piran café

For the first time in a long while, I listened to the Eurythmics soundtrack for the film 1984 last night, and it struck me how much it really sounded like 1984. The beats and rhythms, the synthesizers the electric drums.

Released 25 years ago this month, a squabble (or misunderstanding) with director Michael Radford kept 98 percent of the music out of the film. And it’s too bad since this was probably the Eurythmics’ best album. I caught the tour the following summer when they passed through Cleveland. The opener was Sex Crimes with Annie Lennox beautifully screaming “sex sssex sex” as she walked out of a giant zipper that was stretched across the front of the stage.

Below is I Did It Just the Same, which refers to Winston Smith’s sex crime. Also check out Julia, Doubleplusgood, and Room 101.

Igor Stravinsky conducting.

By Tim Minchin.

Groovy cover, no? Spotted this relic at the Collecta International Collectors Fair on Friday.

Here’s Birth Control singing The Work is Done and here is their cover for the album Hoodoo Man.

The Best of Birth Control, originally uploaded by pirano.

Via World Music Network comes this song by Kenyan band Kenge Kenge, their humble tribute to Kenya’s current favorite son of the diaspora.

Song in both Luo and English, the music features the oruto, a single-stringed fiddle. Whether the lyrics do anything for you or not, it is undeniably mesmerizingly danceable. If Obama wins, Kenge Kenge really should get an invite to an inaugural ball.

The band, which formed in the 1990s in the western part of the country, shot much of the video during last summer’s WOMAD tour, and it also features clips of Obama and wife Michelle dancing along during a visit to Kenyan villages.

A little more about the band here, where you can also purchase a download. More samples from their CD, Introducing Kenge Kenge, are here.

Here’s another nice ditty (minus Obama), Otenga.

Besides the music of Rokia Traoré and her compatriot Habib Koite, I know next to nothing about Mali. But that’s more than enough to put that west African country very high atop my go-to wish list. One day.

She’s been a hit since her first release in 1998, Mouineïssa, which I bought on a whim a few years later on a brief trip to Paris. Hooked since. Traoré, and her majestically beautiful voice, is in Ljubljana next Sunday, 02-Nov, at Cankarjev Dom. If you’re around, you really should go. Sublimely irresistible. Tickets 10-25 EUR.

From a press release:

Rokia has always had her own particular vision of how her music should sound. It was born out of a youth as a sax-playing diplomat’s daughter and life in the embassies and consulates of Brussels, Riyadh, Paris and Algiers, with the concomitant loneliness and isolation that provided fertile ground for writing songs and poems, and dreaming of becoming a great singer.

Below is Dounia from her upcoming release Tchamantché.

[Website (en francais)] [Afropop Worldwide dedicated site] [Tchamantché review from Global Rhythm]

Discovered this Italian singer from Putomayo’s Music From the Winelands compilation. Simply Fabulous.

Here’s an interview with Capossela with NPR’s All Things Considered last January.

“I have an attitude about the grotesque in my shows,” Capossela says. “I like to scare people a little, but then make them feel safe again, and go home hugging each other like friends.”

This is Si è spento il sole, roughly, The Sun has been Extinguished.

[Official Website] [tour schedule]

No, this has nothing to do with McCain-Palin.

Here’s a silver anniversary memento I’m looking forward to: a remastered two-CD 25th anniversary edition of REM’s Murmur, their first full-length release, to be released just in time for the worst shopping season of a generation (or two).

Murmur was actually released in April of 1983, but this year’s November 25 release makes more sense as far I’m concerned since it wasn’t until the fall of ‘83 that I finally listened to the album start to finish. Over and over on my roommate’s headphones in my freshman year dorm room in Athens (Ohio, not Georgia). My brief experimentation with the campus Young Republican Club was already resigned to the dustbin; other more appealing experiments awaited.  And REM has been along for the ride ever since.

The second CD is a live recording from July 9, 1983, at Larry’s Hideaway in Toronto. [Set list here.]

