Twofer Tuesday #17

A tribute to the late Steve Barrow and being blissed out in the Bizarro World of dub reggae

Welcome to Twofer Tuesdays, a special for subscribers wherein I discuss two albums in conjunction. (Or back-to-back, in classic rock radio DJ parlance). Sometimes random, sometimes aligned, sometimes old, sometimes new, sometimes a deep dive, but maybe also super-shallow, sometimes in dialogue with each other, sometimes just because their covers kinda look alike, or whatever criteria I deem appropriate/ inappropriate. Today, a tribute to the late Steve Barrow.

As an American teenager who hung out with potheads, I had heard plenty of Bob Marley in high school, but I was exhausted by hearing Legend for the umpteenth time at a kegger. But it was a friend at Hogwild Records (still going strong after 40 fuckin’ years!) who got me hooked on dub reggae proper. Hunting for records from Jamaica in South Texas was all but impossible, but my friend helped me navigate that smoky new headspace. Experiencing dub at full volume felt like plunging into a bizarro world…