Favorite Song No. 333: Nicodemus – Boneman Connection

It’s never easy for me to rank lists of favorites. All the time people want to know “what are you ten favorite movies?” or “who are the five sexiest firemen?” and I rarely have an answer, much less an answer that I can give in ranked order. I mean, Fireman Sam is up there, but Chief Michael O’Halloran has to be number one, right? I get stumped easily when doing that sort of thing, so imagine how trying it has been to sift through almost 1000 songs in an attempt to declare definitively “this song is better than that song.” I mean to say, do I truly like today’s song more than yesterday’s song? Who’s to say? Sure, I know right now you’re shouting “you! you’s to say!” but it really isn’t that easy. Each day when I sit to write about a song I find myself second-guessing my list-making prowess. I start to think about songs that didn’t make the top 366, and wonder– is song 407 maybe as good, or better, than song 333? Should I have moved this one up, that one down, and swapped those two? It’s downright nerve-wracking!

Having established how difficult it has been to rank songs, I have to say that I knew from the start that today’s song would be in the top 366 somewhere. In general I don’t listen to a lot of reggae music, but I like the dancehall sound of the early ’80s, and this is my favorite of that subgenre, so include it I must. Perhaps that’s a bit of a spoiler? You now know there won’t be any other ’80s-style dancehall reggae tracks in the list. There are some other Jamaican songs, but this is my one and only in the dancehall stylee.

I know I’ve mentioned a few times already in these posts about how much DJ and club culture has changed over time, but  I think it bears repeating today. Believe it or not, this was a floor-packing hit track in the halcyon days of electronic music, when DJs would mix disco, house, new wave, rap, psych-rock, and dancehall into one great big percussion-laden bouillabaisse for appreciative dancers. This was also an era when DJs spun exhausting sets from 11pm until 6am, and hardcore dancers would move to the after-party clubs where DJs were beginning their sets at 6am. Seems like lunacy in today’s safety-first era of tepid partying, but that was the norm “back in the day.” I doubt Nicodemus ever shows up in EDM sets today, but there was a time when this got the party people swaying.

I’ll be the first to admit that all reggae songs sound pretty similar to me, and I know I’m not the only one who thinks this. Part of this stems from Jamaica’s lack of copyright laws, which means that the songs really do sound alike because they are alike. The same instrumental track will sometimes be used for dozens of ostensibly different songs. Yet even the reggae songs that use different riddims still sound fairly similar to my untrained ear. I hear a song and identify it as reggae, and that’s about as far as I get. That may be heresy to a fan of the genre, but I can’t help it. I’m simply not into the sound enough to immerse myself to the point where I can  identify major differences between songs. All that said, I sure do dig this song, and would have no trouble identifying it in a mix of other reggae tracks. I think the main reason I like this song is the toasting– I like the whole leg bone connected to the thigh bone vibe Nicodemus is rocking. He’s so serious about it, yet it still comes off like a fun song.  Best of all, it makes me want to dance, and that’s always a plus when deciding to move an entry up or down one’s list of favorite firemen, err, songs.