Some early reggae-style action for you here in the shape of new Slackers single My Last Star and a very poignant story behind its genesis to boot. It seems that the late Greg Lee of Hepcat dreamt he was picked up by a mate in a classic car and on the car’s radio a new single by old friends The Slackers was playing. Long story short, Lee wakes up at 3 in the morning well aware that the song doesn’t exist and in a mad creative rush writes down all the lyrics he can remember and records the tune onto his phone but sadly dies a week later. His partner Mandie Becker notes however that she “hadn’t seen Greg so excited about a new song in a very long time,” so there really was only one thing to do.
Slackers saxophonist Dave Hillyard is so bowled over when Becker gets in touch, that he heads straight to see Slackers singer Vic Ruggiero who harmonizes it and then they write the music around the words. The end result is a lovely bitter-sweet slice of early-reggae. It seems things are being kept well under wraps for the minute though, so contrary to MB convention this is one of those rare occasions when the monkey posts without proper audio though you can cop 20-30 seconds on the band’s various Meta sites. My Last Star comes out in physical (as well as digital format) on vinyl 12” and includes instrumental and dub versions of the song with snippets of Lee’s original vocal demo off his phone hauntingly mixed in towards the end of the instro. The proceeds of Lee’s songwriting royalties, as well as some of the sales proceeds will be passed on to his four daughters.
(Pre-order now/ out 25 April on Pirates Press Records)