Coincidence being what it is, here’s a live video of Talk About the Passion supposedly taped on November 25, 1983, at the EXO 7 Club in Rouen, France, birthplace of the fictitious Opera Ghost of Phantom of the Opera fame. [The evening's set list via REM Chronicle.]

It was their first time out of North America, their first European stint, and just the seventh gig into the tour. So this was early on, and the growing pains are clearly visible here. Patience, please. The song finally begins about 1:45 in. And it’s a decent recording.

via The Regular Guy

Probably not uplifting bumper sticker material, but nifty nonetheless. Just heard this from an old friend who has The BluegrassRave Backroom in his sig file these days: Bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley is stumping for Obama in the hills of southwest Virginia.

Brought to a wide audience when George Clooney wailed his Man of Constant Sorrow in the Coen Brothers’ Oh Brother Where Art Thou, Stanley has been a staple in Bluegrass music for more than 60 years. [Here's Stanley singing his dirge O Death in one of the film's most memorable scenes.]

“I think I know a little something about the families around here,” he begins, “and after the last eight years I know we all need a change.” He later calls Obama a “good man” and “a true friend of the people who live right here in southwest Virginia”.

Listen to the ad, a fabulous slice of Americana and an eloquent sign of the times, here.

Wanna know more? Definitely watch Stanley modestly introduce himself here. Stanley also has a museum in Clintwood, Virginia. Here is his fan club site, with a picture of Stanley with George and Laura Bush after receiving the National Medal of Arts in 2006, the highest honor for artistic excellence in the U.S.

Just 47, singer and bandleader Andy Palacio, who spearheaded the revival of his native Garifuna music, passed away last week.

The Garifuna are descendents of west Africans bound for slavery who were shipwrecked in 1635 off the coast of St. Vincent in the Caribbean, and eventually settled the Caribe coasts of Belize, Honduras and Nicaragua. They were never slaves.

I had the pleasure of meeting several Garifuna at a cultural conference in San Jose, Costa Rica, in 1999. Their music was funky, soulful and wistful, unlike any other I’ve ever heard. Just like their language, wholly unique.

Here’s a video of Palacio’s 2007 international hit Wátina; AfroPop World Wide has a nice remembrance, along with an hour long audio profile of Palacio and the Garifuna. Essential listening if you’re in the least bit interested in the sounds from that fabulous corner of the world.

I’ve found myself humming this quite a bit all summer, from REM’s best album, Lifes Rich Pageant, released 21 (!) years ago. If I had the ability, this is the kind of poetry I would try to write.

Enjoy!

After a decade long battle, Roger Tullgren, a 42-year-old heavy metal fan in southern Sweden, finally got the relief he so richly deserves: his addiction to metal was classified as a disability, qualifying him for state benefits.

Because heavy metal dominates so many aspects of his life, Sweden’s English language daily, The Local, reports, he’s been awarded a wage supplement from the local job center, AND he’s even been given a special dispensation at the restaurant where he’s currently employed as a dishwasher to play loud music while at work.

“I have been trying for ten years to get this classified as a handicap,” Tullgren told The Local.

“I spoke to three psychologists and they finally agreed that I needed this to avoid being discriminated against.”

And apparently, it all began with a Black Sabbath album back in 1971.

You’ve got to read more…

As I was reminded in this post on Sleeping With Pengovsky, today is International Women’s Day, and I’ve been celebrating since by listening to some of the most wonderful women I’ve never met: Marisa Monte, Gal Costa, Clara Nunes, and others. They all happen to be Brazilian, but I certainly don’t mean to play favorites.

I tend to celebrate women everyday (doesn’t everybody?), as did Picasso, so the commemoration continues tomorrow with one more attempt at checking out Picasso: La Joie de Vivre before it leaves Venice on Sunday. Ticket reservations apparently fell through, so some form of bribery might be in order. Wish me luck!

