Released exactly a year after their debut “Tribute To The Martyrs” picks up exactly where “Handsworth Revolution” left off. It’s one I’ve only relatively recently (4 years ago to be precise) acquired my own copy of. It was one of those records I used to hear from down the hallway at home. I owned “Handsworth Revolution”, Miles owned this one. No point in us both buying it, this was 1979, there was too much good stuff to get so doubling up was a waste of our meagre resources. Eventually though I needed my own copy.

We’ve lost Michael Riley from the line up but otherwise it’s the same musicians and Karl Pitterson is still in the Producers chair. Loosely the album is themed around martyrs, both overtly in song like the title track, “Uncle George” and “Biko's Kindred Lament”, in the lyrics with references to the likes of Toussaint L'Overture (a former slave who led a revolution in Haiti) and on the cover, whose Mount Rushmore style image features caricatures of George Jackson, Steve Biko, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Paul Bogle and Haile Selassie.

We kick off with “Unseen Guest” which recounts the prayer of condemned man (“Jah Jah watch over I, Evil watcha gonna do ?”). The music is the equal of their debut, clean, bright, aimed equally at the head and the feet, Ranking Roots reggae. But this isn’t the roots sound of JA. Like Bob Marley, Steel Pulse were working in a more rock/pop vein to get that message out to a wider audience. Make ‘em dance, make ‘em think.

Elsewhere the subject matter diverges, “Sound System” is a tribute to the joys of standing swathed in ganja smoke in front of towers of homemade speakers while the selector drives the groove; “Jah Pickney (Rock Against Racism)” carries a very obvious political statement of intent with it’s chant of “We’re gonna hunt, the National Front”; “Babylon Makes The Rules” and “Blasphemy (Selah)” carry the traditional Rasta religious messages.

“Tribute To The Martyrs” is very close to being the equal of “Handsworth Revolution”. The one thing that separates the two is that “Tribute To The Martyrs” just isn’t “Handsworth Revolution”, that’s all. But that doesn’t make it any less than what it is, a superb British Reggae album.

Uncle George - https://youtu.be/3laBTblAd94?si=O3Hku9UM9ScHnyOH

OK, let's get back to the alphabet... 

Back in the far off mists of time (October 2023) I was talking here about the question of “Which is the greatest British Reggae album ?” while writing about Linton Kwesi Johnson’s “Dread, Beat An’ Blood”. I offered that “this record would hog quite a sizeable chunk of that discussion, and would have every chance of coming out on top of any list constructed from that discussion”. Well, another sizeable chunk of that discussion would be hogged by this album and it too would have every chance of coming out on top of any list constructed from that discussion. Steel Pulse’s “Handsworth Revolution” is utterly majestic.

I had a friend at school, Howard. Howard’s grandparents had come to the UK from Jamaica in the 50’s in the rush of people who came to the “mother country” when it called for people to re-build it after the second World War. By the time I’d met Howard he was already aware of what was going on in Jamaican music, the roots reggae revolution led by Bob Marley and it was Howard who introduced me to the likes of Prince Far I, Big Youth, Dillinger and others that kick started my love of reggae.

The UK in the 70’s was a tough place to be for a black kid. Racism and bigoted attitudes were the norm, the far right was on the move in the shape of the hateful National Front (sound familiar ?). This led to the rise of some radical and politicised UK reggae artists in the late 70’s, the likes of Matumbi, Misty In Roots, Linton Kwesi Johnson and, obviously, Birmingham’s Benjamin Zephaniah and the mighty Steel Pulse.

I probably first heard Steel Pulse on the John Peel Show, that late night beacon of all that was good in new music that you couldn’t hear on daytime radio (as Peel himself once said on his show “there are some daytime DJ’s in the next room, probably listening out for the records they’ll be playing in 6 months time” or something like that). They were around our age, from the same kind of places we lived in the same city. Their songs were firmly aimed at the black youth of the late 70’s, tackling the subjects that mattered to them. But us skinny white Punk Rockers lapped it up. Partly because they were from Birmingham and we were proud of them and I think because not only was this clearly rebel music of the kind being made by The Clash, the Pistols and The Jam but it was rebel music you could dance to !

“Handsworth Revolution” was released in March of 1978 and was produced by respected Jamaican engineer/producer Karl Pitterson who had worked with the holy trinity of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer. 10 days after its release it had reached #9 in the UK Album chart. In June and July Steel Pulse went out on tour opening for Bob Marley & The Wailers about which singer David Hinds has said “To play as part of that package exposed Steel Pulse to audiences that literally were in awe of our message. Of course, being formally introduced through Bob Marley helped us tremendously. Playing for audiences, especially those in Paris who saw the force of Steel Pulse and the force of Bob Marley play on the same bill, enabled us to sell out shows every time since then”. The Youth Club at my school ran a bus trip to see that tour at Stafford Bingley Hall on June 22, 1978, the only UK date on the Kaya tour. I didn’t go…WHY ??? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself ever since.

