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- Listen to I am Rappaport on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. (upbeat music) - Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio.
(upbeat music) - Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. She even said Yaman, right before we started recording, 'cause this is Stuff You Should Know,
Rage Edition. - That's right, and here's the little thing you probably didn't even
notice my friend is we always clap on the count of three
when we go to record, so we can sync our sound. Here's a little behind the scenes for you, everybody. - Sure. - But I clapped on the four. - Did you?
- Just to, you know, make it super Rage. - That was pretty great, yeah, because so what you were doing was a skinging, that's right. And sking is slang for gun in Kingston. - Yeah.
- Kingston in Jamaica is the world capital of Rage. - It's where I was born. - It's one of those things where you're like, "Well, we're just come from where blues come from?" Well, come from here here.
No, Rage 100% came from Kingston, Jamaica. And it was built from all of the other stuff, well, these other influences, but there is no question where it actually emerged and that was Kingston. - Yeah, for sure.
I was playing golf yesterday with my friend Justin, who, you know, Justin from Trinchtown? - Justin from London, which will also play a part, but he asked what we were recording on today and it told him Rage.
And he was like, "Did you know that Rage is like failing new?"
And I said, he was like, "I always thought it was like
"in the 40s and 50s." He was like, "But true Rage was like, "The late '60s." - You make Justin sound like a real milk toast. I can tell everybody that is not what Justin sounds like. - Yeah, but that was, you know, that's true.
And we'll get to all that in the timeline and everything. But yeah, Rage is a, I mean, on the general timeline of music history, it's a pretty new form. - Yeah, almost to the little over 50-ish years old.
- Yeah, I mean, I'm 55, I was born in '71, so you do the math in the notebook. - I'm not doing the math.
“Yeah, I think 1968 tends to be like the year”
that people pretty much put their finger on, when Rage was born. But let's talk about all this. Let's get to the beginning, I guess, okay? - Yeah, which means we got to talk about Jamaica
as a place, right? - Yeah, because one of the things about Rage, Olivia helps us with this, so it had to, to Olivia. One of the things about Jamaica and Rage is that there's like a malange of different people
and cultures who are all kind of brought together, a significant number of them against their will, and all kind of formed the society where it was all mixed together. And one of the things that emerged
was a real appreciation of music and folk music, that kind of developed and it was very unique because Jamaica is unique. I mean, every Caribbean island is unique, even though they have similar histories,
they all just, they form different malanges in different ways. - Yeah, different malanges because you have indigenous people,
Then in the case of, well, most of them,
you had people from Africa brought over in the slave trade. So in this case in Jamaica, that combined with African work songs and the European musical influence that was there at the time. They mixed together and in the 40s and 50s,
the first thing we got as sort of a predecessor
to Rage was called Minto.
“- Maybe that's what Justin was talking about.”
- No, he's talking about Minto's, the freshman. - Capital M-E-N-T-O, which is sort of like, if you heard it, it might sound a little bit like Calipso, out of Trinidad, it's got Banjo and like guitar, it's got something called a Rumba Box,
which is like a percussive thing with pluck steel tines. So Minto was kind of the earliest predecessor and then in the '50s, I guess the late '50s and early '60s, 'cause that was the '40s and '50s. American R&B on the radio,
which also came from African and European influences, obviously. That produced what became the more direct predecessor to Rage, which was Scott. - Yeah, that's the things took a really dark turn. - Oh man, Scott's, I like all this stuff,
I guess we'll talk a little bit about like our affinity for it, but it's not the kind of thing I listened to all the time, but I have my moments where I will put on like, for an entire morning, I will listen to like old, like '50s and '60s Scott and like super early Rage.
I like the early early stuff. - Okay, cool, I can't really fault you for that.
“I think I just have a bad taste of my mouth”
about Scott from the '90s. - The mining mining Boston's. - I'm not calling anybody in particular out.
I'm calling all of them out, basically.
- Yeah, but that early stuff is, I think you could probably appreciate a little more like the Desmond Decker stuff. - Sure, sure. - I'm sure I could too.
One of the reasons that suddenly came up in the '50s and '60s is because transistor radio started become available. Before that Jamaica had basically access to BBC-style radio stations that weren't playing R&B.
And so all of a sudden they could pick up stations from Miami and we're like, "Ooh, I like this stuff." And that was another thing too that Rage was built on. We're like Jamaican people who were like, "I like this, I'm gonna pull this in, I like that,
I'm gonna pull this in." So much so that the concept of sampling in the hip hop community is actually, a lot of that comes
from this kind of mindset that Rage was born out of.
It was like, "I like this, so I'm gonna use this." - Yeah, for sure. Like this episode definitely has some crossover with the hip hop episode. And obviously when we get to the rest of our stuff,
the highly salassia episode. But the technology of the radio was certainly big. And also what was big was, and you see this a lot in the development of culture, like different technologies coming along.
And in this case, just literally electricity being spread throughout Jamaica is what led to something called toasting. And DJs, down that they had widespread electricity could set up these mobile discos.
They were called sound systems. And this was in and around Kingston. And the DJs developed this toasting. I was about to say tradition, 'cause that makes it sound more like something
you do with a wedding, but musical style, where they would speak and sing over the recorded music and that directly led to stuff like, you know, rap. - Yeah, like, do you ever listen to like, reggae shows on college radio or something like that?
“- Well yeah, that's why a lot of times I play on Sunday morning”
because that's when Elb and 88's reggae show was. - Right, okay, so like, and then sometimes the DJ would just turn the music down on all of a sudden and say something. - Yeah, oh yeah.
- That's toasting, right? And it can be done well and it can very frequently be done not well. - It depends on how toasted they are. - Sure, exactly.
Or what they have to say, too, like you have to have something to say that should have to do with the song or something important. It shouldn't be like, you know, shop your back to school sales at Target or something.
And then you turn the music back up real quick. - Sometimes you hear these guys, and it's the best, 'cause I think our old, beloved WFMU and New Jersey, I think they had a reggae show too. And sometimes you can hear these DJs
are super, super stoned. - Yeah, for sure. - I mean, they're probably raw safariians. And so then that's like part of their religion, you know? So it should definitely make sense.
And even if they're not, if you're so into reggae that you host a reggae show, you probably are so in like a pretty decent amount of the time. - It's probably part of your lifestyle. (laughing)
Yeah, they're like, time to put on my game face, smoke my weekly joint before my radio show. That's right. - So some people are like, okay, I like the sky stuff, but I get really worn out dancing to it.
Maybe we could slow it down a little bit.
What came out of that was Rocksteady, one word.
The poem "The Best Names" for any musical genre,
if you ask me, yeah, I'm with you.
“And Rocksteady has a lot of the same components”
and instruments and everything, but like I said, it slowed down. There's much more of a focus on vocals. So like there's like a, you know, lyrics to the song, the theme or something like that.
And if you're like, I don't know if I've ever heard Rocksteady, you definitely have, 'cause there are some hits that came out of this, apparently it was just like a two-year period that Rocksteady was popular.
But the original tide is high. And no sunshine, as in eight, no sunshine when she's gone, that came out of the Rocksteady era. If you've ever listened to the upsetters, like the early stuff, really organ heavy,
everybody sings it once, so the mic peaks and gets overloaded.
Like that is, that's Rocksteady. - Yeah, for sure. And Rocksteady is what kind of directly led to what we know as reggae. And when they started that sort of heavy,
thumping bass and a little more percussion, percussive forward, that's when reggae was kind of born. You know, I know Livia points out that there are some other kind of, I guess just maybe unusual influences.
And one was the school in Kingston, the Alpha Boy school. It was run by, it was a trade school, and there was a none run affair. And they had, I keep wanting to say it's like unusual, but maybe it wasn't, but they had a really great
music education program. And there was a none there named Sister Iggy, Sister Mary Ignatius Davies. And she was just a big time music fan. She was especially big into jazz.
And ended up having a lot of like future reggae, like, you know, not the huge stars, although yellow man did go through there, but some early like Scott and reggae horn players, especially because of her jazz focus,
came through her school. - Right, for sure. Yeah, I had no idea about that, did you? - No, that's super cool. - There was also obviously the Rostafari influence
is significant, and Rostafari anism was around, before reggae, and reggae was actually around before reggae musicians became Rostafarians. And it was, if you go back and listen to our episode in Holly Salacie, it was his visit.
“And I think 1966 that just opened the doors”
to Rostafari anism and reggae being like, essentially hand in hand. - Yeah, for sure. And I thought we had done one on Rostafari anism, but I think I put together an article
and at the time, you were like, we've been doing too much religious stuff.
And I just tucked it away, that never came back.
And then when we covered, yeah, yeah, this is a while ago. And then we covered Holly Salacie, it basically covered that well enough, I think. - Oh, it did, okay, 'cause we definitely got into it for sure, but that episode was about
while a lot more than just that. - Oh, yeah, yeah, but at the time, before his visit to Jamaica, a state visit, this is an official visit. The Rostafarians, even in Jamaica, we're seen as just kind of weirdos,
they were on the fringe, they weren't taken seriously at all. They were just a strange religion. And then Holly Salacie came, and essentially just by recognizing them, I think he awarded medals to some Rostafarian preachers there.
He legitimized it and the eyes of Jamaica, and now all of a sudden a bunch of people, including Rita Marley, are like, I Rostafarian, and that's the moment that it spread to Reggae music.
- Yeah, and this is in the lead up to their eventual freedom from the colonizers and the white supremacist sort of system that they have been living under. They call Babylon, so that's why here Babylon a lot in the songs, and I mentioned Desmond Decker,
and that is probably most notable song
“is that Israelites, and that's what he was talking about there, right?”
- Yeah, that came out in 1968, and I've seen that some people point to that or a lot of people, like S, point to that is the bridge between Rocksteady and Reggae, that song. And it's that song you think it is, like,
whoa, the Israelite, right? - That sounds nice. - And oh, thanks, I've been practicing for weeks. - Is it a lower key, but you're under the weather, so? - Yes, thank you for giving me that pass.
But yeah, that song, I don't think it says necessarily explicitly, but the gist of it is this Rossopharian idea that the stolen Africans who spread all over the world and their descendants are the true Israelites, and they are trapped in Babylon,
which is white supremacist run Western world, and that through self-determination and deliverance by jaw, they will be able
To emancipate themselves, essentially mind body and spirit.
- And that's what Rossopharianism is about.
- Yeah, for sure. And there was a drummer, Rossopharii drummer name, they called him Count Ozzy, but Oswald Williams, he played on a early song in 1958, so this is like, you know, still pre-dating Reggae.
It was a scour recording by the folks, brothers, called Ocarolina, and, you know, we're gonna be mentioning a lot of songs, but if you're in a place where you can, like, cue some of these up, I encourage it, because they're all great.
A lot of this early stuff, and that's kinda what I like about it, is it sounds like it was recorded in a tin can, like the recordings are at the best quality,
“but it adds a lot of Jewish to it, I think.”
