A typical Kiwi dinner party.
New Zealand has never quite recovered from the Bob Marley concert at Western Springs, Auckland, in 1979.
Consequently, nothing sets the tone for a kiwi dinner-party or summer BBQ quite like a the sound of 8, white 40-somethings, from the suburbs of Wellington, playing the national music of oppressed-black-nation Jamaica. Only much slower. And without melody or structure.
In the absence of a CD of local Dub and/or Reggae music to set the mood for a special event, expect to hear either, or both, ‘Legend’ and ‘Exodus’ (Bob Marley’s Greatest Hits Vol 1 & 2) on permanent rotation.
Some even go so far as to argue that the meteorologically-defined, calendar beginning of Summer, which falls on 1st December, is incorrect, and that in fact summer does not truly start until the opening drum roll of ‘Is This Love’ (the first track off ‘Exodus’) can be heard blasting – from a battery powered stereo – outdoors somewhere near either the sea, a lake and some trees, or a KFC restaurant car park.
Acceptable examples include: anyplace where meat is cooking on an open flame; Whangamata or Mt Maunganui campsites leading up to New Years Eve; Albert Park on any given Sunday throughout February.
this shit is still doing the rounds and it 2011 ,
Genius! Check out Jafa Mafia soundsystem. We are a dancehall crew and unfortunatley we dont play kiwi bbq reggae so we hardly get a look in…
This blog is so fucekn true
This says more or less the same:
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2009/04/22/125-bob-marley/
Yes. But I said it first.
fck yeah, Im sick of it, i tried to go to every “summer festival” “pohutukawa festival” “scallop festival” “summer fete” etc etc etc that we get bombarded with every fckn year, and I tried to “skank” and appreciate these new NZ sounds that all me and my white mates that used to listen to fckn good guitar music like oasis and the pixies and all that and after 5 yrs of being back in owteroa and trying to skank with cargo short and singlet wearing dorks with dreads and jandels at some coro park getting sunburnt, or worse, people like me with short hair and real jobs that pay heaps trying to look like potters from colville skan around drinking “summer ale”…..fck it, I nearly wanted to go live in dunedin and get back to the “flying nun sound”…jeeesus….anyway, kiwi skanking dub was a few years ago i think as how actually bought the last black seeds album or fat freddys dump anyway? perhaps I should go back to my coop…
hope you see the funny side of that
It’s made so much more tragic by how original they all think the local dub is as well, when like much else, it’s 10-20 years behind the global scene!
our band the souljahtrain would like to b added 2 the line up sus us out on my space get back to us asap as thi is goin to every festival in nz
What’s funny is that many of these people into this so-called ‘Wellington sound’ know sweet Fanny Adams about Reggae and Caribbean music.
I can well remember once sharing a lab at university with someone who told me he was a huge fan of dub music. I said (hoping for some album exchange) “Oh great I’ve got some albums of Gregory Isaacs and Prince far I”. He looked blankly back at me. He’d seriously never heard of them, it turned out he was a huge lover of dub by virtue of liking (and being associated with members of) the Black Seeds.
His knowledge of Reggae music seemed to be this; fat freddies drop, the black seeds, Bob Marley, Eddie Grant and Inner circle. He’d never heard of even Desmond Dekker or the Mighty diamonds and thought Jimmy Cliff was a mid 90′s one hit wonder LOL.
I strongly suspect the majority of these reggae fans in NZ fan into the same category, listening to Bob Marley (which while mostly quite good is mostly Raggae-styled pop music).
I think dub is the lesser of two evils, the other being AC/DC, Guns and Roses and the like, on permanent rotation. I know what I’d rather be listening to in any restaurant I frequent.
You know summer’s here when you hear incessant overuse of the word “skanking”. Apparently it interchangably means either swishing about in purple, housebus-curtain pants twirling fire pois, or just freely smoking dak out of a wizard bong while listening to Aotearoa-steppa-nu-roots-dub-breaks, which incidentally is not a groundbreaking new sound but rather shithouse, recycled basslines recorded badly in creative-collective Wellington flats.
dude dub’s awesome
Nothing makes me want to vomit more than Bob Marley (again) on a hot summers day. In fact only one thing makes me want to vomit more….when someone takes the Whitesnake off in favour of some Marley. Bleurrrrgh.
I hate you. I’m a faux hippy presently living in Grey Lynn and I love all music made in Wellington and other great kiwi acts like D dub. You bastard.