Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Jamaican Halloween Spooktacular 2010 - Track Eighteen - Barnabas Collins

For the love of god, will this guy ever stay dead?! Here I am into the fifth year of creating these Halloween mixes and along comes Barnabas Collins poking his fangs into yet another Spooktacular! Judging by the plethora of tunes paying tribute to Ol' Barnie and or Dark Shadows, it's quite obvious that this guy must have achieved folk hero status in Jamaica back in the 70's!

This one is by a group called Del, Owen & Newts and is taken from a 7" on the Hatchet label from the mid 70's. I never even knew this song existed until I discovered the tune mentioned online this spring and thankfully got ahold of a copy in September and I gotta say, it's a good one!

I don't know why, but the Barnabas Collins thing has gotten to be such a integral part of the Spooktaculars that I don't know if I'm going to be able to continue each year without at least one mention of the schlocky TV soap opera bloodsucker. As far as the namesake goes, we've had three versions of Lone Ranger's "Barnabas Collins," Yellowman's answer "Mi Kill Barnie", Dillinger's version "I Thirst," Charles Hannah & The Graduates "Dark Shadows," and there are still 4-5 more that I have up my sleeve... but I'll tuck it away in the coffin until next year. Maybe when the Dark Shadows and Barnabas tunes dry up, it may be the perfect indicator of an appropriate time to discontinue the Spooktacular... we'll see!

"Barnabas Collins" by Del, Owen & Newts
Jamaican Halloween Spooktacular 2010 - Track Eighteen

3 comments:

Waskrijt said...

really beautiful effects any clue who did the production?

John AKA Reggaexx said...

Producer is listed as __ndell Forgie, arranger is Newton Simmons - I can't read the first couple letters of Forgie's first name - they got cut off the label when they punched the hole.

Waskrijt said...

intresting
i do know the song "woman a ginal" from Andel Forgie & Bolivar. Great tune, except maybe for the lyrics...