augustus pablo 10" dubplate

A dub plate is a one off copy, the original acetate of a recording which is then never released on vinyl. It is usually a different version of a tune already available and released, typically with a different lyric, or a different vocalist, or a more raw and bass-heavy mix. Dubplates are much prized by sound-system operators for the simple reason that no rival sounds can never play it. Since the inception of the dancehall era, the competitive nature of the dubplate has become still more pronounced. Nowadays a dancehall 'special' will typically extol the virtues of the particular sound which commissioned it or pour scorn upon the merits of any rival sound foolish enough to challenge in the dancehall arena.

One side of this dubplate consists of two previously unreleased dub mixes of Pablo's Unfinished Melody, a tune perhaps best known from his album East Of The River Nile. Recorded at Lee Perry's Black Ark studio back in 1976 and given the final mix by Tubby, both mixes are satisfyingly raw and dub-heavy. The other side, Jacob Miller's hitherto unreleased Stop Them Jah. On the same rhythm as Hugh Mundell's Stop Them Jah and Jacob Miller's own Who Say Jah No Dread (aka too much commercialisation of rasta) this is lyrically quite different to both. The rhythm in question is best known to a wider audience as King Tubbys Meets The Rockers Uptown from the album of that same name. Jacob Miller's vocal comes and goes intermittently over the crisp, incisive horns familiar to all who own that album and is described on the label as a guide vocal. So perhaps this might have been a trial for an intended release that, for whatever reason, never saw the light of day. The side finishes with a cut to New Style, the rhythm on which back in 1974 Bongo Pat recorded Young Generation.

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