Let my bredrin the 420 Bunny and myself wish you a wondrous 420 spent with family and friends for Easter, Puff Puff Passover and other compelling purposes for randomized encounters and barbecue excursions. Enjoy your libations responsibly. Otherwise, Johnny Law is gonna give you the hairy eyeball:
<Johnny Law 1 min>
I want to be the Soundtrack to your celebration with all the Mutant Dub I am fascinated by. 50 Canna-bass tunes from the likes of Thievery Corporation, Primal Scream and Dub Syndicate.
Enjoy this Secret Stash from the Smile Jamaica Ark-Ives. 4 hr and 20 min worth. You will be running to theSevwith Musical Munchies Selah!
Coming down the home stretch of the 20 Days of Cannabis. So the Smile Jamaica Ark-Ives has filled you in on Jah-maican Reggae Herbtunes and 4 hr 20 min of Mutant Dub: a high-ly world and Euro phenoemon.
Good ole Americans love the Seven Leaf too. Here is Smile Jamaica’s Top Ten American Herbalists
1. The Toyes – Smoke Two Joints and Monster Hash; The Toyes (CD Tunes). All killer novelty classic. The former awards video game stalwarts two joints for every 10,000 points. The latter works on 4/20 and Halloween. Boris Pickett would be proud.
2. Future Pigeon – The Mummy; Echodelic Sounds of Future Pigeon (Record Collection) . Out of Los Jahngeles, this is another ditty that works in April or All Hallow’s Eve. “Roll a lickle spliff wif de papyrus while we smoke Sensemeenia inna Mesopotamia”
3. Ben Harper – Burn One Down; Reggae Sampler (Virgin). If Smile Jamaica tracked requests over the past two decades or so this gentle acoustic niyahbinghi number would be near the top. “Let us burn one from end to end. Pass it over to me my friend.”
4. Dub Lounge international – Dub Hangover; Dub Lounge International (Ancient Vessel). Seattle: usually the dub is blissed out riffing on the original vocal. In this case dub rid dims pump out a gravity-free mix with vocals straight no chaser. “I’ve got an Herb hangover and I don’t wanna let it go”
5. Collie Buddz – Come Around; Collie Buddz (Colombia). New Orleans by way of Bermuda. With his name you would think he was in league with the Seven Leaf. Ragga vocal style with a hint of Autotune. Thick and sticky Roots Riddim updating an old Zap Pow Reggae lick.
6. 10 Ft. Ganja Plant – Walkey Walk Tall; Presents (ROIR) Upstate New York, like #4 another truth in advertising group. They are good for one or more herbtunes on nearly all their releases.
7. Natural Roots – For My Sensi (extended); CD Single (Rock da Joint). Homegrown in Utah. Nice horn licks, rub a dub riddim and winsome female backing vox. Drum and the bass mashes up nicely with the Sensi ride. Bliss at nearly 7 minutes
8. Mystic Roots Band – Pass the Marijuana; Constant Struggle (Stay Positive). Chico, Collie-fornya. Nuff herbal meditations from this group. Features special guest intro
<SOUNDCLIP>
9. Rootz Underground – Herb Fields; Movement (Riverstone) Nice slinky one drop tribute to guerrilla growing the Ganja crop.
10. Easy Star All Stars – One Likkle Draw; First Light (Easy Star). The label and collective out of New York. They brought us two volumes of dubadelic Dub Side of the Moon. This groover features Junior Jazz and Daddy Lion on the vox.
Gonna play a set of American Herbalists in 2 hours: Smile Jamaica 90.9FM KRCL.org. 420 Cannabis Service Show
I bet I am up and at ’em before any of you readers take the tykes out for any Easter Egg Hunt.
So my 4 hr 20 min Mutant Dub Herb Special is finished. Magnum Dopus!
So I’ve rinsed out 50 plus tracks from around the globe. Starts with my favorite Weedstepper Soom T and ends with the Bush Doctor Peter Tosh dubadelic 10″ pic sleeve vinyl mix from Record Store Day a few years ago.
