Fashion’s “JA to UK MC Clash” series was an inspired idea, highlighting the immense talent of homegrown UK artists compared to those back a yard. Would it work today, though?

Prancehall runs a recent JA tune featuring slightly unnerving impersonations of cockney.

Heatwave run an interesting comparison between Sizzla and Wiley.

Incidentally, Heatwave’s new 7″ just hit the shops – a double a-side featuring Roll Deep’s Riko and Heatwaves own Rubi riding the Piano riddim which you will have heard Warrior Queen’s version of on the An England Story comp.

: MERCURY TODAY :

A heartwarming piece on Bionic Rhona (one of the few female UK MCs in the 80s, who released two stormers on Fashion with Papa Face) rediscovering her past.

Things like this make me happy, but it does concern me that people from that era don’t know how much their music is still loved today.

Exposure to record label causes memory loss.

LONDON, May 22, 2008. Scientists working at London’s University of Westminster have made a new discovery which challenges everything we know about our brains.

After a painstaking series of experiments – conducted over several decades, conclusive evidence has now emerged that involvement with Trojan Records causes permanent damage to workers’ long term memory.

“The discovery is quite shocking” said Professor Mick Sleeper, a neuroscientist who has been working on the project since 1993, “but our experiments prove conclusively that working for this one record label leads to the development of lesions in the hippocampus, which cause permanent long term memory loss.”

Professor Sleeper’s investigations began when he noticed some curious aspects to the label’s output: “Trojan is well known for having a huge archive of Jamaican music stretching back to the 1960s” said Professor Sleeper today “So I was very surprised when some of my students mentioned that they seemed to be releasing the exact same records over and over again, in different covers. I naturally assumed there was some commercial impetus to this strategy, but after several interviews with company employees both past and present, I was shocked to discover that none of them could remember a single thing about what the label had done in the past.”

Professor Sleeper’s research suggests that even short term exposure to the company can produce quite profound effects. “When Trojan was recently bought out by Universal, it seemed that the cycle of brain damage had ended. I was relieved to see that one of their first releases was an all new album by Horace Andy, for example. But sure enough, only a few weeks later and Trojan is once again manufacturing the exact same albums by Bob Marley and Desmond Dekker”.

A spokesman for the company rebuffed Professor Sleeper’s research, when contacted at their new West London offices: “Huh? The man is an idiot – we’ve never released any such thing before. Reggae fans everywhere will be looking forward to our exciting new compilations featuring obscure artists like Jimmy Cliff and Toots and the Maytals. Trojan is continuing to push forward the boundaries of Jamaican music”.

Bob Marley was not available for comment.

I managed to pick this wicked LP up for a mere fiver in an all too rare trip to an actual record shop last week. Which shop? Ha! I’m not telling you that, are you mental?

Anyway – it’s outstanding mid-80s business, George Phang production, Sly and Robbie, Willi Lindo, all crew doing-over hard versions of Studio One riddims. Josey is in fine form on the title track, “Throw Me Corn” and “Freeze Who Goes” especially but it’s all good.

And, well, yeah – a mad cover by Limonious, the famed JA illustrator who had an eye for the laydeez. The back cover gets psycho-sexual with a scantily clad lovely threatening to cut off Josey’s “you know what” if he leaves her for another girl…

I don’t have that much Limonious artwork ‘cos I try to get 45s rather than albums from that era, but there is a fair bit about him on the net now:

» Limonious » Crude Boy

Myspace tribute page (including audio of the only record he ever sang on himself, which is pretty good! and a gallery)

Woebot

The toss can be argued about the artistic worth of his pieces, or whether people like them cos of their exocticism. I think I just like the mad colours and the crazed cheekiness…

So farewell Tighten Up. You were that rare thing – a regular reggae night on my doorstep which wasn’t full of trendies OR earnest trainspotters (mostly!). Plus you had some wicked guest selectors and flyers. Many good times were had – and many nights were spent cursing ourselves for not going.

Memorial interview with TU’s Mista Brown over at Soulbrew’s

Interview with the legendary Chris Lane over at Soulbrew’s. Chris was one of Tighten Up’s guest selectors and played a blinding set of ska and rocksteady. He was also the co-head honcho at the legendary Fashion Records and co-founder of Dub Vendor.

Get yourselves down on 6th June and pay your respects.

Big up Tim P, Mistah Brown and Champion – time well spent from where I am sitting.

Don Letts came in for a bit of a hammering in Woofah issue 1, but he’s not too bad presenting this. Perhaps because the archive reportage and contributions from people such as Linton Kwesi Johnson, Vivien Goldman, Jazzie B, King Tubby, Trevor Sax, Daddy G, Ali Campbell, Caroline Coon, Lenny Henry, Rodigan and Tippa Irie make it essential listening.

The Blues Dance

Tuesday 13 May 2008 13:30-14:00 (Radio 4 FM)

Repeated: Saturday 17 May 2008 15:30-16:00 (Radio 4 FM)

Don Letts tells the story of the Blues Dance or Jamaican private club in Britain. Crowds gathered to listen and dance to heavy bass lines of reggae, pumped out from huge speakers. The first wave of West Indian immigrants set up informal basement parties in West London, but the phenomenon would later gain prominence across the UK.

BBC online listening.

Penny Reel on blues dances from the New Musical Express “soundsystem splashdown” feature.