There is something in this piece by Marcello Carlin that resonates very profoundly with me. I think it is this passage:
"Up in remote Lanarkshire, as yet unfamiliar with Handsworth or Brixton, it seemed to me like a record from the outermost space, a reggae version of Stockhausen's Stimmung, all chopped up syllables and stopped polyglots, and I loved it."
Substitute South Gippsland for Lanarkshire, and ignore for a moment the reference to Stockhausen, and it could be me. Not in 1974, mind, but 1978, listening for the first time, perhaps, to the Sunday evening reggae show on Sydney's 2JJ, accessible by radio hundreds of miles to the south only as the cool night air sent the signal down our way, sporadically, fading in and out in the way only AM radio can, so that your chances of catching the back-announcement of the songs just played were fairly slim. Which, I guess, added to the mystery. What was this thing called "dub"? And why did I really, genuinely feel this music in a way that I didn't feel other music, even music that I was totally absorbed by? (And why do I still feel the same way?)
Such a response, to what (judging by the reactions I have had in the past from casual listeners) is not the most readily accessible of musics, is perhaps easier to understand in someone like Carlin, who seems to have been brought up in a kind of alternate-world ideal household, where jazz in its more lofty forms was the order of the day, along with the likes of the aforementioned Stockhausen. In my own case, my parents' feeble record collection ran to "30 Smash Hits of the War Years", Strauss waltzes, and the Seekers, spiced up a bit by regular World Record Club selections from the likes of V Balsara and His Singing Sitars (still one of my favourite records: listen to them butcher the Beatles and weep - or howl). So, whence comes the dub that courses through my body? Is there a hint of illegitimate Jamaican blood in here somewhere? (I did have two transfusions at birth. Aha - has anybody ever done a study on this?)
On the other hand, I could always cease the amateur self-psychoanalysis, relax, and put on Keith Hudson's "Pick A Dub" (Blood and Fire reissue - hey, my personal 1974 revolved around The Sweet and Suzi Quatro, with Skyhooks looming just around the corner; I wouldn't have recognised a dub plate if someone served my dinner on it).
