The Duppy Jamboree
by Wrongtom
Before we get started on part 2 of the Duppy Writer story, I’d like to tell you a little bit about my dad when I was growing up. A man of few words, yet he loved language. After a few beers he was known to recite macabre verses from Hilaire Belloc or nonsense from Edward Lear (for ref: Sheila E raps a bit of Lear in the middle Prince’s ‘It’s Gonna Be A Beautiful Night’), and he coveted records by George Melly, Peter Sellers and The Kingston Trio. He especially loved the latter’s album Live At The Hungry I, particularly the two calypsos - ‘Tick Tick Tick’ and ‘The Zombie Jamboree’ - which no doubt originally led me down a path of Caribbean music; Harry Belafonte was another big drawer for him.
Unlike me, he was athletic, but not a jock. He supported no football teams but would happily sit and watch a good match. We didn’t have loads in common and didn’t chat much, but when we did I’d bug him for stories about growing up in India, and his worldwide travels with work as a chartered engineer, especially to Japan, from which he’d return home with elaborate robots and manga comics as presents throughout the 80s. He took early retirement at 58 before the job wiped him out from the stress. He enjoyed a frugal but happy retirement, accompanying my mum to jazz gigs and festivals, and catching up on all the fun he’d missed while tap dancing for corporate bozos. In case you missed it in part one of the tale, my dad was diagnosed with mesothelioma which he’d contracted from exposure to asbestos while working in a power station at the start of his career. It was terminal but he faced it like a champ, determined to live as long as he could. A good man, which of course I’d say, but it’s true. Anyway, back to the album…
When Tony McDermott’s finished Duppy Writer artwork showed up, I was standing there beside myself, like Fisher Stevens in his questionable role as Guttenberg’s comedy Indian sidekick in Short Circuit. I couldn’t begin to tell you how many hours I’ve clocked up marvelling at the detail in various covers by Tony over the years, and here I was immortalised alongside the likes of Mad Professor, Yellowman and Ranking Ann to name a few. Though my favourite, Live At The Soul All Dayer Of The Century isn’t a reggae cover at all.
I appreciate that I haven’t divulged much about actually making most of the album. In truth it’s the least remarkable part of the tale. Mostly just me in my home studio, questioning my abilities and endlessly playing and replaying guitars, keys and drums until I was happy they sounded ok. The cliches are all too real, I am my own worst critic. To give you a little insight into the process however, I’ve put together a playlist of tracks which influenced the recording, some overtly, others in essence.
With the album ready to ship, it was promo time. I’m not a fan of having my picture taken, so I rolled up to the Russian Club in Dalston with trepidation, though still a little excited, having heard we were going for a turn of the 90s ragga theme; think Z Cavaricci baggy slacks and shirts, Sonetti waistcoats etc. Inside, however, the stylist confusingly presented us with a load of 80s-style casual wear, so I picked the least laddish outfit I could find, and stood awkwardly in shot while I watched my seasoned associate work his way through a series of poses like a true professional. I hadn’t even combed my hair.
The next day I flew to the States for a well earned holiday. My girlfriend, Emma, was off to a wedding in Puerto Rico so I said ¡buen viaje! at JFK and headed into NYC to meet Ed Zed (that’s him in the plaid shirt on the Duppy Writer cover). Fresh off the plane and out of the subway, we wound up in a cinema in Greenwich Village watching Henri Clouzot’s Inferno, the semi documentary/reconstruction of director Clouzot’s ill-fated film L’Enfer which depicts a hotelier driven mad by jealousy, plagued by distorted visions and violent fantasies over his wife’s infidelity. Clouzot pushed himself to the brink of madness during the production, and the film was abandoned after he suffered a heart attack. Obviously I’d finished the album without hospitalisation, but it’d taken almost a year and a half of crushing defeatism and technical setbacks between trips to the hospital to get to this point, and as the credits rolled, I thought “me too Henri, me too.”
Ed and his wife Varrick had recently ditched stinking London to shack up in Varrick’s childhood home in Leonia, NJ. A marvelous crumbling wreck which reminded me of the Klopek’s house in The Burbs, replete with a bee infestation in the front yard, and a porch you might fall through if you didn’t watch your step. The neighbours, with their immaculate lawns and star spangled banners flying over their lawns, must’ve thought vampires had moved in.
The night I arrived it was punishingly humid, and Ed and I kicked back on the front porch with some ice cold drinks and a portable deck. A pair of tiny clawed paws, followed by a pointy little nose emerged over the edge of the decking; a racoon had come to see what was happening before clambering up a nearby tree. As the stress of my dad’s illness and my own insecurities about the album drifted away, I realised this was the first time in a couple of years I’d felt truly relaxed. It was wonderful.
