Here at Gold Shop we are a bit old school. We prefer fax machines over email, Fila over Nike, beepers over cell phones and Records over anything else. You will notice that our releases have very little information about Gold Shop, and despite the fact that we do actually have a website, we never list this or our email on our records. We just have the opinion that who needs to know knows, and that our Gold Shop logo lets people know what is real from imitation anyway. That being said, many people have gone to great lengths to contact us, and we figured that maybe we should make it a little bit easier. Below you will find our email as well as our mailing address. Feel free to drop us an actual letter, and go ahead and include something good like a photo, sticker, record, sound tape or basically anything else that won’t result in us getting arrested when we go to the post office. Should you wish to contact us by phone, I will update this post with my beeper number as soon as I pay the bill and get it turned back on.

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GOLD SHOP

P.O. BOX 250630

BROOKLYN, NY 11225

contactgoldshop@gmail.com

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Witty Records

Gold Shop is pleased to announce a new partnership with one of the most iconic NY dancehall labels Whitfield “Witty” Henry’s Witty Records. Throughout the 80’s, Wittys Music Master Record Shop, and Witty record label were the pulse of the NY dancehall scene. His releases began with licensing tunes from his friends back in Jamaica like Prince Jammy, Junjo, Gussie Clarke and others, but by the mid 80’s Witty began focusing on his own production.  Some of the earlier productions featured rhythms that were made in Jamaica with vocals added by the popular artists of the time. As the label and the NY dancehall scene developed, Wittys became a home to some of the best NY artists like Shelly Thunder, Sluggy Ranks, Knight Rider, Trevor Sparks and others. Witty also employed some of the best NY musicians of this time, most notably John “Raf” Allen who played a lot of the classic Wittys rhythms, as well as legendary engineer Philip Smart, whose HC & F studios served as the home base for all of Wittys in house productions. Gold Shop plans to tell the whole Wittys story over a lengthy campaign of releases which will begin with these titles listed below.

MM200      LITTLE JOHN    CORK UP DANCEHALL

MM091     LITTLE KIRK    I DON’T KNOW

MM064     ECHO MINOTT   FOLLOW ME

MM201       NICODEMUS    EARTH & MOON

MM202       AL CAMPBELL   LEAVE THE HERBSMAN BUSINESS

MM203       TONY TUFF     COOL IT

Gold Shop / Yankees logo courtesy of our in house art guru XRAT

2009 was probably a bit of a mixed bag overall. Barack Obama became the new face of America, giving us a much needed pr boost. The Yankees won the world series. Michael Jackson died, leaving the world in mourning, further reminding us that the world is in short supply of music legends, and we don’t seem to be creating any new ones. The music industry as a whole continued its death spiral unimpeded, with the one exception being the vinyl market. There seemed to be a lot of press in 2009 about the resurgence of vinyl, and for once I started to agree with these articles. When I was distributing new releases from Jamaica, I used to loath this type of press, as it was only true for genres like rock which had abandoned vinyl over a decade ago. Genres like Reggae who never stopped releasing vinyl have seen a steady drop off in sales since the advent of the cd burner. In fact, I think that reggae djs were the first to go to cd, even as hip hop and dance music djs managed to stick it out for a couple more years. Part of this was the fault of the producers, who started to supply radio and sound djs with promo cds long before the records were available. You couldn’t really blame the people who had originally lined up at the record stores every week for wanting to stay current. If this meant switching to cd, so be it, it was certainly cheaper. When you removed the djs, the only people left buying records are collectors, and it has taken the industry a long time to figure this out. In the last couple of years however the message is starting to get out there. While Jamaica continues to churn out new dancehall records which would only appeal to a decidedly non vinyl crowd, the rest of the world has started releasing records specifically geared towards actual record collectors. There has been a huge increase in the amount of Roots releases, primarily on 10 Inch which are mostly produced by and for Europeans. Along with this, reissues have come back to the forefront and are starting to become a mainstay of the vinyl business. In my opinion, 2009 was a pretty good year for reggae re-issues, and for once I could start to see a correlation between reggae re-issues and the type of re-issues that seem to be coming out in other genres and generating all of this press about the growing vinyl market. Considering how dead the market is for new releases, the fact that re-issues are selling at all is reason for optimism. The people who put out re-issues last year definitely put in the amount of time and care required. Deadly Dragon Sound have been a central hub for reggae collectors worldwide, and they have also been behind some great re-issues. In 2009 they released the killer from Icho Candy “Bloodsucker”, definately one of the best from the Ujama catalog. Digikiller Records came on the scene rough in 2009 as well. After a couple of releases on the Crat label, they came with a massive 12 Inch on the Yah Congo label. By combining two massive roots tunes onto one 12 inch they made available two utra rare tunes, Freddie Mckay - Take My Hand Oh Jah and Naggo Morris - You Want To Get I out. The response was massive. If you are reading this blog, then you are probably aware of the releases that Gold Shop put out on the Eclipse, Part 2, and African Love labels. Standout tunes where Sammy Levi - Come Off The Road, Sluggy Ranks - Sodom & Gomorrah, and Shinehead - Mama Used To Say. For 2010 we plan to put out a whole lot more, so stay tuned to this space for further updates. Not every re-issue label is based in NY however, GB Distribution from London put out some great releases, most notably from Dixie Peach on the Jah Tubbys imprint. Dub Store from Tokyo released some great re-issues of Bunny Wailers productions which set a new high for quality of packaging (and price!). Looking forward for 2010, I would expect that there will be many more well received re-issues, which will hopefully drive some people into the record shops. As bright as the future looks for releasing re-issues, it does not look so bright for the shops that sell them. Here in NYC most of the original landmark shops have closed, or at least stopped selling vinyl. Special big up to Deadly Dragon, NY’s only all vinyl reggae specialist shop. Moodies in the Bronx is probably the only store left of the original 80s stores in NY which still sells vinyl, and remains basically unchanged. Worldwide we are experiencing the same thing, with foundation shops closing or diverting there attention to cds and dvds. The one shop that has managed to continually re-invent themselves without losing the original identity or focus is Dub Vendor in London, which I am going to say in my completely biased opinion is the worlds greatest reggae specialist shop. If reggae music is your obsession, make it a point of paying a visit to Dub Vendor for a taste of the past and the future.

