An individual with a skateboard and a gun robbed a bank in San Diego. We need your help in identifying… what kind of board he was riding! Ba-dump, crash! Nice one. Did I get you? Like I’m going to ask everyone to rat out this guy. As long as he sticks to the lyrics.
– Thanks to Eric Cherry for the tip.
21 comments
Sorry, thought this was Ska And Annoy
And we conclude this babble with the useful “fact” that some of the more pleasant, but lesser known, sixties Ska can be found on “Trombone Man: Rico; an Anthology”, and some of the greatest Ska ever, by Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, can be found on Youtube, and on their “Ska Me Crazy” compilation, and, that, when it comes to Afro-Latin pun-names that make fer a great Ska song to download, “Soul Mocoso” is the one.
RH
Correct (as best I can tell), but I suspect the Clash were leary as early as 1979, cuz Rat Scabies probably delighted in telling them how slow they were in comparison to some band that had opened for the Damned in the states, that he had invited to come on over. (HR was actually BORN in London, it turns out; did not know that.) Anyhow, regardless of who knew who, yes, Mikey Dread’s reggae stylings were around before HR’s; woulda been kind of hard to rip ’em off otherwise. Mikey might not have been the only one that the Bad Brains secretly emulated, though; all-black Philly “first wave” (pre-’76) punk band Pure Hell had a suspiciously similar guitar sound, though not as fast… and Philadelphia is not far from DC. But, hey, the much-emulated-by-Ska’s-second-wave Prince Buster had gone so far as to change his name to Muhammad Ali after becoming a Muslim, (really)… before changing his name to King Tubby and inventing Dub (okay, not so much)… and it doesn’t get much more emulatey/copy-cat than THAT. Biters all… with good results.
Joe Dummer
My daddy was / A bank biter / But he never hurt nobody…
houseofneil
The Clash show I’m talking about was jan 26 1980. I lived in england then. Bad Brains didn’t play with the clash until June 81 in nY at the Bonds shows.. And by that time the clash were anxious to have non-punk bands opening for them.
houseofneil
The first Madness single is a homage to Prince Buster: “The Prince” is teh a-side and “Madness” is the b-side.
And Mikey Dread’s affiliation with the clash goes back further than any Bad Brains affiliation. The first time I saw the clash Mikey Dread opened up. That was the 16 tons tour I believe.
RH
Not sure that that 1980 tour was before the first time the Bad Brains opened for the Clash (which the Clash supposedly were not anxious to repeat, finding them a hard act to follow). And whereas Madness’s “The Prince” was an homage, and “One Step Beyond” was a straight cover that royalties were paid on, “Madness” was more like a rip-off, in that Madness probably should have paid double royalties on that one, since it used the vocals from “Madness” and the instrumentation of Buster’s “Burning Creation”. The Specials at least mixed it up, covering Buster’s version of “Enjoy Yourself” and borrowing from Buster’s “Al Capone” on “Gangsters”, but also covering Dandy Livingston’s “Rudy a Message to You” and Andy and Joey’s “Your Wondering Now”… whereas the Beat straight up covered Buster’s “Wine and Grine” and “Rough Rider”. But another Buster homage is Swell Map’s intro to one of their songs (“International Rescue”?) that goes simply “F. A. B.!”
