Preview
MIKEY DREAD
Monday, February 14
Hi-Fi Club
The time was 1980 and Jamaican broadcaster-producer-performer Mikey Dread was in New York recording with seminal rockers The Clash. They were recording the follow-up to their landmark London Calling, the troubled masterpiece Sandinista. The nascent punk, hip hop, new wave and electro-pop scenes were all seeping into the sprawling sounds of The Clash, but Dread had something else in mind.
"Well, really and truly, I didn’t care about New York and their music," Dread says dismissively. "I was more trying to push reggae, like an ingredient that I was trying to put in every concoction. I wanted to introduce it to everyone, like (breaks into huckster rap), ‘Yo, you need to try some of this man. It’s good (and) it’s going to last longer than any rock record, this is going to break new barriers. You might not think it’s worthwhile now, but you’re going to be a hero, blah, blah, blah.’"
The Clash’s record company CBS didn’t like the idea, according to Dread, but when they started moving units, they had to rethink their position.
It certainly wasn’t the first or last time he got people thinking about his beloved music. Born in 1948 in Port Antonio, Jamaica, Dread, a.k.a. Michael Campbell, showed a proclivity for technology and music – a blend that later defined his signature sound – at an early age. Although well-versed in traditional ska and calypso, Dread soon became enamoured of the slowed-down, nationalistic rasta stylings of reggae. Around the age of 12, he began running with mobile soundsystems, honing an ear for all genres – soul, R and B, funk – as his crew catered to any given hire’s tastes. Perhaps the most important career development during this period, though, came to pass after he became a student at Pitchfield High School and, with the help of a teacher, started the first all-Jamaican radio station.
Tapping into Dread’s interest in physics and broadcasting, they enlisted the help of the physics department, built a transmitter and got a licence. "So, for a five-mile radius we had Radio Pitchfield," says Dread. "We could play music and read the weather and things like that, you know? It was just small-time – I didn’t know that one day I would be doing this for a career."
But that’s exactly what happened. Dread went to work with the Jamaican Broadcasting Corporation (JBC) in 1976. While working as a tech in the two-person on-air booth, his life took a decidedly different path.
"I didn’t like the way Jamaican radio was being formatted.… I still don’t. Most of the people who program the radio cater to foreigners more than the local people. When they play a foreign record the royalties go right back to foreign," says Dread. "When I listen to what they’re playing, it’s like I’m not in Jamaica... it could be Miami or Toronto, it could be anywhere... but it does not identify with the target audience.
"How can you build the culture and the morale of a society when the people do something that is internationally accepted and your own culture tries to beat them down?"
In those days, the JBC was off the air five hours a day, and seeing an opportunity, Dread convinced his bosses to let him use the vacant time to launch Jamaica’s first all-reggae program, Dread at the Controls.
"They’re not going to hear no soul, they’re not going to hear no foreign music," he says. "They’re going to hear 100 per cent reggae music."
Short-lived as it was, the program’s impact was profound. Besides breaking new artists, both regionally and internationally, Dread also honed his craft as a recording artist. Soon, he started charting on his own across the Atlantic, with such singles as "Barber Saloon," "Step by Step" and "Love the Dread," leading to the call-up by Strummer and Co.
"I didn’t know who they were," he says of The Clash. "They were singing punk, which I didn’t like. So I tell them, ‘Try the reggae style.’"
Dread admits that his music hasn’t changed much over the years. His current modus operandi seems to be twofold: constant touring and spreading the word of traditional roots reggae; and securing his legacy, most notably in retrieving the rights to his back catalogue. This includes a triumvirate of discs released during his incredibly prolific period between 1979-80 – Dread at the Controls, African Anthem Dubwise, and World War III – that most reggae completists would regard as essential listening.
"I went back to school because I was robbed by the record companies," Dread says. "I sued those record companies and banned them from putting out any more of my records. They did a good thing for me, because I had to step back and go to school and learn about copyright law, about management, about what is my intellectual property. So I understand the industry now. Now my label, Dread at the Controls, is releasing my catalogue, a little at a time.
"I’m selling lots of CDs, playing lots of concerts, and a lot of people are still discovering me. Maybe early on I could have gone commercial and been signed to a major label, but I don’t think my career would have been as long lasting. For now, I have no regrets about nothing. I’m not even breaking even, but I’m happy." |
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