A few years ago I came across the results of an international poll which suggested that one of the most recognized faces on the planet was that of Bob Marley. Indeed, seasoned travelers share stories of seeing references to the reggae great in the most remote corners of the globe. Whether in a small, isolated village in El Salvador or Cote D’Ivoire, or in a major metropolis like Paris or New York, Bob Marley as icon can be found virtually everywhere.

Today, my fellow Aquarian Bob Marley would have celebrated his 61st birthday. Besides a few obligatory Marley CDs, I’ve paid my humble tribute by listening to Kaya N’Gan Daya, Gilberto Gil’s 2002 homage to the Jamaican giant. Gil is perhaps the most widely respected singer/songwriter in Brazil’s broad and varied musical landscape, and his carefully selected 16 track selection was his personal tribute. One giant to another.

To fully appreciate the sincerity and respect with which Gil approached the project, one needs to know more about the musician who literally redefined Brazilian pop music and culture nearly four decades ago, giving it the international prominence, appeal and reach it holds today. Gil is not your typical pop singer. In the late sixties, he, along with singer and friend Caetano Veloso, co-founded tropicalia, a nimble blend of samba, reggae, funk and jazz that proved so powerful and spiritually uplifting to Brazil’s poor huddled masses that both were jailed and subsequently exiled by Brazil’s authoritarian military regime in 1969. Like Marley’s rebel music style, Tropicalismo became the attitude for defiance and change in Brazil, and the face of Latin America’s largest country was changed forever. Coming full circle, Gil was named Brazil’s Minister of Culture in 2002.

Gil’s voice can’t always match the passionate urgency of Marley’s –Whose can?– but there’s a distinctively earthy, organic edge in Gil’s vocal presence that not only compliments the Marley material, but adds an almost ethereal quality to the melodies he’s selected. He’s most successful with the songs that incorporate his unique blend of Brazilian flare –-from the melodically simple but elegantly beautiful treatment of Three Little Birds to the driving urgency of the Kaya N’Gan Daya (Kaya) intro. Partly sung in Portuguese, Gil adds some strings and traditional Brazilian percussion to the mix. The high point is the anthemic No Woman No Cry (Nao Chore Mais), accompanied by Marley’s original vocal back-up trio, the I-Threes –-Rita Marley, Marcia Griffiths and Judy Mowatt (who appear on most tracks).

Carlos Jones, a friend of mine in Cleveland and a talented and passionate musician in his own right, recorded his own tribute to Marley, Torchbearer, a few years ago.

“Each of us, that were touched by (Marley) in our lifetimes, we carry a part of that too,” Carlos says. “Each of us in our own way, whether we’re musicians or not, we can carry that little bit of light, or truth, forward. Whatever it was that it made us feel, and try to pass it on. Marley was a torchbearer. When he passed on, he passed the torch. But not just to one person –to everyone within earshot. To carry a little candle flame and help illuminate the darkness.”

A couple nights ago I got together with a few colleagues for a belated New Year celebration, and over a few bottles of wine and shots of grandma’s slivovec, we reminisced about some of the places we’d been to in the past year. Our chosen profession means we all spend quite a bit of time on the road. The notion seems romantic to some but more often than not we don’t get to see and experience these places nearly as much as we’d like. Sometimes not at all. Sometimes I spend more time getting there and leaving there than I actually spend there.

I usually do make an effort to get out and about, but haven’t kept particularly adequate notes. [That will change this year, now that I've finally begun keeping real journals.] This past year was nonetheless brimming with little mental post cards that will be filed away for some time. Some of those, in no particular order:

August: Zurich. Continued feeding my Van Gogh habit at the Kunsthaus, home to his Thatched Roofs near Auvers, one of his last paintings, and the well-known Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe. Realizing how much I’m beginning to relate to this guy –besides his religious zeal– is beginning to scare me. Nice street music in the afternoon and evenings along the Zurichsee just beyond the Bellevue tram stop.

July: Kanegra Beach, Savudrija, Croatia. My first nude beach. Just a long stone’s throw from my old place on the Slovenian coast, but it was a transcendental experience. I will never –ever– swim clothed again.

