Vivien Goldman
Related: UK music - black music
Profile
Writer, broadcaster and musician, Vivien Goldman has been chronicling black music and culture for the past 25 years. Her career in music journalism began at Sounds magazine in the mid-70s, where she wrote about the punk and reggae scene. In 1981 she published the first biography on Bob Marley, Soul Rebel, Natural Mystic.As a songwriter, she's worked with acts diverse as Massive Attack, Coldcut, John Lydon and Ryuichi Sakamoto and was also a founder member of the Flying Lizards. Her most recent book, The Black Chord: Visions Of The Groove traces the connections between African and Diaspora music, and was described as 'a small miracle' by Rolling Stone magazine.
Jah Wobble
"Wobble's antics are notorious yet now he has found himself in a position to channel his manic energy into formulating some of the most awesome and original bass lines in modern music", wrote Vivien Goldman in the Melody Maker. -- [...]Wild Dub - Dread Meets Punk Rocker () - Various Artists
1. Jah war - Ruts 2. Bankrobber (dub version) - Clash 3. Wild dub - Generation X 4. Immigrant dub - Basement 5 5. Turn to red - Killing Joke 6. One of the lads (dub version) - 4 Be 2s 7. Typical girls (Brink style dub) - Slits 8. Private armies (dub version) - Goldman, Vivien 9. Red beat - Red Beat 10. Death disco - Public Image Ltd. 11. Where there is a will - Pop Group 12. Bloody dub - Stiff Little Fingers 13. Private life (dub version) - Jones, Grace
Wild Dub takes you back to the days in 1970s London when Punk and Reggae first merged, when Johnny Rotten hijacked the radio airwaves to spin the toughest Jamaican pre-releases, and DJ Don Letts showed pogoing punks in the Roxy Club how to skank to the hottest dub riddims. The spark that exploded between black and white culture in that glowing moment was one of the first multicultural youth movements and its attitudes and achievements, like the birth of the anti-fascist Rock Against Racism movement, have endured. Their experiments with life and music and the sheer energy of the city at the time, attracted foreign artists who came and stayed as long as possible, like Chrissie Hynde, Bob Marley, Patti Smith, Deborah Harry and Johnny Thunders.
Pivotal scenes of punk happened all round town, from fashion hangouts like the Acme Attraction store run by Don Letts and Janette Lee, and Vivienne Westwood's Sex shop, to the Rough Trade record store, Louise's, a louche gay club in London's then-sleazy Soho, the Roxy in Neal Street, and all the abandoned houses and after-hours cinemas where after-hours night life flourished. A tight-knit group of people kept the scene buzzing, with many of the artists featured here. The Ruts, the Clash, the Slits, Generation X, Killing Joke, Public Image Limited, the Pop Group and Stiff Little Fingers may not have been of direct Jamaican descent, but Jamaican Dread culture, and the language of dub, became part of their identity anyway. Collaborations between UK punks and reggae dons like Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Mikey Dread and Dennis 'Matumbi' Bovell, resulted in all sorts of new cross-fusions, with dub as the common denominator. And some of the finest are gathered together here for the first time, on this extraordinary tribute to the power of dub.
Wild Dub's liner notes are by punky reggae scenemaker, writer and musician Vivien Goldman, who as a journalist for the punk weekly, SOUNDS (and later, New Musical Express,) lived at the heart of the action and was joined by very gifted friends like Aswad's George Oban, PiL's Keith Levene and John Lydon, Vicki Aspinall of the Raincoats and Steve Beresford and Robert Wyatt for the recording of her 'Private Armies Dub' (remixed by Adrian Sherwood).
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