Here’s how your Holiday Weekend works: Good Friday, Record Store Day Saturday, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday
I will hit send on the Interwebs this Sunday 4/20 at 4:20 AM at the Smile Jamaica Mixcloudpage as well as here
Mutant Dub Files: Episode 4 – Space Dust. 260 minutes of Seven Leaf mixed with heavyweight dub
For once I don’t say a word. Just herbal meditations and Canna-bass
Here’s the Straight Dope:
Bong – 4
Collie – 1
Dope – 4
Flavors – 2 High Grade, Lebanese Blonde,
Ganja – 1
Growing/Farming – 1
Hemp – 1
Herb – 4
High/Stoned – 4
Legalize – 3
Lifestyle – 5
Marijuana – 3
Police/Arrested – 2
Rizla/Rolling – 3
Sensimilla – 4
Spliff – 2Weed – 3
Countries/Places:
Brazil: 1
Brooklyn: 2
France: 1
Jah-cago: 1
Jah-maica: 2
Jah-many: 3
Jah-pon: 5
Jah-scow, Scotland: 3
Jah-stria: 2
Jah-suchusetts: 1
Los Jahngeles: 2
Ska-dinavia: 1
UK: 21
US: 4
Wash’n DC: 3
“See ya” or more like “hear me” Sunday AM and have this Dub Episode for your Soundtrack as you celebrate early and often
I was cratedigging last weekend and swung by the magazine rack. Something caught my eye and I nearly wet myself.
Whenever I go to Jah-buquerque to see my Sister and family, we go to a local cafe for breakfast. They used to have a whole wall devoted to magazines. I liked that because they had The Beat magazine: a Reggae and World Music mag that I wrote Mutant Dub reviews for in the mid to late 90s. I’d grab a copy off the wall and point out my review to my fams.
So we pop in last month and boom: All the magazines were deemed redundant when everyone reads content for free on their gadget. They apologized to the evolution to more seats with plugins.
How does a perennial magazine like Rolling Stone move units in that environment? One way is to release issues for collectors of “artifacts”. Those of us dwindling consumers who want a physical memento as opposed to a utilitarian digital object.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my iPod. I have to have something to listen to from my car in the parking lot to my office and back. But very little of the music I play on Smile Jamaica comes digital born. It’s vinyl at home, CDs in the car and office.
I seriously average between 4-8 hours of active listening per day. Every day. Being a librarian I keep lists everywhere. I have 50,000 songs on my iTunes. And those are albums I listened to on headphones before I rip them and move them to playlists: herb tunes, UFO, Marley Tributes, Occupy Wall Streeet, Rockers doing Reggae.But it’s 99% physicality for surety! It was “rinsed out” on vinyl or aluminum (isn’t that what cds are made of?)
When I get iTunes gift cards at Holiday time, I mainly buy Dubstep 12″s I can’t find locally that I read about inMixmag.
There are diehards who want the cd (or better yet vinyl), magazines, actual books, magazines, comic books and music scores. There is something to be said for small scale catering to niche markets of collectors and people who want to give their eyes a break from the cathode ray nipple.
Rolling Stone has released several theme based issues devoted to the stalwarts like The Beatles, Dylan, Rolling Stones. Collections of stories and photos from the magazine on glossy page stock.
It is meant to drive even subscribers to reach for their wallet. (And I have a lifetime subscription to Rolling Stone. That is my next article for KUER Music).
.
If you dig the magazine Wax Poetics (and you should if you don’t), it is very reminiscent of that attention to a better quality page than magazine glossy slicks.
The Marley Special Collection issue is top rank.
How Bob Marley Changed the World
An Encounter With the Legend; excerpt of Bob’s first cover story Aug. 12, ’76; 4 months before he was nearly assassinated in Jamaica
Visiting Bob Marley’s Jamaica musical travelogue of the Island
Living Legacy: 5 of Bob’s 11 children reflect and share memories of their father.
