The Loafer Rides Again
Big Boss Sound
LP - 2024
“Every gun makes its own tune”, as Clint Eastwood quoted in The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (1966).
The year is now 2024 and on this new album Nasser fires his Winchester 1866 “Yellow Boy” (Clint Eastwwoods gun) thirteen times and each tune is a direct hit.
It’s long been a tradition with Jamaican artists to write western cowboy themed songs and use wild west imagery. The Upstetters with ‘For A Few Dollars More’, ‘Clint Eastwood’, ‘Big John Wayne’, ‘Return Of Django’. Prince Buster with his album ‘The Outlaw’ featuring ‘Cincinnati Kid’, Jackie Mittoo and Harry J’s Allstars did ‘Hang ‘em High’, Baba Brooks did ‘Magnificent 7′ and Laurel Aitken, who Nass worked with with The Loafers, had ‘Jesse James’, the list goes on…
There are many reasons why the western theme was used so many times by Jamaican musicians, was it the tough rude boy image played by the hero? or the unforgettable melodies from these films? These two would be directly intertwined in the case of Cecil Campbell, aka Prince Buster, as he was head of security/selector for Coxsone Dodd’s sound system in Kingston.
For Nass it was three movies ‘A Fistful of Dollars’, ‘For A Few Dollars More’ and ‘The Good, The Bad And The Ugly’ that inspired these recordings. All three films directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood, but the reason they stood out from all the other cowboys movies of the time, was the epic soundtrack by Ennio Morriconne. It was without doubt the reason they were elevated to the three best cowboy movies of all time.
Nasser’s ‘Ennios Peyote Train’ evokes the wild west gunslinger as the hero draws his gun and ‘The Whip Of The Mariachi Kid’ sees him ride into town for the final show down where there will be only one winner.
‘Live Long And Prosper’ and ‘Vulcan Mind Meld’ may at first seem to have nothing to do with cowboys or western themes but this is where these two elements meet, as Nass is a big fan of Mr Spock, from Star Trek, and was known as “Spock” by Mick, the landlord of Newbury infamous local pub, The Dolphin, where The Loafers grew up.
In the Star Trek 1968 episode ‘Spectre Of The Gun’, the crew are beamed down to Tombstone, Arizona, to a planet in 1881 to play out “the gunfight at the ok corral” cowboys from the future!
So put on your stetson hat, put your guns in the holster, mount your horse and light up a cigar cos it’s time to take a fistful of dollars and ride to the sounds of ‘The Loafer Rides Again’, for a few dollars more you can be GOOD-BAD AND UGLY.
