THE ZINC FENCE MILLENIUM COUNTDOWN

Record of 1985 , selected by Peter Dalton:

UNDER ME SLENG TENG

WAYNE SMITH (JAMMY$)

Jamaican music's different phases can't usually be traced back to any one ground-breaking 45 - just consider how many have been credited with starting reggae itself. But the one unchallenged exception is the disc that kicked-off digital reggae, or ragga. It's true that several tunes pointed in the direction of this most fundamental of shifts - the semi-computerised experiments of Paul Blake and the Blood Fire Posse of the year before, for instance, or the 'robotic' rhythms created by Sly & Robbie for their Taxi imprint in the first half of the decade. But the first fully-computerised rhythm - created on a Casio Music Box - was undoubtedly Wayne Smith's Under Me Sleng Teng .

There are a couple of conflicting stories about how the rhythm - based on the riff from Eddie Cochran's Something Else - was first found on the computerised keyboard. It might have been the discovery of Wayne Smith and another young singer, Noel Bailey - or, alternatively, the session musician Tony Asher who found it with Smith. Whichever account is nearer the truth, the rock 'n' roll rhythm on the Casio was slowed down and rebuilt by Asher at Jammy's St Lucia Road studio, and launched on an unsuspecting world at the historic sound clash between Jammy's and Black Scorpio at Waltham Park Road on February 23, 1985.