Here’s the first fruits of our recent recording session – our version of rocksteady classic The Tide is High.
There are four more tracks to come.
The video is taken from shots of 1960s London coffee bars. The original song was written in 1967, a few years later than the film.
But most of us like coffee and we live in London, so …
[tube]X6XkkHvFfTY[/tube]
We’ve been invited to play at Charlie Wright’s in Hoxton a few times, but were disappointed not to be able to do the dates that they offered.
But on Friday we had a good time at our eventual first gig there.
This is what we played:
The Harder They Come and The Tide is High are two the new songs we worked up over the new year, and are definite keepers.
We were supporting the Kubricks, who we thought were terrific. It would be good to work with them again as they do their own material that goes well along side our journey from the 60s roots of ska.
Once again we pressed someone in the audience to take some pictures. Thanks Frank C.
Home » At Charlie Wright's » The Skamonics at Charlie Wright's January 14 » The Skamonics at Charlie Wright's January 14 
We’ve been invited to play at Charlie Wright’s in Hoxton a few times, but were disappointed not to be able to do the dates that they offered.
But on Friday we had a good time at our eventual first gig there.
This is what we played:
The Harder They Come and The Tide is High are two the new songs we worked up over the new year, and are definite keepers.
We were supporting the Kubricks, who we thought were terrific. It would be good to work with them again as they do their own material that goes well along side our journey from the 60s roots of ska.
Once again we pressed someone in the audience to take some pictures. Thanks Frank C.
Home » At Charlie Wright's » The Skamonics at Charlie Wright's January 14 » The Skamonics at Charlie Wright's January 14
We spent yesterday in the recording studio and laid down five tracks.
Thanks to Andy at RMS studios for helping make it a productive day.
It’s our first time in a proper studio. Earlier recordings – including our cd – have been diy affairs. And while we were pleased with those, it was so much easier using a proper studio with great acoustics, good equipment – including microphones well outside our budget, and someone else operating the controls with both good ears and years of experience at getting good recordings.
It also meant that we were able to play as live. In the past we have always had to record the rhythm section first and then add horns and vocals as overdubs. But yesterday we were able to get down Latin goes Ska, all playing together, on the second take at the end of the day when we were running out of time.
The tracks we recorded were:
Now comes the slower job of mixing and mastering, but another advantage of having a great recording to start with is that this is much easier than with less upmarket equipment.
We also have some video, though that was a lower priority, and hope to have enough to put together one of us playing Tainted Love.
Here are some pictures we took during the day.
We have a new gig.
It’s on Friday January 17th at Charlie Wright’s in Hoxton. We’re supporting the Kubricks.
It’s £5 to get in – and Charlie Wright’s does Thai food so you can make an evening of it.
We’ll be playing at about 8:45.
This is the Facebook event.
(And ignore references to the Rhythm Method as support, we’ve replaced them.)
We’re very pleased to be at Charlie Wright’s as we’ve been offered a few gigs there, but the dates haven’t worked in the past.
We have a new gig.
It’s on Friday January 17th at Charlie Wright’s in Hoxton. We’re supporting the Kubricks.
It’s £5 to get in – and Charlie Wright’s does Thai food so you can make an evening of it.
We’ll be playing at about 8:45.
This is the Facebook event.
(And ignore references to the Rhythm Method as support, we’ve replaced them.)
We’re very pleased to be at Charlie Wright’s as we’ve been offered a few gigs there, but the dates haven’t worked in the past.
Tuesday nights in early January are probably not the best nights for attracting a crowd. Add in heavy rain, and we were half expecting to be playing to an empty pub.
It was good therefore to see not just a pretty fair attendance but a full dance floor last night.
We like the Hootananny as it has a good stage and excellent sound, particularly in the hands of our last night’s engineer Geoff, who has mixed us before.
We also got the chance to play two full sets. And this is what we played:
| Chinatown | Dr Who |
| Guns Of Navarone | Work Song |
| Latin Goes Ska | Johnny Too Bad |
| Mood For Love | Paranoid |
| You’re Wondering Now | Pata Pata |
| Harder They Come | 10 Out Of 10 |
| Alley Cat Ska | 99 Red Balloons |
| Man In The Street | Tainted Love |
| Mambo Number 5 | Rudy A Message To You |
| Tide Is High | My Boy Lollipop |
| Enola Gay | Gangsters |
| Price Tag |
It went down well, and we hope to be asked back. Promoter Cecil Reuben knows his ska, and liked what we played.
We didn’t take any pictures but is anyone in the audience did we’d love to see them.
We played five new songs at our first gig of the year at the always great Dumplins Live Ska last night at the Fiddler’s Elbow in Camden.
That is almost half the set.
Brave, foolish or what?
This is what we played.
Our first new song was The Harder they Come, first sung by Jimmy Cliff for the film of the same name. And while it is absolutely of Jamaica of the 1960s, its rhythm cannot easily be described as ska or rocksteady.
The Tide is High is probably best known today through the Blondie cover (or even that by Atomic Kitten), but was first sung by the Paragons – a fine rocksteady group.
Johnny Too Bad has also been covered by very many people. The John Martyn version is good, but very far from the original by the Slickers – also on the soundtrack of The Harder they Come.
Paranoid comes from our bonkers covers book. We think we may be the first band to give this a ska treatment.
Pata Pata is of course from the great Miriam Makeba. The reformed Skatalites did an instrumental version of this, which gave us the idea. It is likely to be the only song we do in Xhosa.
Here are some photos from the gig. (thanks John!)
And our next gig is Tuesday January 7th at Hootananny in Brixton, where we are playing two sets.
We have two gigs in early January – the 4th in Camden and the 7th in Brixton.
On Saturday January 4th we return to Dumplins Live Ska – one of our favourite gigs – a nice venue, good sound and a friendly crowd who know their ska. This takes place at the Fiddler’s Elbow. The nearest tube is Chalk Farm. The address is 1 Malden Road Camden NW5 3HS. And it’s £7 admission.
This is the Facebook event.
On Tuesday January 7th we return to Brixton’s Hootananny – also a great place to play. And this one is free.
Hootananny is at 95 Effra Rd, Brixton, SW2 1DF.
And this is the Facebook event.
These two gigs will fire us up for a recording session we have booked a few days after the Brixton gig.
This is a video of a tune called Mandela by the South African jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim (known as Dollar Brand when he wrote this).
It’s not a great quality video and dates from 2007 when we were an exclusively instrumental band.
There is a story that Nelson Mandela was banned from hearing recorded music when he was incarcerated on Robben Island, but a lawyer smuggled in some music by Ibrahim and played it to him.
[tube]8OJvaM9PYPM[/tube]
