10: Free Energy
Marcus had it all planned. It was not possible to bring all his festival band musicians from Yorkshire for a week in the studio, but it was possible to recruit from his local pool of musicians in London who had played at his birthday gig, and who respected his energy and liked his music.
He brought Mark Burden down from Yorkshire to engineer the session and play some guitar on the tracks. He called on his old No.1 Station drummer Dr Sleepy, who had recently retired from touring and gigging with Ska Cubano and the Top Cats. He asked Wayne Worrel from Mingus Elastic Band to play the Bass. Julian Vicary from South London All Ska's agreed to contribute some keyboards to the session, and also from the All Ska's he invited James Howell on Trumpet, Sebastian Goodwin-Day on Trombone, Tomoya Foster on Tenor Sax, Dave Kemp on Alto Sax, and Zebby - or Zeeroy as he was now calling himself - on percussion.
Marcus wrote a whole new set of songs, and he set about producing a brand new album. They laid down some new rhythm tracks over the first two days, and overdubbed vocals, horns and keyboards on subsequent days. A great new album was taking shape.
In the meantime other business was afoot.
Marcus was struggling financially and was having great difficulty keeping the record label afloat. His digital distributor Donald Leahy offered to take over running the label to help him out. Marcus felt that he couldn't continue running it on his own so he agreed and Donald took over running the label from that point
Donald then funded a new 7" single release of She's So Sweet/Free The Spirit from Marcus's Earth Songs album, which gained some good publicity.
Donald wanted to start planning to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary since the first releases on the Blue Beat label by organising a big anniversary show in 2020, and he suggested to Marcus to write a song as a celebration of the event, so Marcus wrote a new song called 'Blue Beat Is Back In Town' which he sang over one of his own original rhythm tracks that he'd already recorded at That Sound Studio.
Donald then managed to licence Boogie Rock by Laurel Aitken - the Blue Beat label's first ever release, from 1960, and he had the two songs issued on a new 7" single.
Donald then planned to release a compilation album of back catalogue tracks celebrating the sixty years. Marcus was never interested in licensing or releasing old back catalogue music, but he felt that a sixty year anniversary was a justifiable cause for celebration, so he wrote a list of relevant tracks that he considered would make for a good retrospective album. Donald took Marcus's list and added his own input to create a sixty year celebration album which was given the title of Marcus's song - Blue Beat Is Back In Town.
The album was well received and contained four of Marcus's productions in the track list.
Then disaster struck.
The Covid Pandemic forced all activity to be put on hold. The single and album were released and ready to go, but this development brought everything to a crashing halt. The sixty year celebrations were all cancelled. It was the year of the great lockdown.
2020 was the year that was lost from everybody's lives, but there was a ray of light in amongst the gloom; the 20 year celebration single that Marcus had written managed to enter the national chart with three weeks in the top 75, peaking at No.66 in September - the first chart entry for a Blue Beat record since Prince Buster had his biggest hit with Al Capone in 1967. A major acheivement for both Marcus and Blue Beat.
During the summertime there was a brief respite from the lockdown in August, and Marcus and the Microdots and Mental Block were able to play at a couple of outdoor parties with the Little Village crew, but everything else was flat.
Then on top of all the misery shortly after this period, in 2021 the drummer Dr Sleepy very sadly passed away. The sessions he recorded with Marcus were to be his final recordings.
Rest In Peace Dr Sleepy.
As things started returning to normal in 2021, Marcus decided to organise some new gigs to celebrate twenty years of No.1 Station. The band did a couple of really successful revival shows in London and the Westcountry, where they pulled together a mini-tour - it was just like the good old days.
Donald released a '20 Years of No.1 Station' retrospective album - for digital release only - that Marcus compiled which included a few unreleased tracks, and a digital single release of Stop The Fighting achieved enormous amounts of play on Spotify with over 104,000 streams recorded in one week.
Then in August 2021 Marcus's old friend and mentor Lee Perry suddenly passed away.
After the loss of Sleepy, Marcus was devastated. To lose two incredible friends and amazing musicians in such a short space of time was quite a blow. Marcus was shocked to hear of Lee's death. He said "I thought he'd live forever, he seemed to be so fit, with an eternal spirit. The world will be an emptier place without his amazing presence."
Rest In Peace the great Lee Perry.
Time Marches On
As time marched on, In 2022 Marcus's old friend Errol John asked him to put The Agitators back together for a one off reunion gig at Stevenage Carnival. He assembled some of the old crew from the Upsetters - Spike and Tarlok - plus a couple of recent No.1 Station members Lee on keyboards, Dave and Seb on Sax and Trombone, with Dian Merry and Hannae singing harmonies, and amalgamated the musicians to form yet another Agitators line up, which also went down a storm.
Then, later in the year No.1 Station were given the Saturday night headline slot at the Small World summer festival. Things were certainly picking up again.
In another development, Marcus was playing rhythm guitar with The Trojans at a gig at Gaz's Rockin' Blues where he met up with the top producer Daniel Gaudi, who had just completed the new Horace Andy and Steel Pulse albums.
Marcus asked him if he'd be interested in helping him complete his new unfinished album. When Gaudi heard the songs he was instantly enthusiastic to produce the tracks. Marcus took the unfinished tracks to Gaudi's studio, and the resulting album is still, at the time of writing this, in the production stages, and a new single - 'Bring Change' - is finished and awaiting release.
At the beginning of 2023 Marcus decided to try out releasing a couple of already recorded tracks for download. Simultaneously it was announced that a new reissue of the Battle of Armagideon album was planned. Marcus was asked to contribute some of his out take tapes for an extended deluxe release and to write sleeve notes for the booklet.
Gaudi has also recruited Marcus to contribute rhythm and pick guitar parts to his forthcoming Jazz/Dub Fusion album, where Marcus will be featured alongside such legendary names as David Hinds, Jah Wobble, Sly and Robbie, and Ernest Ranglin amongst other luminaries along with the inimitable Gaudi when that album is released in 2025.
Marcus is now back in the studio with Gaudi working on finishing the album and two singles are set to be released independently.
Watch this space.
No.1 Station
Marcus Upbeat
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