February: Donetsk, Ukraine. This southeastern Ukrainian city is hardly a tourist Mecca, but it was my first trip to the former Soviet states, so it’s got to make the list. The timing was good as well, just a few months after recently-elected president Viktor Yushchenko’s face started peeling off after he was fed some poisoned soup. The women there are absolutely stunning, adding more ammo to my historic crossroads theory. Surprise! February is cold there. Surprise 2! There’s lots of good, and cheap (to westerners) vodka.

August: Tallinn, Estonia. I was only here for about five hours, and those came on the tail end of two solid weeks of ass-busting work. But it was enough to really want to go back and spend some time. Medieval Europe comes alive here, seemingly a world away from other former Soviet Republics.

March: Over the course of a few late winter days, saw my first Stradivarius at the Palacio Real in Madrid and spent an afternoon following in the footsteps of James Joyce in Trieste. The violin was an absolutely gorgeous piece of work; the Joyce walk was beautifully interrupted by Julia, another absolutely gorgeous piece of work.

August: Brussels. Getting there involved sharing a cheap flight with The Village People. Once I got there, I ran into a suspected fruit cocktail bomber on my favorite tram ride ever.

September: Berlin. I visited the German capital three times in the space of a month, and it’s quickly becoming my favorite European city. Precisely why is difficult to pin down. I always feel like a minor character in a Wim Wenders film there, and it’s a good feeling to be able to blend into one of his long, deliberate pans. Most taxi drivers here don’t care much for George Bush, making drives around the city a particularly pleasant experience. I was never one for fashion photography, but the exhibit, A Gun For Hire, at the Helmut Newton Museum, helped change my mind. A little bit.

August: Helsinki. First visit to the Finnish capital, a place that appears to be home to more drunks per capita than anywhere else I’ve ever been. Despite the price, it’s mind-boggling how much Finns can drink; one recent conservative estimate puts it at about a bottle of hard booze per week per capita. I added the The Ateneum, the Finnish National Gallery, to my museum list.

July: Paris. Caught Africa Remix: Contemporary Art of a Continent at the Centre Pompidou, a phenomenal attempt to describe the soul of a vast indescribable continent. I spent nearly two hours lounging in a chair of a makeshift typical urban “African” bar –part of the exhibit, or course—next to an old-style jukebox gushing with 60 CDs worth of amazing music. [Here's a link to the same exhibit but earlier in London.]

July: First visit to Oslo. Besides being one of the most expensive cities I’ve ever been to, it was also one of the nicest. Friendly folks, lively street music and night life into the wee hours. The night I arrived coincided with U2’s show there. No, didn’t fork over a huge pile of cash for a ticket, but did enjoy the street musicians jamming U2 tunes until dawn. Visited the Munch Museet –once home to The Scream before it was stolen in August 2004. It’s next to the Toyen Park, a sprawling lush botanical garden.

June, July and August: Piran, Slovenia, home for most of last year. More specifically, concerts in the courtyard of the 700-year-old Franciscan Monastery. I attended two small ensemble classical performances and a solo classical guitar concert, all of which were so soothing, so relaxing, that I definitely felt at home.

BRUSSELS – It’s as predictably irritating and ultimately amusing as a speech by George Bush: when a RyanAir boarding call announcement is made, a no-holds-barred attack from all sides ensues. There’s no room for mercy or goodwill when these no-frills carriers come calling, no latitude for politeness allowed. It’s a stream of usually tired bodies, cooped up in a small airport’s tiny departure lounge, suddenly springing to life, a frenzied commotion that can be likened to big city Italian rush hour traffic converging on a dangerously small, narrow traffic circle.

That was the scene, one I’ve lived too often, late this morning at the tiny Venice Treviso Airport, as disheveled Belgian backpackers, Italian families carrying crying children, along with about a hundred others –including a pair of young lovers joined at the lips and an invalid in a suped-up wheelchair– all made their mass assault towards the flight’s lone ticket-taker.

