Yellowman & Dillinger

Glasgow 02 ABC, 5 March 2014

Salute to the Yellow King

Regular Black King readers will know I man as a clean-living, respectful, righteous kind of reggae fan, who has very little time or opportunity for sexual explicitness and drug-dabbling (except for a couple of incidents integral to the plot on pages 47-48, 194 and a brief mention of soft drugs on pages 74 and 201). So it was with some trepidation that I found myself in the den of iniquity that is the Glasgow 02 ABC, in the company of notorious slackness originator, Yellowman, and infamous cocaine advertiser, Dillinger. Would I be corrupted by their lyrical banter? Only time would tell. I have to admit I was not a big Yellowman fan growing up – he was a bit before my time and most of his best tunes could not be played on legal radio, so when I was getting acquainted with dancehall business it was the likes of Supercat, Ninjaman and Shabba who were following in his footsteps – I wasn’t even sure he was a real person, from the look of some of his album covers and the stories of pandemonium when he touched down, he seemed like some kind of myth, a superhero from a comic book. I had missed him the last couple of times he was in town, but by the size of the crowd gathered on a wet Wednesday night in Glasgow, it was clear he had made a big impression here and become a firm favourite over the years.

First, Mungo’s warmed up the crowd with some cherished specials from the likes of Sugar Minott, Johnny Osbourne and Mr Williams. Then it was time for the Sagittarius band, long-time Yellow collaborators, to take the stage and lay down some classic riddim tracks for original gangster, Dillinger to start off a night of sex, drugs and …well, reggae. He followed his deejay versions with his own renditions of the original songs from the Mighty Diamonds, the Abysssinians and Bob Andy, which was very helpful for the trainspotters among us who take some time to recognise the source material. He threw in a little slackness just to offend my delicate sensibilities, gave us ‘CB200’ but then left the stage without doing his most famous hit, and I thought perhaps he had disowned it. But then he was back and without so much as a by your leave, the place was jumping up and down to the addictive, racing disco beat of ‘Cocaine In My Brain’. Maybe it is a biting satire on the New York party scene of the seventies, but call me old-fashioned, reggae is a music with a message, and without quite so much of the white stuff we might have a couple more of our stars still around today, and a lot less dead bodies in the ghettoes - not that I am blaming Dillinger personally for any of that, and deejay culture is also about reflecting reality. For a damning indictment of how the CIA flooded the Caribbean with hard drugs to prevent revolution, read ToJamaicaWithLove and listen to Curtis.

Then Yellowman came along and eased my mind with his natural high, inspirational confidence and positive vibes. Bounding on stage in running vest, track shorts and do-rag, burning with energy, there is no doubt he has still got it, and it’s something they can never take away. Obviously the operation on his jaw has taken its toll over the years and his voice may not be as powerful as it once was, but he makes up for it with super physical fitness; hopping, skipping and jumping around doing the one foot skank and the water pumping, leading the crowd in an impromptu aerobics session. An abandoned child in Kingston, a graduate of the legendary Alpha Boys School orphanage, where he had a hard time as an albino, he has absorbed the musical essence of Jamaica, taking the influence of Fats Domino into the dancehall alongside the vocal styling of patois that can be traced right back to Africa. Throwing in some old time nursery rhyme patterns and lyrical content that would not be out of place in a Carry On film, he hit upon a formula that put the deejay centre stage for the first time and went on to dominate the music from the early eighties onwards. He may have toned down his act a bit since his heyday when he was the closest lots of people got to sex education, and he has incorporated a safe sex message over the years, with a very helpful practical demonstration of how to put on a condom. Reeling off hit after hit, such as Operation Radication, Mad Over Me and of course, who can forget Zungguzungguzungguzeng, he demonstrated why he was crowned king and struck his regal pose for the crowd's warm embrace in between tunes.  Yellowman has transcended kingliness among deejays and is now more akin to a demi-god of the dancehall, showering the crowd with blessings and love, reaching out his arms to us, with everyone wanting to touch his hand in the hope that some of his charisma and magical powers will rub off on us, Scottish. Until next time, one love Glasgow!