ERROL CAMPBELL - AFRICAN QUEEN & AFRICAN ROCKAS - TEMPUS RECORDS - 1980

A marvellous 7“ single by Errol Campbell, who I know nothing about, backed up with a decent dub on the flip. The great Dennis Bovell has his fingers all over this record whether co-writing, playing instruments and producing. There are many words written on Dennis Bovell, so here are a few words from VICE to make up the 5000 character limit for YouTube posts. For Bovell, it had all started at a comprehensive school in South London. Born in Barbados in 1953, the future Matumbi frontman came to London in 1965 and enrolled at Spencer Park School in Wandsworth. Spencer Park had a recording studio. Despite being quite a musical school, with its own orchestra, the recording studio was expressly for the purpose of the English department, for recording soundtracks to plays. By the time Bovell was approaching school leaving age, he had pretty well commandeered the studio himself to conduct lunchtime sessions with some of the school’s many instrumentalists. “And then,“ he tell me, rather matter-of-factly, “I happened upon tape loops.“ “I had an idea to borrow bits of current tunes and glue a loop together round a broomstick, to keep the tension on the recorder,“ he continues. “I made loads of loops, taking bits out of really famous reggae tunes. People were going, how do you get that? I didn’t tell them what I was doing. So I started making dub plates at school. And then word got out.“ One day an old friend from school that Bovell hadn’t seen for a while turned up. “I hear you’re making dub plates,“ he says. “Can I come round and have a listen?“ When he came over and checked out Bovell’s work, he was clearly impressed because he offered to buy the lot. “You want them all?“ Bovell said, incredulous. “Yeah,“ the guy said, “we’re making a new sound system.“ And Bovell, quick as a flash: “Have you got a DJ?“ With Bovell’s exclusive cuts in their armoury, Sufferer rose fast. “Quite quickly we were playing with all the big sound system guys,“ he recalls, “Duke Reid, Sefrano B, Count Shelly. All the big guys. They were like, we’ll play with you guys. Because we had quite a following.“ Every Friday night they’d play the Metro in Ladbroke Grove. The doors would open at seven. “It was heaving by 7:30,“ Bovell recalls. “If you didn’t get there before eight, you wouldn’t get in.“ At eleven, they’d pack it up at the Metro and hot foot it over to Cricklewood to play the Carib Club from midnight till six in the morning. Saturdays they were often at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go in the West End. Sundays was the Landsdowne youth club in Stockwell. Some other nights, a place in Fulham. “We were quite all over the place. It was seven nights a week almost. After a while, I got myself into trouble there.“ The trouble, for Dennis Bovell, began one November night in 1974. It was a regular Friday down the Carib Club. But not quite the usual Friday night. That night Sufferer were in the middle of a three-way soundclash, with Lord Koos’s system on one side and Count Nick’s on the other. “I was taking two of them on, because I was like, come on, I’ll take you both on.“ He did have a little advantage. Earlier that day, Lee ’Scratch’ Perry had arrived from Jamaica with suitcase full of fresh dubs. Bovell had been there to meet him at the airport and now the Upsetter himself was standing beside him in the DJ booth. But over on the other side, stood next to Lord Koos, was Perry’s arch-rival, Bunny Lee. “So there was this dub out,“ Bovell says, “where I’m playing Lee Perry stuff and the other guy’s playing Bunny Lee.“ But Bovell had a secret weapon. Since his group Matumbi had been working as the touring band for Bunny Lee’s star singer, Johnny Clarke, he also had all of his latest dubs. “Then there was this tune,“ Bovell recalls, “which was a trombone version of ’The Real Rock’ by Vin Gordon. Put that on. Won the competition. Hands down.“ But his triumph would be short-lived. For just at that moment, a fracas had broken out in the crowd. Police had burst into the club, supposedly in pursuit of a man seen driving suspiciously outside. The Carib dancers had closed ranks and a fight had broken out. In court, the police would accuse Bovell of being some sort of ringleader, geeing the crowd up with a microphone from the stage. “No such thing took place,“ he insists. “Policemen put their hands on the Bible and lied.“ Bovell spent nine months in court. “Monday to Friday. Every day. No chance to work.“ The first trial lasted six months and ended with a hung jury. Finally, after a further three month trial, he was convicted on a majority verdict after no unanimous decision could be reached. He was imprisoned, appealed, and after serving six months of a three year sentence, the appeal judge said, “this man should never have even been charged. There was no evidence to even have charged him.“ He was released, without compensation. He decided there and then to “put a halt to my sound system career. Matumbi became the main focus then.“