A Punky Reggae Party in the UK

From publishing heiresses to hanging like a bat, all roads lead to reggae and dub

My partner in musical crime, Gawain, and I are hosting a listening club this Saturday. Members are invited to meet monthly at various locations where we play great music on hi-fi gear. I’m particularly excited as I’ll be spinning some of my favourite vinyl on a new high-end sound system, designed and built from the bottom up here in Vancouver.

The theme of the evening is Journeys, and for me this means looking at how my musical tastes have evolved over time.

In the 80s and 90s, much of the music I listened to as well as played as a DJ ultimately led to a deep appreciation of Jamaican music. As I explored the influences of the songs, artists, genres and styles that I liked, all roads lead to reggae and dub.

In this spirit, today’s post is the first in series that looks at the profound influence that reggae and dub have had on so many forms of popular music including punk, new wave, goth, disco, house, techno, hip hop, drum and bass, jungle, and EDM to name a few.

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The UK’s Punky Reggae Party

In the UK, many punk bands were heavily influenced by reggae music. At its onset, punk’s UK epicentre was a Covent Garden nightclub called The Roxy. It was so early in the scene there were very few punk records to play, so the club’s resident DJ, English-Jamaican Don Letts played dub reggae music. 

Gravitating towards its anti-establishment vibe, heavy baselines and weed, the music was embraced by the club’s patrons, many of whom were in punk bands.

Famously, The Clash who helped define punk with legendary live performances at The Roxy, incorporated reggae and dub into many of their tracks and albums. A cover of the reggae classic Police & Thieves on The Clash’s debut album made their love of reggae clear.

While in London, Lee Perry heard The Clash’s version of Lee Murvin’s Police & Thieves, which he had produced.

Upon his return to Jamaica, Perry played The Clash’s version for his longtime musical collaborator Bob Marley. While initially taken aback by Joe Strummer's harsh singing, the two liked it. “It is different, but me like ’ow ’im feel it,” said Marley of the song.

Marley was inspired to write and record the Perry produced Punky Reggae Party as a positive response to the UK punk reggae partnership.

I'm saying

The Wailers will be there

The Damned, The Jam, The Clash

Maytals will be there

Dr. Feelgood too

This is the Black Ark first pressing, which is a different mix than the Tuff Gong releases. 

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Around this time the German model, actress, music promoter and publishing heiress Norah Forster was a fixture of the London bohemian scene. Her flat was a crash pad for her musician friends such as Jimi Hendrix, John Lydon of the Sex Pistols (who she would marry) and The Clash’s Joe Strummer. 

Strummer and his girlfriend Paloma McLardy met Forster’s daughter, Ariane aka Ari Up, who Paloma approached about forming an all-female punk band, which they called The Slits. Ari Up was 14 at the time.

While The Slits disbanded after a couple of albums, Ari Up would go on to join The New Age Steppers, a dub outfit produced by UK’s legendary Adrian Sherwood who built a career of straddling punk and reggae.

Note: Adrian Sherwood and On-U Sound deserve and will get their own post in the future

It’s worth watching Don Letts talk about The Roxy, reggae relationship with punk music, and his friendship with Bob Marley here.

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Mutations: New Wave & Goth 

A certain Declan Patrick MacManus, aka Elvis Costello, was also heavily influenced by The Clash. As he explains it,

“I was in my flat in the suburbs of London before I was a professional musician, and I’d been up for thirty-six hours. I was actually listening to The Clash’s first album. When I first put it on, I thought it was just terrible. Then I played it again and I liked it better. By the end, I stayed up all night listening to it on headphones, and I thought it was great. 

Then I wrote ‘Watching the Detectives’.”

Costello’s relationship with reggae only grew from there. In 1979, Costello produced The Specials' debut album which started the genre of two-tone or the second wave of ska. Bands such as The Specials, Madness, the Beat and Bad Manners fused ska, rocksteady and reggae with elements of punk and new wave.

Around the same time, a six-week-old band recorded their first song, which would arguably go on to kickstart the entire goth movement.  According to Bauhaus bassist David J, “...Bela was our interpretation of dub”. Frontman Peter Murphy reinforced that dub was a massive influence on the music of Bauhaus, and noted that Bauhaus were "more aligned to the Clash than anything else that was going around." 

This is the original studio version of Bela Legosi’s Dead, but if you’d rather watch the live Coachella 2007 version where Peter Murphy sings while hanging upside down like a bat, I’ve got you covered right here.

Stay tuned for Part Two of the journey, where we’ll look at how reggae influenced other music genres.

Thanks for reading, watching and listening!

Sandy