The Comedy of Errors: Yami Bolo & Blacka-T - Waiting for a Sound (9 May 1992)

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A second Yami Bolo record on the 9/5/92 Peel show and it was one that I initially misread.  With its chorus line “Sitting here in limbo/Waiting for another soundboy to die”, I had thought that it was talking about the kind of violent incidents among Caribbean musicians that saw the likes of Dirtsman lose their lives.  But Blacka-T’s toasting puts the mind at rest and it becomes clear that the “killing” in mind here relates more to battles between sound systems than street gangs.  There’s all the usual braggadocio and front on display with particular sarcasm for country boys coming into Kingston and trying to take on the established crews.  I was recently lucky enough to watch a UK-based semi-take on this when Mubi screened Babylon (1980) a reggae dub version of Quadrophenia (1979) with whom it shared a screenwriter, Martin Stellman.  I call it a semi-take, because the movie’s set in London and the furthest anyone has to come in to town to compete at the climatic sound system battle is Lewisham. Well worth a watch if you can find it.  I actually thought it was better than Quadrophenia both musically and cinematically.

Had I been listening to this in 1992, I expect that I’d have taped it because I liked the tune and the vocal.  In 2019, what gets it onto the metaphorical mixtape, apart from the aforementioned vocal and melody, is the fact that it is an Augustus Pablo production. I have had his tune, AP Special stuck as a constant earworm since reading about its use on the 1980 ‘end of punk/birth of new wave’ documentary, D.O.A. In fact, I love it so much I’m going to use it as curtain music on a play I’m directing at the end of this month.

In keeping with a number of the dub videos on YouTube, we get both the vocal and dub instrumental versions of Waiting for a Sound.  The version played by Peel ends at 3:38.



Videos courtesy of vital sounds (Bolo/Blacka-T) and Rodrigo Pablodub ((Pablo)