33 years ahead Midnight Dread has just learned its station KTIM is being sold. What to do? Produce the finest program ever as if it’s the last. Hit the airwaves hard and ask for calls where truth can be told more privately, where freedom of speech still resides. Management has made clear there’s no show next week so The Pioneers blast MD off with a scarce and smokin’ stepper “Allright On The Night”, still alive Bob Marley and recently gone-a-Zion Jacob Miller wait in the wings with their best live performances, Twinkle Bros offer the upwardly mobile uptempo 1975 rocker “Natty Dread Up Town”, Princess Buster lays down the law to her Prince, Rita Marley makes known the perfection of “The Beauty Of God’s Plan”, Bunny Wailer’s got a burnin’ “Love Fire” goin’ brighter with Culture, Tony Tuff does the opening number from the unreleased soundtrack to WORD SOUND AND POWER, and The Iranian Students hoist “Khomeni Skank” high with Ken Boothe as President Carter tries to free the U.S. hostages. The behind-the-scenes drama unfolds like a Ray Gun just nominated for Prez or a commercial radio regular reggae show, both popular and sponsored, but that ain’t the way they play the game inna Babylon. Mental slavery infects the owners as much as the owned. Hate needs oxygen. Love’s on fire! On August 11th 1980 it’s Bunny to the rescue:
In reality Midnight Dread survives the changeover and is back broadcasting in two weeks. In big news a lot is going on. Ronald Reagan’s fresh Republican campaign is out there striving for votes following his late July 1980 GOP Convention acceptance speech. On the air I’m ignoring the whole phenom as did many who knew Gov. Reagan very well, not believing for a moment that the country would possibly elect such a man to become its leader. Many boomers enjoyed the actor when he hosted the dramatic GE THEATRE TV show in the 1950s with the sponsor’s slogan “Progress Is Our Most Important Product” but he’d changed a lot since then. I personally witnessed when the “if it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with” helicopter he ordered flew over UC Berkeley spraying tear gas that wafted uphill into old folks’ homes causing major health issues and death. Later I saw his troops surround scores of random peaceful folks on Berkeley’s University Ave. just going about their business who were then loaded onto buses and imprisoned for days in Santa Rita without charges. Reagan made his bloodbath comment three weeks before unarmed students were ceremoniously gunned down at Kent State and then Jackson State in May 1970 effectively using the intimidation of violence to stop progress. The former liberal head of the Screen Actor’s union now primes the reactionary pump. When the full truth about Alzheimer’s comes out we’ll probably learn the damage starts a lot earlier than imagined. Mental slavery may also be a physical condition. Listen to the antidote from the love perspective Princess:
So outside the joy of hearing this program’s great Jamaican music singing with flair and passion to many chronic conditions and issues, in another real world it’s the precious middle class that’s about to be cancelled. To be poor is not a crime but to make a decent living is on the way out. “Voodoo economics”, George H. Bush’s 1980 portrayal of Reagan’s policies, will soon run things for decades. In August of 1980 Ronald’s ‘handlers’ are about to make a secret deal outside proper channels with Iranian officials over the long festering US embassy hostages. President Jimmy Carter, who’d have continued to make alternate energy a major program and may have quasi-legalized herb in his second term, was being sabotaged. The GOP promise to foreign government reps to wait until their guy is U.S. President to get a better deal is a replay of how they undermined the already completed 1968 Paris Vietnam/U.S. Peace Agreement to get Nixon in. Subsequently the carnage of that undeclared war needlessly lasted 5 more years. Meanwhile commercial radio’s another rough business where cash dictates desires. Government’s neither a business or a family despite Reagan’s proclivities. Its job is to provide justice, defense, and promote the well-being of all. Dollars can distort motives. Elect those who want to re-define Public Service as Profit Service and you’ll get similar leaders who don’t even know what government is for. People Power needs to take flight. As Sugar Minott sings so beautifully here in “Dreader Than Dread”, “People dem a worship material things, some of them don’t even want to let Jah in… back weh this here mood with your ism”, Rita Marley later echoes with her well-charged love analogy “she is a bird, he is the sky, he loves the space, she loves to fly”. Stop cheating, launch freedom, let it uplift:
Dreadcasting & streaming steamin’ musical hotcakes with daily 21st Century Midnight Dread programs at 12am including replays often heard in Wendt’s Best of All Worlds high noon slot. Become conscious at 6am with the indigenous sounds of Native Son Rising curated by Doug everyday (all Pacific Times). Explore more Midnight Dread sights & sounds here.
