Sugar Rush

I grew up in Paddington, and went to school with some of the first generation immigrant West Indian kids. They had been born back in the West Indies and shipped over as babes or young children mostly. I loved their vitality, friendliness, and Carribean sense of humour. Things were a lot more innocent back then or maybe it was just because I was 10 years old.

In my mid-twenties, I did a driving job - just the one - for a reggae music production company in Brixton called Music Hive. I had designed their label logo and they loved it so much that they decided that I would therefore be (by Rastafarian logic) just the right person to take Sugar Minott's band equipment to a gig in Huddersfield. But their usual driver was otherwise engaged, they was paying and times was hard.

The Brixton posse gave me a Shitbox of a White Transit which you could wind up to a top speed of 65mph - but you literally had to make an appointment the day before. Back in the days before SatNavs I was wondering how I would find the place, but the sweet odour of ganja and sweat could be detected as soon as I hit the off ramp on the M62.

I had no idea what to expect, but when I arrived at around 7pm, the club or Shebeen being held in an old red brick hall, was a "hive" of slow, but purposeful activity. At around 11pm, to start the heeevening off, there was a Sound System playing dancehall style dub tracks. They were called Sounds Outernational, and the Selecter (dj to you and me) bubbled and toasted over extremely heavy base-backed white-label dub-mix choons through a thick cloud of smoke, from a deck set at eye level, in between two gargantuan battered speakers. surrounded by a tangle of thick electric power cables insanely draped across the room about a foot above head height. From the side they looked like wardrobes but at the business end they made frightening sense. They were like wooden replicas of a Saturn 5 Rocket engine laid on it's side, and once they had whacked bass sliders up to 11 the sound made your belly feel like it was being scrambled.

My job was to remain at the gig until the end but as I was (and still am) a white boy, I was politely deemed Babylonian by the backstage artists and crew and so was relegated to audience side. I was offered a plate of curried goat and yam, which was spicy hot from the first mouthful and by the time I had finished it my eyes were streaming, my tongue was ruined and my head was on fire.

After midnight, a nice fella with a hatful of dread and a smile like a solid gold demolition site, beckoned me (the only white man in the house) from stage-right behind the curtain, I went up and to my surprise was greeted politely by a soft spoken, heroically stoned Sugar Minott. With a toothless smile he offered up a professionally rolled tapered spliff, a Camberwell Carrot of giant proportions, saying in thick Patwah: "Tanks fe de help tonight spar, one draw an' dis will mek you rise up" I had an idea what he meant, so I sucked on that bad boy like it was milk and honey and before long I had risen to about an inch off the ceiling. From up there I could see the whole crowd, puffing and wobbling in unison, in a red, green and yellow ocean of rum, coke, tank tops and sweat. I could feel the full force of the bass, taste the curried goat and smell the lamb's bread.

Then Sugar walked onstage with that cool Jamaican walk and drop, fashionable at the time. He kicked off with his recent hit, a lovers rock choon called "Good Thing Going" the drum line was insane in it's power and simplicity and even the picture on my driver's licence was wagging it's head in time.

The evening had properly rocked and at some point, in a shadowy arched alcove with a great view of the stage, like a bird in it's nest, I either fell asleep or flew to Shangri-La, I really don't recall. The gap-toothed bowler-hatted Jamaican crooner nailed everything that night, he was a performer. Sugar" Minott sadly died in 2010. He was a legendary Jamaican reggae singer, producer and sound-system operator and at 54, it really came too soon.

I gunned it back down to London in the early hours, with a stick wedged on the accelerator pedal (cruise control, Bad Scooter stylie, doctors don't recommend it) I got home mid morning and slept like a baby all that day, and night.

Listen to Good thing Going, or, if you like your reggae served up with a bit more skank: Rub a Dub Sound Style by man called Sugar, which was widely regarded as one of the first ragga-style choons, and other Jamaican ital bangers on my Spotify playlist: Bad Scooter Skank 
Waak good and memba fi search: Bad Scooter

Read more about the massive reggae scene in 70s/80s Huddersfield here

Photo: Lincoln Barrington "Sugar" Minott