I’ve always been fanatical about music, and that fanaticism
goes way back—all the way to when I was a toddler and my parents would send me off to slumberland to the Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road.” When I was 4, I
remember sitting at the breakfast table anxiously waiting for Glen Campbell’s
“Rhinestone Cowboy” to come galloping from single-speaker kitchen radio. A few
years later, I pestered a radio station’s request lines with pleas for the
Knack’s “My Sharona.” (That power-pop juggernaut had me so spellbound that I vividly recall a fourth-grade
me weeping in the “way-back” of the family station wagon because my dad swiftly
changed stations when the emphatic opening chords and funky bass line of “My Sharona” announced
themselves on the radio.) When I was 11, I slept almost every night with my Sears radio-cassette player beneath my pillow and recorded broadcasts in hopes that
when I woke the next morning, sore neck and all, the tape would contain “Back in Black” or “Crazy
Train” or “Stairway to Heaven” or even “Heaven and Hell.” Shall I go on? Sure, it’s
my blog….
As I grew older, my passion for music only intensified, and
the lengths to which I would go to hear or acquire new music only grew more
extreme—even ridiculous. Remember that in the ancient times of the mid to
late 1980s, when I was coming of age, discovering or getting your hands on music
could not be done instantaneously with a simple mouse click or tap on a phone screen. So
imagine the challenge a teen with no money or driver’s license faces when he’s bewitched by a song he heard on a scratchy-sounding radio broadcast
and there’s no easy way for him to get his hands on a recording without resorting to
some pretty comical measures. And in 1988, this is exactly what I had to do to
track down a fairly obscure album by a local reggae band called Boom Shaka. (Silly
name, I know.)
I became enamored of reggae music as a high school freshman,
and for the ensuing four years it served as my everyday soundtrack. I was
introduced to the genre by my friend Tim, a high school junior who drove the
neighborhood carpool to and from school, Pasadena to Los Angeles—a 36-mile
roundtrip in gridlock traffic; plenty of time for reggae's deep bass vibrations and
soulful melodies to assuage the anxieties and insecurities of my high school
existence. Tim had a sizable record and tape collection—and the taste,
knowledge, and zeal to go right along with it. I had no older brother, so for
the next two years until he graduated, I adopted Tim as mine. Every day, Tim’s
brown VW Rabbit rattled with rhythmic pulse of everything from
Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, and Steel Pulse to U-Roy, Dillinger, Ini
Kamoze, and Yellowman. While I suffered through high school to get the
education I needed, in Tim’s Rabbit I relished the musical instruction I sorely
wanted.
In Southern California, where I grew up, reggae music was more
accessible than it was in most places. Half the record stores had dedicated, albeit small, reggae sections; public/college radio stations aired weekly reggae music programs; and the midsize venues and amphitheaters in the L.A. area (I was too young for
clubs) regularly stocked their summer lineups with some the genre’s bigger
names and festivals (UB40, Steel Pulse, Burning Spear, Jimmy Cliff, Reggae Sunsplash, et al.). Tim
exposed me to all this. He also told me about KCRW’s Sunday afternoon reggae show, “The
Reggae Beat,” hosted by the legendary DJ Roger Steffans, and showed me copies of
a magazine by the same name, also founded by Steffans.
Best of all, Tim introduced me to Poo-Bah Records, a record
shop housed in a tired-looking dirt-brown bungalow in a
gentrification-neglected part of Pasadena. Since its opening in 1971, Poo-Bah’s
had been an institution, an indie record store that was close to everything and
near nothing at all, a hidden gem in plain sight (on the corner of Walnut and
Wilson), a dilapidated sanctuary for various species of music lover—hippies,
punks, jazz freaks, rockers, etc. In these waning days of the vinyl record,
Poo-Bah’s bins overflowed with just about everything, except the crap you’d hear
on mainstream pop radio. Which meant Poo-Bah also had a fat, thoughtfully
curated reggae section. Anytime I had some money, you would find me there thumbing through the stacks.
