Latest / Corie Sheppard Podcast / His Father Wanted a Doctor. He Chose Music | Carl “Beaver” Henderson

Transcript

His Father Wanted a Doctor. He Chose Music | Carl “Beaver” Henderson · Corie Sheppard Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Trinidad is my bathroom.
0:02
SPEAKER_01: The rest of the wood is my speech.
0:03
SPEAKER_01: I could live anywhere in the wood I could choose.
0:06
SPEAKER_01: But Trinidad has the kind of fruit of treat of speech.
0:09
SPEAKER_01: And if I treat anywhere else is different.
0:11
SPEAKER_01: And I pictured myself 40-50 years ahead.
0:16
SPEAKER_01: I would have been a successful doctor.
0:18
SPEAKER_01: But I would have been the most unhappy doctor.
0:21
SPEAKER_01: One day management.
0:25
SPEAKER_01: Oh, by the way, you're producing a new artist tomorrow.
0:27
SPEAKER_01: Festival I never produced before.
0:29
SPEAKER_01: You say, no, we don't worry about you.
0:31
SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
0:31
SPEAKER_01: The artist was Denise Plummer.
0:33
SPEAKER_01: TriniBad is the biggest growing genre in the Caribbean right now, bro.
0:36
SPEAKER_01: Why do you think Trinybad came about?
0:38
SPEAKER_01: Trinibad came about because every other door was closed.
0:41
SPEAKER_01: These three Grammy winners, I started the careers.
0:44
SPEAKER_01: You can't produce them because they have everything inside there ready.
0:49
SPEAKER_01: Shadow and Shorty.
0:50
SPEAKER_01: Everybody was wringing Jamaica off the hook to find Malinasha.
0:53
SPEAKER_01: Of course it's not local reggae points.
0:55
SPEAKER_01: It comes from somewhere.
0:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
0:57
SPEAKER_01: And Jaron and myself sat on the laugh for three months watching the country trying to find Malinasha in Jamaica.
1:03
SPEAKER_01: Remove the million dollar prize and remove the rubric.
1:07
SPEAKER_01: You will start to see the creativity we have in this country.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: You are now flying up and story.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be technically.
1:29
Corie: Hi, before we get started, we wanted to take a moment to ask you to support the channel for free by liking, sharing, and subscribing.
1:37
Corie: Those are the three things that we realize you're not doing as much as you all say you're enjoying the conversation.
1:42
Corie: So please, we appreciate your support.
1:44
Corie: Let's get into today's conversation.
1:45
Corie: Welcome to the Ken Corey Shepherd Podcast.
1:48
Corie: Welcome back to everybody who's been listening.
1:50
Corie: Thank you for everybody who's tuning in.
1:52
Corie: Today we have with us, I don't know what to say, like producer, pioneer, innovator, friend of Ken Kobe.
1:58
Corie: Friend of Ken Kobe.
1:59
Corie: I've been busting around all day.
2:01
Corie: We usually record at one time in a whole different time zone and time block.
2:05
Corie: But I want to welcome to the show, Mr.
2:06
Corie: Carl Beaver Henderson.
2:08
SPEAKER_01: My brother.
2:09
SPEAKER_01: Good to see you.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: It's good to be back with family, actually.
2:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:12
Corie: Same here, same here, same here.
2:14
SPEAKER_01: Because Ken has always been family.
2:15
Corie: Really?
2:16
Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:16
Corie: I'd like to say two nice things about him too, really.
2:18
Corie: You know, that's your problem, not mine.
2:20
Corie: He was here for episode.
2:22
Corie: Maybe we should get daddy to come here and talk with his one of those.
2:24
Corie: Because if the if you put these fellas in a room here, I got an idea, right?
2:28
Corie: And I wanted to participate before we jump in.
2:30
Corie: I uh you see how we did that.
2:32
Corie: Last time I saw you was at this top 100 list with Scotch.
2:35
Corie: Right, very happy, right?
2:36
Corie: With uh yeah, 101.
2:37
Corie: And um, I was appreciating your input.
2:40
Corie: You uh I think it was no mice wasn't on that one, Nigel Campbell was Nigel, yeah.
2:45
Corie: Yeah, and and just the perspective that you gave.
2:48
Corie: I I saw how the room gets silent when you started to talk about anything.
2:51
Corie: So it's it's important for you to be there, I feel.
2:54
SPEAKER_01: Is there's a difference between talking about something and talking about an experience?
3:00
Corie: Well, yes, and that showed that showed, that showed.
3:02
Corie: Yeah, you're you're talking about being in your rooms, being on your road, seeing the thing, right?
3:06
Corie: So the idea I had was I feel like if we need to do something like that for Calypso, where it's not just the top songs, which we could do, we could do a top 100.
3:14
Corie: I know people have attempted it before, but I'm particularly interested in lines in songs.
3:19
Corie: Like I had Crocro, it's a little chaotic right now.
3:22
Corie: Crocro episode now come out, but Crocero has a line in his song where you say, Um, I cock my ears and I turn my macro noborn.
3:28
Corie: I find it's one of the greatest lines I ever hear in a song, you know.
3:30
Corie: So I wanted to get people like you to come out and talk about specific lines and specific songs that whether you work on or not, or it's a good one.
3:37
Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
3:39
SPEAKER_01: The craft, the craft in those days was is a whole different game.
3:42
SPEAKER_01: Oh, you see it, you see it as a big difference.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: Let me just break the routine a little bit.
3:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, totally.
3:47
SPEAKER_01: And I haven't because I was looking for some other music yesterday and I stumbled on a song I forgot existed.
3:52
SPEAKER_01: Right.
3:53
SPEAKER_01: Penguin had a song, right?
3:55
SPEAKER_01: Now, remember Temptations had a song called Wish It Would Rain because the guy got brokenhearted, so to hide his tears and broken heart.
4:04
SPEAKER_01: Penguin had a song like that.
4:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
4:06
SPEAKER_01: A Calypso.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: Who had that slipper doing under my bed?
4:09
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, bad, bad, bad, bad song.
4:10
Corie: But is it basically the same story?
4:12
Corie: Bad, bad song.
4:13
Corie: And them days it had no sunno to help you with lyrics and um arrangements and them kind of things.
4:17
SPEAKER_01: Songwriting is a craft, and they they took that same songwriting craft into Calypso.
4:22
Corie: Yeah, and it's an important discussion to have because this book, I see you walk with a book here, Progress by Wins for Divine.
4:28
Corie: David, are you supposed to hold it?
4:29
Corie: Winston Devine.
4:29
Corie: Winston Devine's I would say in Divine.
4:31
Corie: And um, just yesterday I was recording and playing some of his songs.
4:35
Corie: And I've seen your name coming up in credits.
4:37
Corie: Like, so when I when I tell some producers who in Soko, you can't make that top 100 lists without some of the producers.
4:42
Corie: I have a that's uh suspicion that's well in a progress.
4:45
Corie: Yes.
4:46
Corie: So I have a suspicion that if anybody comes up with that top 10 list of calypsos they ever heard, you have a few well inside of a couple.
4:52
Corie: Yeah.
4:53
Corie: A couple, a couple, a couple.
4:55
Corie: So I saw your work with the book.
4:57
Corie: The book is significance to you in terms of this book and it's publisher?
5:01
Corie: Oh, I appreciate that.
5:02
Corie: I appreciate that.
5:03
Corie: For people who don't know, it's a book that it has all the lyrics of, I think it's all the songs he ever wrote.
5:08
Corie: It was prolific Calypso writer.
5:12
SPEAKER_01: Um and, you know, we have a thing in Trinidad that our greats, we first of all, you don't recognize them.
5:22
SPEAKER_01: And then when we talk about them, we just talk about them in passing, adjust a name.
5:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:27
SPEAKER_01: And there's a book I'm supporting and helping as much as I can to market it because this is so much a part of our collective history as a country, and this is one of our greatest writers.
5:38
Corie: Yeah, sure.
5:39
Corie: And I wonder why you know be insulting like the English literature or Trinidadian literature or whatever we have in school these days.
5:45
SPEAKER_01: Put this way, I'm not I'm not worried because I know this book.
5:50
SPEAKER_01: All right, hold on to this book.
5:51
SPEAKER_01: In 10 years, you will see the value of this book.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: Okay, good.
5:54
SPEAKER_01: I will.
5:54
SPEAKER_01: I will, I will.
5:55
SPEAKER_01: It's something that I feel is a real, real, real important work.
5:57
SPEAKER_01: And do not convince anybody convince you to borrow it.
6:00
Corie: Yeah, it's not a good thing.
6:00
Corie: It's gonna be that valuable.
6:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's gonna be that valuable.
6:02
Corie: I with you.
6:03
SPEAKER_01: What was your book?
6:04
SPEAKER_01: Like you plan to do something like this, like to document this.
6:06
SPEAKER_01: People talking to me on that, yes.
6:08
Corie: Okay, good.
6:09
Corie: But I uh for my story, I just need the right person to do it.
6:12
Corie: Yeah, I would imagine, I would imagine.
6:13
Corie: Because your book will be extremely valuable as well.
6:16
Corie: Because I have a brother-in-law, I don't talk to about him.
6:18
Corie: That is my father.
6:19
Corie: What would he call him?
6:20
Corie: Son-in-law.
6:20
Corie: Let me keep daddy in the middle, is it episode as much as possible.
6:24
Corie: A fellow by the name of James Cash.
6:26
Corie: And his favorite song of all time is Dingole.
6:28
Corie: I need to tell him that this is the man, you are the man who would have produced and did the work on that product.
6:33
SPEAKER_01: But I didn't actually produce that track.
6:35
SPEAKER_01: That track actually was done by a good little church boy called Andrew Ford.
6:39
SPEAKER_01: Really?
6:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
6:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, so Dingole was actually produced the year before the album, the rest of the album.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: See, it's because the song was finished so late.
6:49
SPEAKER_01: They launched, they launched this song Carnival Friday.
6:52
SPEAKER_01: And when they when they realized upstairs Amaral Studios realized this song was so powerful, you say, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold back, hold back.
7:00
Corie: They started getting feedback one time out as soon as they release it.
7:02
Corie: Yeah, yeah.
7:03
Corie: From by the second verse.
7:05
Corie: Yeah.
7:05
Corie: Yeah.
7:05
Corie: In studio mean you realize how powerful it is.
7:08
SPEAKER_01: Before you know, they were launching it upstairs in the conference room, like a media launch.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: And after that, they just held it back.
7:15
Corie: Yeah.
7:17
Corie: I can imagine.
7:18
Corie: And then it was one of those albums that stood out for shadow.
7:20
Corie: I know you a lot of albums.
7:21
Corie: It's one of Amara's best products ever.
7:24
Corie: Yeah.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: Like I did the rest of it.
7:25
SPEAKER_01: Poverty is hell, pack pack, and all that kind of stuff.
7:28
Corie: Yeah, Poverty is hell is one I remember.
7:30
Corie: This is 90s now.
7:31
Corie: How about it?
7:32
Corie: Yeah, 91, I think it was.
7:34
Corie: Yeah, that's another thing.
7:35
Corie: When I listen to your productions or the music that you influence, it feels like you're testing genres a lot of times, if I could put it like that.
7:43
Corie: Because Poverty is hell, I was in school at the time.
7:46
Corie: And it was a time where I don't know that Calypso was very popular when you're outside the line.