Plus the obligatory Top 50 Songs and artist reflections. Before I read the magazine, I ventured a guess at what would be judged Bob Marley‘s #1 song. My guess came in at #3.
70 high quality photos in color and black and white.
And since this is Cannabis Service Month. The “toker’s tally” of those 70 is 4:
Now you see him in action, let’s hear a lickle drawof Bob in service to the Seven Leaf
That wobbly stack of disks is what I have left to “harvest” (ha ha) to my exclusive online-only Mixcloud Digital Dubplate Show: 420 Canna-bass!
What Is Mutant Dub? Episode 4: Space Dust
4 hours and 20 minutes on 4/20 at 4:20 AM.
Rise ‘n’ Shine!
Wake ‘n Bake!
Wake the Town ‘n’ Tell the People!
With a week to go, I have rinsed out 197 minutes of a total (4 x 60 plus 20, by my liberal arts math, that adds up to…) 260 minutes of acoustic levitation inna Herbal meditation!
63 minutes plus cannabinoidal soundbytes to go. Selah!
Wanted to Ark-Ive yesterday’s edition of Smile Jamaica. Terrible signal quality in the digital file, so I had to discard it.
I suspect a conspiracy by the dark forces arrayed against the Seven Leaf. (20 of the 28 Roots & Dub selections from yesterday’s show were pot propaganda).
Usually I spend Sunday chopping up sound files and stripping out the commercial interruptions during the day prior’s broadcast of Smile Jamaica. Gonna post Ark-Ive Editions here (see Tab above) as well asat Mixcloud
I guess I have to do my taxes instead. Below is the Playlist, at least. You can read it like I read the Major League box scores in the papers.
Next Saturday: “4 score and 20 bongrips ago” . I got 1 score of years devoted to Cannabliss. …
It’s Smile Jamaica’s 20th Annual Cannabis Service Show; 4-7 PM, Mtn. Time. 90.9FM in Utah and krcl.org online.
Let’s hope for better luck next Saturday. Jah guide!
Before my head hits the pillow this evening, my Federal Taxes will be nice and printed. My Utah State form will be nice and printed. Then tomorrow morning all I haffe do is skank on over to the Post Office and buy one of those stamp thingees.
Now under what pile of Cds in the Smile Jamaica Ark-Ive did I stash that effing W-2?
Fi-yah burn!
bless, robt
Smile Jamaica Playlist; Apr. 12, 2014
4:00-7:00 PM
Ras Michael & the Sons of Negus – Sip Your Cup; Rally Round (Shanachie) ’85 nyahbinghi herb tune
Marcia Griffiths – Feel Like Jumping; Naturally (Shanachie)
10 Ft. Ganja Plant – Rooftop Duel; 10 Deadly Shots vol. II (ROIR) 2012 Dub Album of the Week
Aswad – Ethiopian Rhapsody; Aswad (Mango) ’76 UK roots group Aswad = ‘black’ in Amharic, Arabic; instrumental
Pato Banton – Give Me Oil; Mad Professor Captures Pato Banton (Ariwa) ’85 UK
Pablo Paul – Don’t Dope; 12” (Kingston Connexion); 4:20 Cannabis Service Announcement
Black Slate – Legalise Collie Herb; Amigo: The Best of Black Slate (Ensign); UK dubble dose of herbs
Israel Vibration – Feelin’ Irie; Got to Move (RAS); triple herbs; ***End of Set 1
John Holt – Police and Helicopter; 12” (Holt); herb tune with police siren effect
Max Romeo – Wet Dream; Pray For Me (Trojan); best of set. Riddim Shower (1): vox
Somebody asked me recently just how many actual songs do you have devoted to the Seven Leaf?
I am running two accounts of iTunes at the moment and just haven’t collapsed all 50,000 songs I have “harvested” to iTunes into one spot. on my Go Flex External Hard Drive
Best guestimation of Smile Jamaica’s herb tunes: Reggae, Dub, Rock, Soul, Blues,Gospel (ha ha) etc. It is at least 800.