- Nice. So, oh, one other thing about Rossopharianism too, so I said it predated Reggae.
I mean, it basically came out of the 20s and 30s
when Marcus Garvey predicted that Emperor would be elected to sort of see it, I don't know what you would call it when you install an, there was gonna be an emperor that came out of Africa, and people were like, "Oh, Holly Solassi, that's him."
And so from that moment on, Rossopharianism was born, and apparently, Dreads had been part of Rossopharianism as far back as the 1940s. - Oh, wow. - I had no idea.
- What about white hydreads? - Those came out of the 90s, I blame the 90s Scott Revival for that too. - Probably so, yeah, yeah. - All right, that feels like a good time for a break, right?
- Yeah, I think so.
“- All right, and we will come back with more on Reggae,”
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- So Chuck, we're back. - But it didn't, didn't. - Yeah, let's hear it, I threw to you really, I was being serious. You guys, here's another little behind the scenes thing.
Chuck and I decide on the fly, which one's going to bring us back from break.
This time I said I was gonna go,
and so we came back and I immediately tossed to you,
which is why I did that. Apparently it was not that great of a joke. Is because I'm not super musical. Like, I know Rey A, pick Rey Gae out in a, like, maybe two notes, I could be like, that's a Rey Gae song.
- Yeah. - But I can't mimic it. Like, and when I read about it, I don't have any idea what's going on. It actually confuses my understanding of Rey Gae,
which is dumb. - Well, if you're gonna count on me to mimic Rey Gae with my mouth, although I kind of just did with that drum intro. - Yeah.
- People are probably gonna be disappointed, but we should talk a little bit about the instrumentation because it's like you might find in a rock band, maybe minus some stuff and plus some stuff.
Drum, sometimes steel drums, which I was trying to mimic. - Oh, it's a piece. - You got your electric guitar, a lot of percussion, you know, bongos and shakers and stuff like that.
Bob Marley used some cool, like, scint, scint these sounds and organ sounds, you didn't have... - It's my life. - On what? - It's my life. Don't you forget in that the wailers?
- I don't know that song. - Yes, you do. - It might be a song, Rey. - Oh, okay. - Yeah.
- It's a very simply song. - Yeah, yeah. I just, I didn't recognize the rendition. It's just 'cause you're sick, though. - Yeah, it's 'cause I'm under the way. - Horn section, sometimes you might get in a Rey Gae band,
but, you know, I mentioned earlier that rhythm of Rey Gae that is, kind of maybe the most distinguishing aspect of it. It's a four-beat rhythm with the emphasis on the second, the two and the four, where there's traditional rock,
“it's not that, so that's why when you hear that,”
you know, that chunking rhythm guitar, that don't chink it, don't chink, that's on the two and four. And it's, you know, it's a real distinct sound. And, you know, as we'll see, you know, once they, this kind of transferred over to London,
you had tons of groups like the police and the specials in madness kind of like latching on to that sort of two and the four, you know, it's a very distinct thing. - For sure, in the '70s, it definitely caught
great Britain by the... - Short release? - Short release? - Curly, yeah. (laughs)
And Ireland too, we can't forget Ireland ever, we never do.
- No, of course not. - Even if we don't mention Ireland, we still are including Ireland. - That's right. - But we should say it separately
because they're not great. - They're great Britain. - Did you know that? - We didn't want to rally anyone up. (laughs)
“- So, thank you, that's what I was trying to get to”
is you explaining the rhythm, 'cause I can't. I have so little rhythm that I can't even explain it verbally. - Yeah. - But that's essentially what you just said, like that's one of the hallmarks,
if not the hallmark of Reggae. And then you also said that sometimes they have horns, I feel like that's one of the main things that distinguishes Reggae from Rocksteady or Scott. Is it a horn?
- It's a horn that kind of moved away from horns. Where horns were really, really important to Rocksteady and in particular Scott. - Oh, yeah, for sure. - Yeah, so one of the other things about Reggae, too,
that's good to know. That's easily overlooked if all you've ever listened to is say Bob Marley, or maybe even Burning Spears, something like that, they tend to focus more than like spiritual aspects, self-determination.
There's a lot of Reggae out there that focuses on violence and crime, because it definitely emerged in that context. If you've heard Bob Marley, you've definitely heard of Trinch Town.
Trinch Town is a low-income neighborhood in Kingston. I think part of it's like Chante, even. It's that low-income. And you've lived in Kingston. There was a really good chance that one of your
only options was to turn to crime to make a living. And so there was this romanticization of crime that was going on in the area at the same time that Reggae was emerging in the same area. So they are kind of intertwined.
There's also like a real, it's really male dominated. It's still today. It is generally a male dominated music genre. So there's just like inevitably a certain machismo that's still, that's in the background there.
It might not be always talked about.
It's more dancehall, but in Reggae, even, to there's this idea that the man's in charge is just how it is. - Yeah, and there's a lot of sort of, like I mentioned, the influence on hip hop
and a lot of sort of lines that you can draw,
“I think definitely more women broke through”
in hip hop than in Reggae. But this violent context of the gangster persona,
A lot of it taken from American movies
in both Reggae and hip hop.
“The rude boy culture was what it was called in Reggae,”
but you can see a lot of similarities there. The actual word Reggae probably didn't come around until 1968, it was a song by the Great Great toots in the Metals, Frederick Toots Hibbert. There was a song called, "Do the Reggae, R-E-G-G-A-Y."