7:51
Corie: I remember being on Curiosity Grounds for the first time and hearing Poverty is hell and thinking, all right, well, what's this?
7:55
Corie: You know, you know Shadow, Shadow is already Shadow.
7:57
Corie: But it's like, what's this?
7:58
Corie: And a haunting bass line and a story you can't really let go.
8:02
SPEAKER_01: So what's like working you're deliberately trying to No, well, actually, Shadow is the artist I worked the longest with.
8:08
SPEAKER_01: We worked together for 30 years.
8:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: Um, and the first time I worked with him was actually he did something out of the box at the time, was when remember he had a song I Believe in the Stars, a song called My Belief.
8:23
SPEAKER_01: And Arthur Dikoto had done that for Carnival.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: But like it seems to be one of his favorite songs.
8:29
SPEAKER_01: Shadow.
8:30
SPEAKER_01: And he decided for quote unquote summer release to do it over.
8:35
SPEAKER_01: And I end up playing keyboards on it.
8:38
SPEAKER_01: Right.
8:38
SPEAKER_01: And while I explained my keyboard part, I stop in the middle of the intertake.
8:42
SPEAKER_01: I say, Eric, hold up, I want to check this off.
8:44
SPEAKER_01: Shadow a wrong code here.
8:46
SPEAKER_01: You say, Boy, they know wrong code in my music.
8:51
SPEAKER_01: So I go on again.
8:53
SPEAKER_01: I stop, I say, but shadows are wrong code here.
8:56
SPEAKER_01: You say, boy, they had no wrong code in my music.
8:59
SPEAKER_01: I know my music.
9:00
SPEAKER_01: So now at that point in time, I was 20-something years old.
9:03
SPEAKER_01: So you know, at that age, you're pooky, fresh, out of place, disrespectful.
9:08
unknown: Right?
9:09
Corie: I thought I was going in the next direction.
9:11
SPEAKER_01: No, man.
9:13
SPEAKER_01: You have to understand, remember?
9:14
SPEAKER_01: All right, so at that point, I was the youngest, I was the the hot cock on the block.
9:19
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
9:20
SPEAKER_01: As a keyboard young musician, be finding man.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: So I have attitude.
9:24
SPEAKER_01: So, but then I remember my mother in the back of my head.
9:28
SPEAKER_01: Respect your elders.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: I humble myself.
9:32
SPEAKER_01: So I played the wrong chord.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: I just let it be.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: But I stuck around for the session.
9:38
SPEAKER_01: And the next person to go back in the room was a shadow to put on his guitar.
9:44
SPEAKER_01: By the time he finished putting on his guitar, my wrong chord was part of the complete chord.
9:49
SPEAKER_01: His guitar was playing the rest of the chord.
9:52
SPEAKER_01: And the two instruments became the right chord.
9:55
SPEAKER_01: I understand.
9:56
SPEAKER_01: I understand.
9:56
SPEAKER_01: After that, I gave the man respect.
9:59
Corie: And since then, we were like, mm-hmm.
10:01
Corie: You know.
10:02
Corie: I hear many people say that.
10:03
Corie: They say when you come into a studio, you don't have what you need, you tell them basically what the instruments are to play.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: There are two artists I quote unquote produce, but I didn't really produce them.
10:12
SPEAKER_01: Right.
10:13
SPEAKER_01: Because you can't produce them because they have everything inside there ready.
10:17
SPEAKER_01: It's Shadow and Shorty.
10:19
SPEAKER_01: Oh, so you're a single Shorty.
10:22
SPEAKER_01: Um did the um shanty album.
10:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, so like um the Ohm Shanty album and that one was called Clandeline and stuff like that.
10:35
SPEAKER_01: Right.
10:36
SPEAKER_01: Abby Blackman's full song, um, A Young and a Moving On.
10:40
SPEAKER_01: And actually, that album, the Ohm Shanty, that was my studio band called TNT Rainbow.
10:46
Corie: Okay.
10:47
SPEAKER_01: And TNT Rainbow was my studio band.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: Once it left the studio, it was Roy Cape All Stars.
10:53
SPEAKER_01: Oh, serious.
10:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
10:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
10:57
SPEAKER_01: Interested.
10:58
SPEAKER_01: So there's a whole interweb, interweave.
11:00
Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
11:01
Corie: So is a youth man around then too?
11:03
SPEAKER_01: I was fresh and out of yeah, it's interesting to hear that.
11:08
Corie: Like somebody was talking about that with one of the bands in um, I think it was Pelamose here talking about the band in Kate Studio and trying to get in there to try to record some of his early days playing and that kind of thing.
11:18
Corie: You're rigid.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: No, but the the reason I I guess too that I was kind of a little arrogant at the time.
11:24
SPEAKER_01: Youthful arrogance, but you know, it's as a youth, you're pushing to buff for new boundaries.
11:28
SPEAKER_01: Right.
11:29
SPEAKER_01: Is because the industry, there were two main studios.
11:32
SPEAKER_01: There were a couple other smaller ones, but two main studios was KH down C Lot and SEMP studios on Makarap Road.
11:39
SPEAKER_01: I was the producer at SEMP.
11:41
SPEAKER_01: The rest of the guns were down in Cage.
11:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:44
SPEAKER_01: Right?
11:44
SPEAKER_01: And then it used to be a problem at KH because I was on competition, obviously.
11:51
SPEAKER_01: So Robin Imamsha was in Cage.
11:54
SPEAKER_01: But Robin almost didn't want anybody else to play keyboards on his productions.
11:59
SPEAKER_01: But policy, I couldn't go down there.
12:01
SPEAKER_01: Oh, he wanted nobody else but you to play.
12:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:04
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
12:04
SPEAKER_01: So, but management obviously didn't want the competition in the studio.
12:08
SPEAKER_01: Of course.
12:08
SPEAKER_01: So I had to go in after hours on weekends.
12:11
SPEAKER_01: Or really is the stuff.
12:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, man.
12:13
SPEAKER_01: I couldn't be going down during the day in my competitive competitor studio.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: You know.
12:17
Corie: So those days when you're doing, because that's competitive, people talk about that era.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so like when Robin's biggest hit was La La La T T T Sweet Soker song.
12:26
SPEAKER_01: Right, I mean, and remember we came from our own band.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: Right.
12:28
Corie: So for me to play that, I had to go out to hours, you know.
12:33
Corie: Yeah, get on there.
12:34
Corie: So, in terms of the competition at that time between studios, because now you're in a studio, you're emailing a songtime and you or you do Aliblas or whatever they call it now, every every DJ in the country have your song, or every DJ in the world if you want, really.
12:47
Corie: What's the process then when you doing records?
12:50
Corie: Because your rate of production was high.
12:52
Corie: Y'all produced music every week.
12:54
Corie: We used to have no, we had a hit every week.
12:56
Corie: A hit every week.
12:57
Corie: I hit every week.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: Both studios.
12:59
SPEAKER_01: Oh, multiple.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: Because remember, it's only me, me and Sam.
13:03
SPEAKER_01: But in KH was more than that.
13:04
SPEAKER_01: Because in KH was Clive Bradley, Bootman, Robin E.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: Mamsha, um, Pelum Goddard, um, who else?
13:13
SPEAKER_01: A Dikoto, Ed Watson.
13:14
SPEAKER_01: Right.
13:15
SPEAKER_01: You know what the guns were down there.
13:16
SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
13:16
SPEAKER_01: So it was the guns against me.
13:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:20
SPEAKER_01: Right?
13:21
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, no, the only producer there, just a smaller studio.
13:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, all right.
13:25
SPEAKER_01: Because they came afterwards, and it was the studio was SEM Studios, um, Stan, Shaman, Clive, um, David Beresford.
13:35
SPEAKER_01: Right.
13:35
SPEAKER_01: And actually, that studio started with the help of Kat Stevens.
13:39
SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, they were good friends with Kat Stevens in London.
13:41
SPEAKER_01: Anyway.
13:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, so they basically started as a small private enterprise.
13:46
SPEAKER_01: Right.
13:47
SPEAKER_01: And then it just took off.
13:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:50
SPEAKER_01: They called me in one day.
13:52
SPEAKER_01: Um, or it was turned out to be the first thing I did for them was Gene Lawrence's album.
13:57
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think the whole country knows it because during the last coup attempt, it was one of these songs that played now.
14:03
SPEAKER_01: Kouhiku.
14:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:05
SPEAKER_01: Right.
14:05
SPEAKER_01: People were hearing that and say, oh god, that song again.
14:08
Corie: That Kohiku is me on synth.
14:10
Corie: I see, I see, I see.
14:11
Corie: So where did it start?
14:13
Corie: Because if you if you in the studio, that me, a trusted man, yeah, I hired gun.
14:17
Corie: If they had a pro they have one producer they could get.
14:19
Corie: No, I started as a session musician.
14:21
Corie: Right.
14:21
Corie: All right.
14:22
SPEAKER_01: I got called in that night, is Nadia LaFone came to the ban room, my banroom with Robney Mamshire myself, and told me they wanted me for a meeting in the studio.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: I came down to the studio for a meeting, and they explained to me the album they wanted to complete.
14:37
SPEAKER_01: So the same Koek Kohu was the first thing I ever got as a paid session musician.
14:42
SPEAKER_01: Right.
14:44
SPEAKER_01: And I left the studio the next morning at seven o'clock with the album complete.
14:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:49
SPEAKER_01: I completed the album here in about 12 hours.
14:51
Corie: Serious?
14:52
Corie: Into production or just play?
14:53
Corie: No, just play.
14:54
Corie: Play session, yeah.
14:55
Corie: And so how would you shift from that to end up being producer?
14:57
SPEAKER_01: And then I was um keyboard session player for everything for the studio after that.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: Once I was in the door, I mean I mean, I was every day now in session.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: And then one day um management told me, um, oh, by the way, you're producing a new artist tomorrow.
15:14
SPEAKER_01: I said, Well, huh?
15:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, yeah, producer.
15:17
SPEAKER_01: I said, Well, I never produced before.
15:19
SPEAKER_01: He said, No, we don't worry about you.
15:21
SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
15:21
SPEAKER_01: Seriously.
15:22
SPEAKER_01: I said, So who'd the artist?
15:23
SPEAKER_01: Well, you can find out in the morning.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: The artist was Denise Plummer.
15:26
SPEAKER_01: Oh.
15:27
SPEAKER_01: And her very first time, yeah.
15:29
Corie: But what then was the difference between because for somebody who played music, you're playing on a keyboard, what's the gap between that and production?
15:36
Corie: What does the scene that they have that face in it that you could produce or something?
15:39
SPEAKER_01: That morning my bottom was going.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: You know, I was just trolling a deep end in the pool and was told you're producing.
15:48
SPEAKER_01: And it's not to say that you know somebody was there to supervise me.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: They didn't come till after lunch, bro.
15:53
SPEAKER_01: So I was there on my own.
15:54
Corie: So you're doing the whole arrangement, all these songs.
15:56
Corie: So where are you going from idea?
15:57
Corie: What do you artists coming with?
15:58
Corie: A written song or anything?
16:00
Corie: No.
16:00
Corie: Well, it was covers at the time.
16:02
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
16:02
SPEAKER_01: Very first thing because Mama Denise used to be in country and pop.
16:05
SPEAKER_01: Right.
16:05
SPEAKER_01: So I did song um Blue by You and Oh and Leo C when I need you.
16:10
SPEAKER_01: I don't even like to listen to the production.
16:12
SPEAKER_01: No.