And that doesn’t include probably another 150 on vinyl LP/12″. And probably 300 or so 45’s: classic Reggae as well as Ragga.
There is a whole sub genre just in the Mutant Dub world on 10″ and 12″. I probably have 30-40 of those extended mix dub workouts too.
So here is a little sampling of some of my Ark-Ives A-Z
K: King Sighta – Dollar Fe a Reaffer (sic); Master of All (Sunshot) ’78
L: Lovindeer – Free the Marijuana & Grow the Weed; De Blinkin’ Bus (TSOJ) ’82
Miller, Jacob & Ray I – All I Want For Ismas & Deck the Halls; Natty Christmas (RAS) ‘ 78; “all I was for Ismas is my collie herb”. “deck the halls with boughs of collie”
N: NiyoRah – Positive Herb; A Different Age (I Grade) 2005
O : Osbourne, Johnny – Mushroom; Fally Lover (Greensleeves) ’80; don’t pee in my garden or mushroom will grow. Gimme d’good sensi instead
P: Prince Hammer – Export Ganja; Respect I Man (Tamoki Wambesi)
Q: Queen Omega – Ganja Baby; Weed a Bun vol. 1 (Charm)
Peter Tosh must be looking down from Jah’s Heavenly Choir with guitar in hand, spliff in mouth and smile on face.
“Legalize It, I will advertise it”. The penultimate herbtune in the Reggae canon. I wish he could see the progress of his missionary work on behalf of the Seven Leaf 25+ years after his gruesome murder.
It was the summer of 1987. I had really gotten into Reggae music. Started collecting it on these new inventions called CDs. Vinyl from around SLC (Cosmic Aeroplane, Randy’s*, Smokey’s Records, Starbound, Raspberry Records, The Mad Platter, etc.).
(*The only shop still in business 25 years later.)
I would travel and couch surf with relatives in the Bay Area and buy up all the cheap Reggae vinyl that was in all their great stores from Reno, Sacramento, San Fran, Berkley, Oakland, San Jose, Rasta Cruz, Mill Valley. Everyone was shedding vinyl for CD upgrades.
I had my student loan check in hand from Uncle Ronnie (Reagan that is) and I would binge on $4 vinyl discards that fetch $40 and more today on Ebay.
I even did a little half-assed Reggae show called Positive Vibrations on the University of Utah’s KUTE radio station which broadcast only in the Student Union.
Peter had a new album out called No Nuclear War. I figured the chances were excellent that he would go on tour in the States and I would get to see at least one of the Big Three since Bob had passed in ’81.
I remember I was in the airport picking up my sister Stacey for a little visit. This was in the wooly days before 9/11 when you could queue up to the gate to meet your party. I grabbed a coffee and a paper and waited for her plane to touch down.
Headline on the top of page 2: “Reggae Star Peter Tosh Murdered in Jamaica”. The date: Sept. 11, 1987.
Spooky eh? The usual senseless drug violence.* (See the movie Red X for how this went down from survivor testimony.)
*There is an alternate theory of why Peter was killed. But I’m not telling that story. “Ask me no questions and I”ll tell you no lies.”
Peter played one last trick on the shitstem of Bobby-wrong and wreaked havoc on the Crime Ministers s(h)itting in the House of Representa-thief of A-sad-ica. “Because there is nothing ‘merry’ about America”. He crashed the stock market on his birthday that year: Oct. 19. A mere five weeks later.
Before the Great Recession of ’08, Oct. 19th, 1987 was one of the biggest stock market collapses since the Great Depression. It’s known by the ominous term Black Monday. I’m certain Peter would have loved the irony.
Peter Tosh paid a personal price for his Cannabis devotion. A famous concert took place April 22, 1978 in Jamaica. It is known as the One Love Peace Concert. “The Woodstock of Reggae”.
