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wrongtom

@wrongtom.bsky.social

3.9K followers 2.7K following 4.2K posts

“DJ, producer and professor of musical information” (Not my words, but the words of my learned friend Tom Robinson. The 6music/2468 Motorway Tom Robinson, I mean, not the Nazi one). Contact: [email protected]

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wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · Mar 7

Happy Bandcamp Friday!

A decade since we made it... Wrongtom Meets Desta Zion 'Somethin' Else' rongorongorongo.bandcamp.com/album/someth...

Download and a limited 7" (which will ship out as soon as it's pressed)

Somethin' Else, by Wrongtom meets Desta Zion

3 track album

rongorongorongo.bandcamp.com

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wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · 4h

I love the fact Musical Youth were the first black group to get played on repeat on MTV

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wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · 6h

Oh Carolina was first. Released at the start of 93, and reached number 1 in March opening the floodgates for a load of similar rhythm n blues influenced dancehall in the summer like Tease Me (which reached 3), Boom Shackalack by Apache Indian (5), and Shout by Louchie Lou & Michie One (7)

wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · 7h

Musical Youth, most of the 2 Tone brigade, and... www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2XG...

Johnny Nash on TISWAS - 04/03/1978

YouTube video by Robert Exley

www.youtube.com

wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · 8h

Ever checked who produced that?

wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · 8h

Perhaps one of my downfalls is I’ve been quite vocal about this kind of thing, and I’ve refused to work with a few folks due to their horrible/stupid views

wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · 9h

In hindsight it seems fitting you could buy Under Mi Sensi from a drug store

wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · 9h

Indeed. America is a huge place with only pockets of Jamaicans, whereas the post-war Jamaican connection to the UK and the flourishing JA communities here meant reggae quickly became as much a part of British identity as, say, David Bowie, or going for a curry

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wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · 9h

I interviewed Chris who produced Police Officer years ago, and asked him (with the prefix of "I always get asked this, so...") how he got into reggae music, and his response was of course "it was pop music"

wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · 9h

Yep, it just missed the top 40 at the start of 1985. It would've been in Woolies and WHSmiths up and down the country

Reposted by wrongtom

David N Atkinson @dnatkinson.bsky.social · 10h

Yep. Reggae was just: around. Barrington Levy’s 1984 single Here I Come was one of the first records I ever bought – not from an inner-city specialist record shop, but from Woolworths in Whitby (population 12k)

wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · 15h

Over the years, something I almost always get asked in interviews is how I, a white guy, got into reggae 🤷‍♀️

I think they're expecting some kind of origin story, and my discovery of these "exotic" sounds, but the truth is much more mundane. Reggae was pop music in the 70s and 80s

Scott Clifford @ilovemyrecords.bsky.social · 16h

I grew up as a white kid in South Wales in the 70s & 80s… on one hand, it’s a bit odd that I ended up being completely obsessed with reggae/dub/ska… on the other hand, you see old clips like this and it makes perfect sense…

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wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · 10h

What I was gonna say earlier was Congo Natty had been at it mixing up reggae, hip hop and electronic dance sounds for a good few years prior to that stuff. This is from the Soul All Dayer Of The Century LP from '87 www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZmE...

BEATFREAK remix soul alldayer of the century 1987

YouTube video by dkay1972

www.youtube.com

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wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · 10h

Oh no! Wish I still had some left to sell

wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · 10h

Oh, you prefer anti-abortion era Chaka Demus and Pliers? 😉

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wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · 10h

I'd say 2 Tone's success was the other way around. Reggae had been a mainstay in the charts throughout the 70s, and then punk and new wave at the close of the decade. It was a happy medium between the two with broad appeal

wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · 11h

Racists, that’s who

wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · 11h

I don’t hear it 😉 www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4RY...

Buccaneer - Fade Away ("Orinoco Flow"/Sail Away" Dancehall Version)

YouTube video by JayJay5790

www.youtube.com

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wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · 11h

I've often wondered what AC12 would've made of those BENT COPPERS

a man sitting at a desk with bbc written on the bottom right

ALT: a man sitting at a desk with bbc written on the bottom right

media.tenor.com

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wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · 11h

I appreciate this is all a bit sweeping, though i have done a fair bit of research on events, stats etc, and plan on writing about it at some point. Til then, it's just a few frivolous thoughts on a social media platform 😉

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wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · 11h

was suddenly under fire from the tabloids, the police, scared parents etc. Black British music was increasingly marginalised and policed, and suddenly there's all this fairly conservative rock music flooding the charts.

It would take UK Garage to turn it around again by the end of the decade

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wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · 11h

Partly because of the rise of the less poppy dancehall sound, but also because other new underground and often reggae-adjacent sounds like rave and hip hop were all over the UK charts at the turn of the 90s. But then we had the Criminal Justice Act, and much of what was conflated as dance music...

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wrongtom @wrongtom.bsky.social · 11h

We have to look at the bigger picture of what was happening in the UK in the mid 90s. Pop had been overrun with underground, ant-establishment, black, queer and various other minority sounds since the 70s. Reggae had been mostly absent from the charts for a few years when Oh Carolina hit in 93...