Lovers Rock Wackies Style

 

Black History Month

 

 

As the beloved Morgan Freeman sez: "I don't want a Black History month. Black History is American History."   But the greatest thing about Black History Month is that it is a time when the culture & contributions of African Americans take center stage. These contributions are highlighted in a variety of cultural institutions including theaters, schools, libraries, & museums. Nowhere are the contributions of African Americans more greatly showcased for me than through the voices of Black Musick.

 I have decided to concentrate my efforts this month on some of their music on this forum. Hope you enjoy.

One Draw

 

Since DUB is my lifeblood & Lloyd Barnes' studio at 4371 White Plains Road, Bronx, NY was probably the very first DUB studio in the USofA, good place to start this thing. 

 

I’ve covered a great deal of Wackies output here or here or here in the past.

 

 

The key to Barnes' Bullwackies sound was his unique use of relatively humble tools: a moog synthesizer; a DI box for that distinctive quaking bass: & a big Ampex machine for his eight track tape recorder (this machine now finds a home in the Les Paul Museum). Slight but significant innovations were also made with a special booth constructed for the recording of the drums which Lloyd covered in tailored padding & aluminum foil. Somehow, the process created a sound that still transcends.

 

I'm gonna start at the beginning, with the first album, Wackies #1...

Wackies Rhythm Force - African Roots Act 1, W-0001, 1975.

all decryption codes in comments

Side A -

Addis Ababa Dub
Rock Ago Rock
Undying Dub
Freedom Dub
Gem Rock Dub

Side B -
Wackies Rock Tune
Mozambique Trial
Always Dubbing
Betrayers Call
This Exit

Roots Underground - Tribesman Assault, Wackies Senta-L-0038, 1977.

Side A -
High Times
Makka Root
Tribal Rock
Dread Feeling
Wrong Cord

Side B -
Shotgun Skank
Disco Reggae Rocker
Black Brigade
Tribesman Assualt
Open the Gates (K.C. White & the Love Joys)

 

 

The Chosen Brothers -  Sing & Shout, Wackies W2457, 1985.

Side A -
There You Are
Sing & Shout
Jah Don't Like That
Hey Lady
Joy, Joy

Side B -
I Gave You Love
Dancing in the Rain
Mash Down Babylon
Back to Africa
All Things

 

Most of the rest of these are with non-JA, US-based artists 

 

 

Joe Morgan & Reckless Breed - Basement Session 7", Bullwackies Records Senta-0033, 1976.

 
Side A -
Basement Session

Side B -
Basement Scrub

 

Joe Axumite - No Equal Rights in Babylon, City Line Records SENTA-2004, 1978.

Side A -
No Equal Rights in Babylon - Joe Axumite

Side B -
No Equal Rights in Babylon (version) - Bullwackies All Stars

 

Itopia - Creation, Wackies-272A, 1981.

Side A -
Creation

Side B -
Creation Dubwise version

 

Itopia - Message from Jah, Wackies-273, 1981.

Side A -
Message from Jah

Side B -
Message from Jah Dubwise version

 

 

Junior Delehaye - Showcase, Wackies W-1382, 1982.

Side A -
Love
(I Love You) For All Seasons
All I Need is Jah

Side B -
Travelling Man
Sitting in the Park
Your All I Need (Movie Show)

 

 

Love Joys - Lovers Rock Reggae Style, Wackies W-2383, 1983.

Side A -
One Draw
Long Lost Lover
Stranger

Side B -
Let Me Rock You Now
Chances Are
All I Can Say

 

 

Jah Batta - Argument, Wackies W-2395, 1983.

Side A -
No Meat
Ten to Seven
Argument
I Don't Want to Wait
Mi Black

Side B -
Youthman School
Hold on 'Pon the Woman
Informa (Watch It)
Youthman Time
Out a Reach

 

 

Wackies Rhythm Force - The Dub Generals, Wackies W-2191, 1994.

Side A -
Brass Pipes
Rockfort Rock
Drum Song
Song Maker

Side B -
Pie Song
African Rootie
Music Man Rock
Version Pipe

 

& a few scattered left-overs...

 

Various - Wackies Showcase: Choice Cuts, NØ Comps, 2021.

Mango Walk (Dubwise version) - Chosen Brothers
Working Hard for the Rent Man - Junior Delahaye
Roots Rock Special (extended version) - Wackies
Gimme Back (Part 2) - Love Joys w/ Wackies Rhythm Force
Movie Show Dubwise - Bullwackies All Stars
Mystic Revellation - Junior Delahaye
March Down Babylon version - The Chosen Brothers

 

Let's end with Bullwackies All Stars one more time...scratching guitar & scorching street stride bass rhythm & horn, the kind which usually accompanies the deadpan cool of some mustachioed, ball-busting, honkey-slapping Blaxploitation vigilante. A surprisingly balanced mix of DUB & funk released on Aires, one of Wackies many sister imprints.