- Yeah. - And when asked about that word, he didn't say like, "Hey, I invented the word," but he said that he was replacing the word "streggae, ST-R-E-G-G-A-E," which was like a raggedy-looking woman,
but he said that had a negative connotation. It was like a derogatory term, so I didn't want to use that. So I changed it over, and then there's another story where it was R-E-G-E-A-Y, which was a dance trend taken from the terms
for ragged clothing, and that turned into R-G-E-R-G-E-R-G-E-R-G-E-R-G-A, which was about like fighting or protesting. So there's not like a definitive like, "Hey, this is where the word came from, but probably maybe a mashup of those three things."
Well, there's another entry to an artist named Little Roy, who the same year that two to the Maytals song came out 1968, he released a song, or maybe even Alvin called "R-G-E-Soul," and he spelled it the way that we spell it today, too. So it's just completely muddled,
but it seemed to have come around in 1968, the year R-G-E broke. - Yeah, and a lot of that was thanks to, like I said, Frederick Tut's Hibbert, if you wanna dial up some early suits in the Maytals,
it's pretty good listening. They started out in 1962, obviously Scott at the time,
but their first big hit was in 1968,
with the song '54, '56, that's my number, great tune, and they had a bunch of, you know, not, they didn't take over America like Bob Marley later would, because this is the late '60s, so America was consumed with all, you know, like the Hibpy culture
and everything that was going on musically there. So it would take Bob Marley in the '70s to break through in the States. - Yeah, but at the same time, to the suburbanites in America and the mid '60s,
we're into Caribbean stuff, like exotic, and things like that, which is why we have heard songs like the Tite is high. So it did kind of make its way over here, but no one has ever taken the world by storm, at least as far as R-G-E goes like Bob Marley.
He just became an international icon, like in a very short time, even, too, as we'll see. - Yeah, for sure. So he's coming up, everybody, wouldn't that be funny if we did a whole episode in the news?
(laughing) - Just a lighter? - That'd be an April Fool's episode. - Yeah, for sure. - But we, you know, producers, just like all genres,
like producers and engineers had a lot to do with, oh, it's not all music, actually. Some more than others, but definitely with R-G-E, there was a guy named King Tubby, who was born Osborn Retic,
and he was one of the guys, you know, kind of a studio wizard that was like building his own hardware to create effects,
and he was the guy that first started stripping out vocals
“to create dub plate, and that's what the DJs would toast over.”
- Yeah, which, as we'll see, sounds a lot like me hip-hopping rapping, right? - Yeah, and dub music. - Right, and so dub music, if I don't know if King Tubby was the guy
who was credited with actually coming up with it, there are others, least-gratch-parry, as another originator, or dub, hoped in Lewis, who came to be known as scientists, in my money, the best dub musician of all,
but the thing that these guys had in common was they were using, like, recording equipment, often cast off recording equipment, that they built their own rigs out of, that they were using essentially as early synthesizers.
And it was a lot like how craftwork and divo who came later did, or it was like, I want to make the sound, but there's nothing out there that makes that sound, so I'm gonna build my own thing.
“And that's what dub music essentially was based on.”
It was taking reggae, and then making it into essentially electronic music with all sorts of effects. - Yeah, man, I would love, I used to be scared of doing these music episodes because 45 to 50 minutes to encapsulate a genre
is really, really hard, but since we've done it a few times, I'm not as scared of it, and I would love to check new wave off the list. - I don't think that's a good idea. - We don't, I almost said that's where we don't even need
to come up with an article for that, we can just go back and forth on it, how about that?
- That sounds great.
I think you say "ish" instead of "this" word, is what people do. - Yeah, that's like on the radio or something.
“- For sure, "ish" because I think it's the sound”
that it makes when you scratch the record backwards at that moment. - Is that it? - Oh, okay. - I'm almost positive.
- All right, so we're getting to Bob Marley, but if we're talking about Lee Scratch Perry, he's one of the guys in the early '60s who was working with the whalers very early on, and he, you know, Lee Scratch Perry went on
to have an incredible long career eventually
in hip hop and rock and like everything else. - Yeah. - But I guess we should talk about the whalers a little bit, and if we're gonna talk about the whalers, we gotta back up a little bit and talk about Joe Higgs.
- Did you know who Joe Higgs was? - I did not, but now I'm like, I love seeing the tint like the early tindralled being like, tindralled. - Sure, there might have been a whalers at one point,
but we probably wouldn't know it because Joe Higgs taught them most of what they know about music. - Yeah, I think I heard of them probably in the Bob Marley documentary now, I think. - Oh, that makes sense, because you kind of couldn't
talk about Bob Marley without talking about Joe Higgs first. He taught not just Bob Marley, how to sing
“and how to write songs, and everything you need to know”
about, you know, making music. He also taught Peter Tosh and Bunny Whaler at the same time. So he essentially taught the whalers how to play music. So yeah, they might have been around
'cause I know that Bunny Whaler and Bob Marley were essentially raised together from childhood as almost stepbrothers of sorts. And they met Peter Tosh as teenagers in Trinchtown, so they probably would've formed a musical act,
but they would've just sucked. - Well, Joe Higgs was definitely the glue early on and the mentor to them. He had a big hit as a singer in 1960, with Higgs and Wilson, it was called Manio,
and it was, again, if you listen to some of this stuff, you definitely hear like the American R&B sound coming through,
like some of this stuff sounds like James Brown at first,
and then like that Reggae Beat kicks in. But it was one of the first Manio, he was one of the first records ever pressed and released in Jamaica, and sold 50,000 copies and was this 1960, so that's a lot of records for back then.
