It wasn’t really hip-hop, fusion, or electro, it was Sly & Robbie turning their bass funk inside out. But much like Infidels, Language Barrier had this similar aura of quicksand-like unfamiliarity. Even Dylan found a way to tap into their mystique with his brilliant Lion of Judah sign-off: Jokerman. As performers they were the bedrock in the rise of dub as a movement and were able to become elite “guns for hire” injecting their sensibility to outré Jamaican-affecting hits from the likes of Grace Jones, Gwen Guthrie to Joan Armatrading (of all people!). Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare always seemed like a sure thing, having come off producing insanely successful/creative dub records by Black Uhuru, Ini Kamoze, Yellowman and Sugar Minott – and that’s just naming a few of the overground things people were hip to. But poof, like some no name act, it hardly made a dent in the charts, and they had to lick their wounds and regroup for a good while. Where do I go from here? I know that Augustus Pablo: King Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown is an undisputed classic, and I'll definitely be picking that up soon.I’m looking at the liner notes to Sly & Robbie’s Language Barrier right now. Performances by Afrika Bambaataa, Bernie Worrell, Mikey Chung, Manu Dibango, Wally Badarou, Herbie Hancock (!), Bob Dylan (!?!?), and production by Bill Laswell…I keep asking myself why in the world did this not make a dent in anyone’s memory? By the looks of their action-packed music video, featuring a young Neneh Cherry as a dancer and Sly & Robbie getting pumped with more lead than your average Steven Seagal movie, Island must have tried to put some muscle into generating heat for this release. In the Red Zone: The Essential Collection of Classic Dub Linval Thompson: Ride On Dreadlocks 1975-77 (contains many dub versions) Israel Vibration: Israel Dub (Same Song/Unconquered People dubs on one CD) The idea of manipulating music in this fashion also helps contextualize some of the developments in popular music over the past few decades.īurning Spear: Garvey's Ghost (on CD with Marcus Garvey) How wrong I was! I'm amazed at some of the atmospheres and textures that I'm hearing in this music. For the longest time I thought that dub just meant instrumental versions of songs without vocals (sounds boring, right?). As I'm exploring the various styles and time periods, I find that I'm really drawn to '70s era dub.
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