But jaded to the drill, she was prepared. With the stern determination and unassailable control of a dominatrix –apparently, a quality RyanAir agressiveyly seeks during their employment screenings– the petite gatekeeper quickly asserted her absolute control after curtly, if marginally politely, scolding an elderly man for cutting in line. Not that anything resembling a line actually exists. Except for the one Madame RyanAir firmly drew in the sand.

Besides the priority given to some of those adults with the small bawling children, not the remotest sense of boarding order is found here; there are no seat assignments, no real queues. It’s an anarchy that works remarkably well thanks only to the terse and total control of a slight woman who takes absolutely NO crap.

Anyway, after ten or so families were allowed through, a half dozen middle-aged men, all waving some sort of passes tucked into their U.S. passports, wormed their way through the chaos, cacophonously chanting, “priority pass, priority pass.”

They were carrying bags that certainly challenged the carry-on limits, wore a variety of music-themed baseball caps –one was from the recent Cher tour– and chatted about concerts and music as they weaved through the melee.

While being shoved from behind and elbowed from the front, a man asked one of the not-so-dirty half-dozen: “Are you guys a band?”

He laughed, and replied: “Yeah, we’re a band. Guess which band we are?”

Sensing a leak in the chaotic dyke, the inquisitor didn’t reply, choosing instead to forge full-speed ahead through the fracas. But I interjected, facetiously and tiredly, “Umm… The Village People.”

The guy let out a huge roar of a laugh but said nothing, and slowly ambled on through the combat that is RyanAir boarding.

Now, I didn’t just sarcastically pull that name out of my ass; I knew the “People” would be playing a gig in Brussels on Friday, and I only knew that because I learned last night that they’re the evening-cappers at a sporting event I’m covering that night. In short, and unfortunately at that particular point in time, The Village People were at the forefront of my mind. I don’t think that’s every happened before. But after three hours sleep, a two-hour train trip and a 40-minute cab ride to the airport that wound up adding nearly 60% to my “cheap” airfare –all on top of what has probably been the most exhausting month of my life– 70s disco bands are the kinds of things that float through my mind. And my mother wonders why I’m still single.

After a terribly brief and brutally uncomfortable nap during the flight –did I mention that cost-saving measures by RyanAir led to a new fleet of planes with cheap plastic and vinyl seats that do not recline?– my mind eventually wandered towards more pleasant thoughts –the Iraq war, the miserable weather around Europe, Lance Armstrong’s latest drug problems, my over-drawn bank account– by the time we began our descent towards Brussels Charleroi. (RyanAir destinations, by the way, have absolutely no footing in reality. An hour by bus to your actual destination, like today’s, is actually pretty good, in Ryan terms.) And it continued to wander on the tram ride to my hotel, until it was stopped cold –bludgeoned actually– by a woman’s desperate scream.

It was immediately after a Moslem man, dressed in traditional garb, full bushy beard and all, left a large, plain brown paper bag on his seat as he prepared to get off at his stop, that the woman unleashed her yelp of horror. With more than 50 sets of eyes focused on him instantly, the large man quickly returned, looked around as he reached into his bag, pulled out some fruit, and said in perfect French to a captively terrified audience: “It’s only oranges and bananas!”

Some of us broke out in laughter while the woman, still shaking, openly wept. I decided against any more chance encounters with would-be or imagined fruit cocktail bombers, and got out at the next stop to walk the final two kilometers to the Sheraton Towers.

But the prevailing theme quickly returned. I had dinner at a modest pub run by an extended Senegalese family, by all appearances a pleasant immigrant neighborhood gathering place with a phenomenal juke box that bounced and danced with lively west African rhythms. As I sipped my coffee, an infectiously annoying pop dance song ruined the groove, and again the Village People returned to haunt my mind.

After dinner, I ran into a press officer for Friday’s event and we briefly discussed the evening’s entertainment.