 

Bullwackies All Stars - Skin Tight, Aires BJ-119, 1975.

Side A -
Skin Tight Part 1

Side B -
Skin Tight Part 2

Enjoy,
NØ

What's Goin' On?

I guess I owe it to all my dear friends here at NSS to explain what’s been going on with me since March. It’s a mighty grim tale & I’ll probably start ranting before I finish, so here’s some sweet Dub music to soothe the edges. From the early days of M. Lloyd Barnes Bulwackies great work recorded at the original Wackie’s House of Music on White Plains Road, NYC in 1979.

Bullwackies All Stars - Black World Dub, Hardwax Records 1040LP, 1979.

all decryption codes in comments

Side A -

Recording Connection
Skylarking
Troubled Land
Morning Star
United Rock

Side B -

Black World
Simple Little Woman
Tribute to Studio One
Shining Star
Rain from that Cloud

__________________________________________________________

So here goes...

It all began on the morning of March 17th.

I’m not really one to make future plans, chosing mainly to live in the Here & Now, but I was so caught up in my plans for the up-coming week-end. I was going to start my planting the following two days. Much earlier than usually, but I was going to attempt something I had never tried before this year. A life-long friend & fellow grower had been extolling the virtues of early planting as a sure fire way of sexing one’s plants, an early identification system for boys & girls. If I could weed out the boys before I even got very far into the season & only kept the girls, I could save myself a great deal of needless work & expense.

So I’m sitting in our breakfast nook having a fresh baked croissant & a cup of Tieguanyin before I head off to work when the phone jangles. I grab it so as not to awaken the distaff duo sleeping in the adjoining bedrooms (Black Dahlia & Lao respectively).  It’s our landlord calling to let me know that the owner of our house is putting it on the market this very day. We have sixty days to vacate the premises.

I just kinda crumble back into my seat. WTF! I just drop the handset back into the cradle. I’m incapable of movement or thought for quite some time. So much for this years crop...that’s my first thought, as my mind was already awash with the plans for the next two days. Then it all sweeps over me like an avalanche...I was just finishing a major five month project enclosing the rear patio into a catio for Ralf, Lao’s cat...now in full recovery from having her left rear leg amputated. As a former outdoor cat, now needing much more territory than our house afforded her...we made her a new world...this was our WORLD...we had no plans to move...what about all the detritus we had accumulated over the years???how were we going to afford to move??? Sixty days.

Fuck. Hold up. I just can’t do this. I’m finally coming out the other end & this feels like just so much bullshit bitchin’ right now.

I could explain about digitizing all my music & then selling off my record collection. About how the very next day...yeah, the very day after I copied the last CD & parted ways with all things jewel case bound, that my external hard drive (8T) crashed & burned. 

About the -4.5/-4.8 rental market here in Sacramento...yeah, there are between 4.5% to 4.8% more people looking for rentals than are available to rent.

About the fact that what five years ago rented for $850 now rents for $1300+.

About how mid-move, my pick up truck blew a head gasket & threw a rod.

About how on the day before we were finally moving to Oak Knoll, our latest abode, my coon-hound Hungry Chuck Biscuits (brother for the last eighteen years) died in my arms...

I could explain, but I won’t.

I’ll leave you with this (+ one more musical delight):

from T. Lobsang Rampa - The Cave of the Ancients, Corgi Books 1963
     Over us the stars wheeled on their course, endless, eternal. Smiling, the Lama Mingyar Dondrop reached in his robe and brought forth a box of matches, treasure brought all the way from far-off India. Slowly he extracted one match and held it up. “I will show you Creation, Lobsang!” he said gaily. Deliberately he drew the match head across the igniting surface of the box, and as it flared into life, he held up the blazing sliver. Then he blew it out! “Creation, and dissolution,” he said, “The flaring match head emitted thousands of particles each exploding away from its fellows. Each was a separate world, the whole was a Universe.   the Universe died when the flame was Extinguished. Can you say that there was no life on those worlds?” I looked dubiously at him, not knowing what to say. “ If they were worlds, Lobsang, and had life upon them, to that Life the worlds would have lasted for millions of years. Are we just a stricken match? Are we living here, with our joys and sorrows - mostly sorrows! - thinking that this is a world without end? Think about it, and we will talk some more tomorrow.” He rose to his feet and was gone from my sight.


from Rob Garza, half of Thievery Corporation. A bit rougher & tougher than TC.  Let me just say that "Cherubim Sing" saved my life.