16:15
SPEAKER_01: I hope we have it somewhere we can listen to it.
16:18
SPEAKER_01: I hope not.
16:19
SPEAKER_01: Matter of fact, if it's on YouTube, well, I said we'll take it off.
16:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:23
SPEAKER_01: No, but right after that, I decided her next thing that she did is I wrote this song, which was well, disco was happening anytime.
16:31
SPEAKER_01: So I wrote this song and I wrote and produced, arranged, and produced it.
16:35
SPEAKER_01: It turned out to be the number one song of the year.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: It was number one for 13 weeks on the charts.
16:39
Corie: So you that was that was my first hit.
16:41
Corie: Yeah.
16:41
Corie: First big hit.
16:42
Corie: But it has some gaps missing here, you know.
16:44
Corie: It has some things I didn't understand.
16:45
Corie: We learned to write song and think how outreach to writing from production.
16:48
Corie: Oh.
16:49
Corie: Keep on playing.
16:50
Corie: I started in classical music.
16:51
SPEAKER_01: I see.
16:52
SPEAKER_01: At nine, ten years old, I started classical music.
16:55
SPEAKER_01: Okay, gotcha, gotcha.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: So it's a whole gap of history with me before that.
16:59
Corie: All right, good.
16:59
Corie: Well, we get to that now because I heard you say, like, I'm home and I just leave home.
17:04
Corie: And they was complaining that you don't like to wash ways, they're just putting in the sink and thing.
17:08
Corie: Then I hear you say is washing ways the inspiration hit you for music.
17:11
Corie: And I wonder if I'm missing my blessing, my not washing no wears at all in the house.
17:17
SPEAKER_01: You go home and get blamed.
17:19
SPEAKER_01: Go come and blame me for your bad behavior at home.
17:23
Corie: Lightning the strike twice.
17:25
Corie: Why washing ways?
17:27
SPEAKER_01: No, but somewhere along the line, my um my dear departed mother was my biggest fan and somehow was my trigger in my career.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: All right.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: So I come from a home where the tradition, okay, sorry, microphone.
17:41
SPEAKER_01: From a tradition where when you're growing up, your father decides who's gonna be the lawyer, who's gonna be the this, who's gonna be the this.
17:48
SPEAKER_01: And among these siblings, I was the dedicated doctor, medical doctor.
17:53
SPEAKER_01: Right?
17:53
SPEAKER_01: No, I I was studying, I was already on campus doing my first pre-med and then.
17:58
SPEAKER_01: UE campus?
17:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
17:59
SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
18:00
SPEAKER_01: And because my old man was a professor, my my path was laid out.
18:04
SPEAKER_01: So it was automatic.
18:06
SPEAKER_01: And the night before my final exam here, a pre-med, not science.
18:13
SPEAKER_01: Um the whole week before, I was like again nightmares.
18:15
SPEAKER_01: I couldn't sleep, I was just stressed out.
18:17
SPEAKER_01: And looking back on it, it was basically myself was fighting with myself for my future.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: And for some strange reason, that same night before the final exam, is I closed my eyes, like on almost under meditation without trying.
18:33
SPEAKER_01: And I pictured myself 40 or 50 years ahead.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: I would have been a successful doctor, but I would have been the most unhappy doctor.
18:43
SPEAKER_01: I walked in the next day in the exam, signed my, not your name, your student number.
18:48
SPEAKER_01: You waited mandatory one and a half hour before to leave the exam.
18:51
SPEAKER_01: Of course.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: Signed my name at the bottom on a blank sheet and walked out.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: Really?
18:54
SPEAKER_01: Never turned back.
18:56
SPEAKER_01: Well, mommy and them saying at that point, but daddy.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: Only time in my life my father hit me one right hand.
19:02
unknown: Seriously.
19:05
Corie: Because he thought something had to be wrong with you.
19:08
Corie: When he find out, you find out when you do it, so you find out when results come out and you gain the zero.
19:12
Corie: No.
19:12
SPEAKER_01: No, and even with not even writing a wooden exam, I didn't really feel, you know.
19:18
SPEAKER_01: That's what they call something they call supplementaries.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: That you're just under the pass mark, but you know what, just go back and do a supplementary exam, you automatically.
19:27
SPEAKER_01: And never went back.
19:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:28
SPEAKER_01: Just never went back.
19:29
SPEAKER_01: But at that point, yeah.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: At that point is when he found out.
19:32
Corie: Right, yeah.
19:33
Corie: That's right.
19:34
Corie: Yeah, boy.
19:35
Corie: But do you have anything secure in music at that point in time?
19:38
Corie: Like you're gigging or you're outside or you're doing it now.
19:41
SPEAKER_01: We just left, Robin myself, we just left school.
19:45
SPEAKER_01: I had um, all right, uh, even before that, you had to understand that I had partly gone to school in the US.
19:52
SPEAKER_01: Right.
19:52
SPEAKER_01: All right, so I had paper root and come back.
19:55
SPEAKER_01: So I had a little saving.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: I think.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: And in those days, a little saving was how much, boy?
19:59
SPEAKER_01: In TT dollars.
20:01
SPEAKER_01: Um, I think it was$200.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
20:03
SPEAKER_01: So, I mean$200 in those days at the age of 16, 17 was the bag.
20:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:10
SPEAKER_01: And I blew that whole thing and bought a secondhand organ.
20:15
SPEAKER_01: Right.
20:15
SPEAKER_01: So my father watched me like, why you you empty your account to buy an organ?
20:20
Corie: If you're a business organization or brand looking to reach an engaged and growing audience, the Cory Shepherd Podcast offers opportunities to sponsor, partner, and advertise.
20:30
Corie: You could check out the email address in our YouTube description or via the link in our bio on Instagram.
20:36
Corie: We need the money.
20:38
Corie: Like uh Max and House, you remember that?
20:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, about an organ.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: First rehearsal, the organ smoke and burn.
20:47
SPEAKER_01: Rehearsal, nice my geek.
20:48
SPEAKER_01: Robbing myself to jam.
20:50
SPEAKER_01: First time you used it.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
20:52
SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's a whole story.
20:54
SPEAKER_01: But all right, you have to understand my whole path, my whole career, I considered myself highly blessed because of the experiences that were thrown before me.
21:04
SPEAKER_01: You know, I didn't go hunting for anything.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: Alright.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: And now I can um, and even Robin and myself discuss it, that sometimes you're creating history, but in the moment you do not know you're creating history or do not understand the value of what's happening at the time.
21:20
SPEAKER_01: So when I look back, I look at um I started classical music.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: Um my father was a professor on campus, but he was also the rap for United Nations FAO, traveling officer for agriculture, through the whole Caribbean and Latin America.
21:37
SPEAKER_01: And every, I mean he was more out than in, but every time he came in, he brought music, always vanilla.
21:44
SPEAKER_01: So anything he brought, I was the first to go and just check it out.
21:48
SPEAKER_01: So, like when Scar hit Jamaica.
21:51
SPEAKER_01: Well, no specific genre, he buy music.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and then at that point in time, he went to do his PhD in Madison, Wisconsin in the US.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Family, whole Kabul went up there with him, and that was 1967.
22:05
SPEAKER_01: So I was able to jump from a simple life here into Midwest redneck country at the height of racism when they kill Martin Luther King.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: The whole was in turmoil.
22:20
SPEAKER_01: But the good part about it is Motown just exploded.
22:23
SPEAKER_01: So I was smacking the experience.
22:26
SPEAKER_01: I was able at up to now up to last week I was trying to figure out how I got this ticket, this one ticket, to see James Brown at his peak.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: And the seat I got, again, I don't know how, the universe aligned it.
22:40
SPEAKER_01: You know, normally people want to sit down in front of the stage.
22:43
SPEAKER_01: I got a seat like one of them premier balcony seats overlooking the stage.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: And overlooked how the band was structured, how it was run, everything.
22:50
SPEAKER_01: And that always cemented how I, you know, produced bands and stuff.
22:54
SPEAKER_01: I see.
22:55
SPEAKER_01: But it was a blow mine.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: So all that experience came back.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: Um and that was my first experience dealing because in school, joined the school band, ended up playing clarinet, um, bass clarinet.
23:08
SPEAKER_01: The school over there?
23:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, across there.
23:10
SPEAKER_01: Right.
23:10
SPEAKER_01: So the first time I started deal with brass and thing, so that excited me a whole different level.
23:15
SPEAKER_01: I never got that down here.
23:16
SPEAKER_01: Right, right, right.
23:17
SPEAKER_01: So that experience, I brought that back here now.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: And um, that whole Motown sound and that funk and thing when I came back here.
23:26
SPEAKER_01: So quiet, and then and came back in a class, ended up being reassigned in a class with Robin, I'm sure.
23:34
SPEAKER_01: This and Mary's now?
23:35
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
23:36
SPEAKER_01: And within two weeks, we both realized we are musicians.
23:39
SPEAKER_01: And that's when he's back and all started.
23:42
SPEAKER_01: We used to get penance at least twice a month.
23:48
SPEAKER_01: A particular teacher, I could call his name, so he's not training money, but if he's still around, Mr.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: Pierre, our chemistry teacher.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: Right.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: Put us at the back of the class.
23:55
SPEAKER_01: He said, All swimmers and musicians at the back of my class.
23:58
SPEAKER_01: Don't waste my time.
23:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
24:00
SPEAKER_01: We go to get penance regularly.
24:03
Corie: Yeah, Robin is a hell of a parent.
24:05
Corie: Robin was getting any time.
24:07
Corie: And you playing keyboard.
24:08
Corie: By that time you finish a classical training, you start learning and all that.
24:10
Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
24:11
Corie: You see, I hear telling a story about the game of dad where if you watch your way, when he said you want to go and learn keyboard, or you want to learn piano, it wasn't welcome.
24:19
SPEAKER_01: It was never welcome at the no.
24:21
SPEAKER_01: My sister was doing piano.
24:22
SPEAKER_01: Right.
24:23
SPEAKER_01: No, my old man was a musician before.
24:25
SPEAKER_01: But in my mind, in those days, being a musician was not career generated.
24:31
SPEAKER_01: And he didn't want earmarked for medicine.
24:33
SPEAKER_01: So, in other words, boy, don't be foolish.
24:35
SPEAKER_01: P yourself not play music, anything, but that's probably why I would have told my son to work.
24:38
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
24:39
SPEAKER_01: Go through it.
24:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean.
24:41
SPEAKER_01: So, um, at that point in time, um I went through the music, and he matters after that, he didn't talk, he didn't talk to me for two years now.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: Two years.
24:54
SPEAKER_01: Two years, lock off, lock off, luck.
24:56
SPEAKER_01: Almost it basically disowned me.
24:58
SPEAKER_01: And then one day, well, I had just moved out of the house.
25:01
SPEAKER_01: I just waited till I was 18 to legally move out.
25:03
Corie: Right.
25:04
SPEAKER_01: And then I went back every so often I used to go back and check the old lady and keep in touch because there's no internet, no mobile phone.
25:10
SPEAKER_01: So you're going to look for people.
25:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're gonna look for you.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: Um, so went back home.
25:15
SPEAKER_01: He was in the yard, you know, watering the plants.
25:18
SPEAKER_01: He watched me, I watched him, no words for about 30 seconds.
25:23
SPEAKER_01: And then, all right, I apologize.
25:27
SPEAKER_01: That works.
25:28
SPEAKER_01: I was just trying to knock some sense in you.
25:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but I realized it's serious now.
25:33
SPEAKER_01: And it the healing took place right there.
25:35
SPEAKER_01: Oh, nice, nice.
25:36
Corie: Well, he starts seeing success publicly.
25:38
Corie: What makes him say?
25:39
SPEAKER_01: No, in other words, I was doing it long enough.
25:41
SPEAKER_01: For you, stick with it.
25:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
25:43
SPEAKER_01: Because at first, well, we spoke after that because he he he just thought that um the lime, drink, girls, I mean, you just in for the flam.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: Right.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: But when he started like, whoa, you're all doing gigs, you're serious.
25:57
SPEAKER_01: I hear you in rehearsal every day.
25:59
Corie: And how would you how would you say that in St.
26:02
Corie: Mary's, you all sat in our band as well, outside of the school?
26:05
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's where it started.
26:05
SPEAKER_01: It started in school, actually.
26:07
SPEAKER_01: Um, because I mean the schools were never um creative oriented.
26:12
SPEAKER_01: Right.
26:13
SPEAKER_01: And um, well, Robin and myself realized that, so we used to go down the basement of Centenary Hall.
26:19
SPEAKER_01: And then Louis Nurse, um, Colin Lucas, Carl Jacobs, Andre Tanker just left school.
26:29
SPEAKER_01: All these men was in St.
26:30
SPEAKER_01: Mary's.
26:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: Um, gosh, what's his name?
26:34
SPEAKER_01: Angus Noons.
26:35
SPEAKER_01: Right.
26:35
SPEAKER_01: Um, bass player who ended up being musical director for Harry Belafonte.
26:39
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
26:39
SPEAKER_01: There's a whole watch of us came from that same era.
26:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the same as school, David.
26:43
SPEAKER_01: We just checked out.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: Francis S.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: Kai.
26:45
SPEAKER_01: Right.
26:45
SPEAKER_01: Francis.
26:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:46
SPEAKER_01: A whole watch, yeah, a whole movement of music came out there.
26:49
SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
26:49
SPEAKER_01: And we always jamming down there.
26:51
SPEAKER_01: And uh, I was telling David coming up the story of to get a gig, there was no gig to get.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: So we took the first opportunity.
27:00
SPEAKER_01: We played for folk mass in school.
27:02
SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: What's Folk Mass now?
27:04
Corie: In mass, in the school, in the chapel, in school.
27:06
Corie: Okay, mass.
27:07
Corie: Yeah.
27:07
Corie: He said mass, I think in costume.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: We ain't going to church in a long time.
27:11
SPEAKER_01: No, so in other words, the only gig we could have got was in the church.
27:15
SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah.
27:16
SPEAKER_01: So we we we beg, we beg to play in the church because normally it's just the organist, you know, Lindy and Borden Rich and the Christian and the choir, because we were in the choir too.
27:25
SPEAKER_01: Okay, nice.
27:25
SPEAKER_01: But the choir was kind of boring, you sing in the traditional.
27:29
SPEAKER_01: So we beg to do a kind of folk master.
27:32
SPEAKER_01: Right, okay.
27:33
SPEAKER_01: Um, so one of the priests kind of begged management basically for us, and we were allowed because they say us rehearsing.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
27:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, right.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: So they could do something.
27:42
SPEAKER_01: So I guess they expected us to go and play traditional.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: You hear my Lord, and all them things.
27:49
SPEAKER_01: So that is what they were expecting.
27:52
SPEAKER_01: We had other ideas.
27:55
SPEAKER_01: Um, we played one or two of the traditional, but during the mass communion is the part where there's the longest, you know, pause, and you can play most music.
28:05
SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
28:05
SPEAKER_01: Because it was in our repertoire, we chose the Beatles, My Sweet Lord.
28:11
SPEAKER_01: It's church, my sweet lord, hallelujah.
28:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
28:15
SPEAKER_01: But the whole church was the only time in history the whole church was singing, it was like a joyous Christian thing.
28:23
SPEAKER_01: Right.
28:23
SPEAKER_01: But we forgot we're in church, and at the end of the song, because says Hare Krishna.
28:29
SPEAKER_01: So the priest is having all communion, and we up.
28:33
SPEAKER_01: We're up in the loft singing Hare Krishna, Hari Rama.
28:38
Corie: Well, it's sing it still when you reach the part.
28:40
Corie: If they forget, but when you reach the part, you didn't realize it's a good one.
28:44
Corie: Turn turn back for what?
28:46
Corie: Make it a musical interlude.
28:49
SPEAKER_01: You have to understand when you're in a musical high.
28:51
SPEAKER_01: A musical high is higher than drugs or anything else, you know.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: A natural musical high is one of the highest experiences.
28:57
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
28:57
SPEAKER_01: And once you locked into that space, you can't come out.
29:01
SPEAKER_01: So what father's?
29:02
SPEAKER_01: Didn't say anything.
29:03
SPEAKER_01: All I remember, all I remember saying, somebody saying, look, look, look, look.
29:08
SPEAKER_01: Because I was playing the organ.
29:09
SPEAKER_01: And I look around and see if father, looking up, looking up.
29:13
SPEAKER_01: What do you say?
29:13
SPEAKER_01: Nah, it's all right.
29:14
SPEAKER_01: We could be good.
29:16
SPEAKER_01: Next Monday morning, call the whole school in St.
29:20
SPEAKER_01: Henry Hall.
29:20
SPEAKER_01: And it was the whole school, and the principal came and said, There was an incident, so and so happened Mass and Friday, and chalala la la.
29:28
SPEAKER_01: There'll be no more, no longer be folk mass in the church.
29:32
Corie: Stop the old folk.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: We were banned after that.
29:37
SPEAKER_01: Right?
29:38
SPEAKER_01: So the band that we formed was called The Last Supper.
29:45
Corie: That was only the Last Supper, though.
29:47
Corie: Yeah, that was the Last Supper.
29:48
SPEAKER_01: But Last Supper became one of the biggest things in Trinidad after that for the next decade.
29:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
29:53
SPEAKER_01: So as you say, from then you started get gigs, you sort of look for it.
29:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: Now, again, different approach.
29:59
SPEAKER_01: Now, the same way you go on social media today, and you know, you do a song, you put it out, and you know, you try to market yourself.
30:06
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
30:07
SPEAKER_01: There was no social media.
30:09
SPEAKER_01: So how we did it was there were two malls in the country, Val Park and Starlight Mall.
30:15
SPEAKER_01: Right.
30:15
SPEAKER_01: We convinced management.
30:18
SPEAKER_01: This month we play in Val Park, Car Park for free.
30:21
SPEAKER_01: Next month, Starlight.
30:22
SPEAKER_01: We did that for about a year.
30:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
30:24
SPEAKER_01: That's all marketing.
30:25
Corie: So you're doing that just for people shopping hunting on nighttime or what?
30:29
Corie: Uh Saturday afternoons.
30:30
Corie: Oh, I see.
30:31
Corie: So you're getting exposure to gotcha, gotcha, dicey marketing.
30:34
Corie: Yeah.
30:34
Corie: Question if we move on from that, right?
30:36
Corie: You're one of several musicians who are the highest levels in St.
30:38
Corie: Mary's.
30:39
Corie: It's truly music programs hunting in the school, or everybody just comes with their own musical background, like you.
30:44
Corie: Music program?
30:45
Corie: You're crazy.
30:47
SPEAKER_01: When I was leaving, that is what actually made me decide to go to UE.
30:52
SPEAKER_01: I didn't do Form 6.
30:53
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
30:53
SPEAKER_01: I went straight into pre-med.
30:55
SPEAKER_01: Right.
30:55
SPEAKER_01: Because I was afforded because I'm an old man.
30:57
SPEAKER_02: Right.
30:58
SPEAKER_01: But normally I would have stayed back.
30:59
SPEAKER_01: I offered to stay back an extra year to start the music because it was so developing.
31:04
SPEAKER_01: But I was told in no uncertain terms at that point in time.
31:07
SPEAKER_01: Henderson said, Mary's is about academics and sports.
31:12
Corie: So, in other words, right out.
31:15
Corie: Yeah, I wonder about that sometimes.
31:16
Corie: Like I wonder when I hear people like you and some of your history and many of the people who you call their Robin and them, I wonder how come like we're not having that getting to secondary school level.
31:26
Corie: Thank God for UCT and things seeing some of it now.
31:28
Corie: But I wonder if it'll ever filter down into the school level where we could adjust the way we do music programs to include some of our heroes in it.
31:36
Corie: You know, the people who have accomplished a lot here, I wonder.
31:38
SPEAKER_01: No, but besides that, I mean, I mean, it has been proven that um the creative arts helping the development of studies and education and stuff.
31:48
SPEAKER_01: As a matter of fact, um, Rennie Cummings had put a post, I think, last month, on social media, um, where she and I spoke about that about 15 years ago.
31:58
SPEAKER_01: Right?
31:59
SPEAKER_01: Because, I mean, I have a concept.
32:00
SPEAKER_01: It can still be done, but it has to be at community and school level.
32:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
32:05
SPEAKER_01: Um, and she is now seeing the same thing that we spoke about 15 years ago being implemented in Barbados and New York.
32:14
Corie: Okay, so.
32:15
Corie: Yeah, it's like I was talking to Skrunter one time, and Skrunter was talking about take the number, I believe was he saw, being used on the curriculum in Grenada, I think he said, as a sort of you know, public awareness thing to let children know about safety with cars and that kind of thing.
32:28
Corie: And I wonder, like, how can we missing out on opportunities like that?
32:31
Corie: Imagine if you were able to put that program in St.
32:34
Corie: Mary's.
32:34
Corie: More and more tough to people here.
32:35
Corie: I realized that something happened in St.
32:36
Corie: Mary's for sure.
32:37
Corie: But it happened before, after the people meeting up in St.
32:40
Corie: Mary's coming out with is the wine in his cellar.
32:42
SPEAKER_01: Is it no?
32:45
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
32:45
SPEAKER_01: We still have it, but St.
32:46
SPEAKER_01: Mary's had one of the best cured wines in the Caribbean.
32:51
SPEAKER_01: Very serious.
32:52
SPEAKER_01: The Holy Ghost Fathers.
32:54
SPEAKER_01: No, we know.
32:55
SPEAKER_01: We stole a couple bottles.
32:56
SPEAKER_01: David book the Holy Ghost Fathers, but you see what?
32:59
Corie: Any representative go work?
33:01
Corie: So you went on there with last supper and starting from the market and then the malls and stuff is starting to get calls for gigs.
33:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:07
SPEAKER_01: Actually, the first gig we got was one of our well, uh one of the girls' convent opposite.
33:12
SPEAKER_01: Her birthday party for sixty dollars.
33:14
Corie: Sixty dollars.
33:15
Corie: Well, it's 200, it's plenty savings.
33:18
Corie: Six days are good rates, you're getting good money.
33:20
Corie: Five dollars would have been enough at that point in time.
33:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we go in.
33:23
SPEAKER_01: Just to just to go and play.
33:24
SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
33:25
SPEAKER_01: So um we got that.
33:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, but musicians, the band members, we never got a took a cent for the first two, three, four years, you know.
33:36
SPEAKER_01: Everything we did, we put back in equipment.
33:38
SPEAKER_01: We kept developing, developing, and developing and developing.
33:41
SPEAKER_01: Because besides the music, um, Robin and myself, we always had a thing, a curious kind of thing with technology.
