hi,

I stumbled on a great album of old '60s reggae/ska called something "Skinhead Classics."

Seems counter intuitive that skinheads would have loved music played by black people
from the islands---with whom I would've thought skinheads would have had a problem.
Also, I thought skinheads were virulently anti-marijuana, which certainly would not have
been the case with the people who made that music. At least UK punks were, I thought....
associating weed with hippies, being diametrically opposed to hippies.

Were early punks into old-skool reggae/ska too? Just UK punks? or NY too?

I didn't know til tonight that "The Tide Is High," which Blondie recorded in 1980, is
a Jamaican song from the '60s. Guess Blondie heard it in England or around NYC?




How did this cultural mashup work?

Any good sources to learn more about this seemingly unlikely convergence? [documentaries,
books, etc]

thanks,
swiss



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012-05-22 10:49 by swiss.

Skinheads do not think that much. But this is not that surprising. You will easily find antisemit people who listen to great jewisch performers and racists listening to Miles Davis.

From what I remember of the East London area (late '60s & early '70s) - the issues the Skinheads had were with Pakistanis and jews...(both ethicities being considered generally too socially insular and money orientated)....not blacks at all........
Dope smoking was very much a part time thing with most skinheads as their main hobbies were @#$%& ing and fighting......(usually with the above and rival football (soccer) fans....(just the fighting that is.........
In my home town - Swansea - late '70s, there was a club called Pandora's Box AKA - Dirty Dora's..........every weekend the place was jammed with Punks, skinheads, hippies, teddy boys, mods, nutty boys (Ska etc), rastas, angels, (greasers), hookers, junkies, general dopeheads and local villains, as cultural entities we all got along just fine, occaisionally a fight would break out between indivduals but that was usually due to a dope deal going bad or about a girl, no gang stuff. The only issue any of us had was with the gangs of brain dead suits that used to come down from other clubs and wait outside to pick fights. (and of course the police were despised by everyone too - generally known for busting people for dope, keeping most of it for themselves to sell through their own channels later)...............



Edited 9 time(s). Last edit at 2012-05-22 11:47 by EddieByword.

I was there! Skinheads loved reggae. Although my friends and I were never proper skins we had short hair (more suedeheads!) and wore the levis, ben shermans, docs etc. Books like Skinhead by Richard Allen were required reading. Reggae was the only music we'd listen to. Holidays and weekends were spent hanging around reggae shops in Shepherds Bush and Willesden. I remember seeing Brown Sugar on display (I vaguely remember a picture cover but I could be wrong) and we took the piss because it wasn't reggae!

I've never lost my love for late 60s early 70s reggae but years ago Richard Allen's skinhead book became strangely fashionable and was reprinted. I flicked through a copy aiming to relive my youth and it was appalling. Badly written, misogynistic racist tripe.

We were never proper skins - we had black friends for starters, but even the most racist skins loved the music. Illogical? Yes but they weren't particularly smart and probably didn't see the contradiction.

It's also worth noting that racists fights weren't always whites vs blacks in fact asians vs blacks and whites vs asians were probably more common. However, school vs school or football club vs football club were much more common.

Some great music and I'd still argue that the Wailers music we listened to around 1971 was at least as good as the later Island material.

That is because the early skinheads were not racist. They didn't become racist till the late 1970s and early 1980s and all these different political wings developed in the movement.

htttp://www.last.fm/user/rocknrollcola

Quote
RollingStonesRob
That is because the early skinheads were not racist. They didn't become racist till the late 1970s and early 1980s and all these different political wings developed in the movement.

Absolutely right about the skins not being racist as a movement till later but the level of racism in society was much higher and I suspect most skins, teds, angels, greasers etc were racist in today's terms.

It's a great irony that 'skinhead' became shorthand for 'racist' as the original skinhead / suedehead scene was directly influenced by Jamaica.

It was mostly white working class boys & girls who had started going to ska clubs and Jamaican drinking clubs (they stayed open all night and you could get weed and amphetamine pills, which meant you could dance all night).