]]> http://goldshopreggae.com/2009/10/stone-love-q-club/feed/ http://goldshopreggae.com/2009/09/african-love-releases/ http://goldshopreggae.com/2009/09/african-love-releases/#comments Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:54:54 +0000 admin http://goldshopreggae.com/?p=345 Gold Shop New Release

African Love Records

With the recent untimely death of the King of pop, Michael Jackson, people all over the world have been compiling playlists of his hits. In reggae music there have been many covers of Michael Jackson songs, and in these playlists, people often list covers of his songs which have become classics on there own. I would say that Shinehead’s version of “Billy Jean” is the most famous example of this. To commemorate the passing of MJ, Gold Shop has released Billy Jean, along with another Michael Jackson cover “Lady In My Life” and the sound killer version on this rhythm “Reprimand”. For this historic release, we saw fit to pay tribute in the sleeve design as well, by adding the signature glove to our beloved Gold Shop mascot. These will be limited to a run of 1000 copies each, and will not be available again in this format.
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ALM-7-001A     Shinehead - Billy Jean

ALM-7-001AA  Shinehead - Mama Used To Say

ALM-7-010A     Shinehead - Lady In My Life

ALM-7-010B      Dub

ALM-7-011A      Shinehead - Reprimand

ALM-7-011B       Dub

As most of you know by now, Steely has passed away. In one of the articles about him, it states that Steely & Clevie contributed to over 80% of the dancehall rhythms produced in the late 80’s. I would say that this is a conservative estimate. Simply put, Steely & Clevie RAN dancehalls heyday of the mid 80’s to the early 90’s. The sound that we all identify as the golden dancehall era, is the Steely & Clevie sound. It is impossible to guess what direction reggae music would have taken without them, but it definitely would have been completely different. Steely was also a larger than life personality, and I would say that if he never played a note in his life, he still would have been the center of attention on charisma alone. He was a legend among legends, and was the ultimate producers producer. I don’t think there has been a producer that started after him that has not tried to emulate his style in some way. There will not be another Steely, and now that he is gone, Jamaica and Dancehall music will never be the same. R.I.P Steely.

When I first went to Rough House, it was known as NY King Jammy$, but when the name changed the crew stayed the same, Beardie running the store, veteran DJ General Jah Mikey running the dubplate studio downstairs. Singer, Trevor African was the man behind the counter. They always had some different 45’s that the other stores didn’t have. When Delroy took over the shop he took it to a different level. He quietly amassed a huge selection of 45’s that stacked in piles leaning to impossible angles on his narrow counter. God help you if you ever tipped one over. Delroy became legendary for his unique approach to customer service. He was as feisty as he was knowledgeable. People either loved him or hated him. Regardless of what you thought of him, everyone would have to agree, Delroy is a music fanatic. He could argue for hours about a particular song, artist, producer, etc. Even if he was wrong, he could win any argument by perseverance. As the market for reggae vinyl started to dwindle and shops started closing, Rough House showed little signs of following this trend. Delroy continued stocking and presumably selling at basically the same rate as he ever did. As other stores moved away from vinyl, rough house stayed firm, and really became one of the last places to get new release 45’s. The end of Rough House arrived not because of the decline of music sales, but a more traditional NY retail story of a conflict between partners, landlords, etc. Delroy, has never given up, and still buys and sells records among his friends and long time customers. He plans to open up a new retail store, and when this happens, expect a full update right here. Rough House, R.I.P.