INNOCENTS IN BABYLON PART 2

A Search For Jamaica With Bob Marley, 144,000 Rastafarians, Burning Spear, Marcus Garvey, Haile Selassie, Christopher Columbus, Michael Manley, Perry Henzell, Swank and Time Magazines, Island Records, Chris Blackwell, Lee Perry, King Tubby, I Roy, U Roy, CBS, Peter Tosh, Country Man, Jack Ruby, Canadian Tourists, Bachelor Father, Big Youth, Burt Bacharach, Max Romeo, Ras Michael, Harry J. and LESTER BANGS.

This is the conclusion of a two-part article on the music and lifestyle of Jamaica. Last month our reporter passed thru Third World customs, sampled ganja like a good scout, ran down Rastafarianism, served up a liberation proposal for record clerks of the world, conversed with white infidels, and interviewed Bob Marley. For the mystico-exotic climax of the trip, read on.

Thursday. I am in a cab with John Martyn, bombing through the streets of Kingston on the way to Strawberry Hill. John is; an English songwriter who is planning to record part of his next album in Jamaica, but right now we are on our way to a Burning Spear recording session where he is going to do some guitar overdubs. First, however, we have to drive up to Strawberry Hill to pick up the guitar at Chris Blackwell's hilltop estate. The road is long, narrow and whip-winding, with perilous curves and steep drops off the shoulder, but the country around it is beautiful,, lavish with brilliant green and yellow. It's a welcome respite, and the only time I will see anything close to still-existing primal Jamaica during my stay. On the way up Martyn points out to me the palatial estate of Blackwell's parents, who made millions of dollars in decades of colonial enterprise in Jamaica. On the way back down we meet, pedalling uphill on a rusty bicycle as if floating, a frienid of Martyn's named Country Man. Country Man is a Rasta with university education, gifted, articulate and imbued with enough of the unimpeachably mystical that even a cynic like Martyn (who beats your reporter) believes the accounts of him levitating on occasion. Country Man lives by swimming or rowing fair off the coast into the Caribbean, holding onto a rock among the Keys with one arm, and grabbing fish as they swim by. The best story about Country Man is that his wife complained once because he would go off on such expeditions for three days at a time leaving her. alone; she wanted, she said, a radio for cpmpany. So Country Man sold their house, used the money to buy her a radio, and built a new house the same day. ___

Jamaican TV is weird. Commercials for condoms and birth control pills run regularly. _

When we arrived at the Spear session we discover, naturally enough, that we are the first people to show up even though we are over an hour late. So we take a walk around the corner, a risky proposition for whites in downtown Kingston at any time of the day, and have a couple of drinks in a black bar where sullen youth are playing billiards. I feel only minor drafts. An old man comes up and asks me where I come from, and expresses a sentiment I would hear from a few other, mostly older Jamaicans during my stay: "Many people say bad things about Jamaica, that is violence, bad place to live. This is not true. You know, there's an old saying: believe only half of what you see —"

"And none of what you hear," I finished.

He nodded and smiled. "Right."

We go back to the session, which is taking place in Randy's studio, which naturally enough is right over Randy's record shop, which may be the best store in Jamaica and is the first place you should go if you have a shopping list — Randy stocks records by everybody, not just the output of his studio and star producer, Jack Ruby, who is himself a bit of a legend. Ruby, who has also worked as a hotel waiter, started producing two and a half years ago and his biggest success to date has been with Burning Spear, a vocal trio straight out of the hills whose U.S.-released album, Marcus Garvey, epitomizes the more purely African wing of reggae. There is something almost aboriginal about Burning Spear — Winston Rodney walks up to the mike and begins to sing a new song about living in the hills, Rupert Willington and Delroy Hines harmonizing behind him, and there is a haunting plaintiveness in his voice as he sings of his brother going to the river to get the water for his family. As he tells this seemingly simple story, the dozen or so black youths milling about in the control room, friends of the producer and band, laugh and comment to each other approvingly. The reason they are doing this is that many of them have probably experienced what Rodney is singing about—spending a whole day going back and forth to the nearest river, which maybe a distance of miles, with a bucket on your head, until the drum or barrel which is the family's only water supply is full. In the middle of the song Rodney sings "These are the sounds of the hills," and begins making bird calls and animal sounds. Martin Denny it isn't. Later Martyn, who has been warming up with some obviously overbusy Eric Clapton runs, will add a few spare, sustained-note and wah wah lines which fill out the track perfectly, especially when he plays an intentionally "wrong" note which in its strange offness somehow is exactly right for Burning Spear, whose sound always remains primal no matter how arranged.