33:49
SPEAKER_01: All right, so well, I could apologize to the country on behalf of Robin, Robin and myself now.
33:55
SPEAKER_01: All the big PA you're seeing in the country, all the massive Psychons.
34:00
Corie: We started that in the 70s.
34:02
Corie: Really?
34:03
Corie: Yeah, we started PA.
34:04
Corie: So when you first started over the bandwidth lost up, it's just everybody bringing their own instruments or the acoustic and thing on your mic's up, or you're dealing with it.
34:11
SPEAKER_01: No, well, um, I think one of the parents, I think Robin's parents, and we invested.
34:16
SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
34:17
SPEAKER_01: Um, and actually, we were fortunate at the time too, that it was right after the 70 revolution.
34:25
SPEAKER_01: And then when things cooled on what a year afterwards, things were still a little shaky in the country, you know, emotionally wise.
34:34
SPEAKER_01: And Eric Williams had some kind of foresight, and he used creative entertainment to suit the country.
34:41
SPEAKER_01: And what he did is he pulled money from all the different ministries and basically paid, it was 2,000, no matter how big or small you are, 2,000 for any pan side, parang side, combo, ban to just go and play in community communities.
34:58
SPEAKER_01: So our first gig, official gig actually, um was in Toko RC school for the community.
35:08
SPEAKER_01: Just to play for the community.
35:09
SPEAKER_01: Just to play for the community.
35:10
SPEAKER_01: Oh, actually.
35:10
SPEAKER_01: Any community coming out, I suppose, once you do that.
35:14
SPEAKER_01: Oh.
35:14
SPEAKER_01: Every Sunday, every corner of the country was entertainment.
35:17
Corie: Yeah, and you're taking them gigs, or they go in.
35:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:19
Corie: Well they playing, but you're specific to our genre at that time, or you're playing any kind of musical.
35:24
SPEAKER_01: There was no there was no limits of genre.
35:26
SPEAKER_01: Um well, we were known basically as a pop rock band.
35:29
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
35:30
SPEAKER_01: And being a pop rock band, um, we were really good at it.
35:36
SPEAKER_01: Um so we were like the Jacksons, you know.
35:41
SPEAKER_01: I mean, and we were the heart tropes.
35:43
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we were the right age, at the right place, at the right time with the right music.
35:46
SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
35:47
SPEAKER_01: Um, and then somewhere inside there, I realized we were doing music, we were booked all year.
35:54
SPEAKER_01: And we used to take vocational carnival time.
35:57
SPEAKER_01: Oh.
35:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, at carnival time, we used to go and party.
36:01
SPEAKER_01: And then after about four four years, I realized, yeah, something I feeling right.
36:05
SPEAKER_01: We're in the land of Calypso.
36:07
SPEAKER_01: And in 1974, well, we had a our sister band was a band called Comets, which was Calyan.
36:14
Corie: Okay.
36:14
SPEAKER_01: So we were in each other's band room.
36:16
SPEAKER_01: So, in case somebody from one band to the next couldn't make the gig, somebody would have filled it.
36:21
SPEAKER_01: And in 74, I got my first take.
36:23
SPEAKER_01: I just appeared, as Arthur Marcel was say, Beaver just appeared on my truck.
36:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:28
SPEAKER_01: Right?
36:29
Corie: I thought it's with Kalyan.
36:31
SPEAKER_01: That was his band, Kalyan.
36:33
SPEAKER_01: And because we were always in each other's rehearsal and that kind of situation.
36:37
SPEAKER_01: So I appeared on the truck.
36:39
SPEAKER_01: And by lunchtime Monday, I was playing.
36:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:43
SPEAKER_01: Alright?
36:44
SPEAKER_01: And then I realized something, but I'm this is what I'm missing.
36:49
SPEAKER_01: And again, I tell you how I'm blessed.
36:52
SPEAKER_01: By the time I came off the truck carnival Tuesday, I'm walking off the ladder to come off.
36:57
SPEAKER_01: Somebody was waiting at the bottom of the steps to tell me Man or Marcelin is looking for me.
37:02
SPEAKER_01: Looking for a keyboard player to go on tour.
37:04
SPEAKER_01: I see.
37:05
SPEAKER_01: And then found out Frankie Francis is musical director.
37:09
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't know how many people in this country know Frankie Francis.
37:13
SPEAKER_01: One of the best I'm talking about in the world.
37:16
SPEAKER_01: Right.
37:18
SPEAKER_01: Right?
37:18
SPEAKER_01: Um, I went on understudying him for you.
37:21
SPEAKER_01: That's why I started in Calypso.
37:22
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I see, I see.
37:23
SPEAKER_01: So you leave the band at the time, or?
37:25
SPEAKER_01: I had to leave here.
37:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and so focused to understudy Calypso.
37:28
SPEAKER_01: Right.
37:29
SPEAKER_01: And then came back to Last Supper.
37:31
SPEAKER_01: And then I was a love trainer at the time.
37:34
SPEAKER_01: And we went on the road for the first time carnival Monday and Tuesday.
37:37
SPEAKER_01: Gotcha, gotcha.
37:37
SPEAKER_01: And lick up carnival Monday and Tuesday.
37:39
SPEAKER_01: We won't best play in band, all kind of crap.
37:41
Corie: Out the gate?
37:42
Corie: Out the gate.
37:42
Corie: Yeah.
37:44
Corie: I guess only putting here 10,000 hours, you're making it happen that time.
37:47
Corie: When you're going on tour with Madame Maslow, and then what's your experience like then?
37:50
Corie: Because well, before even you get to that, when you're playing with Last Supper, everybody's singing, or you have lead singers, or how you all yeah.
37:56
SPEAKER_01: Well, basically Derek Patience was the lead vocalist.
37:59
SPEAKER_01: But in other words, I was the soul and funk man.
38:02
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
38:02
SPEAKER_01: So I would be singing.
38:04
SPEAKER_01: I would have been the ones like Derek would sing all the pop stuff.
38:06
SPEAKER_01: Robin would sing some pop stuff also.
38:09
SPEAKER_01: But and and then we had a female vocalist later.
38:11
SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
38:12
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I will sing all the funk.
38:14
SPEAKER_01: Like I would sing the temptations, Joe Tex, ain't no bump no with that big fat woman.
38:21
SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah.
38:22
Corie: I was all the funk and soulful stuff.
38:24
Corie: Okay, gotcha.
38:25
Corie: So manual masculine is when you get into the calypso.
38:27
Corie: Now you gotta adjust your playing style and that kind of thing.
38:29
SPEAKER_01: You look then they're basically it's basically from scratch.
38:32
SPEAKER_01: But again, um, anybody you could check back my music in my whole career, I have never played keyboards like a traditional calypso keyboard player because of my experience with funk and jazz and stuff like that.
38:45
SPEAKER_01: My strum is totally different.
38:47
Corie: Yeah, yeah, I guess you're playing where you're feeling at that point.
38:50
Corie: Whatever my soul is, yeah.
38:51
Corie: So, what is the reaction from people?
38:52
Corie: Because you're calling people who's established calypso musicians now, is that they well, I guess they come and seek you out, so they know where you're gonna bring.
38:58
Corie: That is why I also thought because I'm different.
39:00
SPEAKER_01: See, not that I was better, I was I was always different.
39:05
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, through the through the years, I mean, people always say, but before you're the baddest.
39:10
SPEAKER_01: I was never the baddest.
39:12
SPEAKER_01: I was different.
39:14
SPEAKER_01: Because I could call a million keyboard players who are badder than me.
39:18
SPEAKER_01: But the fact that I was different, and as a keyboard player, I could change my mood on the drop of a dime.
39:25
SPEAKER_01: I can go from calypso to soccer to reggae to electronica to funk, anything.
39:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, within the same thing.
39:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:32
SPEAKER_01: Just turn the sheet and I'll change the mood.
39:35
Corie: I see, I see, I see.
39:37
Corie: Who are you playing for then?
39:38
Corie: They're playing for but when they're on tour?
39:40
Corie: Is that band what they play what they played?
39:41
Corie: What Manu Marcelin?
39:42
Corie: Yeah, they're playing.
39:43
Corie: Oh no, well, actually.
39:44
SPEAKER_01: How they went on tour was they won Brass orama and government-sponsored tour.
39:50
SPEAKER_01: So we started them when the pair come down.
39:52
SPEAKER_01: Right.
39:53
SPEAKER_01: Right.
39:53
SPEAKER_01: And same thing there, singing calips.
39:55
SPEAKER_01: So I'm thinking how it goes in there, or you're just playing?
39:56
SPEAKER_01: Oh no.
39:57
SPEAKER_01: Well, actually, we had a lead vocalist at the time.
39:59
SPEAKER_01: Um, who was the boys?
40:01
SPEAKER_01: Peter Rachis.
40:02
SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
40:02
SPEAKER_01: So he was leading.
40:03
SPEAKER_01: In other words, that was the first time they had vocalists in the band, actually.
40:05
SPEAKER_01: I see, I see.
40:06
Corie: So brass orama itself would with a left.
40:09
Corie: But instrumental.
40:10
Corie: Oh, it was instrumental only.
40:11
Corie: Yeah, gotcha.
40:12
Corie: Right.
40:12
Corie: Random question, right?
40:13
Corie: I always hear people talk about band versus combo band.
40:16
Corie: What when you say combo band?
40:18
SPEAKER_01: Vocals and no vocals.
40:19
Corie: I see.
40:19
SPEAKER_01: So combo band and combo, in other words, guitarists to play the melody.
40:22
SPEAKER_01: So what the vocalists sang later.
40:25
SPEAKER_01: Right.
40:26
SPEAKER_01: So in other words, in combo, they will have two guitarists.
40:28
SPEAKER_01: One playing chord, rhythm guitarist, and then elite guitarists.
40:32
SPEAKER_01: I see.
40:32
SPEAKER_01: So between elite guitarists and maybe, well, organist will play the melodies.
40:36
Corie: Gotcha, gotcha.
40:37
Corie: So the era you're talking about is the combo band dominating then?
40:40
Corie: Yeah, just the changeover.
40:41
Corie: Starting to change.
40:42
Corie: Yeah, change over.
40:43
Corie: Also, when Pelham was here, Pelham was talking about learning music and uh doing a correspondence program, I think he called it.
40:48
Corie: So you sort of send his exam, he thing, he mailed it back and that kind of thing.
40:51
Corie: Well, your formal training was all here or all here.
40:53
SPEAKER_01: All here.
40:54
SPEAKER_01: Um it was, well, Yvonne Mason Roach, um, who was actually choir master, and and I've actually produced so many festival winners.
41:03
SPEAKER_01: She was my music teacher.
41:05
SPEAKER_01: And actually, the cause of me stopped playing classical too.
41:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:10
SPEAKER_01: Because um she was friends, good friends with my parents.
41:14
SPEAKER_01: So every so often she'll come home for Sunday lunch as family.
41:18
SPEAKER_01: And at Sunday lunch, she walked in and watched me and walked in on me playing old Danny Boy without sheet music.
41:24
SPEAKER_01: And took a ruler and hit me across my knuckles.
41:28
SPEAKER_01: Because I was playing by air.
41:30
SPEAKER_01: Well, she doesn't.
41:31
SPEAKER_01: That's not good.
41:32
SPEAKER_01: That's tradition.
41:34
SPEAKER_01: I never went back to piano lessons.
41:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:43
SPEAKER_01: I was a rebellious so much.
41:45
SPEAKER_01: You know, he still was.
41:49
Corie: I'm a little disembarking now.
41:50
Corie: I like that.
41:51
Corie: Like me too.
41:52
Corie: All of us.
41:54
Corie: So you went on the road as a last supper and win the best play band.
41:58
Corie: Yeah, yeah.
41:58
SPEAKER_01: Um, and and the thing is, we took a well, by getting that job, is because we replaced another band.
42:06
SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't call the name.
42:07
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
42:08
SPEAKER_01: Um and the band that we took the job from followed us when we started playing on the road, followed us on the side of the truck and saying, Well, them boys ain't go last, let me see.
42:20
SPEAKER_01: I see boys, um, let me see white boys from St.
42:22
SPEAKER_01: Mary's, and once they are talking, but we flattened pot explain that you serious.
42:28
Corie: Yeah, yeah.
42:29
Corie: I hear you're talking about something that I would take for granted, you know, even you saying, right?
42:33
Corie: And that's why I like enjoy listening to you talk, telling these stories.
42:36
Corie: Because when you say two malls in Trinidad, I expect you like long circular.
42:39
Corie: I feel I was always there.
42:40
Corie: So it's just good to hear them stories just to understand where it was.
42:44
Corie: And one of those stories is you said you're the first band to make up the drum set on the road.
42:48
Corie: Quite right.
42:49
Corie: Okay, so why wasn't it done before?
42:51
SPEAKER_01: Like all right, so not too long before that, remember, musicians will used to play on the road, walking, you know?
42:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the band?
42:59
SPEAKER_01: Walking, yeah, porn players, everybody walking, right?
43:02
SPEAKER_01: The drummer.
43:03
SPEAKER_01: So what did he get?
43:04
SPEAKER_01: Like a march, like a marching pole.
43:05
SPEAKER_01: Like a marching band.
43:06
SPEAKER_01: So we dragging an amp, or we're playing no well, like manu and them.
43:10
SPEAKER_01: What they did initially, they used to have his amp, I guess it was battery powered or generated by battery.
43:15
SPEAKER_01: I think car battery.
43:17
SPEAKER_01: Right.
43:17
SPEAKER_01: And a prim.
43:19
SPEAKER_01: A baby prim.
43:20
SPEAKER_01: Seriously.
43:21
SPEAKER_01: My man pushing that on he played.
43:22
SPEAKER_01: As it was a perambulator.
43:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
43:24
SPEAKER_01: Right?
43:25
SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, so that's how it started.
43:27
SPEAKER_01: And then Mano was the first person to put a part of his band on a truck.
43:31
SPEAKER_01: I got you.
43:32
SPEAKER_01: Right.
43:32
SPEAKER_01: So I think he put part of his band up there and the brass was still walking behind, you know, playing.
43:37
SPEAKER_01: But Mano was the man who made the transition.
43:39
SPEAKER_01: Right.
43:40
SPEAKER_01: And then eventually, by the time I was on the road, um Robin, well, Robin was the more tech head than me when it comes to PA and stuff.
43:51
SPEAKER_01: We were the first one to mic up.
43:53
SPEAKER_01: That's what we took tongue by.
43:54
SPEAKER_01: In other words, you hearing a bass rum for the first time coming through a system.
43:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
43:58
SPEAKER_01: That weight on your chest.
43:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, man.
44:00
Corie: So that's another thing you could say one time, Mika.
44:03
Corie: All St.
44:03
Corie: James and Woodbrook residents who feel in that chest pointing now.
44:06
Corie: You might be telling you anything of that.
44:12
Corie: So even from then, the PA system then came from that in terms of Gigan just trying to get better, trying to song better.
44:18
SPEAKER_01: We we were after sound.
44:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
44:20
SPEAKER_01: Um, because the like, for instance, the first boxes we used was really some DJ Altec land thing.
44:27
SPEAKER_01: Some the things which is like we consider home now.
44:29
SPEAKER_01: Right.
44:30
SPEAKER_01: That was our whole PA system.
44:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, when you play notes.
44:33
SPEAKER_01: Um, Robin and John Alfone then build the first snake.
44:36
SPEAKER_01: Is they put six cables, electrical tape, right?
44:39
SPEAKER_01: And then then think about grounding.
44:42
SPEAKER_01: So we played a whole gig with the system going all night.
44:46
Corie: I mean, that's part of the game.
44:47
Corie: Yeah, just live alone.
44:49
Corie: So when you're seeking out our song, because you have the experience traveling, you so when you talk about James Brown, for instance, and that experience with the band, that influence and what you want to hear when you setting up your band.
44:58
Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.
44:59
SPEAKER_01: In other words, that was the benchmark to me.
45:02
SPEAKER_01: So, like, for all right, so if you want to talk from that experience, I could tell you that's a direct relation to my contribution to the development of soccer.
45:11
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
45:12
SPEAKER_01: My strength in soccer was the sound of horns.
45:16
SPEAKER_01: And you could go back and listen to um when I won the road match in 1979 with Poser, Final Party, and all them things, era and listen to horns before.
45:28
SPEAKER_01: Not that people were playing the wrong thing is how they approach the plane.
45:32
SPEAKER_01: Because I approached when I arranged my horns, I approached it like was a funk band tight.
45:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, instead of pa da da, I will play pop, you know, pop.
45:42
Corie: Yeah.
45:43
Corie: Yeah.
45:43
Corie: And that 79 was when you started to see that shift?
45:47
Corie: Oh no, no, I started that from before.
45:49
Corie: Oh, I see, yes.
45:49
Corie: Yeah, from 75-76.
45:51
Corie: Understood, understood.
45:52
Corie: So even that on the road influence, and where you want to hear in terms of adding that kick drum and that kind of thing.
45:57
Corie: Yeah, it was again the whole development of change that was taking place.
46:01
Corie: Right.
46:01
Corie: Yeah.
46:02
Corie: So where where it went from there from last supper?
46:04
Corie: I know that you would have gone to fight, you started Fireflight, don't you?
46:07
Corie: Yeah, no, but I was in studio in the interim in between that.
46:09
Corie: Oh, so the studio at SEM came.
46:11
SPEAKER_01: Right.
46:11
SPEAKER_01: And with studio, formed my studio band, TNT Rainbow with a short.
46:16
SPEAKER_01: We did the road match and short T walked and explained on Sunday Night Fever whole set of hits.
46:21
Corie: Okay, so that road match with Poser.
46:24
Corie: Full production, yeah.
46:24
Corie: What they coming with because there's not Denise Plummer now, no bottom went again again.
46:28
Corie: Yeah, Zoo.
46:29
Corie: No, no, no, no, no.
46:30
Corie: Yeah.
46:31
SPEAKER_01: Cassette with Poser on a Quattro, four o'clock in the morning, him cocking the back crowing.
46:38
SPEAKER_01: Well, I don't know if you don't want to wake up your wifey singing.
46:40
SPEAKER_01: Find a party, you know, kind of, you know, than playing a quiet quattro.
46:45
Corie: And you start from there?
46:46
Corie: That was it.
46:48
Corie: So, what what what you're hearing that you want people to hear?
46:51
Corie: You have road match and mine and them kind of thing, without no, I just hit.
46:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I wasn't studying road match.
46:58
SPEAKER_01: Serious.
46:58
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's actually only now carnival people do things with the aim of getting a road match or aim of getting we were just doing great music, man.
47:05
SPEAKER_01: That wasn't typically the thing then.
47:07
SPEAKER_01: We were not interested in road match, and then road match thing came.
47:11
SPEAKER_01: I started looking at road match about two weeks before.
47:13
SPEAKER_01: Oh, somebody said, Oh, I say, oh, whoa, oh, really?
47:16
SPEAKER_01: Really?
47:17
SPEAKER_01: You know, but that was not you know, forefront of your mind.
47:20
Corie: Yeah, and I suppose as uh if you talk in 798, you still have the defined artists as a Calypsoan at that point in time, right?
47:27
Corie: Pose defined as a Calypsoan.
47:29
Corie: Yeah, so artists at that point in time.
47:31
Corie: So in terms of because when I hear you you talk about uh when I appreciate the conversation about where did soccer music start, and you all being at the genesis of it.
47:41
Corie: You said five names.
47:42
Corie: Who's those five five people?
47:43
Corie: You said oh, even six include Edwardson, yes?
47:45
SPEAKER_01: All right, so it all right, myself, right?
47:49
SPEAKER_01: Robin Imamshaw, Pelham Goddard, Arthur Marcel, Michael Bootman.
47:54
SPEAKER_01: Right.
47:55
SPEAKER_01: And the sixth person I wanted on our panel, but um he was mentally challenged at the time because of you know Alzheimer's was Edwardson.
48:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
48:05
SPEAKER_01: But we are the only five living architects of the creative of um the creation of Soka.
48:10
Corie: Yeah.
48:11
Corie: Still on the planet.
48:12
Corie: If you want to support the show and ensure that we're getting the best guests here telling the best stories and we're getting a little bit of back and all out of all of them, you could support for free by liking, sharing, and subscribing on YouTube.
48:22
Corie: But you could also join our Patreon and just file us to ensure that we could continue to get stories that inspire, educate, empower, inform, and all the other in things that these people behind the scenes tell me to say.
48:33
Corie: So go and do it now, and then we could jump back into the episode.
48:37
Corie: Bang.
48:39
Corie: So you there was one time you were talking about a conversation, you and Robin had just trained a wrong ideas.
48:44
Corie: At that point in time, y'all deliberately trying to do work to change our genre or feel what Calypso songs different or add something to Calypso?
48:52
SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, no, it's not even it was not even about Calypso, you know.
48:57
SPEAKER_01: It was breaking every mould that you could find.
49:00
SPEAKER_01: All right.
49:01
SPEAKER_01: When you're a kid, 78 years old, you always were around your house in here anymore.
49:06
SPEAKER_01: Boy, don't do that, boy do do that, boy, right.
49:09
SPEAKER_01: But that carried on into our teenage days and aft, into our 20s.
49:13
SPEAKER_01: Right.
49:13
SPEAKER_01: But we had no um parents in our environment then to tell us don't do this and don't do that.
49:20
SPEAKER_01: We were just doing it.
49:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
49:21
SPEAKER_01: Because we lived a life of kind of what if.
49:25
SPEAKER_01: And what if, and if this could happen, we went in search of what ifs.
49:30
Corie: Gotcha, gotcha.
49:31
Corie: And the bedrock of it is how the musician plays for y'all at that point in time.
49:34
Corie: Like, where you want to hear into because now you could, like I say, Suno is a good example of it, right?
49:38
Corie: If I want to hear funk, I could put in funk.
49:40
Corie: Assuming that Suno, I never used it before, but assuming if I want to hear something that's a mix between Afrobeats and rock music, I could ask it for that too.
49:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but uh, it depends how again you use AI.
49:50
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
49:50
SPEAKER_01: Um because the old argument is yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
49:54
SPEAKER_01: Um, what has happened with AI, like I tell people, is it's not even a bother to me because I use it.
50:01
SPEAKER_01: But I've gone through this since in the 70s.
50:05
SPEAKER_01: Because I was one again, one of the first keyboard players using synthesizers.
50:09
SPEAKER_01: When synthesizers first came out in the 70s, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
50:12
SPEAKER_01: What it was upset?
50:15
SPEAKER_01: When drum machines came out, worse yet.