“Couldn’t they have come up with something, well, anything, better for a sell-out crowd of 47,000 besides a Y-M-C-A sing-a-long?” I asked.

After a few off-color jokes, I was told that the band would be paid 30,000 euros, roughly $36,000, for their 20-minute set.

I was dumbfounded. “Really? Those guys can still command that kind of money?” Not that I know much about the role of 25-year-old disco acts in the music industry these days, but I found that impossible to believe.

Now even more infuriatingly Village People-curious, I rushed back to my room to find their official website, and there they were, the six guys who playfully dealt with the RyanAir chaos, this morning, of course, minus their infamously resplendent wardrobe that will one day figure prominently in an exhibit at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in my old Cleveland home: the Lakota Sioux Indian, the hardhat-wearing construction dude, the cowboy, and the others decked out in vintage 70s leather. Their tour listing had them playing a gig at a casino in Nova Gorica, Slovenia, yesterday, the divided city on the border with Italy. (No, I didn’t know about that gig.)

Maybe I just need some sleep, but this whole episode seemed a tad weird, more weird than most. Lost in the anonymity that only something as chaotic and aloof as a RyanAir flight could provide, was a band whose songs are known to hundreds of millions of people worldwide, whose ditties are enjoyed by three and four generations at a time at virtually any wedding party. And there we were, dozing together over the Alps. Not everyone can say, or at least would care to admit, that they slept with The Village People.

Life IS so much stranger than fiction. The dominatrix-in-training documentary clip I just watched on BBC 2, with some Village People music humming in the background, simply provided more proof to that.

Yes, I do need sleep.

Illuminating the Darkness
Carlos Jones:
Carrying Cleveland’s Reggae Torch for More Than Two Decades

[note: This is from a short-lived entertainment weekly I edited until the publisher suddenly ran out of money and began bouncing checks my way. 11/2001. Warning: 2073 wds.]

CLEVELAND — All music can be liberating.  But of all musical genres, it is perhaps the raw, organic pulsating beat of a reggae riff that adds a spiritual dimension, a redemptive quality to that emancipation that soothes and satisfies the soul as it feeds and invigorates the brain.  And, at the same time, involuntarily keeps your feet moving, your hips swaying, and lips smiling.

Think reggae and you envision the sounds of Jamaica and the Caribbean, those uplifting styles of riddims that are as often associated with a West Indian Island cruise as they are with the oppressive living conditions in the shantytowns of Kingston.  Thanks to the legendary work of Jamaica’s reggae prophet Bob Marley and others who followed, the style is now international, feeling comfortably at home as much in Soweto or Accra as it in Tokyo or London.  Yes, even Cleveland.

And for nearly two-and-a-half decades, first with I-Tal, then First Light, and now with the PLUS Band, vocalist and percussionist Carlos Jones has been at the forefront of the local reggae scene.  In many ways, Jones’ name is synonymous with Cleveland reggae, as much for his musical contributions as for his efforts to keep the reggae beat alive and well on the north coast. 

The Bob Marley Connection – “A natural mystic blowing through the air.”

His musical evolution began far from the Island beat.  As a youth in the mid-sixties, Jones lived as an “army brat” in Frankfurt, Germany, where he was first exposed to the Beatles.  “That music blew me away, just like it did many others,” he said.  When relocating to the Cleveland area in his early teens, interest in Motown, R&B and the rock sounds of the late sixties sparked enough interest to begin playing the drums, and much later, the guitar.  But there was still no real connection with the art of music for Jones until he stumbled upon Jamaica’s finest export.

“Reggae hit me in the mid-seventies,” he recalls, after his older brother turned him on to one of Marley’s early albums.  “It was one of the most amazing things I ever heard.”  As a percussionist, Jones was exploring a variety of international sounds and styles, from Latin America to Africa.  “And when I heard reggae, it was totally captivating, unlike anything I’d ever heard.” 

But there was more to the attraction than just the hypnotic drum and bass line.  “Getting past the music and into the message, that was something else again.  There was a political message, but something very spiritual as well.  And that sucked me in deeper and deeper.”