This was a Reggae music festival hailed as the return of Bob Marley from exile. (He had been shot in the run up to the last major Jamaican attempt at a music benefit: The Smile Jamaica Concert; Dec. 5, 1976)
The concert movie Heartland Reggae is the artifact of this show. Peter took to the stage to harangue the two leaders in Jamaica. Michael Manley (left wing, PNP party); Edward Seaga (right wing JLP). Such a high profile public rebuke was a bold and reckless thing to do in a country that was at the point of a ghetto civil war.
It would be like Obama and Romney going to the Kennedy Awards dinner and getting called out for their failures and venality by Bob Dylan. Very impolitic and a response came soon enough.
About a month later the Jamaican police nearly frog stomped Peter to death. They paid special attention to beating him on his hands. Imagine the double viciousness to try and destroy a guitar player’s hands. It would be like putting a surgeon’s fingers in a meat grinder. The Reggae rebel had to feign death to get away.
Check this sound clip about the attack with author Stephen Davis. This is taken from the dubble disk set that includes Peter’s performance at the One Love Peace Concert called Talking Revolution (Pressure Sounds). It’s a great piece of musical history. Peter Tosh was fearless and Old Testament righteous. He definitely lived up to his nickname The Stepping Razor from the stage.
<Tosh I-view about his police beating 3 min.>
Peter wrote about the incident in his album Wanted Dread & Alive.Especially his “court transcript” set to music: “Cold Blood”
Every time I see Babylon my blood runs cold Every time I see the wicked men my belly moves
You say after me sir I solemnly swear That the evidence I shall give Shall be the truth The whole truth And nothin but the truth
So help me God So help I Jah(3x)… Rastafari Every time I see the wicked men my belly moves
You are brought before this court For having ganja in your possession Guilty or not guilty Not guilty your honor
How could one man do such a thing… ganja It is totally impossible your honor
I can remember yeah When I was framed and jailed, brutalized The grudge would find me guilty For an exhibit they could not find
Every time I see Babylon my blood runs cold Every time I see the wicked men my belly moves
When I see the condition I said it’s a curse For the past 400 years ago Things get from bad to worse
Every time I see Babylon my blood runs cold Every time I see the wicked men my belly moves
(Yes, that’s Keith underneath a halo of smoke)
Wanted Dread and Alive means everything to me. Is this gross? I broke my cherry I lost my “Reggae virginity” on (with?) this record. The very first Reggae artifact in the Smile Jamaica Ark-Ives of several thousand. I got this Christmas ’81.
I would always put records on my Christmas list. My mom would simply take that list into the local record store in Great Falls, Montana (Eli’s Records; now known as the Hastings chain). She would give that list to the clerk. She would come back an hour later. Trim the stack – No Ted Nugent Wang Dang Sweet Poontang – and wrap the winners in one big obvious present under the tree.
I was always an impulse buyer and would often buy an album because I liked the cover. That was the case here as well with the great cover of Peter right out of the Wild Wild West. It wasn’t until Bob Marley’s Legendin 1984 that I picked up Reggae gem #2. Me and millions of others. “Satisfy My Soul” indeed.
So full circle to Peter Tosh and the price he paid for his advocacy, in America at least. Collie-rado and Washington succeeded in “legalizing it” with another dozen states going to the polls in 2014 and 2016 to do the same.
The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) has been tenacious in their efforts to decriminalize and legalize a plant that has zero overdose deaths in the 8000 plus history of human cannabis consumption. They have been the first line against cannabis prohibition whose purpose was always to criminalize a lifestyle.
Here is Peter’s very own Cannabis Service Announcement for NORML back in the good old days of when “only” 400,000 Americans were arrested and jailed for a “lickle herb stalk”. Half of what it is is today.
