Carter Van Pelt,
The TVD First Date

“My mom used to place a stool near the base of our Zenith console stereo so I could peer over the edge and watch 7-inch 45s on the dropstack changer. Something fascinated me about the 45s, their size and feel. A teenage obsession with The Police led me to reggae—Steel Pulse, Bob Marley, Burning Spear, and Augustus Pablo, but LPs and CDs provided my only access to this alluring but cultural distant music.”

“Fast forward ten years to my first trip to Jamaica in 1996 when I met a Belmont, Westmoreland area soundman named KD. At KD’s, I came to understand the importance of the 7-inch single in the Jamaican context, the soundsystem, the sheer amount of recorded music, and the concept of ‘music like dirt,’ when he winged a slightly cracked Israel Vibration 45 into the ocean.

KD sold me records from his collection of tens of thousands of 45s. From that trip, singles quickly became the focus of my interest, as Jamaican music was so clearly built around singles made for dances.

Jamaican 45s are a strange fetish to be sure, but there is something about those 7-inch artifacts—not just the seasoned sound, but the typesetting, in many cases the hand drawn labels, the inherent artfulness of offset printing—that makes the world of Jamaican 45s all-consuming. Even if the records are blank, they usually have variegated stains from the climate: rain, tropical storms, hurricanes, or just humidity that make them unique.

Sometimes the rubber stamp of a record shop adds to the charm and intrigue, but nothing more so than the handwriting of various owners. All of it remains enchanting, and anyone who collects Jamaican 45s knows how they trigger the imagination, across time and space and culture.

That first bunch of records from KD included “Malcolm X” and “Cheating” by Earl Sixteen, “Danger In Your Eyes” by Linval Thompson, “Rastafari Tell You” by Judah Eskender Tafari, “Set The Captives Free” by Gregory Isaacs, “Ragnampizer” by Dillinger, among roughly 50 others.

The last time I saw KD before he died, he said many of the remaining thousands of 45s were swept out to sea by Hurricane Dean in 2007. I treasure those original 45s and still play them out to this day. They have been the starting points for many musical adventures.”
Carter Van Pelt

Carter Van Pelt is a DJ and founder of Coney Island Reggae On The Boardwalk, an all vinyl reggae soundsystem event held four times each summer in Brooklyn. He recently compiled the acclaimed 8 vinyl + 4 CD box set, Down In Jamaica: 40 Years of VP Records and the forthcoming 7×7-inch box set Xterminator: Earth Feel It.

Carter Van Pelt Instagram | Twitter | Soundcloud | Spotify
PHOTO: LAURA HANIFIN

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