Perhaps most fascinating is that all this goes on with seemingly little direction from producer Ruby. He watches Spear sing a while, then, in the middle of a take, leaves the control board to chat with the visitors and other musicians hanging around the studio, lounging later across the board to read a copy of Newsweek I'd brought; then, intermittently, he would unexpectedly snap up from reading or conversation, shout "Spear!," stop the take and bolt into the studio to tell them to bring this up, take that down, change the thing around till the sound is right and tight. All this is in such contrast to conditions in American studios, where not a pin can drop in the control room during a take and there is a red light outside the door barring visitors (who come and go freely in Randy's) when the tape is rolling, that it is mind-blowing. In the midst of such seeming casualness, people talking, joking and rolling endless spliffs everywhere, there is enormous interior discipline; Ruby, while reading Newsweek with seeming indifference, is listening intensely and in iron control all the way. I mentioned this to him, and he replied "Of course. I always know the sound I want, and I always get it." He also got two completed takes in one afternoon, which racks up pretty well against the output of any New York producer or studio, for all their comparative uptightness.

Towards the end of the session, the writer and photographer from Time arrive to interview Ruby, and later Martyn and I catch a ride back to the Sheraton with them. By now it is nine o'clock at night, not at all a safe time for whites, even in numbers, to be on the streets of Kingston. It is never safe for whites to go into Trenchtown. But now the Time photog is pointing at the myriad small, brightly lit black rum bars »• we pass, saying "C'mon, what the| fuck, man, I could use a beer, let's just go in." Martyn and I cower in the back, laughing but praying these guys will not stop. Meanwhile, Time's scribe is saying, "I've got to figure out a way to get into Trenchtown..." I tell him to forget it, and he replies that he's been thinking maybe around five in the morning would be a safe time.

We hear a sound like firecrackers exploding. Except they aren't; they're pistol shots, and we see people running out of a bar ahead of us.

We arrive back at the hotel in a driving rain, running past the poolside bar where under the roof Canadian tourists are singing "Granada" to organ music almost as loud as the speakers in the record stores.

I could use a little bit of cross-cultural . relaxation myself. I retire to my room, where I watch Hawaii Five-O and an old Universal Grade D musical about singing soldiers from the late-thirties, * on the TV I had to order when I first checked in. Jamaican TV is weird — there's only one TV network, JBC, which turns up on several channels with things like "An Evening With the Jay-Teens," an hour of young black girls doing folk dances from various cultures against a blank backdrop. (There was no announcer, they looked like a high school dance recital, and moved as stiffly as one through all the corny choreography except when it came time to do African dances, which they performed, of course, fantastically.) The first thing I saw when I turned on my TV on Tuesday morning was a woman demonstrating the use of a steam iron with stilted delivery: "This we use to wash and iron clothes, to keep ourselves clean and our people healthy..." Commercials for condoms and birth control pills also run regularly. Every afternoon the station goes off for several hours, leaving a test pattern and radio station playing the usual American pap. The rest of the programming is equally weird and scattered, featuring things like Bachelor Father, The Six Million Dollar Man (8:45 on Friday night — some shows come on at times like 6:02, right after headline news) and Sesame Street, which seems to be abigfavorite. I gotto watch, since there was nothing else, the singing-soldiers movies for two nights in a row, leading me into dark speculations about propaganda which were probably paranoid.

Friday. Aftefbreakfast I go for a walk around the blocks immediately adjacent to the hotel, and look into faces radiating.undisguised hatred. When I, stop a youth and ask him for directions to a local record store, he answers grudgingly in a patois I can't understand anyway. I have not stopped being uptight in the almost four days I have been here, and feel a strong yearning to get the hell out of this fucka ing place.

Back at the hotel, I run into Chris Blackwell by the pool, and he invites me to visit a couple of recording studios with him. Blackwell himself exudes an air at once sanguine and blase — he came from money, now he's making more money, and everything about him indicates that the good life agrees with him. Sandy hair, brilliant tan that reminded me of many I'd seen in Hollywood, the kind of person who looks so healthy it's almost obscene, too healthy. Or maybe it is merely endemic to record industry people, this air of bland hedonism. In any case, Blackwell always looks as if he is either on his way to or from a tennis court. Now we are in a limousine, riding out to the home studios of Lee Perry and King Tubby, who live in relatively affluent sections of Kingston; these guys are two of the biggest producers on the island. Their houses look like American working class homes circa 1954. At Tubby's I watch an engineer mastering a dub, and get to meet Vivian "Yabby" Jackson, leader (& producer) of a group called the Prophets, whose album, Conquering Lion, was recorded at Harry J.'s studio across town and mixed here; I have just bought a copy of the album at Micron records (not coincidentally, the store and label bear the same name) for five bucks, and show it to him. Then I lean over and shout in his ear over the booming dub beat: "How much money did you get for making this?"

2'Nothing yet," he says.

