Tuesday last week, FIRST Magazine returned back online and has since then produced more good content than The Jamaican probably ever will.
Here’s a list of my four favourite stories so far:
First recommends: Suzie’s Bakery patties – it’s harder to find tasty patties in Kingston than it is to find incorrupt Jamaican police. Good to know that Suzie’s Bakery is out there to serve high quality uptown patties straight out of 20 Barbican Road day in and day out.
FIRST likes: Maxine Walters’ Dancehall poster collection – while there’s nothing more depressing than looking at the cover designs of today’s reggae and dancehall albums, it’s almost always a pleasure to look at the simplistic posters announcing dancehall sessions alongside Jamaican roads. Filmmaker Maxine Walters is obsessed with them and currently shows her collection of 500 of the posters at the Real Artways Gallery in Hartford, Connecticut.
The cancer in Jamaican music – Sherman Escoffery argues that the main reason for the decrease in quality of Jamaica’s musical output (“These songs are so bad they can’t even make it to the Harbour View roundabout much less to get on a plane to go anywhere outside of Jamaica.”) is mainly due to deejays’ musical illiteracy and the loss of competent musical collaboration because of selfishness of producers.
FIRST People: Devon Gordon’s art of extreme patience – FIRST People used to be an amazing series of portraits already back then when FIRST was actually a printed magazine (of which we hunted down every single issue when we were in Kingston back then). FIRST people is now back in the blog edition and kicks off with a look at the work of Devon Gordon – a Greenwich Park Road mural which he has been painting for 16 years now and his story of history in the making.
Our favourite Swiss soundsystem, Goldrush International, looks back at 10 years of sound history with two super nice dubplate mixes.
Here’s the tracklists of Part 1:
Goldrush International – Dubplate Classics 1
01 Jimmy London – A little Sound
02 Sugar Minott – Can’t Test
03 Wailing Souls – Old Broom
04 Mighty Diamonds – Tera Off The Roof
05 Ken Booth – When We Kill a Sound
06 Dennis Walks – Drifter
07 Errol Dunkley – Dancehall Star
08 Pat Kelly – Talk About Sound
09 Tristan Palmer – Entertainer
10 Little John – Medley
11 Glen Washington – Rise & Shine
12 Sugar Minott & Tony Tuff – Tune In
13 Errol Dunkley – OK
14 Derrik Morgan – No Fear
15 Justin Hinds – Carry Go Bring Come
16 Toots – That’s my Number
17 Max Romeo – Chase the Devil
18 John Holt – Police in Helicopters
19 Mykal Rose – Stalk of Sensimilla
20 Mighty Diamonds – Pass the Kutchie
21 Utan Green – Kill Another Drum Pan
22 King Kong – Trouble Again
23 Admiral Tibett – Serious
24 Courtney Melody – Bad Boy
25 Beres Hammond – What One Dance Can Do
26 Beres Hammond – Tempted to Touch
27 Beres Hammond – Groovy Little Thing
28 John Holt – Thief in the Night
29 Little John – Blood Inna Him Eye
30 Capleton – Stand Tall
31 Luciano – Saturday Night
32 Sanchez – Praise Him Sanchez
33 Sanchez – Lots of Signs
34 Ronny Twaites – Mr. Luxury
35 Buju Banton – Boom Bye Bye
36 Bounty Killer – Top a Top
37 Beenie Man – Bumboclaat
38 Pinchers – Borderline
39 Bounty Killer – Kill Fi Fun
40 Beenie Man – Bury Yuh Dead
PS: Make sure to also check out the site of BOY81 – the guy who did the incredible artwork for the mixes and who’s e.g. responsible for the good looks of the flyers of club Wasserwerk, too.
Ok, if it was only for the music, this Rihanna tune probably wouldn’t have made it on this list. I really like the video though which looks like a mash-up of Natalie Storm’s “Look Pon Mi”, any of M.I.A’s clips, Major Lazer’s “Pon de Floor” and Schlachthofbronx’s “Ayoba”. Turbo, can you please put the vocals on some heavyweight club shit?
Talking of Tim Turbo. He’s not only grinding on some serious booking business for the Munich BTYCL party series (Douster in March!, Wildlife! in April! and L-Vis 1990 in May!), he also keeps on putting out the hot shit when it comes to production and remix work. His latest masterpiece is a painkiller trance dub remix of Schlachthofbronx’s “Ayoba” – BIG tune!
And ye, if you haven’t heard the “Sounds of Siren” (Busy Signal X M.I.A. X Major Lazer) on Discobelle or Fader or Attorney Street or anywhere else yet – you definitely missed out on something:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
While we’re still working hard on the relaunch of the seen. site and our online shop, we’re happy to announce that since just now you can purchase all items of the seen. Spring 2010 T-Shirt Collection via the brandnew seen. Facebook Storefront in the meantime. Yea!
Please note: while the Storefront is a nice solution for offering the new seen. T-shirts before the new seen. shop is ready, it has some downsides, too. For example, you can only pay via Paypal and as you can only set a global flat rate for shipping & handling, we have to charge slightly more s&h fees for national orders. Sorry for that but we couldn’t find a Facebook shopping cart app that would allow us to apply different prizing settings.
