Thought I’d go back to some music I would listen to when I needed to unwind from studying all the time. Saved my sanity. It’s Reggae mon. lol
First up in the queue is Steel Pulse. Saw them many times in New Orleans. Their albums are good but they are GREAT live.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIV1zPTOcs8
Next up is the great man himself, Bob Marley. Seriously. Can you have a Reggae line up without including him?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmoORxxZm5M
A little more modern and maybe more mainstream but still good is UB40.
You probably already know this but “UB40” is the form used in Britain to apply for unemployment insurance, AKA “the dole.” The band members were a bunch of unemployed guys who decided to form a band, got hold of some instruments, and more or less taught themselves how to play them. Consequently they weren’t exactly long on technique.
In the late 80s I got a call to play on a kind of quasi-reggae session, bunch of white guys fooling with the style. The “producer” was a friend of the band who didn’t really know what he was doing, but he knew he didn’t like the sound we were getting in the horn section. At one point he said “I want it to sound like UB40 horns.” The guy next to me leaned over and whispered “oh, I get it. He wants us to sound like shit.”
The problem was, when you spent years forming a ‘legit’ embouchure,’ it’s hard to just suddenly untrain all those facial muscles and honk out a sound like you just picked up the horn last week. My brilliant solution was to have us sax players turn the mouthpiece upside down so the reed was against our UPPER lip.
It felt really weird, but it worked.
Ha. you are too funny. I think it’s been years and years since I listened to UB40 and that was back in college/law school and my taste in music might have changed since then. lol