And he is, yeah, he's the guy that like, all these teenagers basically were crowding around just like sponges to everything you knew. - Yeah, that was something really cool about him. Like he was living in Trinchtown or at least Kingston
at the time too, and he would teach other younger musicians, like he took time to do that, rather than just focusing on his career and getting bigger and bigger, he like took his talents and helped other people
develop their own talents, right? So hats off to Joe Higgs for sure, just from putting the whalers together. But you mentioned how, like a lot of this stuff this early Reggae in Rock City,
it's how you can really hear the R&B coming through, and that's true with those early whalers songs too. If you go listen to Simmer Down, which came out in 1963, great song. I think they had four albums before they came out
with their actual full Reggae album in 1972. I can't remember which one it's called, but you're just like, you can hear Bob Marley's voice, but it's total R&B. - Yeah, they dressed the part too.
Like when you look at the old, like the early whalers, they were wearing like the cool like shark skin suits stuff, and they were like styled out like the OJs or something. - Right, exactly, yeah.
So it's a little jarring when all you know about Bob Marley is as a Reggae icon, you know? - Yeah. - But yeah, they all met together in Trinchtown, where they all lived, and one thing I didn't realize
is that Bob Marley's father was a white man. Did you know that? - Yeah, his dad was, his name was Norville Sinclair Marley, and he was Jamaican, he was a white Jamaican of English descent. And he was a army, like a British army veteran,
but was a plantation overseer basically,
and was in his 60s when he married Bob Marley's mother when she was 18, and so you hear that,
“and you think like, boy, is the worst thing happened.”
And apparently, that wasn't the case. I mean, there was a huge age difference. I'm not saying there was a balance of power by any means, but everything I've read, and seeing it was, it was a consensual relationship
and that he provided financial support for a while to the family, but he was not like around much after Bob was born. He wasn't like a real father figure.
- Okay, gotcha.
- Yeah, 'cause I hear white rural overseer,
and I'm like, oh, no. - Well, yeah. - But one of the other things that was a huge influence in Bob's life was his grandfather, his mom's father,
who was a farmer, and herbal healer, and so a lot of the kind of mystic qualities or at least interests of Bob Marley, that just kinda he exudes in a way, you know. He definitely got from being his grandfather's grandson.
- Yeah, for sure. But as a result of that sort of displaced childhood, Barley didn't get to trench down until he was a teenager. It's been a lot of time out in the country in Kingston, hanging out with this granddad, like you said.
And like you mentioned earlier, he and Bunny Whaler, it's a cutest thing, they were friends from the time
they were like two and three years old,
and when Bob's dad died, his mom moved in with Bunny Whaler's dad, and they, they were raised like brothers. - Yeah, super sweet. - It is super sweet, and they met Peter Tauction
“and gambling hall, I think when they were all like”
early teens, right? - Yeah, I don't know when Bob Marley met his wife Rita, but I do know they were married by the time Harley Salasse came to visit Jamaica in 1966, and it was her influence.
She went and saw Harley Salasse, I think we said in the Harley Salasse episode that Bob Marley didn't go, but Rita Marley did, and she came back like guys. This is amusing, and she was the influence who connected Rostafarianism with Reggae,
at least as far as the Whaler's go, and they were hugely influential in spreading that connection. - Yeah, for sure, and like you mentioned,
it's catch a fire in 72 is considered kind of their first
like full blown Reggae album, and I think you're right, I think it was like their fifth record as a group. I like that stuff too, like I definitely had a Bob Marley phase in college, literally every person on Planet Earth, for sure.
But now, I really, really like that those early albums more than anything that I, you know, my legend cassette, that I wore out, of course, in college, like everyone else had. - Well, wait a minute, was that, I feel like they came out with a box set or something like that around that time,
“and that's what got everybody into Bob Marley again at that age?”
- I don't know, was it legend? - I thought for sure there was that legend. - Well, legend was the sort of greatest hits. - Right. - Like a bit of a better word.
- Yeah, legend was the one that everybody had 'cause those were all the big, big songs. - Right. - But it's, I really like that early stuff, and if you go listen, I think Talking Blues is a compilation too.
That's the one where the songs are interspersed with Bob, like talking in the studio and stuff, and, you know, it's great. It's such a thick accent, like you can hardly understand them. - Right, yeah, it's kind of great. - Yeah, and even I was reading a quote from Shaba Rank,
it's about how the, like, how man, Shaba Ranked. - Like old dance hall guys need to lay off of the younger dance hall guys, because they're doing their own thing. And the only reason I know that he said that was from the context of the article, like explaining that,
he said that, 'cause they had a black quote from him, and I'm like, I have no idea what Shaba Rank's just said. And I wasn't even listening, I was reading it. I could not make heads or tails out of it. - It's one of my favorite, the Jamaican accent
is one of my favorite accents on planet earth. - I love it so much. - It's definitely up there with Scottish for me too. - I didn't see the, you ever seen this stuff on the internet where people would be like, if you wanna say this
in this accent, say these words in American English? - You taught me to say Michael Cain, you say Michael Cain. - Michael Cain. - No, my cocaine. - Yeah, that's what I just said.
(laughing) - I saw one recently that was very funny, which was if you wanna say Spice Girls in Scottish, you say, kind of have to quickly say space, geto's in English. - Let's hear it.
So like, asked me what I did over the weekend. - What did you do over the weekend, Chuck? - And I went to a concert and then asked me who I saw. - Who did you see, Chuck? - And the space geto's?
- Oh yeah, that was pretty dead on.
“- Pretty good, huh? What did you have to drink there?”