They started to copy the styles of the black kids who wore a mix of the fashions from Jamaica (tight polo necks with buttoned up collars, very short hair with a 'tramline' parting shaved in), plus some of the more practical clothing that the dockers in london always wore (DM boots etc).

This scene was initially mixed up with the mods, but as the mods turned into hippies, the kids who weren't interested in that scene and wanted to keep purely into ska & reggae became more and more militant about the way they dressed (drainpipe jeans and skinheads being about as far as you can get from the hippy look!)

This was all happening in the late 60's, early 70's - it was the skinhead revival in the mid to late 70's that sadly got hijacked by the British Far-Right parties and football hooligans, and dressing as a skin was a way of signifying that you were a bit of a thug, if not an out and out racist. Of course, even then, not all skins were racists, but it became a tag that stuck..

These links might help:

[www.angelfire.com]

[www.myspace.com]


"As we say in England, it can get a bit trainspottery"

Quote
EddieByword
From what I remember of the East London area (late '60s & early '70s) - the issues the Skinheads had were with Pakistanis and jews...(both ethicities being considered generally too socially insular and money orientated)....not blacks at all........
Dope smoking was very much a part time thing with most skinheads as their main hobbies were @#$%& ing and fighting......(usually with the above and rival football (soccer) fans....(just the fighting that is.........
In my home town - Swansea - late '70s, there was a club called Pandora's Box AKA - Dirty Dora's..........every weekend the place was jammed with Punks, skinheads, hippies, teddy boys, mods, nutty boys (Ska etc), rastas, angels, (greasers), hookers, junkies, general dopeheads and local villains, as cultural entities we all got along just fine, occaisionally a fight would break out between indivduals but that was usually due to a dope deal going bad or about a girl, no gang stuff. The only issue any of us had was with the gangs of brain dead suits that used to come down from other clubs and wait outside to pick fights. (and of course the police were despised by everyone too - generally known for busting people for dope, keeping most of it for themselves to sell through their own channels later)...............

Great story Eddie.


Ah, the great dichotomy of skinheads liking reggae music despite being racists who went out on ‘paki-bashing’ missions. Never quite understood that one. For many schoolboys growing up in the late 60s skinheads were something to be feared. You’d see them at football matches, especially down at The Shed at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge football ground. If you gave them a wide berth you were generally OK although sometimes you’d just have to make sure you could outrun them – not to hard as they wore Dr Marten boots with 32 eyelets. The police used to confiscate their laces so they couldn’t kick or run which was hilarious.

Unfortunately reggae music was synonymous with skinheads and despite The Beatles being probably the first group to use the style for one of their songs, Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Di, it took until the early 70s before many kids really accepted it. There were other famous white rock and pop musicians who wrote the token reggae song, Paul Simon’s Mother And Child Reunion, Led Zeppelin’s D’Yer Mak’er and Elton John’s Jamaica Jerk Off being just three.

Fortunately the UK had a great Commonwealth connection with Jamaica and between 67 and 74 there were some truly great reggae hits in the charts such as Monkey Spanner, Young Gifted And Black, Let Your Yeah Be Yeah, Israelites, 007, Double Barrel, I Can See Clearly Now, The Harder They Come, You Can Get It If You Really Want, Dat and many many more which are all available on a fantastic album called Young Gifted And Black.

Quote
Silver Dagger

Fortunately the UK had a great Commonwealth connection with Jamaica and between 67 and 74 there were some truly great reggae hits in the charts such as Monkey Spanner, Young Gifted And Black, Let Your Yeah Be Yeah, Israelites, 007, Double Barrel, I Can See Clearly Now, The Harder They Come, You Can Get It If You Really Want, Dat and many many more which are all available on a fantastic album called Young Gifted And Black.

Double Barrel by Dave and Ansil Collins kept Brown Sugar off the top spot in the UK charts in 1971.