You’d be forgiven for not knowing of Leonia. Blink on the bus and you’d miss this dormitory town which straddles a crossroads barely a few minutes from the New Jersey end of the George Washington Bridge. Only a short ride away from Little Dominican Republic in upper Manhattan, but you’d never know it from wandering around this sleepy suburb.
That’s not to say it doesn’t have it’s luminaries, and it’s proximity to NYC has made it home to many notable characters. Alan Alda aka Hawkeye from M*A*S*H has been a Leonia resident for most of his life, while new jack swinger Al B. Sure grew up there, as did Anthony Bourdain, and, for a few terrifying hours in 1975, serial killer Joseph Kallinger and his son tormented a family on Glenwood Ave. Of course Ed and I, the tasteless ratbags we are, went on a short pilgrimage to the house.
Kallinger might lack the stony panache of Dennis Nilsen or the boyish charm of Bundy but his tale is equally tawdry, and completely deranged, despite the judge deeming him compos mentis. Dubbed The Shoemaker, Kallinger claimed that God spoke to him in the form of a disembodied head named Charlie who first told him the secret to a healthy mind was the relationship between shoes and good posture, so, working in the family’s cobbler business, he set about making correctional shoes... for hamsters.
The visions escalated. Soon Kallinger ditched his rodent footwear and began a short murder spree which ended in Leonia when an unsuspecting nurse dropped in on the family he was terrorising. He slit her throat and fled with his son, discarding his bloody shirt in the street, which the police later found; it had Kallinger’s name emblazoned inside. Having caught the bus into Manhattan, the pair stopped for a post-murder pizza, I’m not sure where but, were I to make the bloody biopic, it’d open with Kallinger and son enjoying a slice or two at the hallowed ground of John’s Of Bleecker St.
Back to 2010, and across town from John’s, just north of Alphabet City, you could find me warming up for Easy Star All Stars in Stuy Town. What was once a run down neighbourhood - and home of the vicious Gas House Gang - became a hot spot for summer concerts, picnics and yoga lessons in 2010. Hitting the decks for an early set of dub and dancehall, I experienced all three.
Emma returned to NYC from the wedding, and it was off to visit my mate Greg Belson in LA where he’d hooked me up with a couple of gigs at the Rocksteady Lounge and at Miles from Breakestra’s Funky Sole session at The Echo. Between gigs and Greg’s tour of the city, news came in that Duppy Writer’s lead single ‘Jah Warriors’ was slated for Steve Lamacq’s Rebel Playlist back home on BBC 6music. Success, it won! I’d never been playlisted before, and the single was now on air every few hours. We celebrated with some enormous ice creams and I started looking at ostentatious property in Beverly Hills for our big move to La La Land.
Back in the UK, we headed to my folks’ to find my dad wasn’t looking great. I regaled tales of our adventures overseas, sipping tea as he sat on his surgical cushion, the mechanical weezing of his oxygen in the background, like having a cuppa with a weary Darth Vader.
But ‘Jah Warriors’ was doing the radio rounds, and reviews started rolling in for the album. The Guardian called it a “charming beast”, Pitchfork described it as “end-to-end pleasurable” and Q pegged it as “the album Roots Manuva has always threatened to make”. The next step was the launch party, and Will Ashon suggested I tackled it like a live dub thing, playing with the multitracks and dubbing Rodney’s vocals. The problem being, I didn’t really have the equipment to do this, so of course, once again I said YES!
Dante, who’d played on the LP, kindly lent me his laptop, and joined us on trumpet and melodica, while I ran the tracks through a couple of murky old tape echoes via a 32 track Eurodesk because I didn’t have anything smaller. We had one rehearsal at Alaska studios in Waterloo where, between songs, Rodney inexplicably turned to me and asked “do you like oysters?” I told him no, I don’t eat shellfish. He texted someone before launching back into ‘Chin Up’. It seemed like a curious interaction, but remember, this was the guy who showed me photos from a bomb museum moments after we first met.
In the lead up to the launch party, I started seeing tweets and Facebook posts from an ever expanding list of DJs and MC’s saying they were playing there. I was starting to wonder if I’d be playing my own gig at this rate, I hadn’t actually heard any confirmation, but rolled up to The Alibi in Dalston and crammed the mixing desk, a stack of FX and a Dante who’s the height of a small Wookie, into the corner of the venue’s tiny dancefloor.