Out in Tubby's back yard, I meet U Roy, who is not I Roy, and whose album, Dread in a Babylon, has just been picked up by Virgin Records in the U.K. We shake hands, and I tell him how much I like his record. I do not tell him that I thought on the first cut, "Runaway Girl," his vocal sounded much like Mick Jagger circa Aftermath. It is interesting to note that on the album cover he looks like some ragged shaman, squatting on the ground almost hidden behind a giant cloud of ganja smoke, dreadlocks spearing out in every direction. Now, in person, he is dressed in a beret, red sweater and brown slacks. He puts a record on a turntable and the unmistakable, cannonade-in-a-cavern sound of dub thunders from two giant speakers set up in the dirt in Tubby's back yard. A little kid dances in front of one of the speakers, on which "Tubby" is spelled in Chinese-style lettering, pressing his ass against the speaker cloth, getting off on the vibrations, looking at me and laughing. The record playing consists of a deep rumble of Echoplexed drums, out of which, every so often an Echoplexed and perhaps reverbed male voice (which I will later discover belongs to Big Youth, one of the most venerable dub artists) hollers "What the world needs now, is love, sweet love..." I blink. Blackwell laughs: "I wonder what Burt Bacharach would think of this." I suggest that Blackwell bring him down here and show it to him. One thing seems certain — old Burt is not going to get any royalties on this one. Not that he needs them. I think for a moment that perhaps there is a certain democracy in the ripoffs permeating Jamaican music, dismiss that as a dangerous notion, and start babbling to Blackwell about "folk technology." We agree that dub is fascinating, but neither of us has any idea what to do with it. Which is perhaps as it should be. The young blacks sitting around smoking spliffs and listening to this record at the customary earsplitting volume ignore us, except for one who, later in the studio, introduces himself as Clinton Williams and beckons me outside, where he hands me a piece of paper, which looks like a blank invoice, upon which is printed "The Golden-Age Furnishing Co.," along with a phone number. Williams has written his name on one of . the lines, and this serves as his card. He tells me he is doing some independent producing in Kingston, has in fact produced five records, and has been a contender for the amateur lightweight boxing championship of Jamaica. I ask him how he finds time both to box and produce records, not bothering to mention that the number he has asked me to call him at seems to. be that of a * furniture store. He tells me that he wants to become a big-time producer, that the competition is fierce, and that established figures like Tubby and Scratch Perry pretty much have a monopoly on the scene, making it extremely difficult for a young cat to break in. Which sounds a lot like the States, actually. I press him on boxing vs. production; I mean, which is the sideline? He finally laughs. "Boxing." He then tells me that he wants to get out of Jamaica; he figures it's the only way he's got a chance of making it in the music business. I ask him if he can give me a percentage breakdown on record profits as split between artists, producers and record store owners. Sure, he says. "Usually, about 60% goes to the store, 30% to the producer, and 10% to the singer. But sometimes the producers and stores get 45% each."

It looks like a concentration camp, because that's what it is.

Back in the limousine and over to Lee Perry's. Perry is a big man in the island's music scene; he produced Bob Marley's early (and superior) sides, and his current star artist is Max Romeo, with "War in a Babylon" by Max Romeo and the Upsetters a hot item in both Jamaica and England. "The Upsetter" is one of Perry's aliases, and it is a measure of what stars producers are in Jamaica that the clerk in Aquarius had showed me an album called King Tubby Vs. The Upsetter, a kind of dueling control boards mock championship match soundtrack consisting e'ntirely of instrumental dub violence fit to shatter your eardrums. In Perry's studio, behind his house, he is a little potentate, mixing and playing back his tapes for a steady stream of admirers who stand in herb awe as he dances around his control board, changing levels and flicking switches or whirling dials with a flourish and a knowing smile of infinite humor. I can't say exactly how or why, but merely to meet and watch him work for a few minutes is to be irrevocably impressed, to know you are in the presence of genius. The decor of his studio is also instructive: blacklight posters and. big color pictures of Bruce Lee (who is a big hero on the island, because guns are banned and he fights with his fists — his movies pack 'em in, and you see his face everywhere) over walls apd ceiling fitted out with an interplay of bright red and green carpeting, which I found out later are, with gold, the colors in the flag of Ethiopia.

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 32.

But this guy was no Rasta, no. matter what he or anybody else says. This was an uptown cat. A hipster. With his hair slicked straight back, his greying beard, strutting around cocky and amused a diminutive lion in his kingdopn, he at length danced over to the corner where I was trying to be inconspicious, squeezed past me, grabbed a bottle and, straightening up, stopped a second to'look me, in the eyes close as the air, Smiling knowingly, and I smiled back. A few minutes later he walked up to me and said, "You wine man." It was not a question. "Sure," I said. He laughed. "I know wine man," and handed me a plastic cup and a bottle of something called Winecarnes, which is a locpl wine fortified with meat extracts that he seemingly drinks all day without ever losing his stride.

Now, dear reader, I know that this — one drunk recognizing another — is not the most profound or miraculous occurrence in the world, but here, in the middle of Herb Heaven, with every righteous Rasta and American hiplet in. sight belittling the rum culture like it was HI 1967 all over again, it qualified as outright mind-reading.

As we were leaving Perry's, walking down the driveway to the limousine, I heard a familiar sound and peeked for a moment inside the open door to the living room of his house. There, on the couch, his kids were watching a Road Runner cartoon on TV.