"As we say in England, it can get a bit trainspottery"

Quote
Silver Dagger

Quote
EddieByword
From what I remember of the East London area (late '60s & early '70s) - the issues the Skinheads had were with Pakistanis and jews...(both ethicities being considered generally too socially insular and money orientated)....not blacks at all........
Dope smoking was very much a part time thing with most skinheads as their main hobbies were @#$%& ing and fighting......(usually with the above and rival football (soccer) fans....(just the fighting that is.........
In my home town - Swansea - late '70s, there was a club called Pandora's Box AKA - Dirty Dora's..........every weekend the place was jammed with Punks, skinheads, hippies, teddy boys, mods, nutty boys (Ska etc), rastas, angels, (greasers), hookers, junkies, general dopeheads and local villains, as cultural entities we all got along just fine, occaisionally a fight would break out between indivduals but that was usually due to a dope deal going bad or about a girl, no gang stuff. The only issue any of us had was with the gangs of brain dead suits that used to come down from other clubs and wait outside to pick fights. (and of course the police were despised by everyone too - generally known for busting people for dope, keeping most of it for themselves to sell through their own channels later)...............

Great story Eddie.


Ah, the great dichotomy of skinheads liking reggae music despite being racists who went out on ‘paki-bashing’ missions. Never quite understood that one.

I think that's what I was getting at........I'm not sure it was just about race..From what I remember and remember older people saying - I was quite young then - with the 'Pakis' it was more about the way they came to Britain en masse after the India/pakistan partition and basically set up what was to a lot of peoples perception - (and from what I remember not just skins - although their reaction was of course more volatile) - anti-social enclaves in and about London.......and apparently that still prevails but especially up north, giving nothing. whereas the blacks brought over a comparitively expansive outlook - exemplified by the Notting Hill Carnival and (for better or worse) dope and definitely for the better really excellent music.........amongst other necessary but more mundane things,
Could be that the skins weren't racist but were reacting (ultimately badly) to the Pakistanis racism...........?
I used to own a cheap end ladies fashion shop in the '80s......we used to go to this Pakistani run wholesalers.....nothing was ever priced up ...you had to ask every price.......years later I was told (and I think reliably) that this guy used to A. Secretly charge white people a 10% surcharge...or B. Give asians a 10% discount...........
Only then did it dawn on me that perhaps racism isn't necessarily a one way street.........

Mind you I am a bit slow sometimes...I spent 5 years of my life in the 60's being called Gwailo in Hong Kong - Whiteghost.............

Also I appreciate there's a huge generalisation trap there. Of course every society's got it's generous people and mean bastards...........



Edited 9 time(s). Last edit at 2012-05-22 14:48 by EddieByword.

Even The Beatles weren't adverse to a bit of racism, however supposedly tongue-in-cheek it was. During the Twickenham sessions they recorded an early version of Get Back, which later was called Commonwealth Song. Don't think anyone could get away with that now, as a joke.

Here it is below.

video: [www.youtube.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012-05-22 14:41 by Silver Dagger.

Quote
Braincapers
racist in today's terms.

Most people are, then and now.

Great posts Eddie and totally agree with you.

My older brother was heavily in to Ska and still loves it even in his mid/late 50s. Dont really remember any racism, and what there was was always directed at asians, dont know why there were none were we lived (still not that many). Your race views could be aired relatively freely then with little chance of anyone pulling you up for it. (As seen on the sitcom Love thy neighbour)!
Unacceptable of course..... Totally unacceptable now

What a drag it is gettin' old

Quote
His Majesty

Quote
Braincapers
racist in today's terms.

Most people are, then and now.

I think many hold prejudices and let's not confuse plain old ignorance with racism. Before I started work in London, I definitely suffered from the former. Variety is the spice of life. I'm all for multiculturalism.

hi you guys -- thanks so much for posting responses! This thread slipped to Page 2 of the
"Message List," and I am often too distracted to make it all the way to Page 2. So now I see
there's all sorts of awesome stuff to read. I'm not feeling very well, and will be going to
bed early, but will bringing my laptop so I can read everyone's responses, and will respond
tomorrow. In the meantime, thanks again for helping along my education on these topics

-swiss