None of the tweeting DJs or MCs showed up, and the Big Dada crew knew nothing about them, but we did have Don Letts to open for us, and Kevin “The Bug” Martin had requested to play a set of 80s dancehall after we’d finished. While Dante and I soundchecked, Rodney and Ricky Ranking were nowhere to be seen. “Oh, it’s his birthday” someone told us “he’s gone for oysters.”
I turn to camera. Curb Your Enthusiasm theme plays.
The gig was great, maybe not technically, but somewhere between the feedback and echo, and in the thick of a rowdy dancefloor, Rodney was on fire. Some of the punters hadn’t seen a Roots Manuva show this up close and personal since the 90s. This was back to basics. “Jesus” Rodney exclaimed at the start of the set “I feel like someone’s gonna try and sell me a £3 draw!”
An amazing night, aside from popping outside for a moment and the bouncers refusing to let me back into my own launch party; they weren’t having it when I pointed to Tony’s drawing of me on the poster. Speaking of which, Tony’s artwork started to crop up all over the place. People were buying two copies of the album, one to play and another to frame, and the posters were as sought after as the records. A keen-eyed friend paused his TV while watching an episode of Channel 4’s Fresh Meat, having spotted the poster adorning JP’s bedroom wall. I wasn’t sure how I felt about JP being my album’s demographic, but he was the best thing about the show, and played with alarming accuracy by Jack Whitehall. In 2013 the cast made the front page of Time Out, and lo’ and behold, so did Duppy Writer.
T-shirts were printed too. In fact, a few weeks later we had another launch party for it’s grand unveiling. East London loves a launch party, and testament to the old adage that some people will show up to the opening of an envelope, once the fridges were dry and the shop was empty, we’d sold a grand total of one t-shirt. Still, another fun gig, especially seeing Ricky Ranking in the thick of the crowd as if he was back at a Sir Coxsone session in the 80s.
The good news is the t-shirts flew out in bundles with the album which was doing pretty well itself. When my first royalty statement showed up, we’d shifted over 11,000 units before Christmas, which I gather is pretty good for a super-niche record. My balance? -£1924.19. This was going to take a while to recoup.
We weren’t the only one’s celebrating in September. Ninja Tune had notched up 20 years in the game, and marked the occasion with a voluminous box set including 6 CDs and 6 7”s of remixes and exclusives spanning their last 2 decades. One of the 7”s featured label founders Coldcut remixed by the legendary Prince Jammy, but flip it over to find me making a woozy dubby mess of Kid Koala’s ‘Skanky Panky’. Once again it’s near on impossible to get a copy, but you can listen here…
My mum and dad were celebrating too. A few days before the album dropped, we went for dinner to celebrate their 50th anniversary. September 3rd. 71 years since the outbreak of WWII.
Let’s skip back to 1981 where we’ll find disgraced MP Cyril Smith delivering a speech to the House Of Commons about the need for less regulations surrounding asbestos. “The public at large are not at risk” he promised. It turned out the Rochdale based asbestos manufacturer Turner & Newall had written it for him. T&N staff, and locals to their factory had been dying of asbestos related diseases for decades, and in 1955, an epidemiological study in the area outlined the link between asbestos and cancer. Ed Howker wrote in the New Statesman that “T&N persuaded it’s own scientist, Dr John Knox, to draft a paper discrediting Doll’s work.” It soon came to light that the MP had shares in the company.
Cyril Smith died of natural causes at the age of 82 while my mum and dad were enjoying their anniversary dinner.
Gig offers rolled in. I’d been playing reggae sets for years but it was never my main focus, yet now I was dusting off my dancehall vinyl for gigs all over the country. Back in East London I popped down to play at the regular residency for my buddies Disco Shed at The Big Chill Bar. I’d always treat these Sunday afternoon slots as an excuse to play whatever I fancied, and this week I had a dedicated bag of DC go-go. Swanning up to the venue, I realised it was heaving; someone had erroneously billed the set as me and Roots Manuva! As I opened with ‘The Word’ by The Junkyard Band, the crowd looked confused and dismayed. One disgruntled punter down the front caught my eye, it was actor Mohammed George who played street sweeper Gus in Eastenders. I remembered Gus had a Big Dada poster on his bedroom wall in the show, it felt like life imitating art(hur fowler). He was gone by the time I’d mixed in ‘The Art Of Drums’ by Mack Attack.
