GUN MONEY...

Clint Eastwood

I inherited my Dad’s weapons. A whole arsenal. Twenty-one hand guns and three rifles. He had ‘em stashed everywhere- I guess in case of an ambush. When I was a youth, he had a pair of .22 Derringers hidden up his coat sleeves. My Dad was an Italian cowboy, if there ever was such a thing. He loved Smith and Wesson big caliber revolvers. Yep-he favored old school six-shooters like Clint Eastwood’s weapon of choice. Dad was a connoisseur of .357 and .44 Magnums. All pistols were loaded with hollow points. In that collection were a few 9 millimeters automatics, nothing special, so no love lost when I pawn shopped them. With the gun violence happening on our favorite West Indian Island I figured turning the gun money profit into Roots Reggae music would be Karmic justice.


and Clint Eastwood!

What tunes I traded my bullets in for!



Wake the town and tell the people...



...it is U-ROY rockin' the mic down at KING TUBBY'S sound system!

Okay, first off, U-Roy was not the original DeeJay to toast something wicked over a Dub plate but he was dubbed the "Originator" for he invented a new necessity. U-Roy copped the sly wisecracking style of Count Matchuki and crafted something so slippery that his lyrics would slide straight off the beat. Yep, Ewart Beckford, I mean U-Roy would slide those lyrical messages straight to the back of your unsuspecting subconscious! And you could still shake your ass to it! Within months, imitators sprang up like weeds in JAH'S garden. Not all the copies would choke out the sunlight though... Big Youth and I-Roy would flourish. Even threaten U-Roy's chart domination. But these songs are where the modern DeeJay style was born. Immerse yourself in Roots Rock History.



I do not claim to be an authority on such matters as U-Roy's jumbled discography. (Maybe it is my brain that is jumbled.) Thankfully websites like www.strictly-vibes.com help sort out the mess my memory is in. Jah knows I can not learn anything from reading the inserts. So my nitpicking gripe is with the presentation-all these Virgin/EMI editions have the same generic liner notes. Cheap MF's is what I call 'em. I mean Virgin has released and re-released the same batch of tunes. Damn sure Mr. Ewart Beckford does not see his fair shear of royalties. These 2004 editions are the 1991 remasters pretending to be new editions disguised with different front covers. But that is okay, because the sound is infinitely better than the snap, crackle and pop of my old vinyl.



Stay tuned - I am going to continue to add things up.

ANTHONY B and MARCUS GARVEY'S BLACK STAR!

I could not find the article I wrote about Anthony B's tribute to Marcus Garvey, so I rewrote it. Better the second time!


Black Star 9.9 outta 10

YAGGA YO- No denying Anthony B’s huge talent. One great release after another but he never seems to grab the limelight the same way that a Sizzla or a Buju grabs it. His success is hiding in the shadows of his Bobo contemporaries. Anthony B’s style is deceptively simple. His genius is- he says what he has to say without the fuss of flowery poetics. No fancy word play. No double entendre. Lyrics are to the point and direct. No complications. No room for misinterpretation. Very few music artists can pull that off without sounding like a blockhead and ironically Anthony B pulls it off quite poetically. His songs are tales of the everyday life of your average Joe. Well, your average Joe the Dread. Dread living in the ghetto. He takes faith, politics and every other subject you are not supposed to bring up in polite conversation and turns them into cautionary tales. Like Marcus, Anthony B is a preacher, and with each record, he serves us his sermon. So listen up you sinners! .


Marcus Garvey standing proud!

Okay, to be honest, it has been a few decades since high school and back then I am certain there was no Black History month. If we learned anything about anybody that was not White Anglo Saxon Protestant, it was usually for his or her negative contributions to society. Case in point; take Italian Americans- as a group of people they helped add greatly to American culture but my history book only showed them only as Mafia gangsters and low-life organized crime figures. Incidentally, as an Italian American serving in the Army down in the deep South, I was considered neither a white nor a black soldier. Safe to say that the KKK would have a rope waiting for my neck. A stand up comedian joked about being thankful to having that measly one-month for “black history” because as an Asian American, they got next to nothing celebrate about their being American. That one-month of acknowledgement comes at a cost of over 400 hundred years of suffering.



The SS Yarmouth, the first ship in the fleet.

One of the names I definitely remember learning about was Marcus Garvey. His impact was so huge even the WASP historians awarded him more than a footnote. Although, they managed to leave out the huge impact his philosophy would have on Leonard Howell’s Rastafarian faith.


Leonard Howell

Black Star is heavy in message but light in mood. The Black Star of course being the ocean liner fleet to which Marcus Garvey hoped to take former slaves and their descendents back to Mother Africa. Marcus’s dream was never fully realized due to internal corruption and White America’s constant sabotage. The symbolism of a black man taking his own fate into his hands scared the bejeezus out of those White Anglo Saxon Protestants.



