Friday 2 August 2013

DUB VENDOR







I've been familiar with Dub Vendor since the late 70's, when their mail order ads used to appear in the weekly music paper, Black Echoes, and the item at the top here is an example of one such advert dating from January 1979.
Forward-wind to the 2000's and Dub Vendor are still going strong.
The item under the ad is one of their mail order catalogues dated October 2004.
The front of this particular issue shows the cover of an album called "Dread Broadcast Corp - Rebel Radio" released on Trojan Records. This is a double album's worth of goodies relating to the pirate radio station that hit the airwaves in 1980, and was pretty much the first black station of its kind in the UK. So the album contains tracks as well as some of the original jingles from that period.
The review of the DBC album comes from the Dub Vendor catalogue and the CD cover is from my collection.
While I was at it, and because it's in the same kind of territory, I have put up an old T-Shirt of mine that dates back to the early 80's and as you can see, it has a very similar graphic design to the one used by DBC.
"Dread At The Controls" was another radio show, only this one was running in Jamaica in the late 70's and was hosted by Mikey Dread. Although it wasn't a pirate station, the show became influential because the records played on it were a mix of underground reggae and dub.

1 comment: