If you have never seen the generic cover used by Greensleeves for its 12-inch singles it is a cartoon drawn by the Mancunian illustrator Tony McDermott who is also responsible for the covers of many of the albums that have the Greensleeves imprint. A couple of books cover this body of work by McDermott but for me it is 12-inch sleeve, which has remained the same across nearly five decades, that is the true icon.
The cartoon depicts the historical journey of reggae music from its Jamaican roots to it adoption as an integral part of British music history. It commences in the top left-hand corner with Mento musicians playing on a beach watched over by a white colonial police office with a rural shack off in the distance. Mento was the sound of post-war Jamaica and heavily influenced by what American radio stations were playing. It was a rural sound played with simple instrumentation such as banjos, hand drums and guitars. However that US influence was soon enabling connections to ska and rocksteady with the introduction of electric guitars, electric pianos and amplification and this cover represents that phase with three smartly and identically attired singers who I imagine to be 60s rocksteady trio The Heptones, but on this I could be wrong.
I probably need to buy a copy of the recently republished “Greensleeves: The First 100 Covers” to bottom that.
The musical journey then tumbles down the right side of the sleeve in panoply of the stars in the unfolding history of reggae. Just how many stoned folk have stared at it trying to work out who is who?
Identifying Bob Marley is easy but then Doctor Alimantado, Big Youth, Desmond Dekker, I Roy and of course Lee Perry.
There are many more and they are joined by two stern looking London policemen taking notes, oh and is that Joe Strummer at the back?
The journey ends under London’s famous Westway flyover with Arno Goldfinger’s modernist masterwork Trellick Tower looming above it and a pop-up sound-system in the street in homage to Notting Hill Carnival. This is very much not the Notting Hill of the film 'Notting Hill'.
This is a neighbourhood with staggering gradients of inequality. You can move from early Victorian millionaire luxury to social housing estates simply by crossing the road. Meanwhile Gardens could be the imagined location of the last scene on the record cover. It is a small municipal park squeezed up against the Grand Union Canal and the curvy, modernist social housing block of Holmefield House, with the Westway fly-over and Paddington railway line a block away.
It was here amongst the swings and skate board ramps that on the Sunday night of 1983's Notting Hill Carnival that local reggae band Aswad performed.
It was recorded for posterity and is the only live album I own where I was actually in attendance. It became the album "Live and Direct".
It was late afternoon, sunny and warm, a packed audience, and smoky from the grills of jerk-chicken and spliffs. It was on the surface very laid back but Aswad’s performance is full of righteous anger and power driven by a powerful horn section.
It hadn't been that long since 1976 when a riot had marred the last day of Notting Hill Carnival and a watching (participating?) Joe Strummer penned The Clash’s ‘White Riot’.
In 1983, no such tensions arose and a great reggae album was recorded.
Special request to the Harlesden posse, Paddington posse, Brixton posse, Ladbroke Grove posse.
Music as a geographical marker in the dense city.
Of course this Greensleeves Records sleeve is an artefact of a time as well as place.
Who’d have thought back in the day?
When I turn around to wash my hands facing me over the sink is another 12 inch dub plate, Pablo Gad’s 1981 Poor Man versus Rich Man dub in its Dub Vendor original sleeve – a photo of their old Clapham Junction shop and in that is another story for maybe another time.
Carl Lee is retired but was a lecturer at The University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, taught A level Geography for 20 years at Sheffield College, is the author of five books about geography and has a PhD in economic geography. He has been nuts about music since buying his first single in 1973: 10cc’s 'Rubber Bullets' if you were wondering.
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