50:17
SPEAKER_01: Who?
50:18
SPEAKER_01: The public, the artists, the the musicians, every everybody else.
50:21
SPEAKER_01: In other words, there are always people looking for an argument to argue.
50:26
SPEAKER_01: Right?
50:27
SPEAKER_01: Or to wake up in the morning and get vexed.
50:30
SPEAKER_01: Right?
50:30
SPEAKER_01: In other words, even though the sun is shining bright and the sky is blue, they had to find something.
50:36
SPEAKER_01: If it's not the sun, it's gonna be the rain.
50:38
SPEAKER_01: If not that, boy, drum machine is gonna take away musician work.
50:42
SPEAKER_01: Synthesizer's gonna take away people musicians' work.
50:45
SPEAKER_01: Then the next thing, sequencer's gonna take away musicians' work.
50:48
SPEAKER_01: As a matter of fact, I remember a situation I was producing an album for somebody and had a guest musician come and do a keyboard part.
50:56
SPEAKER_01: And that musician wasn't getting it out.
50:59
SPEAKER_01: So I said, hold on, hold on.
51:00
SPEAKER_01: Just let me slow down, because I was recording MIDI-wise.
51:03
SPEAKER_01: I said, let me slow down the sequencer for you.
51:05
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no, no, Beaver, that is cheating.
51:07
SPEAKER_01: I will never get it up.
51:08
SPEAKER_01: And I said, All right.
51:12
SPEAKER_01: So he recorded it.
51:15
SPEAKER_01: When they turned their back, I went in and corrected what I wanted to correct.
51:18
SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't waste time, I don't waste time.
51:20
SPEAKER_01: You know, if I'm trying to explain something to you, I mean, and that's the way I am across life.
51:25
SPEAKER_01: I respect, I live on two principles in life: love and respect.
51:29
SPEAKER_01: Um, so I try as much as possible not to disrespect anybody.
51:34
SPEAKER_01: I don't do it intentionally.
51:35
SPEAKER_01: If I do it accidentally, I apologize.
51:38
SPEAKER_01: But if I'm realizing in a situation where I'm gonna end up in disrespect, I just walk away from it.
51:45
SPEAKER_01: So, in other words, you do you do, when you're gone, I will fix it.
51:49
SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah, yeah.
51:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I just leave it like that.
51:52
SPEAKER_01: But you you have always have those kind of situations.
51:54
SPEAKER_01: So the same thing happened, and then you have a situation where you start DAWs on the computer.
52:00
SPEAKER_01: Right.
52:01
SPEAKER_01: And one of the first major hits I got off a computer was um Jahaji by Brother Marvin.
52:09
SPEAKER_01: I did, I was complete on computer.
52:12
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I see.
52:12
SPEAKER_01: And I remember, I think it was a panorama.
52:15
SPEAKER_01: Um, Pat Bishop was doing commentary for I think finals, and somebody was one of the other commentators asking her, so Pat, what do you think about this, you know, computer music?
52:24
SPEAKER_01: And and Pat and my partner, Pat Bishop, yeah.
52:28
SPEAKER_01: Don't study beaven, them.
52:30
SPEAKER_01: I ain't gonna last as long as the Red House fire.
52:33
SPEAKER_01: You know, you know, but they are purists.
52:35
SPEAKER_01: There are people who are purists.
52:36
SPEAKER_01: I mean, not that I'm vexed with them, but they're two sides to the coin.
52:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, don't stop you from pushing the envelope.
52:42
SPEAKER_01: You you know you want to.
52:43
SPEAKER_01: Oh no way.
52:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, that level of arrogance I won't ever get rid of.
52:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
52:47
SPEAKER_01: Because no, but that is that is my fire in life.
52:51
SPEAKER_01: Come to that, to push those boundaries.
52:53
SPEAKER_01: Gotcha, gotcha.
52:54
SPEAKER_01: So listen to me.
52:55
SPEAKER_01: All those things are no experience, and um, so even on the tech side of it, um, so on the band side, only tech, I, even as much as I was an accomplished producer and musician and stuff like that, they have guys who are doing the tech.
53:10
SPEAKER_01: So Robin, Frank Algarat, John Alfoon.
53:14
SPEAKER_01: Right.
53:15
SPEAKER_01: I pulling cable, I was rapping cable, I was an assistant engineer.
53:20
SPEAKER_01: Right.
53:21
SPEAKER_01: To the Jackson Fiven, Savannah, to Cool and the Gang, to Casey and Essential.
53:28
SPEAKER_01: In other words, I will apprentice just to learn to be in that experience.
53:31
SPEAKER_01: To Barry White at all the major shows that came down.
53:34
SPEAKER_01: Gotcha, gotcha, yeah.
53:35
SPEAKER_01: You're absorbing it.
53:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
53:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
53:38
SPEAKER_01: Learning experience.
53:39
Corie: It was unique.
53:40
Corie: It's unique because a lot of people, maybe me, if I have the experience you have, I don't have a road match and them guys think I produce shorty album.
53:46
Corie: I'm looking for I really watch my language.
53:50
SPEAKER_01: I I really it didn't bother me.
53:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know.
53:53
SPEAKER_01: Um, because again, I I try not to live under that false pride.
53:58
SPEAKER_01: Um, because you're you're never too big to learn.
54:00
SPEAKER_01: Simple as that.
54:01
SPEAKER_01: Never too big.
54:02
Corie: It makes sense.
54:02
Corie: So, in terms of you pushing pushing that envelope, because uh again, you all you say it a lot that you're you've always been a kind of tech baby.
54:09
Corie: You like the technology, wherever direction it's going in.
54:12
Corie: Uh like when you hear people who are talking about being at the genesis of so, some people say the ones it's a fuse calypso, it's something you're all just experimenting with what you're hearing.
54:23
Corie: And what is it?
54:24
Corie: When you hear the writing, you know and you go with it.
54:26
SPEAKER_01: No, I mean, it came for different reasons.
54:28
SPEAKER_01: People you were making the change for different reasons.
54:31
SPEAKER_01: I mean, one of the things that happened uh from a musician's point of view on stage, which we used to get real kicks off of, like in the 70s, early 70s.
54:41
SPEAKER_01: Imagine you're on stage playing calypso.
54:45
SPEAKER_01: Classic example, Holiday.
54:47
SPEAKER_01: And you could just look through the crowd and see four or five white people dancing out of time.
54:53
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
54:54
SPEAKER_01: Because calypso was toop toop toop to and if you're not from this culture, it is hard to find the one to anchor to so it's so calypso going on your own, and you just floating you know with the crowd, you know, to find your one.
55:12
SPEAKER_01: Right.
55:13
SPEAKER_01: Right.
55:13
SPEAKER_01: So um the conversation was all right, so maybe we could, you know, to attract a wider audience, we could change our dude up to straight phony floor to to take a dance there.
55:25
SPEAKER_01: So we toyed with it for a while, you know, but it was kind of more discussed than activated.
55:31
SPEAKER_01: Understood.
55:32
SPEAKER_01: Um but then again, the whole soccer transition really came out of the boundaries of carnival that was set by the Catholic Church.
55:43
SPEAKER_01: Boxing data Ash Wednesday, going into Lent.
55:48
SPEAKER_01: If you even hum a calypso, your mother would banners at the back of your head, slap all her boys Lent, and Jesus will not allow it, and so you've all you're cranked up to 100 carnival time with this calypso energy, and you have to switch.
56:08
SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, we're gonna go to the city.
56:09
SPEAKER_01: As of midnight tonight, right?
56:10
SPEAKER_01: As of midnight tonight, the soaker switch with the calypso switch.
56:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
56:13
SPEAKER_01: As a musician, it is painful.
56:17
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
56:18
SPEAKER_01: But right after that, just to have things like what they call pop gear.
56:22
SPEAKER_01: Um, it was the pop bands competition, it was a pop music.
56:25
SPEAKER_01: So it was a loud and lent because it's not calypso.
56:29
SPEAKER_01: So the energy coming out of Calypso when it comes to playing like a funk and stuff like that.
56:36
SPEAKER_01: Drum and bass player couldn't switch off.
56:38
SPEAKER_01: So it was always that kind of influence, always pushing that envelope.
56:41
SPEAKER_01: And all the rest of the musicians followed and followed and followed.
56:44
SPEAKER_01: So it was a gradual change of about five, seven years.
56:47
SPEAKER_01: I see.
56:48
Corie: I see.
56:48
Corie: And long before you say it would claim that soaker would have started, right?
56:51
Corie: Because it had to start with producers, musicians.
56:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but when it started happening, people started talking about the soul of Calypso and the soul in Calypso, Calypso, you know, people were calling it.
57:01
SPEAKER_01: Of course.
57:01
SPEAKER_01: But the real real musicians, we would need everybody else on the outside was trying to name it.
57:06
SPEAKER_01: We were just creating.
57:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it didn't bother you, all it just do any work.
57:09
Corie: It still don't bother me now.
57:12
Corie: Artists were asking for it because, like, for instance, I heard somebody, I want to say his Lou Lions, was having the discussion.
57:17
Corie: I didn't know about it at all because you you grew up here in shorts, he's a great calypso.
57:21
Corie: And uh he was of soccer, sorry.
57:24
Corie: And he was saying that Nelson feels aware about that claim because he was also somebody.
57:29
Corie: When you listen to his music, it was definitely fusion of something.
57:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but well, again, blame Clive Bradley.
57:37
SPEAKER_01: People keep forgetting Clive Bradley in this run of this, too.
57:40
SPEAKER_01: Because Clive Bradley is well, one of my mentors at the time, but he was mentoring a lot of us, younger ones.
57:46
SPEAKER_01: Um, look at Disco Daddy and all them things.
57:48
SPEAKER_01: I mean, what that was not normal Calypso, man.
57:51
SPEAKER_01: I don't know where it is, it's not I don't know normal nothing.
57:54
SPEAKER_01: Right, but um it really came from the musicians in studios, um, some partly in the band room, but mainly in studios.
58:03
SPEAKER_01: And I think um Robin most ideally described it as when they started having multi-track recordings.
58:10
SPEAKER_01: Right.
58:11
SPEAKER_01: Because even before multi-track recordings, the band used to just play.
58:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, played on the wheels on.
58:15
SPEAKER_01: So they put two microphones in front of the band, and there's a you record album in three, four hours.
58:22
SPEAKER_01: Right?
58:22
SPEAKER_01: Satan.
58:23
SPEAKER_01: Um but once they started having um multi-track, they started to experiment and experiment and experiment.
58:29
SPEAKER_01: And everybody in their own way, where there was the rhythm, where there was the sound.
58:33
SPEAKER_01: So, like for instance, I will call Robin Imam Sha the godfather of the soccer kick drum.
58:41
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, yeah.
58:42
SPEAKER_01: It was Robin's one who created that heavy kick drum in studio, and it was so sought after that Kat Stevens went to Jamaica to record an album and requested Robin to fly up to Jamaica to get him that song for his album.
58:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the bass drum song.
58:59
Corie: Yeah, now them songs coming in packs, and that's uh call them.
59:02
Corie: Example.
59:03
Corie: Yeah, yeah, you could just get.
59:05
Corie: I wonder sometimes when you're like you know, we use poser as an example, right?
59:08
Corie: Poza send you a quattro or they'll sing dong or something.
59:11
Corie: I don't know if he may hear, like Shadow, Shadow might hear the end product, some artists might not, right?