Back at the hotel, I made arrangements to meet Blackwell for dinner. By the poo) I met my colleague from Rolling Stone, and over drinks Blackwell asked him what angle he was going to approach his story from. "Oh, I dunno, man," he replied, with no idea who he was talking to, "I'm just gonna use the gonzo approach for this one pretty much. I intend to do my whole story from the poolside bar amd go out of the .hotel as little as possible. I mean, who gives a fuck, y'know? I'm just in this for the free drinks and to see if I can get laid." ;

Blackwell looked a little green around the eyeballs, but went on to ask Gonzo what he thought of reggae.

"I can't remember ever hearing any. The last album I really got into was The Allman Brothers Live At Fillmore East. Hell, man, I don't even have a record player!"

Blackwell's jaw dropped.

Later we are at dinner, Blackwell is still staring sourly at Gonzo, who is raving at Michael Butler, a receding face behind a grey Van Dyke who was the producer of Hair and is down here getting ready to put together a reggae Hair with the projected title of Babylon. Don Taylor, Marley's manager, a thin, lightskinned black man in a Toots and the Maytals cap, is telling me and the man from Melody Maker that many American blacks resent Jamaican immigrants because, he says, the latter tend to hustle harder and achieve more. He cites his mother, who he says worked at menial jobs but wound up owning her own apartment house, then: "It's just like Bob. He is very dedicated to his music, but when it comes to his money, he is not going to let anyone cheat him out of any portion of his equal share."

Right. No good businessman would. A phrase often used by Rastas and heard in many reggae songs is "I and I." It can mean me, you, we, etc., all balled up in one great big cosmic loving mulch; the old "I am he as you are me as you are we as we are all together" routine. But when push comes to shove...well, as John Martyn laughingly put it, "I and I means me so fuck you!" Which may not be exactly what Burning Spear meant when they sang "Give me what is mine," but what the hell — I mean, we're all 20th Century folk here, right?

Saturday. Gonzo and I spend the day getting drunk and smoking dope in his room, reading Rolling Stone and the Village Voice and listening to the reggae which, for some unaccountable reason, is coming out of the radio. . Wooly calls up to see how we're doing, and we tell him we've become Rastas and ask to borrow his cassette recorder so we can listen to Iggy tapes.

That night we are down at the bar when the photog from Time shows up and asks us if we want to go to some discos with him. Isay sure; Gonzo stays at the bar. This shutterbug and I then drive up to Beverly Hills, the rich folks' ghetto of Kingston, to pick up Clive, son of Randy, who is going to show us where the kids dance in this town. We pass blocks of beautiful houses with sculpted lawns, and the one where the owner of Randy's Records lives is no different from the rest. Clive tells us, in fact, that their next-door neighbor is the French Ambassador to Jamaica. A Comparison of this picture with Perry's and Tubby's homes seems to confirm Clinton Williams' figures, and I begin to wonder what Burning Spear's house looks like. As for the discos, they look just like American discos: the floor lights up, couples dance to American soul records. The photographer keeps saying he wants more roots, and Clive just shrugs, so I translate: "What we're looking for js one of these places with a deejay sitting up there playing dub records and hollering into the microphone while all the guys in the crowd stand around smoking herb and vibrating."

"Oh, those," says Clive. "Not so easy to find now. They never held those like, you know, regular thing. And every time they did, seem like, a gunman would show up and start firing. So now they are not allowed."

So much for discos. I suddenly notice that Clive has been taking swigs out of a half pint bottle of his own. "What's that?" I ask him.

"Roots." He hands it to me, emphasizing that it does not contain what the label Says: no rum culture here. I take a swig -1Hquid cannabis root extract, mixed with something else unmistakable, "There's wine in here!"

He smiles slightly. "Yes. A little." And takes the bottle back and pours himself another drink.

After the Time man and I take him home, we are driving down a street in a residential district when suddenly we hear a sound like firecrackers going off. Except they aren't firecrackers; they're pistol shots, and we see people running out of a bar ahead of us on the left, scattering in every direction. The Time guy slows down, and I begin to freak. "C'mon, man, let's get the: fuck out of here! C'mon, turn that comer!" He had almost stopped. I guess he hoped to get an exclusive shot of authentic Jamaican street-violence, which I guess is good journalistic instincts. Me, I was more interested in my own skin.

Then again, it may be that the streets of Kingston are, actually, comparatively safe for a honky next to those of Harlem or inner city Detroit. We stopped a few minutes later at a MacDonald's (no relation to the American chain) for some curried' goat, the steering wheel ©n my friend's car locked and he couldn't get it started for about 20 minutes. Nobody hassled us; all we got were some black people in a minibus next to us who asked what was wrong and tried to help us get going again. Then again, the bus did say "UNICEF" on the. driver's door.