Dust Galaxy - Dust Galaxy, Eighteenth Street Lounge Music ESL 124, 2007.

Sun in Your Head
Limitless
Mother of Illusion
It’s All Yours
River of Ever Changing Forms
Sons of Washington
Cherubim Sing
Overhead
Down
Come Hear the Trumpets
Crying to the Night

What he sez,
NØ

What a Bunch of Bullwackie!

Re-uploaded by request 12/10/2025

 

While On-U Sound rose to the challenge of Dub in England, in the U.S. that mantle was raised by none other than Bullwackie.

Bullwackie was born Lloyd Barnes in 1944 in Trenchtown, Jamaica. He moved to the Bronx, New York in 1967. He was an active member of the newly developing DJ scene in New York City (primarily the Bronx, Brooklyn, & Queens). When that scene became so fatally violent (Barnes tells of how after one particular gig he had to pull bullets out of his speakers), so oppositional to the spirit of unity & communal enjoyment that reggae & the Sound System culture espoused, Barnes opted to turn his hands to studio production.  He is the founder of the independent record label Wackies, specializing in great Jamaican music. The Wackie's label, with its Rastafarian image of a lion with a dreadlocked mane, was one of the earliest reggae labels in this country.

Barnes was a protégé of Prince Buster while in Jamaica. They recorded several singles during the 1960s. Lloyd then worked for Duke Reid's Treasure Isle label as an engineer before moving to New York. He opened Wackie's House of Music record store on 241st Street & White Plains Road. Behind this shop-front was his studio, the first significant reggae studio & label in the United States. This became the recording factory for Bullwackies & Wackies labels as well as other imprints such as Senrab (Barnes backwards), Hamma, & Senta. During the late 1970s & early 1980s he produced artists such as Horace Andy, Sugar Minott, Junior Byles, Roland Alphonso, Tyrone Evans, & Lee 'Scratch' Perry.

If you want a much more intimate & in-depth view of this Wackie Dub phenomenon, you can watch the 1980s film Wackies: Bulwackie in New York here. I highly recommend it.

Barnes presently resides in the Wakefield neighborhood in the New York City borough of the Bronx, where he owns & operates another music studio on 225th Street & White Plains Road, once more called Wackie's.

In 2001, Basic Channel, a German label, began to reissue Barnes' earlier recordings. Thanks to this comprehensive reissue campaign by Moritz Von Oswald & Mark Ernestus, Wackies continues to reach new listeners. The force & beauty of the Wackies style still sounds prodigious today.

Here are a few tastes to make your day Dubtastic:

Engineer Douglas (Prince Douglas) Levy was part of the original 74-75 Wackie's crew alongside Lloyd Barnes & Jah Upton. For a while he has his own label, Hamma, within the Bullwackies family. Along with Sugar's International Herb, this 1980 dub album is his finest work.

Many of the rhythms are derived from a tape given to the studio by Sly & Robbie, containing their versions of the then-current Joe Gibbs hits. There is also a brilliant treatment of "Tribesman Dub" using the rhythm of Tyrone Evans' "Black Like Me". But the deadliest cut of all reworks another gift, Steel Pulse's "Handsworth Revolution", which arrived in a parcel of records from England the same weekend as the recording session. "March Down Babylon Dub" finds Bullwackie himself at the microphone in his Chosen Brothers guise, as steely & apocalyptic as Douglas Levy's fabulous production.

Prince Douglas – Dub Roots re-issue, Wackie's W295, 2005.
all decryption codes in comments

Side A –

Jam Love Dub

Hard Times Dub

Let Me Love You Dub

Tongue Shall Tell Dub

March Down Babylon Dub

Side B –

Sunshine Dub

You & Me Dub

North of the Border Dub

Tribesman Dub

 

 

 

This is one splendid Dub album...released originally on the Senrab label in 1976. The selection commemorates a series of brilliant seven & twelve inchers from labels like City Line & Wackies & from sister labels like Upton, Versatile, & Munchie Jackson's Earth imprint. The core rhythm tracks are straight from Jamaica. They are mostly tracks from Treasure Isle mixed by King Tubby. They were then worked over at the Sounds Unlimited studio on E. 24th Street in Manhattan. 

 

Bullwackies All Stars – Dub Unlimited re-issue, Wackie's W-0036, 2006.

Side A –

Black Heart Dub

Disco Dub

Dub to Jah

Dub Seasoning

Dub Unlimited

Side B –

Bullwackies Revenge

Upton I

Hurricane Not I

Dubbing Around

Unlimited Dub

 

Enjoy,
NØ