was too busy going to nightclubs and pubs, getting drunk and going to see bands like these guys:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AbtHgT93zg

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  2. Indeed, David! My D&D pals and I lost plenty of potential dice rolling time to drinking and listening to tunes or heading downtown DC.

    Thanks for the link - very "this are two tone" sound there. Good stuff.

    I'm a great fan of the Specials, Selecter, Madness, etc. but I know little of the scene down under. Thanks!

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  3. No worries Dave. The scene was never big in Australia, although there are still some Ska bands floating around down here. I was a skinhead back when it was Two Tone and Ska, before it got infected and taken over by Oi and the right wing Nazi rubbish. I'm afraid I was never a very good teenage geek. Sex & drugs & rock'n'roll took precedence over everything else. But I'm making up for it now as a hard core 40-something geek.

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  4. I hear you. My game crew also became my drinking crew and some of them also later became my Punk club rabble-rousing pals.

    Are you familiar with The Saints? There was a time when I named them amongst my favorite Punk bands ever. Great stuff.

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  5. The Saints were a little bit before my time and so while I knew of them, I didn't hear much of their music, apart from the couple of songs that made it into the mainstream.

    I grew up in Adelaide, South Australia, a city of 1 million, so the whole "British" culture scene was quite small, meaning that the punks, skinheads and mods all knew each other and there was quite a bit of mixing between the groups without too much hostility (although everyone hated the mods - the posh gits!).

    I tended to stick to Ska music mainly, saw Madness in concert in '82 at 15 years of age. Got into Oi for a bit, relating to the whole working class, disaffected, picked on minority thing, didn't listen to much punk other than Crass, who I still listen to today.

    I've been enjoying your Friday Flashbacks and have meant to put my hand up a long time ago and say that you're not alone.

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