The Congos - Heart of the Congos Poll

impossible.

lol i clicked this post to type "impossible"

top of my head tho it's "Children Crying"

and now i notice there's a clue in the intro

I think of this so much as a single work that it's really hard to pick one song. I guess "Congoman" is most emblematic, but I might go for "Can't Come In."

The Wrong Thing is the right thing

I thought 'impossible' as I was typing the song titles. Ridiculous.

(But it is Children Crying. Probably.)

Congos tracks sounding good on recent Lee Scratch Perry round-up King Scratch: Musical Masterpieces From The Upsetter Ark-ive.

Open Up The Gate

are there other reggae albums where the tracks sort of have their own dub versions integrated into the song structure like this? it's a really cool effect

just listened back thru and for me it's still either Children Crying or Solid Foundation, i'd forgotten quite how amazing the vocal line on the latter is

“open up the gate” definitely

are there other reggae albums where the tracks sort of have their own dub versions integrated into the song structure like this? it's a really cool effect

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lots yeah, though usually not as organically as this as they tend to be more like track compilations than albums

check out, for example, Wayne Jarrett's Showcase, Vol. 1

impossible is otm, but you know what's a very good song? Fisherman

yeah how is this not Fisherman? so beautiful

http://quietus_production.s3.amazonaws.com/images/articles/9007/Congo_Main_1339269341_crop_550x500.jpg

Will always love the fact that the first time this album was released outside Jamaica, it was The Beat who put it out on their own Go-Feet label because Island didn't rate it

Is the original mix worth seeking or did Perry withdraw it for good reason?

It’s not bad at all, but much less dubby echo business.

Congoman.

The Sun Araw / M Geddes reboot with the Congos is preparator good.

Probably Children Crying

I didn't know there was a withdrawn original mix

Also this is the best reggae album ever

Fisherman 4 ever.

So good. A perfect album. Went if Open Up the Gate over The Wrong Thing. But everything deserves to place

imagine most of the votes will deservedly go to “fisherman,” but I love “can’t come in.” so creepy

no more lick from the licking stick

The Wrong Thing vs Children Crying for me

“Open Up The Gate” is glorious. As is the album.

are there other reggae albums where the tracks sort of have their own dub versions integrated into the song structure like this? it's a really cool effect

Will always love the fact that the first time this album was released outside Jamaica, it was The Beat who put it out on their own Go-Feet label because Island didn't rate it

Children Crying - without a 2nd thought

argh! but also Fisherman

are there other reggae albums where the tracks sort of have their own dub versions integrated into the song structure like this? it's a really cool effect

Bim Sherman's Lovers Leap Showcase is one of my favourite examples of this.

I remember hearing long ago that Island wanted HOTC but not “Roast Fish, Collie Weed and Cornbread”, but the rejection of the latter led to Scratch refusing to deal with Island

Was Blackwell brokering that deal? I can't imagine he was because the guy knows his reggae and would know that "Roast Fish & Cornbread" is Lee Perry's best tune (under his own name, that is)

Anyway this poll will come down to supreme heady spaced out jams vs supreme heady spaced out jams with added mellow, melodic falsetto vocal perfection

I dunno, I’m just repeating ancient half remembered non-facts! Couple of songs from RFCWACB turned up on Scratch on the Wire a bit after, I always assumed that was something thrown together by Island using bits and pieces they had the rights to, after the falling-out.

all these songs are good but come on, it’s “fishermen”

no “open up the gates” is better

"sodom and gomorrow" is such a mood killer. i love roots reggae but the little blasts of homophobia here and there are hard to deal with.

Man, this album ...

Anybody know the dirt on what soured Perry on the Congos?

it's all here - https://www.waxpoetics.com/article/black-ark-city-too-hot/

I listened through tonight and changed my mind about my vote four times. I only stopped changing my mind because the album ended, so by virtue of being the last song it's "Solid Foundation" for me.

Open Up the Gate vs. Children Crying vs. The Wrong Thing

The hungry must be fed so there'll be no more sufferation!