(laughing) - Was it urn on drink? - What'd you say? - I'm a non-dlinker. - You didn't drink any urn brew?
- What is that? - Remember that's like their drink? It's like almost an orangey weird. - I don't remember that. - Oh yeah, it's like iron brew,
but they spell it like urn brew. - Oh, I do remember it, I didn't know. - Yeah, it's something specific. - I like it, but it was like,
You could easily drink too many at once.
- Yeah, I can see that. - So, what do you think is where we were headed? - Yeah, so yeah, what you have when you put together Reggae Reggae Music and Rostafarian perspectives and outlook
in worldview, that's the word I was looking for. You have what's known as Roots Reggae, and what most people think of as Reggae, what they're thinking of as Roots Reggae, Bob Marley and the Whalers Roots Reggae,
from Ketsafire on. - Yeah, for sure. And Ketsafire was 72, and like we said,
that was their first big Reggae album,
but they actually, the Whalers broke up two years later in '74, and most of the like, the college got into Bob Marley stuff and the legend stuff is all post official, like the Whalers as the Whalers.
And all of them went on to do their own solo stuff,
“obviously, I think Bob Marley had six albums”
after that until, we'll get to his death in 1981. But everyone did Peter Tosh, who was, he was the real deal, man. He had some great albums, legalized it in 1976, is a great one, equal rights a year later,
and then later on in the '80s, he had a very sort of political album called Nuclear War, that was really good. - Yeah, I had this Peter Tosh live show that I cannot find drives me crazy.
Just, it's like every other show from that tour exists
except for that one, and I can't remember what city it was. - And then we had a tape or something. - So yeah, it was like a burn CD. It was so good, man. You could just listen to that on repeat, right?
- Yeah. - But yes, his lyrics were, and just the whole vibe was way more militant compared to Bob Marley. - Yeah. - So I've seen it described as like,
when you put Marley and Tosh together and also Tosh, by the way, was the, like, far and away the most musically gifted of the wailers, he could play all sorts of different stuff. He was also a good songwriter too,
but when you put Marley's lyrics together and Peter Tosh's lyrics together into one show or one album or whatever, you had like a really rich, complex album, like when it was really cool themes in it, right?
And I saw it, there's a Reggae Archivist, which is, I'm not sure what you would go study in school to become that. - The guy named Roger Stephens, and he likened Marley to Martin Luther King Jr.
and Tosh to Malcolm X, and like they kind of had those, they approached things from those viewpoints. So Marley made the wailers universally palatable and Peter Tosh inserted like that kind of militant political bent that is also like a big part of Reggae too.
“- Yeah, and I think a lot of the credibility”
for at least some of our Jamaican's were concerned. - Yeah, I saw also that like apparently around the world, he's respected at least as much if not more than he is in Jamaica because he was like known to walk the walk
and he was beaten nearly to death by the police several times. Legalize it was banned in Jamaica so he took out a newspaper ad and added the lyrics in it. Like he was a cool dude for sure. - Yeah, all right, so I think we should take another break.
And we will come back and talk a little bit about a guy, named Jimmy Cliff right after this. (upbeat music) - Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast
called Playing Along is Back. I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting. Every episode is a little different, but it all involves music and conversation
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“Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests”
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- I'm Munga Sha together and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. This time, I'm diving into a rabbit hole of pet tides, organoids, blood, boys, blue zones, and brain replacement to try to understand
what this longevity obsession is all about. And what it really means to live forever for all of us. I learned about some rad science. - I can make a brain for you. And then we can test what draw is the best for your brain,
a supposed to his brain. - Here are some hard truths. - I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a four to five year acceleration.
- And get myself into a world of trouble. - I'd say probably start bones smashing. - That doesn't work. - Make it look more defined. They say it works.
I don't know. - Listen to Skyline Drive, how to live forever on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. (upbeat music)
(upbeat music) - All right, we're back. Take it away Josh.
“- Chuck, have you ever heard a song by Jimmy Cliff?”
- Yeah, I like Jimmy Cliff. Hurricane Hattie was his first big hit in 1962. He was just a kid. He was like 18 years old. And he moved to London.
And he got a lot more reggae after he moved to London. And he was a big sort of proselytizer for reggae. Kind of took it around the world in a lot of ways. - Yeah.
- And one way he did so was in a movie, which I have not seen.
I don't know, it was one that's always been on my list,
but the harder they come in 1972 is a, definitely a cult classic in is was a big, like not a huge like American hit, but on the movie scene, like the film lovers it was. - Yeah, it's also widely considered one
of the best soundtracks, too. - Yeah. - Because it's about reggae and the reggae music industry and Kingston and the way things are in Kingston, and it's like Jimmy Cliff plays kind of a bang into it
to an extent. - Yeah. - Yeah, I haven't seen it either, but I just know it's like you said it cult classic.
“- Yeah. That, as much as, you know, I think simultaneous”
to Bob Marley touring the world in the wailers. Like that movie coming out and being seen outside of Jamaica, like really helped spread the concept of reggae and what it was all about. - Yeah, I mean, when you've got Cisco and Ebert reviewing
the harder they come on their TV shows, like it's spreading fairly mainstream, you know. - Two thumbs up if I'm not mistaken. - Well, I don't know, I know Ebert gave it thumbs up, but I don't know about Cisco.
I'll have to go back and look. - I know I've told you this before, but do you know that Gene Cisco stated "Favorite Movie" was Saturday night fever? - Yeah.
- And he owned the white suit that revolts of war inside our day night fever? - Yeah, that was in our disco episode. - Okay. - But it's just such a great fact.