Following my freshman year of high school, I got my first
summer job, pushing papers (and removing staples) as a file clerk for $4.50 an
hour. At last, I had some disposable income, income I could happily dispose of toward amassing my own reggae record collection (records, by the way, I still own today). Every
Wednesday—pay day—my work buddy, Tony, would drive us to Poo-Bah during
lunch so that we could dutifully surrender our paychecks.
Eventually my mom tried to bar me from bringing new reggae albums into the
house (my theory at the time was that she was either frightened by the sight of dreadlocked Rastafarians adorning their covers or worried that I’d end up selling pot from my bedroom; really she just wanted me to save my money), so I
would stash my new LPs in the garage until it was safe to retrieve them later.
When that tactic ultimately failed, I switched to cassette tapes, which, while not as appealing as records, could
be easily concealed in my pants pocket.
More often than not, I was broke, but I could still satisfy
my jones for new reggae sounds by taping the local radio broadcasts. One show I
never missed was “Reggae Revolution,” which aired Tuesday nights (or Wednesday
mornings) at 1 a.m. I preferred this show to KCRW’s “Reggae Beat” or KPFK’s
Saturday afternoon show, “Sounds of Jamaica,” because it was on KROQ, and KROQ
was a commercial station. Meaning, its transmitter was a blowtorch to the
public/school stations’ matchsticks—meaning, I didn’t have to keep messing with
the antenna for static-free reception. I also favored “Reggae Revolution”
because I had a connection, albeit a tenuous one, to the host, having met him
when he DJed my friend Tim’s high school graduation party (Pato Banton was also
there). “Reggae Revolution,” whose name I would later crib for my own college
radio reggae show at Gonzaga University, was an hour-long program that featured
a mix of classic roots reggae, the latest dancehall sounds, as well as tunes
from the area’s local talents.
As you might imagine, one in the morning is a long time to
stay awake for the opportunity hear a dozen or so songs. I was not a night owl, so to keep
from dozing off, I’d swallow a handful of No-Doz, which would wreck my stomach
well into the next day and obliterate all chances of getting the rest
I might have gotten between the show’s conclusion and my alarm clock’s rude
intrusion four hours later.
So there I’d be, just like the 4-year-old me, listening to “Reggae
Revolution” in the dark of night, nervously anticipating the hour’s 12 songs as
the rest of the house lay silent with sleep. If just one song reached through
my crappy headphones and rattled my eardrums with its sublime frequencies and
fat-bottom bass, it would all be worth it. Sometimes that song would never come.
You’d hear the requisite Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, ’80s production Steel
Pulse, crossover hits from Pato Banton and Aswad, a dancehall track or two, and
some American-made crap with phony Jamaican accents. But sometimes Roberto
would spin a song so incredible it would stir me from my groggy state and
trigger a welcome jolt of adrenaline. Sometimes its origins would not be from
Jamaica, or Birmingham, England (another reggae stronghold). Sometimes it would come from a local singer or
band. At the time, Babylon Warriors and Swelele ranked among my favorites.
Then one September night in 1988, along came a rockers-style
song called “Wicked Man” by an L.A. band dubbed Boom Shaka, whose singer bore a
distinctive baritone both biting and smoky-smooth, somewhat reminiscent of Gregory Isaacs.
Who the hell was this? I wondered, a surge of caffeinated excitement coursing through my body. His was a voice that cut through the din atop a vibrant laid-back sound
unmoored to the lyrical clichés of genre (i.e., obligatory references to ganja, generic complaints about Babylon/“the system,” love for Jah). Or maybe it was, but to my naïve ears Boom
Shaka sounded authentic, unique. So much so that I was already mentally filing
their debut LP, Creation, between my
Black Uhuru and Burning Spear records. Now if I could only get my hands on the actual record.