Sunday. This is supposed to be a big day, because we have been told that there is going to be a Grounation, which I can only interpret from the rather vague explanations as some kind of Rasta raveup, which we have been invited to observe. It seems dubious to me that the Rastas would want a bunch of white folk from the United States and Britain sitting in the bleachers gawking at their annual convention, but I am anxious to check this out nevertheless. We are told that it will run from early in the evening until about 1 A.M., and I am already wondering how we can grapefully excuse ourselves around, say, 9:30 if it gets boring. I mean, I'm all for Lowell Thomas, but seven or eight straight hours of the gospel of Rastafari, which the guys in Marley's back yard had already proved every Rasta is ready to testify upon vehemently and at length with little or no provocation, did seem a bit much. Gonzo and I spend the afternoon drinking Bloody Marys by the pool; we have decided to start the booze wing of Rasta and spread the truths of that to the unenlightened, hoping for an eventual migration of all the enlightened back to the Seagram's distillery in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Wooly and photographer Peter Simon, brother of Carly ("I'm Peter Simon, Carly's brother," was how he shook hands with Gonzo) just keep Staring at us and shaking theii; heads as we tell them that the wisdom-inducing properties of Hops are at least equivalent to those of Herb. One thing is for sure: there will not be a bar at the Grounation.

Of course, in Jamaica not even Grounations can come off on time — it's my guess they might be sacreligeous if they did, so we wait well into the evening by the pool with Tom Hayes, an Island employee who, I have been told, is responsible for much of the label's business dealings with artists. So I ask him: "How much does a group like Burning Spear get from Island as an advance?"

"You should ask them that," he replied. "I don't think it would be ethical for me to tell you." He pointed at Gonzo. "That would be like me asking him how much you make; don't you see the unfairness of that?" Then, turning to Gonzo: "Ready for another Heineken's?" And gets up and splits for the bar to buy us a round of drinks.

Later, we're finally ready to go to the Grounation, and when the Rastas are ready for us it seems we've momentarily lost Gonzo , who is flying in the face of experience (namely his burn upon arrival) by trying again to cop dope, I mean herb from the guy in the hotel parking lot. When he gets in the car, I ask him, "What the fuck is the matter with you? We're going to a Grounation, a festival of Rastafarians, don't you realize there's going to more dope there than you could smoke in three lifetimes?"

"I know," he says, "but I gotta have some for later when we get back to the hotel and to get me through my flight back to New York tomorrow. I'm addicted to the shit!"

A few minutes later, Wooly and I somehow get onto the subject of Rasta sexuality. "The Rastas are not a particularly sexual people," he says, adding that "I've never seen one come on to a chick."

"Oh, really? What do you think would be the factors in that?" I had noticed that Jamaican men did seem to believe in keeping the woman home tending the babies — you seldom saw them in record shops, for instance — although it is well known that the Rasta men do a lot of cooking and will not let the women prepare food when they are menstruating. In fact, Jamaican men seem to have a whole fixation on the subject of the menstrual cycle — the most popular swear words are "bloodclot" and "bummaclot pussyclot," which are the worst things you can call somebody.

"I think it goes back," answers Wooly, "to the thing you see in lots of primitive societies: the belief that women are polluted, somehow identified with the forces of darkness, like witches..."

"I bet I know why they don'f care if they fuck or not," interjects Gonzo. "Because they're too stoned all the time! Hell, man, I've smoked so much dope before I didn't give a fuck about pussy."

Wooly begins to get defensive — Jesus, man, don't call the Rastas eunuchs — and brings up Marley's four wives and numerous children before dropping the subject like a set of barbells even though I want to pursue it further.

The seven of us — Wooly f Gonzo, Peter Simon, his collaborator Stephen Davis, Tom Hayes, me and a Rasta named Killy who is taking us — ride to the Grounation in two cars. I jump in the Volkswagen Killy is driving and begin asking him if he doesn't think this white media influx might dilute the purity of Rasta ritual. He has long thin dreadlocks running in streamers past his shoulders, and is wearing a T-shirt I had seen on Wooly and others this week that says "ROOTS" with picture of same on the front and commem6rates Burning Spear's recent gig at the Chela Bay hotel just outside Ocho Rios on the back. I have already been told by Wooly that Killy i$ not being paid by Island for services like this, so I wonder what his motivation must be. He gives me the standard Rasta sermon, adds that the Rastas want to spread their truths and rights to all the world and this is one way to do it, then gets into something about how "money is energy." Meanwhile, we have stopped off on a side street in a rundown neighborhood that is still middle-class by Kingston standards, where Killy cops some dope for Gonzo, who makes the mistake of not asking for it immediately.

Then we drive off the main boulevards into an area of fusty pothole streets winding around a lot of shacks in the classic mould — corrugated tin, clay, scrap wood and metal, cardboard, windows that cannot be closed and doors with ragged curtains for privacy , into the heart of Poverty Row. And this isn't even Trenchtown, is in fact far better — this is a section called Olympic Gardens, but it doesn't look like any garden. It looks like a slum, because that is what it is, and I doubt if sharecropper shacks in the American South a hundred years ago had much on the housing here. We finally stopped along one lane, got out of the cars and walked up to a small building out of which the least commercialized form of reggae was blasting. Black people were standing all around the outside, and the inside seemed to be jammed, but I peered over neighbors leaning against the wall into a window and saw a stage small enough to fit inside one end of a building about as big as the average middle class American child's bedroom. On the stage there was a table, and on the table a white cloth, burning candle, pot of red flowers, Bible and smaller, tattered book which I presumed was a hymnal. Forming a half circle around and behind the table were a group called Ras Michael and the Sons of Negus, who have two albums out in Jamaica: a Chinese-looking organist and drummer, a bassist in the corner by the back door, lead guitarist, primitive amps and in the middle Ras Michael, a tall thin man in wool cap and striped sweater, singing with ecclesiastical intensity into a microphone. In front of him was another half-circle of musicians sitting in chairs and on the edge of the stage, eight pairs of hands beating on congas and drums more primitive.In front of them about a half dozen rows of benches which seemed mainly to be filled with little children, though there were women and older people there too. Directly across from the window where I stood I saw, in another window with his back to the street, the mild stringy-bearded face of Peter Simon, bouncing slightly and smiling as if bedazzled. It looked like a good way to get a knife in the ribs.