S&G I prefer to pretend they're angry about lot's treatment of his daughters but tbh I often skip it

thanks for the recs everybody I might start having reggae phase

that one aside there are no bad choices here and they're all legitimate contenders for best song in my view

Yeah I love children crying but had to vote Ark of the Covenant just to make sure it got a vote

Erm what's making people think Sodom and Gomorrow is homophobic? I mean it wouldn't surprise me if it is tbh but I always thought it was about sinners and heathens etc more generally

are there other reggae albums where the tracks sort of have their own dub versions integrated into the song structure like this? it's a really cool effect

Not an album but this is a nice collection of 12" discomixes of reggae tunes, ie extended versions with the song then becoming the dub (if that makes sense)

https://www.discogs.com/release/727271-Various-Trojan-12-Box-Set

experience with christianity mostly, particularly the conservative christian fixation on a one specific extremely cool and fun sin

idk if rastafari has a radically different interpretation, i assumed not in this case based on my limited knowledge of the movement, I'd like to believe otherwise - I don't know what invoking S&G means within rastafari or within jamaican christianity and culture in general, I only know what the story means when it's used over here and I don't love hearing it

xp

and xp yes that's my absolutely my shit thank you

yeah i'm not *certain* about Sodom and Gommorow, but then i think if it's just about corrupt society then Babylon would be the go-to metaphor so there's definitely a big question mark

more digital than roots but the CD version of this Greensleeves sampler runs the songs into the dubs too

https://www.discogs.com/release/1660793-Various-Greensleeves-Sampler-4

plenty of single artist/producer compilations have a song/dub running order, it's not quite the same as HotC and i agree it's particularly deft the way Scratch condenses the two

i think if it's just about corrupt society then Babylon would be the go-to metaphor so there's definitely a big question mark

Good point. Well that's depressing but unfortunately not surprising :(

Steadily gone from an album I like to one of my favourite album over the years, so yes completely impossible.

I think it comes down to Ark of the Covenant & Solid Foundation for me. The hypnotic drive of Ark, the slightly mind-bending conflation of Noah's Ark and the Ark of the Covenant, 'Every morning the black sun rise', and then of c 'Even the ants - saved in Noah's sugar pan'.

Voting Solid Foundation tho' because I think it's really shockingly beautiful, & the last minute or so, the coda/dub, is the loveliest thing. Also I like trying and failing to sing along with the conquering lion of Judah bit.

(Close - Can't Come In, because I do like the Wise and Foolish virgins turning up in a song; La La Bam Bam, 'They sold Jah Rasta and why did they do that?'; Open Up The Gate for just how great that "Send my sons from afar/ And my daughters from the end of the world" breaks out, The Wrong Thing generally, fuck it fuck it what an album)

solid foundation it is!

i think if it's just about corrupt society then Babylon would be the go-to metaphor so there's definitely a big question mark

This is a bit tentative but S&G might be using S&G because it seems to be about a city/captivity that has already been destroyed/ended - 'Down in the dungeon/That's where I used to lay my head/No more straw making bricks/No more lick from the licking stick'. They're burning cities upon which God's judgement has been definitively passed, whereas we're all trapped in Babylon still.

But as with others above I genuinely don't know enough about the traditions to say and yeah it's hard to get away from the implication even if it's not explicitly there, given the history of Jamaican music and homophobia.

had a good think about Ark of the Covenant and its overlapping Arks this morning, funnily enough, it's quite a dizzying multiplication of images

are there other reggae albums where the tracks sort of have their own dub versions integrated into the song structure like this? it's a really cool effect

You might enjoy Horace Andy's Dance Hall Style LP, which if I remember right is full of long songs that are just seamless transitions between the originals and the versions, makes for nice effect

xp yeah it's incredible, the sense of nature, history & destiny being entwined to the point of identity & carried inside the Ark/s is giddying.

it won't help with anyone's poll choices but there's a handful of acoustic versions of some of these songs on youtube, fisherman especially, some old (1980) and some more recent, which attest to the amazing, loose, dubby quality of the musicianship (and cyril's unearthly voice) even when they're not in the studio with scratch playing ghostly games

my understanding of island's decision not to release the LP was that they thought it was too good and would take attention away from marley -- but like tim's storey, it's background chatter i wouldn't know how to prove (esp as possibly at some point it was passed thru the perry-scope*, and he is not really an entirely reliable narrator here)

*like kaleidoscope, plz keep up

The story I half-remembered is pretty much definitely not true, because RFCW&CB emerged a couple of years after HOTC first seeped out in Jamaica. Stirmonster’s link contains a version of the “too good” story.

That piece is adapted from David Katz’s book about Scratch - it’s quite a good book, bit dry at times but a fairly heroic attempt at putting together a narrative given that there were lots of people there, each of whom seems to have a story and none of the stories seem to coincide at any point. I’m not surprised he falls back on what records came out in what order sometimes.

I love that piece, it's fascinating. What a crazy time and place, between the gang wars, the theocrats and all the foreigners jetting in hoping for a little magic. Plus Scratch himself obviously going increasingly bonkers.