- Yeah, and you know what, since that episode, I've had, as a copy-pasted from the original New York Times article that inspired Saturday night fever. - Mm-hmm. - It's been sitting on my desktop on my computer for like 10 years, unread.
- Oh, it's good. It's just, especially if you go into it, knowing it's just one big lie, it's actually even better. - Oh, was it? I don't, I don't remember that.
- Well, I'm sorry. I'm just gonna take that back, I thought you did. - No, that's all right. - I'm sorry, I'll still read it. - Okay.
- It's one of the 10 years from now. - No, forget that. - Okay, cool.
“But you'll never forget that Gene Cisco fact,”
I like to bust out every few years. - That's right. So we should talk a little bit more about, I guess we talked a little bit about the violence that was going on when Reggae was born in Kingston.
But over the years, Reggae has just sort of been intertwined with a lot of political violence and violent clashes, especially within the country politically.
And you know, they're always in the middle of it.
And Bob Marley was usually in the middle of it trying to bring people together. In 1976, they were in the middle of a clash between the people's national party, which was the ruling party at the time.
And there were opponents and Bob Marley went to play an anti-violence concert in some of the people dragged them on that for like, say no, like you're siding with the P and P in Prime Minister, Michael Manley,
just by even playing this event. So I think there's a lot of frustration there judging from the documentary about like trying to do the right thing
By bringing people together.
But some people on the opposition being like,
“you can't even like talk to the other side.”
- Yeah, and the P and P, the ruling party, they were left winged. It was a social experiment, I essentially saw. And one reason a lot of people point to is why there was so much unrest and violent clashes
and all that was because the CIA was running around trying to destabilize the country because it was moving to the left rather than the right. That concert you mentioned that Bob Marley was frustrated about it seeming like he was kind of like a hand-made
near whatever to the unpopular Prime Minister. Two days before he was shot, he was shot, Rita was shot to other people were shot in his home. And after being shot in the chest and the shoulder, he still went on and played that show.
Yeah, it was incredible, two years after that in 1978,
he had the very famous one love concert because there was still that divided political climate. And once again, Bob Marley's there in the middle trying to make peace. And he brought the two guys together.
He brought Prime Minister Manley together with Edward,
“I think Siga of the Jamaican Labor Party.”
And that was a huge, huge deal. - Yeah, there's a very famous picture of them holding hands 'cause Bob Marley's making them. - Yeah, exactly. - So Marley actually died of a cancerous growth
that started on his toe that he didn't get looked at 'cause he thought it was an old soccer injury. And he actually collapsed in Central Park after a pretty great show in Madison Square Garden. - Yeah, he opened up for the Commodore's.
And apparently blew the Commodore's off the stage. And the real sad thing about his death is that for every thing I saw it was that that was, he probably could have been very successfully treated for cancer, had he gotten it looked at earlier on.
- Yeah, so the survival rate for black men from that particular type of cancer is like 70% so yeah, that sucks. But he thought it was a soccer injury, I think. - I'm trying to, I mean, does that what you said?
- Yeah, I don't remember. For some reason, I thought it had something to do with religion, but maybe I'm just not remembering right about that part. - Maybe he did so well in the game.
He considered it a religious experience. Or might have been a little bit of both. - So Bob Marley was shot, but he didn't die from that. He died from natural causes. Peter Tosh and two years after Peter Tosh King Tubby
were both murdered by Doneman. That's how their lives ended. That's, I mean, like there's nowadays, there's a lot of Rage artists who, you know, come along over the years.
This is not like, there was still rather limited Rage artists so limited number. So two major Rage stars being murdered is actually pretty significant. - Oh, for sure.
Peter Tosh's murder was brutal. Like he had these three guys that busted it
basically held him hostage in his house and tortured him,
trying to get money from him. And as people like friends would come by the house, just through the course of the day, they would be taken in and held hostage. And eventually, like, just, there was just a big crazy shoot
out and he was shot in the head. It was brutal.
“- Yeah, the worst thing about that aside from the fact”
that he was murdered, his murderer was a guy named Dennis Logan, Leppo, was what people called him. And he knew that Peter Tosh had money because he had gotten out of prison and Peter Tosh gave him a place to stay.
Fed him, took care of him to help him get back on his feet. - And that's how Leppo Logan repaid him by murdering him because he was trying to rob him for more money. - Yeah, pretty brutal.
- Yeah. - And then King Tubby was murdered and what they think was a botched robbery in 1989. - Well, that's essentially what this was with Tosh, too, 'cause the other time they were just trying to get money
that he said he didn't have it to house. - Yeah, I'm guessing. - All right, so we mentioned London earlier.
London is probably like the second city of Rage after Kingston.
- Yeah, the Chicago of Rage. - Yeah. - So, because of what's called the Wind Rush Generation, which is when Caribbean immigrants post World War II from British colonies and former colonies,
they started moving elsewhere and a lot of them arrived in the UK. And that came over, they're music and they're culture and their food, and everything came over.
And that happened in London and there were all of a sudden a bunch of, well, it sort of depends. Like sometimes white London acts, sometimes Londoners that were black,
depending on the band. But like I mentioned, the police and the specials in madness, obviously they were in UB-40 and those ended up being like really big bands, but they also influenced like the punk scene
with the clash and the sex pistols even. - Yeah, Johnny Rotten was heavily influenced.
He went on to found public image limited
and thanks to him, Johnny Rotten, liking Rage
and jaw wobble, the bassist, really liking Dubbray gay. - Yeah. - PIL had a certain Rage being a Dubbray gay thing to go in on. So heads off to Rage for giving us public image limited.