Jones was 21 in 1978, and had no real musical ambitions at the time.  He was working as a mechanic with Firestone, harboring dreams of becoming a racecar driver.  “But certain things came about,” he remembers vividly, to change his life’s direction.  “The music, and different things associated with the music, like the herb, gave me a heightened vision.  And reggae really clicked into that.” That direction changed for good on May 19th of that year, when Marley’s Kaya tour came to the Music Hall, his second and last Cleveland appearance, a performance that Jones describes as “totally life-changing.”

The atmosphere at the Music Hall, Jones recounts, was nearly indescribable.  “There was such a feeling there.  Wall-to-wall, corner-to-corner, everybody was just plugged into that same vibe, that electricity, that spirituality.  Smoke in the air… everybody’s moving… the music is hypnotic.  And there’s just this little guy on the stage just totally in control of it all.  Simply awesome.” 

Jones has been growing his dreadlocks ever since.

During his relatively short career and particularly since his death in 1981, Bob Marley has achieved an international stature nearly unparalleled by any contemporary historical figure.  Whether in a small, isolated village in El Salvador or Cote D’Ivoire, or in a major metropolis like Paris or New York, Bob Marley as icon can be found virtually everywhere. 

“It’s just a testament to his magnetism and mission,” says Jones, “because I really feel like he was put here on a mission.  It’s amazing to me how much he did, and the legacy he left.  The music that this guy recorded, 99 per cent of it is just amazing, awesome music and messages.  And it’s still very fresh today.  As cruel as it may sound, his passing boosted that even more.”

Putting it Into Practice – “I Want to Tell You Where Reggae Comes From.”

After the Marley concert, Jones immediately went in search of a musical outlet, and found it on a WMMS Coffee Break Concert performance by a relatively new local reggae act called I-Tal.  “When I found out that there was an actual reggae band in Cleveland, I was just tripped out.”  He tracked the band down, and didn’t relent until they took him on as a percussionist.

From a small handful of Cleveland-based reggae bands in the late seventies, I-Tal, with its true roots-reggae approach and philosophy, was clearly the most successful.  The band toured extensively throughout the Midwest until creative differences and ego clashes forced a split by the end of 1983.  But the experience is one that Jones will forever cherish.

“There was the free-flowing joy of the spontaneous groove.  That never-ending hypnotic thing that just took people… I’ve never felt that before,” Jones recalls.  It was the type of reaction and acceptance that all bands strive for.  That universal vibe.  “It was that musical vibe that was so strong, so intense, that you could just feel the whole room take off.  And everybody was there with you.  That’s what I’ve always lived for.  You don’t get that in everyday life.”

After I-Tal’s demise, Jones wasted no time in moving on.  On Marley’s birthday (Feb. 6) the following year, Jones wrote the anthemic Musical Uprising, officially giving birth to First Light, and launching a 13-year run for what was to become one of the most successful reggae bands in the Midwest. 

Initially very roots style-oriented, First Light later evolved to incorporate rock, jazz and R&B influences to their sound, while still remaining true to the reggae spirit.  “We were all American-born,” says Jones, “we all had our own musical influences. Even though we loved reggae, we weren’t Jamaicans playing reggae.”  First Light toured regularly throughout the Midwest, New England, the Atlantic Coast, and all points south, becoming a regular fixture on college campuses, mid-size concert venues, and outdoor festivals.  Musical Uprising and I Want to Tell You Where Reggae Comes From became popular sing-along hymns.  And the band’s hard work paid off financially as well.  “We were doing great,” Jones remembers, with a captivating smile.  “And we were having a great time.  I just wish I could have saved some of that money.”

While he insists that that “universal vibe” was just as strong an element for First Light, Jones says that the camaraderie established by the members of the band will be to him, its greatest legacy.  “It was a family that was created.  There was no deeper love -and no more bitter rival at the same time.  We had some nasty fights, but at the same time it heightened our awareness of our feelings for each other.”  The end of the road finally came in June of 1997, when the band called it quits.