With loads of gigs and press, I figured it was time to seize the moment and follow up Duppy Writer with something new, something of my own. I set about planning an album which would link all this reggae and dub stuff with all the other styles of music I loved and played out - jazz, funk, electro, post-punk, slow jams etc etc - and came up with a radio themed project, each track named after a different historic radio presenter. A rocksteady track, which I hoped to entice Lynval from The Specials to toast on, would be named after Terry Wogan, the first person to play reggae on BBC radio. Feminist activist Jennifer Abod - the first woman to run a nightly radio show in Connecticut - would get a rattling punk-funk workout which I thought Neneh Cherry would be perfect for. Another pipe dream was a Brit-core style hip hop track named after South London pirate DJ Mike Anthony. I had no idea how to contact her, but I thought actor Abbie Cornish rapping in her MC Dusk guise would sound great on that one.
I got lost along the way though. The trips to see my dad were getting harder as he got skinnier, and I could see the fear setting in. He’d gone to church almost every Sunday for as long as I’d known him, but refused a visit from the local priest. I felt helpless watching him nearly defeated by an invisible nemesis which he’d carried with him for 5 decades. At home I sat at my mixing desk feeling defeated too, so I went to the cinema to watch Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.
Somehow Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s languid stroll through Boonmee’s last days before succumbing to kidney failure was exactly what I needed. There was something oddly comforting about the matter-of-fact way Boonmee’s long-dead wife materialises at the dinner table, or the entrance of his cursed son who’d transformed into a nefarious furry night-beast after mating with a “monkey ghost”. Some people need a sympathetic ear, I needed an atmospheric Thai drama featuring a night-beast.
With the monkey ghost at my side, it was time for one more live show with Rodney and Ricky. We’d been booked to support Bonobo at the Brighton Dome, so I crammed that big mixing desk into my car once more and hit the road.
This was our first time on a proper stage together, we probably should’ve rehearsed. Another fun gig though, and there was talk of doing a club tour in the new year. Things were looking up again.
I returned to London to hear my dad had taken a turn for the worse. My mum was exhausted and I decided to stay with them to lend a hand. In the dead of night I awoke to hear commotion outside on the landing, he’d collapsed in the toilet. As I helped the poor guy back to bed, I realised our roles had reversed, and I don’t think either of us were comfortable with it.
The following morning I convinced my mum to call the hospice. This was way more than she could cope with, and I knew we were into meso’s last stretch. It was December 15th. Ten days til Christmas. In the Indian Ocean, just off the coast of Christmas Island, a boat carrying 90 asylum seekers from Iraq crashed into rocks in Flying Fish Cove. 48 were killed.
For the next few days, family and friends dropped by the hospice. After the birthday excursion earlier in the year I’d tried to write him a letter just to say thank you, for the trip, for my life, for everything. I couldn’t find the words. Then, on December 22nd it looked like this could be it, we gathered round, and my sister, brother and I all took turns to spend a bit of time having a chat with him. I’ve no idea what the others spoke about but they took a while. My turn. I sat down next to his bed looking at him, emaciated, a bag of bones, yet still somehow handsome. We made polite small talk but nothing really came out. I don’t know if he was just too exhausted or couldn’t think of what to say but I was completely lost. The TV was on. We wound up watching an episode of The Simpsons, the one where Marge blows all the Christmas money on getting Bart’s tattoo removed, and Homer secretly gets a job as a shopping mall Santa to pay for Christmas.
As the evening went on, he quickly deteriorated. The bickering in the waiting room got worse. We were falling apart. It wound up just my mum and I in his room. I held his hand as I felt him drifting away, my mum sat next to us nursing a whiskey, just trying to survive. His wheezes got shorter. His throat began to rattle, I gripped his hand tighter, and I remembered my dad’s dismay when, a few years prior, he sat with his dying mum, and told me he sensed nothing when she passed. He was a man of science, yet believed in guardian angels and spirits with such unabashed naivety that I was almost sold on them myself, but like him I felt nothing, just sad and helpless as I listened to his final crackling breath.
He died seven days shy of his 74th birthday. As his coffin entered the chapel, we played ‘The Zombie Jamboree’, much to the chagrin of some of the sterner religious fanatics at the funeral.
I’m sure this hasn’t lifted your spirits, and I doubt it’s the upbeat tale of a (hopefully) landmark album you might have expected. Yes, it wasn’t the easiest time in my life, but I did genuinely enjoy aspects of it. The gigs were great, though the tour was cancelled. I learned a lot about producing, and more about the industry. I eventually recouped the 2 grand advance this year by the way; it took a decade but I’m finally in the black.
Most importantly it changed my career path. Duppy Writer shaped everything I’ve done musically for the past 10 years. I gained a whole new audience but lost a whole dad.
Thanks to Rodney, Will and the Big Dada/Ninja crew for the ride, and most of all thanks dad.