I sorta hate the "bonkers" narrative, true as it may be, because it turns Scratch into a caricature (and you could argue he played this up, esp in his latter days, ie "I Am A Madman," Jamaican ET")

I get that but I mean, he … was pretty out there.

it wouldn't surprise me if it is tbh but I always thought it was about sinners and heathens etc more generally

i have a hard time with arguments like this, would agree with map and left that the context matters

to give an example, one of my favorite roots discomixes is the album version of linval thompson's "six babylon", which is about getting locked up for smoking weed. at one point he says "dread don't want to go to jailhouse, dread don't to live where no chink sleep"

on genius.com "chink" is written as "?", when i first deciphered it (and it took like ten years before it clicked what he was saying) i was certainly shocked and tried hard to justify it to myself. "oh obviously this is not anti-asian hate, obviously he's just talking about smoking weed not being the same as doing hard drugs like smoking opium"

but trying to justify it like that never worked for me. i still play the track out but it's an ugly moment and i can't say i wouldn't prefer a version without it. i have no idea how people treated leslie kong and herman chin-loy (i have a comp on cd, should probably check the liner notes) but i know there have always been class issues around wealthy asians in the caribbean, and of course the conflicts between different groups under colonialism are somehow always most internicine when it's between groups on the bottom (as opposed to bottom vs top)

i've heard similar arguments around dancehall / ragga, with people saying that they just choose to hear "person i disagree with" when they hear "fassy", but that doesn't work for me anymore either, has led to me pretty much checking out of listening to dancehall and ragga (and 80s west coast rap for that matter too!)

xp re: scratch he did burn down his own studio, right? but maybe that was a calculated attempt to get out of debt or something by acting crazy!

whenever the congos come up i instantly hear "fishermen" in my head. it's one of those instantly catchy and memorable tracks, like "police and thieves". aside from "congoman" (which i always remember as the carl craig edit version) idk if i could say the same about any of the other tracks on the album

the 2LP blood and fire version i have ends with "nicodemus" which might actually be my second choice, but not an option here

"Fisherman" just popped up in Jordan Peele's NOPE (along with another selection seemingly micro-targeted at me, Exuuma).

That article about the last days of the Black Ark was pretty awesome. All of those unreleased projects! Did they burn up with the building?

I enjoyed reading interviews where Lee is calling Blackwell a chicken-blood drinking vampire and saying he wants to beat him up and bankrupt his label!

I second Paul Ponzi’s recommendation of dance hall style by Horace Andy. One of my favorite reggae LPs.

Peter Tosh liked to refer to Blackwell as Whiteworst lol

There's a newer HOTC that is three CDs. Regular mix, original mix, and relevant singles.

i kinda view this as part of a trilogy with war inns Babylon and police and thieves

ina

Not quite 'dubs within the track' stuff, but another great Horace Andy pair is In The Light/In The Light Dub.
And second the Dance Hall Style recommendation - it's colossal.

Echoing the Dance Hall Style recommendation. HA's recent Midnight Scorcher is a 'companion album' to Midnight Rocker from earlier in the year.

Back to Heart of the Congos, it really is the roots album from the golden period that I keep coming back to, way more than any other.

We should do Super Ape next

Another non-Perry-produced recommended album: Dadawah's incredibly spaced-out "Peace and Love."

I remember when that Dadawah album was re-released and because it seemed to be so perfectly formed and so representative of a particular kind of roots popular at the time, there was speculation about whether it was fake. Magnificent album, of course.

^yeah that is a wonderful album too

I went to Spotify to revisit this album, and couldn't help but notice that they have a 2022 album. With 2 typos on the album art:
https://www.discogs.com/release/23458529-The-Congos-Foot-Prints-In-The-Sand

Punctuation rules are tools of Babylon.

Also they have a song there called "Cravin Choke Puppy," which I'm at least curious about.

The Wrong Thing.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

The fact that the single song with zero votes here would still be a highlight on almost any other roots album from this period says a lot about what a masterpiece this record is

killer R Zee Jackson version of Row Fisherman Row has just been reissued by Jamwax... also has a great version of Bunny's Blackheart Man:
https://jamwax.bandcamp.com/album/row-fisherman-row

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quUMMYB_sLY

I just put this on a parenting thread buried deep in the ilx bowels somewhere, so I'm putting it here too: my boy has been pretty ill for the last five years and has had a fucking awful time of it. He's not only going to Amsterdam with his mates this weekend; he's specifically going to see The Congos. Praise Jah.

(A year late, but that R.Zee Jackson track rules Nick. Nice one.)

Lovely to hear that Chinaski, I hope he has a wonderful time