- And you know, it wasn't just London. Like, we can't get into all this like super, in a super detailed way, but it, you know, Rage went across Africa. They were like native born South African artists
that like became Rage stars. I know the Ivory Coast really got into the Rostafari culture for a while. - Yeah, no, for sure. And some of them, the taking up
that kind of political causes and calls for revolution, some of actually happened to become political leaders in their country. Like Bobi Weene of Uganda or Shada Walae in Ghana. Like these are Rage artists who actually
have talked the talk in their now political, whether they like it or not. - Yeah, New Zealand, we're looking at you because who knew I didn't know. In 1979, Bob Marley played in Auckland
and it kind of, he kind of codified there in Maori musicians sort of adopted Rage for a while. And, you know, they brought their own thing,
like, you know, always happens
when you sort of adopt a music, they brought their own vocal harmonies and stuff. But they also, like, everywhere Rage went
“that it caught fire, I think people except in college”
dorms in the '80s and '90s and the '90s and the '90s. There was a big, like, identification with the politics, sort of the bottom-up pearl, it takes up at all. - Yeah, yeah, that was kind of lost
on the dorm crowd, wasn't it? - I mean, I think we all like to think we were down with the movement, but we just wanted to bumper stickers. (laughs)
- But I'm sure it definitely helped shape our world views. - Yeah, yeah, I think it opened us up to other things, for sure. - There are two other things that you can draw a direct line to from Rage to current music.
One is hip hop, like you said,
and that line seems to go through DJ CoolHeart. - Oh, yeah. - And it was definitely prominently featured in our hip hop episode because he was actually born in Kingston, I think, and ended up in the Bronx.
And it just so happened that within a few years of DJ CoolHeart moving to the Bronx, hip hop came up in New York, out of nowhere. So they think that it was him. - Yeah, I mean, he didn't come to the Bronx
at least 12, so he had a lot of years in Jamaica to bring that influence. And yeah, like I said, that toasting, Jamaican toasting tradition came right along with them. - Yeah, and remember you talked about how Doug
would strip the vocals out of music, so you had instrumental music. He would do that with two turntables and a microphone is back said. - That's right.
- Other places, Panama, like Central and South America, had a big thing, they called Rage on the Spendial. And Puerto Rico, they had like an underground Spanish language, like Rage Rap, called Rage Itson, that came along and like you can draw direct line from that
to somebody like Bad Bunny.
“- Yeah, I think it's even like they call”
Bad Bunny's music, Rage Itson. - Yeah, I think so. - Yeah, boy, that's super bold performance was so fun. - Yeah, he really did set the world on fire. - I know, it was great, it was a lot of fun.
- Yeah, like he prefigured early in Holland. He was like the early in Holland of super bold halftime shows. So Chuck, favorite Rage Band of all time? - I mean, early waylers for sure.
- Okay, I'm going with Burning Spear. - Oh, yeah. Chuck, did you like the 90s sky revival? - Nah, I wouldn't end it that. - Me either.
- Well, that's right, my bag. - I got us to listener mail now, I managed to unlock it for us. - Oh, okay, is that right there? - Yeah, because back in 2008,
one of us predicted that we would bag on the 90s mid 90s sky revival in one of our episodes and that would trigger listener mail. (bell ringing) - All right, we got a short one here
because this episode is a little longer. It's just a quick correction from Dave and California. He said, "Hey guys, in the Eleanor Roosevelt episode, "instead of in Flogrande, Delicto," which is the common term.
Josh coined the term in Flogrande, in Flogrande, Delicado. - Sure. - Which could perhaps mean gently a fire, which Dave says is actually not entirely inappropriate, perhaps.
“- Right, that's what I thought, I didn't realize it.”
It was Delicto, what is Delicto mean? Like, I don't know.
I'm fire, yeah, what is Delicto mean Chuck?
- You don't know?
“- Delicto, well, I think it means caught in the act,”
which is what that means, there's a phrase.
- Oh, okay. - No, I see that it's, yeah, caught red handed. - Yeah, all right, but that's fine, but I like mine better. - Well, I think a stuffy-genetic church clearly be in Flogrande, Delicado.
- Yeah, the gentle fire. - Yeah, the soft touch. - Hmm, laid down by the gentle fire with me, baby. - You got anything else? - I got nothing else, I hope we did reggae justice.
- Oh, I think we did, I hope so too.
- Yeah, I feel like every time I reassure you,
I'm setting a stop for people to be like, you guys suck, you did a terrible job. So I'm just gonna say, I hope so too, how about that? - Yeah, actually what usually happens is we get, like hey, you guys did a pretty good job,
but also there's this and this, which is exactly what we want. - Yes, but usually it's from experts, and we love that too, that's true.
“- All right, well, if you want to get in touch with us,”
like Dave, you said? - Yeah, Dave.
- Well, you can email us just like Dave did.
Send it off to [email protected]. - Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. - Why do some women yearn for Shakira's black hair
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- I'm Mungisha Together,
“and I'm back with a new season of my podcast, Skyline Drive.”
This time I talked to scientists, biopunks, commudions, blues owners, super seniors, then go as top cryotherapy lab to try to understand this obsession with living forever. And what it means for all of us.
And I get into a bit of trouble along the way. - I'd say probably start bone smashing. - That doesn't work. - Make you look more defined. They say it works, I don't know.
- Listen to Skyline Drive, how to live forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - This is Michael Rappaport and my podcast, the I am Rappaport's stereo podcast,
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