Jah Baddis Sound System
At the Holyhead Youth Centre, Coventry 1975
Trevor Evans and Charley Anderson, from The Selecter... second and fifth from the left
From my exhibition of photographs at The Coventry Music Museum. "Jah Baddis Before The Specials" November 2019
See more at -
www.flickr.com/photos/jakeyjb/albums/72157710837376103
Jah Baddis Photo Exhibition
(From The Coventry Telegraph by Pete Chambers, curator of The Coventry Music Museum)
Occasionally, you get an email out of the blue and it’s a total delight when that email is packed full of attachments of photographs from back in time that have never seen the light of day. Enter photographer Jake Bernard whose previously unseen photographs taken at The Holyhead Youth Club in Lower Holyhead Road, will be on display at The Coventry Music Museum till December from November 1.
These rare photos show a young Neville Staple, Trevor Evans and Charley Anderson at the youth club as DJ crew with the Jah Baddis Sound System. Musician Dr. Ray King also helped this project, they are a moment in time, some five years before The 2-Tone movement began and made them household names in the likes of The Specials and The Selecter.
Photographer Jake takes up the story: “I was at Warwick Uni and lived in Coventry between 1974 and 1976. At the time I was taking a lot of photographs – mostly for a variety of Students’ Union publications and the weekly newspaper. I was also a stringer for The Times Educational Supplement.
In the summer of 1975, I was asked (by the union) to put on an exhibition of photographs for Freshers Week – showing some of the diversity of Coventry. One afternoon, I just turned up to Holyhead Youth Centre. completely unannounced and shot a single roll of black and white film – 36 frames. The shoot, typical for the time, was done with available light and a single fixed focal length lens. The photographs are a mixture of reportage and ‘people posed’ and capture (I hope) a very special atmosphere. Thirteen photographs made it to the exhibition and then disappeared, Forty years later, quite randomly, I revisited the negatives."
Jah Baddis Sound System
At the Holyhead Youth Centre, Coventry 1975
Trevor Evans and Charley Anderson, from The Selecter... second and fifth from the left
From my exhibition of photographs at The Coventry Music Museum. "Jah Baddis Before The Specials" November 2019
See more at -
www.flickr.com/photos/jakeyjb/albums/72157710837376103
Jah Baddis Photo Exhibition
(From The Coventry Telegraph by Pete Chambers, curator of The Coventry Music Museum)
Occasionally, you get an email out of the blue and it’s a total delight when that email is packed full of attachments of photographs from back in time that have never seen the light of day. Enter photographer Jake Bernard whose previously unseen photographs taken at The Holyhead Youth Club in Lower Holyhead Road, will be on display at The Coventry Music Museum till December from November 1.
These rare photos show a young Neville Staple, Trevor Evans and Charley Anderson at the youth club as DJ crew with the Jah Baddis Sound System. Musician Dr. Ray King also helped this project, they are a moment in time, some five years before The 2-Tone movement began and made them household names in the likes of The Specials and The Selecter.
Photographer Jake takes up the story: “I was at Warwick Uni and lived in Coventry between 1974 and 1976. At the time I was taking a lot of photographs – mostly for a variety of Students’ Union publications and the weekly newspaper. I was also a stringer for The Times Educational Supplement.
In the summer of 1975, I was asked (by the union) to put on an exhibition of photographs for Freshers Week – showing some of the diversity of Coventry. One afternoon, I just turned up to Holyhead Youth Centre. completely unannounced and shot a single roll of black and white film – 36 frames. The shoot, typical for the time, was done with available light and a single fixed focal length lens. The photographs are a mixture of reportage and ‘people posed’ and capture (I hope) a very special atmosphere. Thirteen photographs made it to the exhibition and then disappeared, Forty years later, quite randomly, I revisited the negatives."