In a few minutes a space was found for us inside and we were led around to the front of this seeming chapel, through a door and down to the very front, where Gonzo and I were seated amongst a bevy of little black kids who stared at us with a mixture of shyness, fear and laughter. I made a face at one staring at me and she dissolved in giggles. I was not so sure that the same thing would be a wise course of action for me to take, so whenever Gonzo said something funny to me I would stifle my laughter, which naturally had the effect of stifling laughter at the dinner table when you are a child — all those repressed chuckles just kept bubbling ferociously inside, burning to get out in howls while I kept translating them into stoned, beatific smiles as I swayed to the music. It was not that there was anything funny about the situation; I was merely nervous. Or rather, these people and this music were not funny —r we were funny, our presence here was funny, or was something else more easily accepted as funny, and by the time Gonzo got around.to screaming in my ear that "This is better than Thelonious Monk at the Five Spot! I see the light, Lester, I've got religion! And don't ever forget that we could lose our lives at any minute!" I just had to laugh out loud.

Luckily, it was swallowed by the music, which was incredible, or seemed so under the circumstances. Ras Michael sang songs like "None a Jah Jah Children No Cry," "In Zion," and "Glory Dawn," alternating cooking reggae with gospel chants as the drummers smoked spljff after spliff, some of them sitting there in total trance never removing the things from their mouths, sucking the smoke like air, cooking up an enormously complex rhythmic conversation which was pure Africa. Killy had sat down at one of the congas, lit up two spliffs and handed them to Gonzo and I, who shared them with Wooly and Peter Simon. I smoked and tried to lose myself in the rhythm, as Ras Michael sang of flying away home to Zion and Gonzo screamed in my ear "Right! Right! Fly away home tomorrow!" One particularly driving chantlike number (number?) which sounded like a basal link between African reggae roots and Elvin Jones caught the whole room up and in that moment alone, perhaps, we all were united, flying through the rhythm. The end of each song was signalled by Ras Michael, who would intone loudly into the mike "Jah Rastafari!" to which the little children, women and men present would shout back "Rastafari!" I remember particularly one tot behind me, screaming "Migh-ty God!" It was like a cross between a, Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting and a very local garage gig by a band which was itself the link between the tribal fires of prehistory, American black Revivalist Christianity, and rock 'nf roll electricity. The guitarist would get into riffs that occasionally suggested that he had been listening to . Keith Richard, Duane Allman, maybe even Jerry Garcia, but this was a religious service and nobody clapped. Except Peter Simon, who kept leaning over and cooing in my ear, "Isn't this great? I just love it, don't you?" He had begun dancing in a manner that I can only compare to Joan Baez doing the Funky Chicken at the Big Sur Folk Festival, and little kids in front of him, shifting out of awesomely intricate boogaloos of their own, began laughingly to imitate hirm He thought they were all getting together in One World brotherhood, laughed back and did what he was doing with more fervor; what he didn't see was that they were having a laugh over his performance with other children behind him. At the end of the set (set?) I saw him in the center aisle, palms together and head bowed in prayerful attitude. Meanwhile, the grass was wearing off, the bench was hard, and, as at many concerts, I was ready to go home before the music was over.

I don't mean to sound jaded. It had been intense, both musically and situationally; it was a capital-E experience, and, as Gonzo said, "Take a good look, Lester — this is as close as we're ever gonna get to Africa." But there was a pervasive irony to the Experience which could not be escaped. It was in seeing Peter Simon, after Ras Michael and the band had left, the room as the hand drummers and congregation kept shouting and chanting, mount the stage and stand there behind the table with the Bible and candle, smiling and clapping his hands as if leading the faithful.

