A heartfelt tribute to Caribbean roots music and those who keep it alive.
The pied piper of reggae reveals some, but not all, about his wild ride through the Jamaican music business.
When reggae producer Doctor Dread was at the height of his powers as the head of Real Authentic Sound Records, he hired a 16-year-old kid to work for him. That youngster became publisher Johnny Temple of Akashic Books, who has lured the legendary producer out of semiretirement to share his memories of the reggae scene. His real name is Gary Himelfarb, but it’s obvious he’s much more comfortable in the guise of Doctor Dread, a name he invented while hosting a reggae radio show in his native Washington, D.C. The book shows how Dread grew from being a starry-eyed kid in love with the sound of Bob Marley, becoming one of the most respected creators in what is a truly tightknit scene. Dread explains how his decision to form the RAS record label in 1979 came at a tragic but important moment in music history, as the death of Bob Marley in 1981 opened the floodgates to a market that now desperately wanted the earthy sounds of reggae. Dread also crafts lovingly solemn portraits of music legends like Philip “Fatis” Burrell, the many Marleys, Freddie McGregor and Bunny Wailer, who contributes the preface. There are also a few unexpected guest stars like Sinead O’Connor (who fares poorly in Dread’s version) and Bob Dylan, to whom Dread dedicated the classic tribute album "Is It Rolling Bob?" Following open heart surgery and a halfhearted return to a day job, Dread’s glory days are largely behind him, but he’s still got quite a story to tell: “Although the record industry is just a skeleton of its former self, music will always be created and heard, and that connection between the artist and fan will always remain.”
A heartfelt tribute to Caribbean roots music and those who keep it alive.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61775-290-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Akashic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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