Will this blood-sucking bastard ever stay dead?!!? Yes, it's the thirteenth track in our Jamaican Halloween Spooktacular and I've saved him especially for today! For the third consecutive year Barnabas Collins is back to haunt us with his insatiable lust for blood.In all seriousness... I love Lone Ranger's "Barnabas Collins," it's probably my all-time favorite spooky reggae tune and it was in fact the first song that got me wondering if there were more similarly themed tunes in the genre and I take great pleasure in being able to include it in all of my mixes. I'm just kinda nervous now because I don't know if there is another version to include next year.
In 2006 we had the best known version of the tune; the 1979 hit produced by Alvin Ranglin and originally released as a 7" on the GG label. In 2007 we had the lesser known Barnabas; the version he recorded for Coxsone Dodd which didn't originally appear on the 1979 Studio One LP On The Other Side Of Dub but was recorded in New York in '85 or '86 and added to the repress of the same album when Heartbeat released it in 1991. Now, in 2008, we've got "Barnabas Collins" from the 1994 RAS/Grapevine CD called Collections which is basically a digitalization of the tunes Ranger cut for Studio One close to a decade before. According to Lone Ranger's discography website, all of the tunes on this release were recorded between 1985-1989.
To put it simply, Lone Ranger must have been quite the fan of the soap opera Dark Shadows!
Have a great weekend and I'll see you on Monday!
Track 13
Thanks for all this killa tunes man ...keep listening reggae music ! Big up from Paris
ReplyDeletenoticed one of your archived posts re: "Dark Shadows", it did indeed come on late night (well...10:30 or 11 PM, that was pretty late for TV then) on JBC from at least 1971-72 through most if not all of the 70's.... my brother and i used to go to bed 'nuff scared!
ReplyDeleteJamaican TV was only one channel, black and white, and it went on air in the early afternoon, off air around 11ish or so and maybe later on the weekend. whenever there was a cricket match on the weekends, you were pretty much SOL for watching anything else for two days..... excruciatingly dull. color TV came to JA in the early 80's.
read a story not too long ago that most of the classic old local program archives were taped over in the 80's/90's - all the old shows like Ring Ding, etc., gone forever because JBC had no money for new tapes.
There is a better version of this song than the one you have chosen... ;-)
ReplyDeleteI have used all three versions of Barnabas Collins over the last 3 years and if there's another I haven't used, you've got to let me know for next year!
ReplyDeleteI started with the GG's version from 1979, the Studio One version recorded in the mid 80's and the George Wright version from around the same time... is there another????? :)