In an effort to return to his preferred roots-style approach, Jones began working more closely with the Peace, Love & Unity Syndicate (PLUS), formed in 1993 as a Bob Marley tribute band.  “We went full circle –forward around to the roots again. That’s what I’ve wanted to recapture –that pure, raw joy, that feeling I felt right from the beginning.  I wanted to take the business out of it, and focus on the music.”

With PLUS, Jones returned to the drum as the foundation for the group.  The focus, says Jones, is on Nayabinghi, an often neglected aspect of Jamaican music that is the percussive framework and the ritualistic ceremonial drumming behind Jamaica’s Rastafarian philosophy.

“We went back to songs that convey spirituality,” says Jones. “I wouldn’t say that we’re so much political, but, in the songs that we do, we try to perpetuate truth.  So, if that’s in conflict with political beliefs or standards, then so be it.  We try to promote people seeing things for what they are.  I think that’s what Marley did.  He illuminated a lot of those dark corners.  Or a lot of those misconceptions that people were led to adhere to.”

PLUS is heading to the studio for its first recording session December 1st. “It’s going to go a long way to define our sound and sharpen us a working unit.  And I’m really looking forward to that, because everything up until now has been very spontaneous, very freeform.”

The Philosophy – “Everyone’s got to search and find their own path to the truth.”

“Technically, I can’t really say I’m a Rastafarian,” Jones explains, referring to the oftentimes misunderstood Jamaican religious group that is as synonymous with reggae as ganja and dreadlocks.  “Because to say that means you really have to adhere to a really strict set of rules in daily life.  It’s a cultural thing.  I’d have to say that I align myself with a lot of Rastafarian beliefs.  But true Rastas, who live it, breathe it, that’s something that comes from Jamaican life and culture.  All you can really do is try to investigate and find your own truth and reality inside of it.  And you can’t be closed minded.  Everyone’s got to search and find their own path to the truth.”

While Jones can’t entirely relate to that cultural connection, the spiritual link is there. “Where I come from, in myself, it’s more of an organic nature, which is why I get into the more rootsy kind of feel of reggae music.  A lot of the songs that I write may not even be reggae.  They may be coming from a more American folk or gospel or r&b kind of place.  That’s my background.  I just try to be as honest as I can about what I’m feeling inside and how I express myself.”

“I have a passion for music,” he continues.  “Music in general, but for some reason, reggae really resonated with me.  And I see a lot of ties between it and the music I grew up hearing, especially in the church, that very raw Baptist revival gospel music that we hear down south.  It had that same kind of resonance.  Even some of the rhythms are a lot a like.  It’s definitely a universal vibe.”

A month after the break up of First Light, Jones entered another union.  He and his wife Dori were married in July of 1997, and fittingly, decided to tie the knot on their first trip to Jamaica.

“It was a mind-expanding pilgrimage, to kind of touch base, to touch the heart of that place I’ve been feeling for so long, and to get a first hand look at where it comes from and what it’s about.” 

On their wedding day, they drove to Nine Mile, Marley’s birthplace.  “I sat in the yard where he would sit with Bunny (Wailer) and Peter (Tosh) and compose songs. I took my one little drum up there and played a little bit.  Some of the local guys came and sang with me.  ‘This is it,’ I thought.  ‘How much closer can I get?’  The sound of my drum was echoing across the same hills as the music did back then.”

All artists have a gospel to preach, and Jones’ is perhaps best conveyed through his recent song, Torchbearer, a homage to Marley.

“Each of us, that were touched by (Marley) in our lifetimes, we carry a part of that too.  Each of us in our own way —whether we’re musicians or not— we can carry that little bit of light, or truth, forward.  Whatever it was that it made us feel, and try to pass it on.  Marley was a torchbearer.  When he passed on, he passed the torch.  But not just to one person –to everyone within earshot.  To carry a little candle flame and help illuminate the darkness.”