Eager to hear the song again, I rewound the tape as soon as the broadcast concluded. “Wicked Man” still captivated me. Again I rewound the
tape. A few hours later as I lay on my bed in the jittery netherworld of No-Doz
semi-consciousness, my feelings for the song remained undiminished. Armed with
the knowledge that the band’s album had just been released, I had to get it—and
fast. That same day, preferably. And I knew exactly where I could find it.
This is where my music obsession takes an even tighter turn
toward the ridiculous.
It was the middle of September, which made it cross-country (running)
season. Which meant practice every day after school—long, punishing runs in the late-summer Southern California heat and smog. Coming on the heels of an all-nighter, that afternoon's practice would be its own special hell. But, as luck would have it, it would be a city run from my school’s L.A. campus west along Venice Boulevard.
And up that road a few miles away sat Ashantites, a tiny record store that dealt
exclusively in reggae music. If any shop in L.A. had Boom Shaka’s Creation, it was this one.
Getting to my destination wouldn't be easy. Besides exhaustion, I was
nursing a painful abdominal muscle pull. Also, we runners weren’t allowed to deviate
from the route to, say, take a shortcut … much less shop for records. But I was
determined to get my record and would use my ailing physical condition to
unhitch myself from the pack: I’d let my fellow runners drop me so that by the time we were
a few miles in I could duck into Ashantites undetected. After, LP securely in
my possession, I’d link back up with the team a couple blocks north as they
made their eastbound return along Pico—albeit keeping a safe distance behind so
that I wouldn’t be seen schlepping a record as I ran.
My plan worked. Hot, hurting, and gasping for breath, I stammered
up to Ashantites’ storefront and hustled inside—lest I be spotted by any
stragglers who may have gotten a late start or by my coaches trailing behind in
a van (which they did periodically to safeguard us from the “mean streets” of
Los Angeles). Inside, before I could be soothed by the air conditioning and
perfume of incense, I made a beeline for the counter, behind which the owner, a
diminutive woman whom I would later befriend, sat reading. “Boom Shaka. Album.
Creation,” was all I could muster. She pointed over my left shoulder to the
spot on the wall where it stood prominently displayed on a shelf along with the
other new releases. I grabbed it, handed her a sweat-dampened wad of cash, apologized, and then hurried out, prize in hand.
The whole transaction took less than a minute.
Outside, I
cut up a side street and stood for a few minutes, watching for my returning teammates to intersect a block up as they raced back along Pico. When runners finally
started crossing, they were no longer a pack, but a stream of smaller groups and lone suffering souls who had been thinned out by the withering pace and heat. After about five minutes, I started my
limping, lopsided run back to campus. Unpleasant as it was to run with an aching side and a 12-by-12-inch cellophane square of hot sweat beneath my arm, I was stoked. I had my record.
When I got home that evening, I tore off the cellophane, pulled the black shellac from its sleeve and dropped it onto the turntable of my cheap Emerson stereo. There Creation remained, in
heavy rotation, for the weeks that followed.
Today, I’m hardly as obsessive about acquiring new music, although
I do hit up the same Goodwill store a couple times a week in search of
discarded treasure. I still own that Boom Shaka album, as well as the second
version issued soon after the original with extra tracks. But until recently, I
hadn’t listened to the album since spinning it on my college radio show more than 20 years ago. While I was pleasantly surprised by the undeniable catchiness of its songs—chief among them, the aforementioned
“Wicked Man,” “Never Be Alone,” and the title track—I was disappointed to discover how dated and overproduced it sounded—which was characteristic of 1980s reggae. That’s not to say
the record doesn’t hold up; it just doesn’t hold the same appeal. But how could it? My
tastes have changed, my ears have changed, I
have changed. Still, I must admit that I was disappointed: I guess I was
naïve to think that listening to Creation
all these years later would rekindle some of that magic I felt all those years
ago, lying in bed, when I heard Boom Shaka for the first time.
Note: Events detailed in this post are as I
remember them; I make no claim to historical accuracy. But it's all true.
