Truth to the people

King Tubby - Ethiopian Version



Travelling with Ajay Saggar for a month was absolutely one of the most rewarding and sweet experiences I had this year. Ajay is a monstrously talented soundperson, and I think a big part of the key to his genius is how carefully he listens to music and how clearly earnest his love for it is. He's also methodical, and when he toured with Dinosaur Jr. he played the same song by the Fall every night when he first arrived at the club, in order to hear the limits, the strengths and weaknesses of the system.

But for Animal Collective he needed a different song, one that would push the limits and reach and twist and flex the way their music does. This is the song he chose.

I first heard dub music in a completely ridiculous, far-removed context. I was living in Washington D.C. and had just heard the first This Heat LP. I thought it was the best thing ever, was completely overwhelmed by its genius. It was crushing. I scrambled to find information about it, this was in a pre-internet world or at least for me so my resources were scant: libraries and magazine stores and the guy at the record store. I found an article in The Wire about Charles Hayward, drummer for This Heat, where he talked just a bit about the band. At one point he was weirdly dismissive and said something like "we never really did anything groundbreaking, all we did was take the strategies of Lee Perry and King Tubby and moved them out of a Jamaican context to a rock/punk context." I knew who Lee Perry was because of that Grand Royal cover story but King Tubby was a new name to me.

What's your favorite song on Illmatic? Around that time all my friends liked "One Time for Your Mind" best but I was running "Represent." It took me four months of arguing about it to realize the difference was that I didn't smoke reefer and that's why the resonant, echo-y boom of "One Time" didn't read for me the same way it hit my friends. I felt the same way about King Tubby's "King of Dub", which felt all rumbling and lost. It took me a while, years really, to find the strain of dub I was really interested in, the soulful, achy kind where the effects lurk and attack with a sinister restraint. Where I feel like I'm listening to one song and suddenly I'm listening to another. Keith Hudson's "I'm All Right." "Place Called Africa" by Jr. Byles. The entire 2nd LP on the deluxe version of "Heart of the Congos." But I'm pretty sure "Ethiopians Version" is the best example I've ever heard.

I can't think of a way to say this without sounding fucked, but I really like reggae slang. I think "live-icate" instead of "dedicate" (read "dead-icate") is brilliant and a beautiful shift. When Nate explained "overstand" instead of "understand" to me after "What Goes Around" came out I felt blurry with excitement. And when I would order reggae records for the store from our salesperson in Brooklyn, and he would respond to my "goodbye" with "bless", or when I knew him better, "blessed love", it sailed my heart for the rest of the day. But the thing is, I cannot get away with it. Those words come out of my mouth and I sound like Sean Connery saying "you're the man now, dog" at the end of Finding Forrester. A nightmare.

But with that introduction, I can't think of a better description for Rod Taylor's vocal performance in "Ethiopian Kings" than righteous. This is the guy whose debut record was titled "Where is Your Love Mankind?" His politics are fierce, hopeful, and most of all, uncompromising. The opening lyrics make for one of the starkest drawn lines I've ever seen; power on one side, and righteousness on the other. In a voice that rings with as much bravery as it does grief, he testifies: "King David he was a bad man, King Solomon he was a bad man, King Moses he was a bad man." King David who defeated Goliath. King Solomon the wise. Moses who led the slaves from Egypt. It's a brutal recasting of history, an acknowledgement of the corruption of power that handles honesty like a weapon, like a slap, like a sharp blade.

But this is where Tubby's version begins its rise, like hands reaching out of the darkness. The vocals hook on a syllable, echoing out with a ghost's mourn before descending like stormclouds. Sounds expand and cave in underneath you, every bar crumbling a bit more, the song's foundations as unstable as the world Taylor describes. It's almost gruesome, the destabilisation of the song, in just a minute it's devolved from a rocking battle cry to a quicksand lurch. But it never feels like two separate songs, somehow Tubby manages to drift from one to the other without seams. And just as quickly, it becomes three songs, as the expansive, demonic fragments merge back together for a meditative, pulsing finish. Like he knew you needed a minute to think.

I don't write about Animal Collective's music because I don't much know how. But these kinds of seamless twists and drastic mood-changes, indescribably subtle and more than that thoughtful, are maybe the thing I like best about them. Ajay is one of those people whose life was so clearly saved by music, that it's almost like he's repaying it by listening so reverentially. I don't know how many songs he has in his computer to choose from, but I'm sure I could go through every single one of them and not find a better way to test a room for Animal Collective than "Ethiopian Version."

The image up above is a page from Ansul Pull magazine, maybe circa 1998? Fred Thomas made it, and I like it because it makes me laugh and feels really serious and heavy to me at the same time. It's been on the wall of every room I've lived in since 2003, from Philly to San Francisco to Portland to New York.