Seven songs 3...

The year is 1971, Sunday 28^th March, 5.00pm in the evening to be precise; it’s Pick of the Pops time. There’s still the horror of Sing Something Simple to come afterwards, put off homework to do, school the next morning - starting with a three mile cross country run - but for now everything is Poptastic Pop-Pickers as the chart run-down begins.

Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman begins to dash through the charts in fine style as always whilst I sit with my finger paused on my cassette recorder; (record) 35 - I Think I Love You by The Partridge Family (stop, yawn), (record) 31 – Rupert by Jackie Lee (stop, urgh), (record) 25 – Granddad by Clive Dunne (stop, I’m losing the will to live), (record) 22 – My Way by Frank Sinatra (stop, snooze) and then suddenly straight in at 21 (record) Dave and Ansell Collins burst like a breath of fresh Caribbean air onto the radio and I am suddenly and immediately converted to reggae.

"Double Barrel", released by Techniques Records, part of Trojan Records, went on to top the Jamaican and UK charts that May for a couple of weeks. To this day I still have no idea why he was the magnificent double u o o o or why he wanted to enter the shack at the back of his baby’s soul. I have an inkling that they may have been some kind of sexual activity going on, mush, mush, mush, mush, because he certainly wanted to be hit one time, ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh ugh and was practically begging her to break it up and to push your lips now.

No matter what the lyrics that Dave Barker shoutily sang, that tune turned me into Trojan fan and from thereon it was a reggae soul party all the way.

Good God, too much, I like it!

And I certainly did.

Listen to Double Barrel here