I pay tribute in “kind” to Peter with weekly Cannabis Service Announcements and yearly Cannabis Service Shows on Smile Jamaica. The least I can do to return the favor. “Everybody wants to go to heaven. Nobody wants to die.” Peter Tosh “Equal Rights”
From KRCL last year when Smile Jamaica‘s 4:20 Cannabis Service Show actually fell on April 20. While we wait for Saturday, Apr. 19; 4-7 on 90.9FM KRCL or KRCL.org
(***The operator of the Smile Jamaica Ark-Ives wishes those reading to know that we do not endorse, encourage or engage in illegal activity. These writings are in spirit with anti-authoritarian subcultures and are meant solely for informational and or educational purposes only. Edutaiment isn’t illegal….yet***)
Greetings,
Everyone knows about the 12 Days of Christmas. But what about the 20 Days of Cannabis? 420 that is. Anyone who has listened to Smile Jamaica over the, well, decades now knows that April is pretty much in bloom with the Seven Leaf Saturday Afternoons on Community Radio Station KRCL..
<Soundbyte>
For going on twenty years – on air between 4 and 7 PM Saturdays – every 4:20 is given over to what I euphemistically call “herbtunes”. I call it the Cannabis Service Announcement. A spin on non-profit radio and its promotion of *Public* Service Announcements. These Reggae and Dub boomshots sing praises to the Wisdom Weed.
The closest Saturday to the 20th day is devoted to an entire show of herbal meditations on all formats and styles: vinyl, singles: 7″, 10″ & 12″, cds and digital*; Roots Reggae, Mutant Dub and Rockers doing Reggae. 180 minutes celebrating free speech and diverse lifestyles. Selah!
*I even have Bob Marley’s Kaya (with the title track and “Easy Skanking” spliff tales) on 8-Track. No player to hear it on, alas.
Because of my job as Audio Engineer in the Marriott Library, I have a slick ProTools digital recorder. So my job pretty much requires me to be a whiz at editing digital files (a skill I originally honed at KRCL on 1/4 inch tape). So I edit a whole heap of sound clips to enhance the mood elevated listening experience. Clips from Cheech and Chong, George Carlin and Steve Martin. Movie dialog from Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown and Saturday Night Live.
I taught myself the DVD audio-track ripper Handbrake just so I could chop a soundbyte out of the Reggae documentary “Land of Look Behind”. From crowd footage at Bob Marley’s funeral, a youth steps forward and shouts “Bob Marley smoked 100 splits a day! A 100 splits a day mon”.
<Bob Marley’s ganja prowess>
Saturday, April 19th. 4-7 PM Mountain Time on krcl.org or 90.9FM in Salt Lake City region.
<Soundbyte>
My annual April Cannabis Service Show. Yeah. It’s silly and obnoxious and totally rude. It’s my favorite show of the year. A lot of my Reggae deejay fraternity are disallowed by their Program Directors to play even a single marijuana ditty. Praise Jah for anything goes KRCL. “Your station that rules the nation!”
<Soundbyte>
Here is the story behind why I decided to livicate (not dead-icate) a potent blast of pot propaganda 20 minutes into each and every Smile Jamaica. And then some.
This could have been about 20 years ago. I was chatting up one of KRCL’s Drive Time deejays in a record store. His show was on one of the Week Days between and 3 and 6 PM. He got the clever notion to bust out a little weed set during his show that he called 4:20 Funk
Alas, someone at the station put the clampdown on his little exercise in musical free speech. 4:20 Funk was banned. Of course, when he told me his tale of woe I made sure the very next Saturday to debut my own Spliff Tales that I christened Cannabis Service Announcements. You have to be fearless and not back down because freedom of expression is under assault.
So in the Spirit of the Season on this Smile Jamaica blog, I will post 20 Cannabis related posts. I’m behind obviously so I’ll do two a day till I catch up.
Studio kinda cloudy!
<Soundbyte>
bless – robt
Smile Jamaica is hosted by Robert Nelson on 90.9 FM KRCL in Salt Lake City, Utah (Saturdays, 4-7 p.m. MT). Ark-ives available weekly here at the Smile Jamaica blog.
Smile Jamaica 