And there was irony a few minutes later, as we were led out of the chapel into a space behind the house next door, where we were given herb soup ("As an offering," I was informed) and tokes off the chalice, a Ceremonial, elaborately carved pipe. Ras Michael stood outside; I shook hands with him and told him "I really dig your music, and I'm going to buy your album tomorrow." We both laughed, there may have been a moment of mutual recognition, and then he launched into the gospel of Rastafari, quoting extensively from the Bible and prophesying Armageddon. It was boring, and after a few minutes I edged politely away, after which it seemed each of our party took his turn at the same course, until Ras Michael got to Peter Simon, whose name he delighted in transposing into Simon Peter, laughing and shaking Simon's hand vigorously. (Upon this rock I will build my church in ...Martha's Vineyard?) We all laughed at this, and a few minutes later I saw Peter Simon inside the house where the Rastas stood smoking herb and testifying to Jah. I could see him, through the smoke, first in the main room, then later coming out of another room in the back. I assumed at the time that that was the john and he had to use it, later "realized that was ridiculous since it was almost certain that the only toilet anywhere around here was the ground. The rest of us stood around &nd just inside the door of the house; it was a while before I realized that behind me, in the darkness, all the Rasta women were sitting in chairs or hammocks along the fence, silently watching as their children hopped aroundthem and the men declaimed inside. The only woman I saw inside the house was one young brownskinned girl about 20, sitting in a chair in a corner with a spliff in her hand upon which she occasionally took another hit; she was beautiful, as yet unbrutalized at least to the eye, but as she stared vacantly into space all the herb in the world could not have been cosmetic for the utter desolation that, in her silence, in her stillness, was radiated by her very youth and beauty.

Older Rastas from the neighborhood came wandering up to the house, some of them ragged, arid I looked at them and then at Tom Hayes, who was wearing a pair of pants that probably cost $50, a Billy Preston T-shirt (I was in my Grand Funk) and a razor cut, and the irony turned to an absurdity so extreme it became a kind of obscenity. It was, at the very least, embarrassing, for me and for these people, and I seriously doubt if for all the talk of brotherhood of Rastafari there is anything beyond that embarrassment which they and I will ever be able to share. What I mean to say is I've been x>n lots of press junkets before, but this was the first one into% Darkest Africa. What I mean to say is that I and a whole bunch of other people were flown, all expenses paid, to Jamaica, so that we could look at these people, and go back and write stories which would help sell albums to white middle class American kids who think it's romantic to be black and dirtpoor and hungry and illiterate and sick with things you can't name because you've never been to a doctor and sit around all day smoking ganja and beating on bongo drums because you have no other options in life. I know, because I am one of those kids, caught in the contradiction — hell, man,, my current favorite group is Burning Spear. But I wouldn't want to organize a press party in that village they come from in those hills they sing about. And hot because I don't want to pollute the* "purity" of their culture with Babylon, either — because there is something intrinsically insulting about it.

At length we were able to leave. Gonzo had been edgily hunching aroundthe doorway of the house, prodding Wooly and Tom Hayes, who as an upright drinking Englishman was much more amenable, to "get the fuck back to the hotel before the bar closes, man!" We trooped out into the street, and sornfe of the Rastas followed us. A curious thing happened then: they had smoked only herb inside, but as soon as we hit the lane where, the cars were parked they started asking for cigarettes, which we of course, gave them. As Gonzo put it later: "I felt like we should have had Hersey Bars to distribute." They told us that in the middle of the band's performance (which was not in fact a Grounation at all but rather a religious concert for children — they would never let us come to the adults' affair) the police and soldiers had driven up to the place, looked in the door, and.then split. I told them that the same thing happened when a rock 'n' roll band tried to practice in my neighborhood, but somehow it didn't ring quite the same. (Kingston police, I have been told, are not averse to such practices as walking into a house unannounced and for no reason in the middle of a night, interrupt a couple while they are fucking, pull the man out of bed and haul him in for interrogation and other sports that can be easily imagined.) I looked up and saw, at the top of a pole on the corner, two strips of black, battered metal, upon which had been crudely written in white paint instructions to go to certain addresses in the neighborhood for the mending of clothes, or to buy fish. "Look," I said to Gonzo and Tom Hayes, "advertisements." The three of us stared up, just ■ stared, and said nothing.

The Rastas stood around or sat on the back bumper of Killy's Volks, polite and friendly conversation was made; they invited us to come back and see them some time. Right. Eventually, without any true goodbyes, there was kind of a mutual semi-embarrassed separation, as they went back inside and we prepared to get in our cars. It was at this point that we discovered one of our party was missing. Peter Simon was still in the house. Nobody seemed particularly inclined to go in vafter him, so we just sort of stood around until some of them brought him out, stoned and beaming and holding hands with them like a brother to the world. Killy then told us that he had to take some members of the band home in his car, and we would all have to ride back in Stephen Davis' Toyota, plus we could drive home Chinna, the lead guitarist. Killy also said that he needed gas, produced a hose, and siphoned an indeterminate quantity out of the Toyota and into the Volks. He left us with instructions on how to get out of this neighborhood, said that in any case we had Chinna to guide us, and drove off. Now we had to squeeze seven people into the Toyota — Gonzo, Hayes, Wooly and myself, three of whom are around six feet tall and in other respects large, into the back seat; in the front seat Stephen Davis driving, Peter Simon straddling the two front seats with his arm around the back of the seat where Chinna rode shotgun. No one spoke to Chinna; in fact, once out on a main road several of us began laughing like maniacs, and I still wonder what "he must have been thinking. But some sort of pressure was off, and also the only''way four of us could fit in the back seat was for one of Wooly's legs to hang out the window. Stephen Davis almost ran off the road the first time he saw a human foot bobbing up by his window. We drove for miles, followed Chinna's instructions until we arrived at what looked like a suburban 1950's American tract home, except that there were fields around it. It wasn't bad for Jamaica. As Chinna took his guitar through the front door, Gonzo cracked: "I'll bet hp's saying, 'Hi, honey, I'm home!"' We wondered if Ras Michael and the rest had left in Killy's Volks for equally "middle-class abodes, and Gonzo also revealed that Killy had burned him for the four dollars worth of dope he'd copped for him on the way to the Grounation. He had rolled part of it up into about four joints which he'd passed to us while the band was playing, but when Gohzo asked him for the rest of. it at the end he said that we (I and I, Ethiopians and ofays) had. smoked it all up. Proving, declared Gonzo, that the Rastas were not Righteous, after all.