The core of Steel Pulse’s sound was David Hinds superb voice, the spidery guitar work of Basil Gabbidon and then there were Alphonso Martin and Michael Riley’s backing vocals (the two would don KKK hoods to perform “Ku Klux Klan” which was a most disturbing sight) plus their absolute authenticity. They are one of the few reggae acts from outside Jamaica that are taken seriously there.

I finally got to see them play live on the tour that supported their second album “Tribute To The Martyrs”. Me and my dear friend Mick found ourselves in the darkness of the Top Rank in Birmingham, surrounded by Rastas and breathing in the smoke of hundreds of spliffs that hung in the air. After the fourth support act had finished I was almost ready to go, I was reggae’d out, and then on came Steel Pulse and blew our minds, one of the greatest gigs I’ve ever seen. This wasn’t just reggae music, this was truly magical, inspiring music being made right there in front of us. 

Steel Pulse are still releasing albums and touring 45 years later This album still gets a spin on a regular basis in our house…it should in yours too.

Handsworth Revolution - https://youtu.be/A3LFvaAD2-Y

We’ve come across a few in my collection like this one, bruised and wounded, records that have lived a life, but records that are so good that it feels wrong to banish them to the £1 or £2 bin where they would end up. So I bring them home, clean them up and play them and as long as they don’t jump or skip (I’m lucky enough to own a pair of Technics SL-1210’s and if a record jumps on them it really is shot) I understand that the pops and clicks and crackles are part of it’s journey.

I’ve never really been a big Bob Dylan fan, that was my Dad and my Brothers thing. Don’t misunderstand me, I understand his position and influence in the grand scheme of scheme things (without Dylan there is likely no Springsteen) but I tend to prefer my Dylan songs performed by others, The Byrds (“Mr Tambourine Man”, “All I Really Want To Do”, “Chimes Of Freedom”) and the Chocolate Watch Band’s “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” spring to mind, but for some reason as a teenager I found my self in possession of this album on cassette.

I knew the title track well but the song that completely fascinated me was “With God On Our Side”, which I played over and over and over again to the point where, hearing it again this morning for the first time in many years, I still know all the words. I’ve never been convinced by (organised) religion, to this day I think it’s a dangerous mental illness. If you need that to get you through life then knock yourself out but please, keep your fairytales away from me and stop using your imaginary friend to justify killing people with a different imaginary friend (or those of us that don’t need an imaginary friend). 

Over 7 minutes of stumbling guitar strumming and harmonica “With God On Our Side” addresses Americas obsession with “God”, it’s slaughter of the indigenous population, the Spanish American war, first and second World wars, hating the Russians and the impending nuclear war everyone was expecting in the ‘60’s and Judas’ betrayal of Jesus, each verse proclaiming all sides had/have “God on their side” (the First World War verse ends with the callous yet devastating “For you don't count the dead, When God's on your side”). The final verse sees Dylan making a plea “That if God's on our side, He'll stop the next war”…we’re still waiting. It’s a song I don’t think I’ll ever tire of.

That’s the song I focus on but there are obviously others “The Times They Are A-Changin'” is a 60’s folk “This Is The Modern World” (“And you better start swimmin’, Or you'll sink like a stone” leads to “I know where I am and going to”); “The Ballad Of Hollis Brown” covers a story of a desperate farmer driven to familicide due to poverty; there’s the gorgeous “One Too Many Mornings”; “The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll” looks at how white people effectively got away with murdering African Americans by looking at the killing of Baltimore barmaid Hattie. All this is delivered with one guitar, one voice and some harmonica.

This was Dylan’s third album and the penultimate release before he horrified the folkies and went electric on “Bringing It All Back Home”. He wasn’t the first protest singer and he certainly won’t be the last but it’s arguable he may be the most important. There’s a straight line that can be drawn starting with the travelling troubadors of Medieval times through the Blues and string band musicians of early 20th century America to Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger in the 40’s and onto Dylan and Joan Baez in America onto the likes of Ewan MacColl, Dick Gaughan and The Dubliners this side of the Atlantic and continuing still through Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg and now Frank Turner and Sam Fender. Call them folkies, call them protest singers but those dissenting voices have always been, and always will be, important to me.

With God On Our Side - https://youtu.be/5y2FuDY6Q4M?si=yDILiADvR7tiG2AZ