Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Lovindeer & the Lighter Side of Life



In the relatively short history of reggae music there have been a number of artists who have presented hard-hitting subject matter in a light-hearted manner but then you have Lovindeer. He never attempted to address global or overtly conscious subjects, he preferred to deal with the everyday concerns, annoyances and the humor in daily Jamaican life. As a member of a vocal group called the Fabulous Flames he never achieved great success but when he went solo and released a self-produced comical track on the state of public transportation in Jamaica called “The Blinking Bus” in the late 70’s, he went to number one. He followed that one up a string of popular tracks, many in a style that the prudish would consider to be slack, or vulgar. The songs “Kratches,” “Panty Size,” “Government Boops” and “Don’t Bend Down” to name a few were popular but didn’t get the airplay that would catapult them to hit status. In 1988 Hurricane Gilbert ravaged Jamaica and Lovindeer’s track “Wild Gilbert” in his trademark humorous style went straight to number one and remains his biggest hit. A couple years later Lovindeer went with a more calypso/soca inspired sound after the influx of newer dancehall or “ragga” took hold in Jamaica.

Outside of Jamaica Lovindeer never achieved great popularity but I found one of his records at a Caribbean grocery store about 12 years ago when shopping for Ting and Scotch Bonnet peppers, and I was immediately hooked. His music took some research to understand initially because of the use of Jamaican slang but once I understood the subject matter on some of the tracks I appreciated the music for what it was. After buying at least 6 or 7 of his LP’s at the same market over the next couple years I would always enjoy taking a lighthearted break from potent topics when I dropped the needle on a Lovindeer LP.

I present here for your listening pleasure three Lovindeer tracks taken from his Best of CD released on his TSOJ label (The Sound of Jamaica) a bunch of years ago. The LPs present longer versions of each track but I’m unable to rip anything from vinyl until I put my dubbing capabilities back together again. My only annoyance with this CD is the exclusion of some of the slacker tracks, in particular “Kratches” that is without a doubt one of his funniest. I’ll share that at a later date…

The tracks are…
1. De Blinkin’ Bus
2. Wild Gilbert
3. Babylon Boops

Lovindeer.zip

9 comments:

king Ed said...

Hi, it's me again,

you can still download torrents if you have a macintosh computer

take a look at this:

http://sarwat.net/bittorrent/

John AKA Reggaexx said...

Thanks for the info. - I'll check it out!

Annukka said...

And if there's trouble with the tomato tool, let me know and we'll work something out.

John AKA Reggaexx said...

With my limited computer knowledge I was actually able to figure it out... but I've got a question - is it always that slow? Man, it took me a couple hours to download 95% of a file, I suddenly got disconnected and didn't even get a chance to finish it up.

king Ed said...

I depends on the fact how many people are sharing a file

for example: If 5 people are sharing a file, with let's say 5kb per second per person, you could have a total speed of 25 kb per second.

If 500 people are sharing that file......

If you would download for example porno,games,or very populair music than you could have very high and fast downloads.

It also depends on your internet connection

when I have access to my university network I can download 1 mb per second ( if it's a well seeded torrent )

king Ed said...

also take a look at this:

http://isohunt.com/torrents.php?ihq=50+cent&ext=&op=and

at the top you wil see 50 cent the movie, with +- 25000 seeders.

you can expect a very high download speed from this file.

king Ed said...

hi!
I used yousendit this time.
I can't use rapidshare anymore ( I can only download, but not upload anymore )

They banned me after one album was downloaded more than 9000 times within two weeks ( lee scratch perry-black ark experiments )

in dub conference vol 1:
http://s11.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=2WNOO1DCO3I4N24BZFO0SIOHQE

enjoy!

John AKA Reggaexx said...

Thanks! I was nearly tearing my hair out waiting for that album to download - it hasn't been that slow since the days of dial-up!

John AKA Reggaexx said...

Wouldn't you know it... you send me the link to yousendit and it looks like their server is down. I tried again using Turboupload and it finally downloaded without much trouble - thanks for all the effort!