Sadly, I learned about these gentleman through the Bob Marley smash, Buffalo Soldiers, and not my history book. I hope my kids learn the truth in school nowadays.

If anybody actually reads my words...

This has been weighing heavy in my mind...early last week my wife's little brother was blasted from the third floor of a burning building. My wife and her family are an emotional mess because he broke his back in two places and smashed the bones in his feet. My little brother-in-law also has some extreme burns covering most of his body. It tears me up to see him laying there in intensive care burn ward. For a few days nobody knew for sure if he was going to make it. He is kept in a near coma like condition so nobody knows what really happened till the doctors wake him. I have asked all my friends to pray for him. So whether you pray to Jah, Jehovah, Allah or Christ spare him a few minutes of your time. Can't hurt!

A TALE OF TWO MEN-Part II

The DeLorean DMC-12 was sort of a cool car in that early 80’s way, but one that proved to be a bad business venture. The car is best known as the time machine in the movie, “Back to the Future.” The all stainless steel body and gull wing doors were stock items. I guess a killer stereo and time machine capabilities were options. John DeLorean was the inventor and head honcho of the DMC-12. John DeLorean learned all this auto industry know how coming up the ranks of first Chrysler then General Motors. They claim he was the brain behind the Pontiac GTO, which spurred on the muscle car stop light war. His many successes led to John being nick named the Prince of Detroit. Eventually Johnny D got bored working for the General, so he became self-employed by firing himself from GMC. He figured his car would be a challenge to the big three automakers. He indulged in a rock star lifestyle complete with snagging a young model wife. (She would leave him once the money evaporated into thin air.)
Although all was not well within DeLorean Enterprises, poor Johnny D. owed a lot of people huge sums of money. Seems the money somehow ended up paying for houses in the country and penthouses in the big city. The British government even loaned him 156 million. That is one helluva bag of cash! Turn of events did not turn Johnny D’s way so our Prince of Detroit found a solution.
Johnny D was caught with a briefcase full of cash. 1.8 million says the FBI agent who led the sting operation. This was to be exchanged for 100 kilos of cocaine at wholesale. (Cheaper to buy product in volume). His 1.8 million dollar investment flipped would be worth 24 million on the street. Actually the US Department of Drug Sniffers was looking for a smuggler named William Hetrick. William unknowingly led the authorities straight to Johnny Boy. John suggested that Ford or one of the other big three auto empires had framed him. He even claimed he might have been set up by the British intelligence.
A jury of his peers found John DeLorean innocent. He apparently had no idea that meeting someone in a secluded spot like a back alley at midnight might possibly be mistaken as engaging in illegal activities. I guess he figured he was buying Girl Scout cookies at wholesale cost. Think of the mark up when Johnny Boy would push them on his friend’s kids. Who could say no to Chocolate Mint?
I am sure the man was an asshole in real life, but I must admit I almost like the guy. I mean he stared the US Government down and then a few years later, Johnny Boy even beat a tax evasion charge.



First off- even if Buju is guilty, why is he being PERSECUTED by the U.S. Judicial System, instead of being PROSECUTED by them? What happened to due process? Even if he was trying to save Gargamel Records by some shady business practices, what happened to innocent until proven guilty? Ever think that he might be completely innocent? In fact I would find it all to easy to believe that the American Government does personally have it out for him. Conspiracies are not just for paranoid crazies. Someone sitting comfy in a seat of power feels threatened by Buju. Hmm, lets see- Mr. Buju Banton is a proud outspoken Black man. Mr. Buju Banton, a Bobo Shanti Dread, is a successful music artist with the youth listening in. That makes him dangerous to White bred America.
Buju Banton aka Gargamel was born Mark Myrie. No one can deny that Buju is credited with bringing roots and culture values back into Dancehall. Huge international sellers like Til’ Shiloh and Inna Heights proved to the unsuspecting world that real reggae did not die with Marley. Hippies and critics might have believed so, but it was safe in Buju’s hands. Safe in Buju’s lyrics.
I remember a time not too long ago when those living in the Reggae world were suspicious of Buju’s conversion to Rastafari. Some figured it was a marketing move by a record company. Many figured he was a thug cashin’ in on Roots revival. My argument then and my argument now is- if he was a youth making fistfuls of cash rockin’ the mic as a slack DeeJay, why even bother pretending to find Jah? He got wiser as he got older. He got wise to the fact that there is more to life than slack ways. And with that newfound wisdom, he found Jah in his heart.
Hopefully Mark Myrie gets a fair trial by his peers. I know that Buju Banton the Rasta will not.