With The Quickness #11: A "Culturally Appropriated" Tribute to Toots Hibbert By Dan LeRoy (By Way of The Clash)
We've been running these With The Quickness playlist columns (title thanks to John "Jumbled" Bachman!) for a while now and, in my opinion, they just keep gettng better and better with each new installment. They're, generally, curated by like-minded fans and supporters of Punk/Hardcore, who more so often than not, are adjacent to the scene and not directly involved with or playing the actual music. So, this latest 11th(!?) edition was curated by renown author and well-documented Beastie Boys super-fan Dan LeRoy. An email/Twitter friend of The Witzard in recent years, LeRoy has written a number of extremely enjoyable books, including The Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique 33 1/3, its "66 2/3" quasi-sequel, For Whom The Cowbell Tolls: 25 Years of Paul's Boutique, and The Greatest Music Never Sold: Secrets of Legendary Lost Albums By David Bowie, Seal, Beastie Boys, Chicago, Mick Jagger & More! Come to find out, Dan LeRoy is a fan of Punk, Hardcore & Ska, as well.
It all started with a recent Tweet posted by @danleroy himself, which read as follows: "As we mourn the irreplaceable #TootsHibbert, thanks to @TheClash for covering "Pressure Drop" and introducing me to Jamaican music. Might I have discovered Toots and all of it anyway? Wouldn't want to risk it. What a vile, artistically destructive idea "cultural appropriation" is." So, of course, that little 140 Characters or Less story piqued our interests and we immediately messaged Dan LeRoy directly. With a little bit of convincing, LeRoy soon agreed to compile a playlist inspired by his journey through Punk, Ska, Reggae, etc. thanks to The Clash's "Pressure Drop" inadvertently introducing him to Toots & The Maytals. Accompanying his 25-song With The Quickness Spotify playlist, Dan was kind enough to send us a bit of well-thought out commentary expounding a bit more on his various selections. Dan LeRoy is currently hard at work finishing up his next book, The Stone The Builders Rejected, which is expected to be released on Sophia Institute Press in 2021.
I've always liked stories about people who discovered bands the "wrong way." One example used to be, if you began not with the acknowledged "classic" album, but with some weird compilation of odds-and-sods instead. That was how I became a fan of The Clash: I'd seen the "Rock The Casbah" video on MTV and knew I wanted more. Yet, instead of just buying Combat Rock, the album which spawned that hit, I, somehow, ended up with a copy of Black Market Clash instead. Why? Were there so many Clash fans where I lived that the local Camelot Music was sold out of everything else? (unlikely.) Did I just like the cover art of Don Letts on his lonesome against an advancing army? (possibly; I still do.) I'm just glad it all worked out like it did.
Black Market Clash didn't merely confirm my appreciation of Strummer, Jones, Simonon, and whichever drummer was manning the throne. It, also, gave me a lifelong love of Jamaican music. The mind-blowing Second Side, with its two massive dub versions (of "Bankrobber" & "Armagideon Time," with The Clash's original take on the latter song, a Willie Williams classic, sandwiched in-between the dubs,) sealed that deal forever.
One of the Jamaican artists this album led me to love was the late, great Toots Hibbert, who passed away Sept. 11, 2020 of complications from COVID-19. Heard objectively, The Clash's cover of Toots' "Pressure Drop" clearly exists in the shadow of the original. But, by itself, the enthusiasm of the new version puts the lie to the whole narrative about "cultural appropriation." And the fact that an album by a bunch of White English Punks opened the door to a fantastic new world of music—not just for me, certainly—shows you what a silly, limiting, and self-defeating concept cultural appropriation is and always was.
If you look at the roughly 20-year timeframe this playlist covers, you can hear a true Golden Era of musical "borrowing." Jamaican musicians hear American Blues and R&B from radio stations across The Caribbean Sea and turn it into Ska, Rocksteady & Reggae. That sound Skanks its way across The Atlantic and inspires two generations of English musicians. That includes the Punks, whose love of Jamaican music travels back to The US and fires up a whole new movement of Punk and Alternative acts. From America halfway around the world and back in two decades, with a highlight reel that is an embarrassment of riches. Not bad at all.
The following playlist of 25 Ska/Punk/Reggae crossovers is in no way definitive: the field is much too big and broad for that. It, also, stops in the mid-eighties—not because there isn't lots of great stuff in the same vein that comes afterwards, but because I don't think the "borrowing" was ever as inspired and as fresh as it was during this era.
If any of it helps you discover something you end up loving... then, just be sure to carry on the tradition and pass it on!"
- Dan LeRoy (@danleroy)