RH
Oh, and before I put a sock in it, my favert dead Kennedy song, beside son-of-Radio-Birdman New Race’s “Nov. 22, 1963”, is Prince Buster’s sly ‘wait, which one of us is the third world?’ instrumental “Texas Hold Up”, which starts with “This is a hold-up. …This is… Dallas, Texas.”[Followed by gunfire]. [And don’t even get me started on how “Radio Birdman” was by no means a MIS-heard lyric from Iggy’s “I Feel Alright” (though the Damned mis-heard and mis-sang it as “Burnin'” in their cover “1970”), because, even though Iggy is apparently too embarrassed to admit it, “I Feel Alright” was a straight up homage to Chuck Berry’s “You Can’t Catch Me”, even borrowing its chord progression and some of its lines, and, if ever there was a song about a “Radio birdman, up above”, it was “You Can’t Catch Me”. (Which does have the distinction of having been in a skate video of the last ten years [might even be the same one that features Radio Birdman’s “Hand of Law”].)] [(!@#$%)]
RH
**But though you’d have to be mighty facetious to claim Neil Diamond as the father of Reggae, a NON-facetious case CAN be made for CassiusClay/Ali as the father of Rap, since fellow boxer Prince Buster was a big fan (see the song “Earthquake”), and, given Buster’s huge influence on Jamaican music, it’s not surprising that sixties Jamaican M.ike C.hatterer’s and Selectors set the stage for Jamaicans to bring rap to Brooklyn in the seventies. But for evidence of just how weak rap’s become in the last nine years, one need look no further than the Gatorade commercial that makes Ali’s comic riffing sound stupid as hell by endlessly repeating one line… theoretically to make it sound “more” musical.
JakeAndAnnoy
I believe your thinking of “why cant i be you” by the cure…at least I am. And Rancid stole a couple of riffs from the Specials, and used one for their song “time bomb”.
kilwag
…say the bells of Prince Far I.
RH
Randy, your tagline reminds me of the fact that I always assumed the Clash’s political selves were singing about the COUNTRY Angola in another song, Junco Partner, till I learned it’s just an old New Orleans song, and immediately made the connection to Angola State (prison). (Hey, I couldn’t make out the “serving”, only the “I was born in Angola,” part before it.)
kilwag
I’ve always wondered about that, I knew it was an old song, I thought they just ad-libbed those lyrics because they didn’t make sense in the context of the source assuming it was Angola the country. Now I know. Thanks! I love thier little messed up short cover of Stagger Lee on the beginning of Wrong ‘Em Boyo. Turns out that was a direct copy of the Rulers riffing on the same song by the same name.
RH
What one finds in one’s old age is that, except for skateboarding and “Junco Partner”, it ALL comes from Jamaica. Such as a “clash” and a “special” (being a sound system battle and a sound system exclusive pressing, respectively). And rap. And then there is HR’s “unique” reggae stylings, which he seems to have straight out copied from Mikey Dread (to the point that it’s easy to mis-guess, given the Bad Brains’ association with the Clash, that it’s HR singing on “One More Time” on Sandinista, unless you know Mikey’s vocals). Oh, and if you start looking for more Prince Buster on youtube, you find out that MOST of the good songs by the Beat, Madness, and the Specials are covers. Though if I remember right the Madness song Madness uses the instrumentals of a Buster B-side instead (Buster’s Madness may be the A-side, or his Burning Creation… and/or one of those three bands lifts Burning Creation’s instrumentals for one of their hits). Someone really needs to name their future-skater child Prince Buster, by the way. But strangely enough, although he is famous for popularizing ska in the early sixties, the first ska recording was by someone else in ’59, but Buster and his trombonist Rico don’t seem to be given due credit for being the very root of reggae, by bringing the Niyah drummers down from the Rasta camp above Kingston to play on “Niyah Man” (or somethin like that). And then there’s N. Diamond, who UB40 thought must be some Jamaican dude.
kilwag
And the Cure re-uses a pretty famous ska horn section riff in one of their more popular tunes too, it escapes me at the moment.
RH
*Because they were only familiar with the Tony Tribe version of RRW.
kc
That’s just his cover. He probably rollerblades.
Carrying your skateboard in to a bank so you can rob it? How are you gonna carry the money with a gun and a skate in your hand?
He should have had his buddy waiting outside with the getaway long board.
ticorico
skating the source man, it’ll change yer life, swear to god.
JakeAndAnnoy
” Dude,I got my first crailslide today,Sir”
roszco
This is just like Point Break!
Casey M.
It appears he doesn’t actually skateboard. He’s mall grabbing.
RH
Mall grabbing or intent to kill? Wouldn’t be the first time someone was killed by a swung board that hit them in the head with one end of an axle. Even including some older guy (not even sure he was a skater) who had made the mistake of giving someone upsettable’s younger brother cigarettes at a park.