The Harder They Come

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Now, this politics of censoring certain music by the authorities in the early 1970s was displayed in the 1972 film, The Harder They Come.

As I said up top in the intro, you know, reading Dr. Musgrove book, had to, you know, go re-familiarize myli- myself with certain films and came upon this big, [laughs] came across this scene and I'm just like, "Wait, wait." You understand? So for persons who don't remember, um, or have never watched The Harder They Come, right, Jamaica's first narrative film.

In the film, right, um, Ivanhoe Martin, who is played by Jimmy Cliff, right, he became wanted by the police in the wake of him being involved in a shootout, um, with the police resulting in the death of three officers, and then days later shooting a wom- a woman who was involved with one of his foe.

If you're a Junior Gong fan, if you're a Junior Gong fan, if you love Halfway Tree, the album, you know that scene with the woman being shot.

I didn't understand it when I read it at the time, but there were all kinds of problems with the text.

He'd lifted passages of dialogue from the dialogue in The Harder They Come, the film, and somehow turned that into Marley's journey from the countryside coming into Kingston.

But at the time, it was a great read for me.

And there was also a Marley biography by Stephen Davis.

That and the Mustard song isn't on the Internet.

Why wouldn't the Mustard song stay on reggae? That song, The Harder They Come by Jimmy Cliff, which is such a great song, and we recorded that with Peter, who we had just met, and you, I guess, who we had just met.

Yep, and we ate Peter's dad's great spiced, Greek spiced hamburgers, which I remember food, maybe you don't.

What kind of spices did he put in the burger? Greek

you want to i'm digressing but if you really want to Watch a really good movie that you won't understand the first time you watch it.

The accents, the harder they come.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The Big Beef Man gets to do the same.

Now, when the theme was mentioned, it was gangsters, I could only think of the Jimmy Cliff film, The Harder They Come.

The Slickers are on that soundtrack with a classic gangster tune, "Johnny Too Bad." Love this.

Check out The Harder They Come.

in ninth grade, and I went on a date with a girl who will remain unnamed because I don't have her permission to say her name.

But we went to see the movie called The Harder They Come, about-

Okay

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Jimmy Cliff and reggae.

And I didn't know anything about reggae, and of course, I was totally smitten with the movie, [laughs] with Jimmy Cliff and everything.

And, um, so I just loved The Harder They Come, and that made me feel cool and dangerous, I suppose, which is how you wanna feel in high school when you're w- you know, walking down the hallway.

Definitely.

Before that, the Busters brought us Tribute to the Scatolites.

You're tuned in to listening to This is Ska and up next, three tracks from the Harder They Come soundtrack.

We're going to start things off with Sweet and Dandy by Toots and the Maytile.

Alright! Alright! Thank you.

Oh boy.

We're gonna run to the rock for rescue, they will be known.

We just heard three songs off of the Harder They Come soundtrack.

The Slickers with Johnny Too Bad, Desmond Decker, 007, Shantytown, and Toots and the Maytel, Sweet and Dandy.

One of the best making of documentaries there's ever been on a movie.

The Harder They Come, haven't seen.

The Guardian, haven't seen.

Kentucky Fried Movie, good thing it's sold out.

And you get, you know, sort of the way that the outlaw figure in cowboy imagery becomes part of rude boy culture and kind of, you know, at least visually, you know, or character wise becomes part of that.

I've been talking for a while now, but I always think about the harder they come.

as one of the the main sort of connections there you know in a way that that could be looked at as almost like a singing cowboy film where there's sort of some like um thematic overlaps there um but yeah i'll i'll leave it there we can talk about it

no of course i mean you perfectly brought me to sort of my next question because i think that outlaw figure is on one hand such a staple part of jamaican music culture right and from like maybe an academic perspective because i'm

There's, there's a visual side to it with the cultural side to it with the Cowboys.

And then there's just these like musical overlaps that are, that are really beautiful.

Um, you asked me for one, I probably gave you like six examples already, but the one that I, that I really do think about and just for me was so important was the harder they come.

Cause I had grown up with that film.

You gonna run to the rock for rescue.

Johnny Too Bad by The Slickers from The Harder They Come soundtrack album.

And before that, we heard Nina Simone with That's Him Over There.

And before Nina Simone, we heard a number 14 hit from 1964, Twine Time, by Alvin Cash and The Crawlers.