I Am Not The Beatles

 

Click above for big pictures, click below to play me…

Barrington Levy is having a bit of a struggle.

With what ?

His complaints are many and various, but he appears to be mostly struggling with being able to find enough relevant words to pad out 4 minutes and 42 seconds of music. Indeed, so much of a struggle is it that - despite his numerous claims that he’ll never give up - he soon does exactly this when he resorts to enunciating a series of Wop Diddle Dee Doo Bops within just 45 seconds of the song starting, and then repeating them with increasingly alarming regularity throughout.

This is an overcompensation from which Barrington sadly never quite recovers, as around the 3 minute mark he even starts struggling with his ability to be able to that successfully and starts to trip over his own Diddles - which is a messy experience at the best of times.

Maybe he is just a bit stressed ?

He is certainly that alright and for very good reason - as he woke up this morning to make the frankly disturbing discovery that he had run out of tea.

Bloody Hell.

And terrifying though this thought is for just about anybody to contemplate, Barrington has an added complication…

I get the feeling I am going to struggle to believe this…

… and this is that Barrington is capable of perceiving both the past and the future simultaneously - thus making his present moment a rather uncertain one.

Unbelevyable!

This is evidenced in the first verse where he claims that he is currently able to recall both waking up this morning and waking up tomorrow - and this confusion makes any presumptions about any perceived tea or lack thereof laughably difficult to pinpoint. After all he may not have any tea right now, but what if he has already bought some in the future thus making any quick trip to the shops wholly redundant?

Faced with such a chronological conundrum Barrington thus chooses the only sensible solution available to him… and very wisely struggles back to bed to moan about some other things instead.

What Else Does Barrington Moan About ?

Shitloads.

Everything from the fact that he is currently the owner of only one half of a pair of shoes, to the rather strange complaint that he considers himself morally incapable of being a thief. Odd though this latter moan is, the one I must take issue with is where he states that he finds it impossible to make love on a hungry belly.

This must surely be very much in doubt - as I can promise you that if there is one thing men are most definitely capable of if they are given even the merest hint of any action, it is attempting to have sex with just about anybody… hungry belly or not.

Any Major Levylations As A Result Of This Record ?

Yes.

This song is an example of the dancehall genre which originated in the 1970’s in Jamaica.

Now, dancehall is, by its very nature, in existence to make you dance - very possibly in a hall if you’re lucky enough to be in one at the time - but some people take it very seriously indeed and blame it for both social deterioration and increased violence in the place of its birth.

Despite the fact that just about every musical genre has been accused of this at some point in its life so the answer is already blindingly obvious - ie it’s probably a bit more complicated than that - why not read this essay called “So wha, mi nuh fi live to?”: Interpreting Violence in Jamaica through the Dancehall Culture. It essentially argues that, if you are Jamaican, then both you and dancehall are products of the same culture and therefore both you and it are going to exhibit many of the same characteristics of each other.

With this in mind if you dislike dancehall for the reasons stated above, it suggests this is only because you recognise secreted parts of yourself within it and it is thus probably a good idea if you swallow your pride, initiate some sort of group hug, chuck some on the stereo anyway and have a bloody good dance to forget about it all.

A bit like the plot to Footloose then, but with longer words :

http://www.ragashanti.com/articles/Ideaz.pdf

Anyway Barrington himself, like Jean Beauvoir before him, was an early musical developer - releasing his first single under the pseudonym Mighty Multitide when he was just 13 years old. It would then take him just another 7 years or so to become the biggest star in the country at a stupidly young age, is still huge today and is seen as a massive influence to many :

http://www.barringtonlevy.com/

http://springlinejamaica.blogspot.com/2008/09/barrington-levy.html

Interestingly, the second link above tells us a tale about the way record companies view their relevant markets and how this naivety can directly impact upon what becomes popular - as at one point Barrington recorded an album where he collaborated with other people. In the UK this was released with the slightly edgy title of ‘Barrington Levy’s DJ Counteraction’ and it did reasonably well. In the US however they took one at at, didn’t really understand the title, then panicked a bit before finally deciding to tamely downgrade it to … ‘Duets’.

And how did it do there ?

Yep : It struggled.

Can Barrington Levy Really See Into The Future ?

Yes.

But only because, if Professor Mark Changizi is to be believed, then we all do this all the time - as we are all forever seeing about one tenth of a second into the future and predicting what will happen. This is, he claims, where hallucinations (such as ghosts) come from where our predicted future doesn’t match up with the reality of it :

http://www.impactlab.com/2008/05/18/humans-can-see-into-the-future/

Fascinating though that is, others believe they will soon be able to prove beyond all doubt that we all most definitely have a fully developed sixth sense that can do so so much more.

Important I Am Not The Beatles Warning

The following article contains the potentially deadly cocktail of words ‘paranormal researchers’ and ‘The Daily Mail’ :

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-452833/Is-REALLY-proof-man-future.html

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence
Current Value : Barrington may well be struggling with lots of stuff, but his second hand market is certainly buoyant - 5 pounds and 35 pence - which puts him in 9th place and sandwiches him between Sudden Sway and Luba value-wise.
Current Profit : 232 pounds and 26 pence. Want to hear a bit more Barrington ? Here is the very lovely You Have Caught Me :

And if you like that, why not pop off to Amazon to buy his Greatest Hits ?

http://www.amazon.com/Too-Experienced-Best-Barrington-Levy/dp/B00000E9KP

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 2:14 pm and is filed under I Am Quite Famous, Admit It, You Quite Like It. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.