Back at the hotel, Torn Hayes, Gonzo and I closed the bar. I had Courvoisier with Heineken chasers. Gonzo said, "Yes, tonight we have been where few white men have dared venture!" Hayes remarked that Peter Simon did not know how lucky he was to he alive.

Stephen Davis, Peter Simon, Wooly and I are driving to Harry J.'s studio. Harry (Johnson) is another prolific island (and Island) producer; Marley has recorded at his studio a lot, and in fact when we get there Wooly sees a car that looks like Marley's BMW and for some reason gets nervous. It seems implicit that if Bob is there visiting Harry J. for any reason, we will have to turn around and go back to the hotel, and it occurs to me that it's a wonder Marley keeps any perspective at all with everybody treating him like this. But it's not his car, after all; we go inside.

In the car all morning Wooly has been saying "Jah Rastafari" and singing Ras Michael's "None a Jah Jah Children No Cry"; the night before, as we stood beside the door*, I had asked him if Island was thinking Of signing Ras Michael, and he had said no, but that after what we had just seen it might be a good idea. Now he has offered to make me a copy (a dub!) of his tape of Ras Michael's performance, and I tell him I've gotta have a cassette, and that if he can't make one easily not to go through the hassle, because I feel that Ras Michael's show is one of those things where you just would have had to have been there, and I probably won't play it much, especially if it's on reel to reel . which I don't have equipment for. He insists, though: "Don't you want a tape to play for your friends and turn 'em on?"

It seems to me that the next logical step is home movies. Why didn't somebody give Peter Simon a Portapak?

Inside Harry J.'s studio, Wooly gives him the English edition, on the Island label, of his Jamaican hit with the Heptones, "Mama Say." Harry explodes. "What kinda crap is this? I produced this fucking record, and on this label it credits Danny Holloway. [An English producer ] All he did was mix it! This's a fuckingbumma-clot." Task him if this kind of thing happens often. "Never before with Chris Blackwell. Always I've trusted him." Something else occurs to me, very belatedly in fact, something so'basic I had missed it all through my stay on the island: I ask him if very many Jamaican artists have managers. He looks at me as if I were the most pathetic ignoramous alive. "Not many," he says.

When we get back to the hotel, who do we run into in the lobby but Chris Blackwell himself. He has been in England over the weekend, and is just returning. Wooly is very agitated about Harry's complaint, and tells Blackwell the story. Chris is not perturbed at all. "It's a very simple problem, really. Harry J. has a big ego and so does Danny Holloway." He smiles. "And between the two of them, the Heptones haven't got a chance."

Two hours later. I've checked out of the Sheraton, and am in a cab on my way to the airport. I ask the driver to go by way of the Gun Court, an island attraction I'd heard about and wanted to see before I ever got here, a legend that preceded my tourism. The Gun Court was set up by the Manley regime as a way of dealing with all the berserk pistoleros and violent political agitators. What it means is that anybody caught by the police with even a bullet, even a shell casing, or any type of explosives in * his possession is whisked before a tribunal which asks him why he has these illegal and dangerous items. If he doesn't have the right answer, he is thrown in the stockade behind the Gun Court for life. Sic. 99.9% of Jamaicans who appear before the Gun Court have the wrong answer. And now here it is: high fences with enormous rolls of barbed wire at the top, guard towers, a yard where you can see young blacks milling around. The front of the place painted a garish red. It looks like a concentration camp, and that's what it is. 1 ask the cab driver what he thinks of it.

"I don' mind Gun Court so much," he says. "Other things bother me much more. On this island there is little real freedom', and now Manley is dealing with the Cubans, and we fear Jamaica will become like Cuba, where there is no freedom. No freedom under Communism, and already I don't feel free here anymore." He pointed to a pile of giant rocks left at some roadside excavation site. "You see those rocks, that's how we feel in Jamaica, like being crushed down by all of those, underneath them. Manley is a dictator, of course. Under him today, the people are unhappy, and sometimes driving in the cab I don't say what I think if the rider asks me a question about politics, because 1 don't know who he is. He might go and tell the police, and I might not be here later. The RastaS are something else — they don' matter at all. I want to always live in Jamaica, but now I am riot so sure. All I want now is my freedom." ip§>