Tunesday: King Tubby

Recently I was conversing with one the readers of The Tasty Morsel about the music we feature on our Tunesday posts. He seemed to think that we were lacking in diversity as to what music we have been posting. I find that to be untrue since we've posted bands from the likes of URTC to Look Mexico to Drag The River to Coconut Records as well as many others. So we'll delve into something a little more different.

With my recent acquisition of a new record player, the hobby of collecting of vinyl has been sparked in me and there are just some types of music that sound great on vinyl. One such genre is Dub music, and the artist we'll focus on here is one of the grandfathers of Dub, King Tubby.

Dub is a pretty awesome genre since it is one of the early forms of remixing music, a-la today's mashup. Pioneers of Dub in the 1960's and 70's such as King Tubby would take Reggae tunes and strip out the vocals, add delay, reverb, sample in lyrics, etc. Dub music allowed the dude behind the mixing board to be the composer as he altered tunes and gave them a whole new perspective.

Here's a little taste of the King at work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB28MKa7AiM

I find it a little funny that recently Alison and I have been sitting on our front porch playing King Tubby records on a Friday evening. From a distance if you heard some Dub playing, you'd expect to walk by and see two older Jamaican dudes sharing a spliff and sippin' on some Red Stripe, but instead you see a pale couple smoking cigarettes and drinking Miller Lite (when on sale).

That's the beauty of listening to music though. No matter what social stereotype has been labeled to the music, anyone can listen to and appreciate it. However, I do find that the performance of certain music best be left to the professionals...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTkreQgI5zk