59:16
Corie: But we have a little dependence on you now to come up with your idea of the I suppose arrangement, production, he will take what all the instruments play, right?
59:23
Corie: When you're coming up with things new, like that, artists ex they're accepting it when you're all coming up with something that's not something like no.
59:32
Corie: No, they will they will trust us.
59:34
SPEAKER_01: Okay, they did because we would have hit every week.
59:38
SPEAKER_01: So not not just say our last hit was 40 years ago.
59:41
SPEAKER_01: Right, gotcha.
59:42
SPEAKER_01: I mean our last hit was last week, yeah.
59:44
SPEAKER_01: Last week.
59:45
SPEAKER_01: So we had kind of an idea what we're doing.
59:47
Corie: I understand, I understand.
59:49
Corie: One more question about that.
59:50
Corie: When you say last hit was last week and the locking off drinlens, what do you used to do?
59:53
SPEAKER_01: Your production stops and you run up to Carnival or again to me, that is one of the challenges we have in the industry here.
1:00:00
SPEAKER_01: That is why the industry to me has slowed down.
1:00:04
SPEAKER_01: We were producing as much, if not more, music for out of Carnival than in Carnival.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_01: Right?
1:00:11
SPEAKER_01: So, like for instance, once Carnival is done, it's because you had a runway to get two weeks' rest to come back in studios because when they come back in, is well, I besides the band Napi is doing some Nappy had a band called Embrao.
1:00:25
SPEAKER_01: I was also the keyboard player in Embrao.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_01: So, like on Nighty LaFon's recording, a keyboard player.
1:00:31
SPEAKER_01: Um, I am also doing keyboard playing in competitor studio.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's overnight.
1:00:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, so in other words, I mean everybody was still doing music out of carnival.
1:00:40
SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying.
1:00:41
SPEAKER_01: Outer Carnival.
1:00:42
Corie: Yeah, it's interesting.
1:00:43
Corie: Like now that you're saying it, I could hear why some of it changed.
1:00:46
Corie: Because that production all around, the background you're talking about, as well as the not because it's difficult to envision now that somebody not going after Smokerwati.
1:00:54
Corie: When you hear fine part, I say, right, we have a road match.
1:00:57
Corie: Because artists now come in here and tell me they construct the song as the road match pick.
1:01:01
Corie: And why is a road match pick and it's how crescendo yeah.
1:01:04
Corie: Do you know why?
1:01:07
SPEAKER_01: A chunk, a major chunk of our industry here is created and designed for the rubric of a judge's sheet.
1:01:17
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:01:17
SPEAKER_01: Whether it's road match, so monarch, calypso monarch.
1:01:22
SPEAKER_01: People go into the studio with 50 points of melody, 50 points of it.
1:01:27
SPEAKER_01: People are creating music for that.
1:01:29
SPEAKER_01: And not just creating great music.
1:01:31
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:01:31
SPEAKER_01: So it's limited limp.
1:01:32
SPEAKER_01: That is why, that's why I concern our industry here is in a kind of a dulge a little bit.
1:01:37
SPEAKER_01: Because we have kind of boxed in ourselves.
1:01:40
SPEAKER_01: Where we previously we were just experimenting and creating great music.
1:01:46
SPEAKER_01: We have just focused on Carnival and what we could win out of Carnival.
1:01:50
SPEAKER_01: And our music is limited to that now.
1:01:52
Corie: Yeah, I heard Pelam say something similar when he was here as well.
1:01:55
Corie: Because you're talking about like you'd call in artists' names here, right?
1:01:58
Corie: So poser is one, Nadi Lafon is one is like forever music.
1:02:02
Corie: So every maybe five, ten years, Trinidad discovered that Nadia Lafon from here is like this song from here is his head every single time on social media, right?
1:02:11
Corie: And I wonder if now in your mind there's the because sometimes I struggle with artists who come here.
1:02:17
Corie: I can't remember the last year.
1:02:19
Corie: When men asked me what is the road match last year, I cannot tell you.
1:02:22
Corie: But if you ask me who went in 80, I could I could probably tell you and know these songs.
1:02:26
Corie: You think is that that rubric chasing is what leading to some of them?
1:02:31
Corie: Rubric chasing and million dollar prize.
1:02:33
Corie: Oh, the combination of these two.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I guess if you give my million dollars, I could change that.
1:02:37
SPEAKER_01: All right.
1:02:38
SPEAKER_01: Remove the million dollar prize and remove the rubrics.
1:02:42
Corie: Well, if you remove the million million, the rubric, I know much value again in the week, we're doing it for.
1:02:46
Corie: Well, exactly.
1:02:48
SPEAKER_01: You will start to see the creativity we have in this country.
1:02:52
SPEAKER_01: So you think the creativity is still there?
1:02:53
SPEAKER_01: It's not that we're lacking that.
1:02:54
SPEAKER_01: It's just it is there.
1:02:55
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:02:56
SPEAKER_01: All right.
1:02:57
SPEAKER_01: Like I tell people, I could live anywhere in the world where I chose to.
1:03:01
SPEAKER_01: But Trinidad has that kind of spiritual creative space that if I create anywhere else is different.
1:03:07
SPEAKER_01: So Trinidad, I consider my own creation is different if you do it here.
1:03:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:03:12
SPEAKER_01: If I write anything, it's different.
1:03:14
SPEAKER_01: So if if um Trinidad is like my barom, the rest of the world is my stage.
1:03:21
SPEAKER_01: Understand.
1:03:21
Corie: That's how I treat it.
1:03:22
Corie: Yeah.
1:03:23
Corie: I wonder sometimes if you get it because you know that world stage is something you hear, artists of every year are chasing.
1:03:29
Corie: Artists, producers, musicians on the whole.
1:03:31
Corie: Like, why we music now globally here the discussion all the time?
1:03:35
Corie: Why we not Grammy ready?
1:03:37
Corie: Yeah.
1:03:38
SPEAKER_01: You know why?
1:03:39
SPEAKER_01: Because we keep trying to serve Dom Perin in this golden case sealed, and when they crack the bottles, more be coming out of it.
1:03:50
SPEAKER_01: You can't do that.
1:03:52
SPEAKER_01: Um again, well, one of the benchmarks obviously is the Grammys, and you always hear artists talking about soaker today.
1:03:59
SPEAKER_01: That ain't gonna happen.
1:04:00
SPEAKER_01: Right?
1:04:01
SPEAKER_01: You hear you could figure any road match being nominated for Grammy.
1:04:07
SPEAKER_01: Modern over back in the day.
1:04:09
SPEAKER_01: Anytime.
1:04:10
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, it's hard to envision.
1:04:13
SPEAKER_01: Right on.
1:04:14
SPEAKER_01: In other words, that music is created for carnival, right?
1:04:18
SPEAKER_01: So it's limited to that.
1:04:21
SPEAKER_01: Um so if you're talking about to the Grammys, you have to step outside the carnival thing.
1:04:27
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of times when I try to explain that to people or try to do it, the first argument is boy, that is now we culture, and there's now we this and there's now we that.
1:04:36
SPEAKER_01: Um our culture is multifaceted, and we keep choking us who we are into a little box.
1:04:44
SPEAKER_01: And that is why we are not successful yet as a collective.
1:04:47
SPEAKER_01: That's one of the reasons.
1:04:49
SPEAKER_01: Second reason to me is we don't do things as a collective.
1:04:55
SPEAKER_01: When last you heard of a collective movement in the music.
1:05:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:05:01
SPEAKER_01: A while, uh a while.
1:05:02
SPEAKER_01: Alright.
1:05:03
SPEAKER_01: So you could for me to explain to you when last it happened, go on YouTube and look for a video, a song, and a video called Now is the Time Calypso for Africa.
1:05:12
Corie: Yeah, they just redid it right together and them try.
1:05:14
SPEAKER_01: Well, they they they are tempted to redo it in Napa.
1:05:17
SPEAKER_01: Right, but look at that, you will see all our stars there on one place.
1:05:21
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
1:05:21
SPEAKER_01: That has not ever happened since.
1:05:24
SPEAKER_01: It's reach a point when now two big artists almost don't want to be on the same stage together.
1:05:30
SPEAKER_01: You know.
1:05:31
SPEAKER_01: So unless we get together, I mean, competition is fine.
1:05:35
SPEAKER_01: Um, but unless we get together for a common purpose, we'll just be getting accidental hits and accidental success.
1:05:43
SPEAKER_01: All right, so back in that era, all right.
1:05:45
SPEAKER_01: So for instance, what we called it the big five bands, what Fireflight Chandler, Song Rev, Blue Ventures, Calyanse, for instance, right?
1:05:55
SPEAKER_01: Once we're on stage, we are pure woe.
1:05:58
SPEAKER_01: I mean, when I tell you woe.
1:06:00
SPEAKER_01: Technical musical war.
1:06:02
SPEAKER_01: You know, no prisoners taken.
1:06:05
SPEAKER_01: But once you step off of that stage, we're back there drinking, taking a drink, and and linemen and who cooking the pot for tomorrow morning for the next gig, you know?
1:06:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:06:14
SPEAKER_01: You know, but there's no common movement anymore in the state.
1:06:18
Corie: Yeah, back there eating, talking about who get blown out, right?
1:06:20
SPEAKER_01: And they're preparing for where you go next.
1:06:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, in other words, you blow, I I blow you out tonight and we backstage lineman getting ready for some check tomorrow, and I gain you fat.
1:06:31
SPEAKER_01: But I blow you away last night and oh god, yeah, right, right.
1:06:33
SPEAKER_01: I gotta take the blow out.
1:06:34
SPEAKER_01: And then tonight you will return if you even blow me up.
1:06:37
SPEAKER_01: That is how we were.
1:06:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
1:06:39
SPEAKER_01: But it was a common movement of getting better all the time.
1:06:43
Corie: Yeah, it's one of the things where I enjoy talking to people from the band movement because you know, when the people say remove the competition from Carnaval, I don't know if it ever will remove the competitiveness.
1:06:52
Corie: Because I think Eddie Charles is the person who described it to me here best because he straddles some heroes like yourself.
1:06:57
Corie: And Eddie says exactly what you say.
1:06:59
Corie: Eddie says, Boy, when it's traffic and Atlantic, that's like Europe.
1:07:02
Corie: He said, Boy, it's war, men are to die.
1:07:04
Corie: He said, But there was love.
1:07:06
Corie: He said, No, backstage.
1:07:07
Corie: He said, Yeah, and you know, Eddie, Eddie's like boy, backstage now with the tense.
1:07:10
Corie: You know, he you know, it's a different type of environment.
1:07:12
Corie: Yeah, yeah.
1:07:13
SPEAKER_01: Um and it is so sad that we have so much talent and we have so much um, we have a pool of so many things.
1:07:25
SPEAKER_01: Even outside this, you know what our our biggest investment should be in this country?
1:07:29
SPEAKER_01: Steel pan.
1:07:31
SPEAKER_01: That's our biggest asset, and we still don't realize that.
1:07:34
SPEAKER_01: Um, because that is so far off what is the norm, and we have not even fully explored steel pan and you know where it could go.
1:07:43
SPEAKER_01: We keep thinking of steel pan as this panorama instrument.
1:07:47
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:07:48
SPEAKER_01: It could go so many different places.
1:07:50
SPEAKER_01: And I've you know, I've seen the vision of it um uh out in Japan, I've seen the interest all over the world.
1:07:56
SPEAKER_01: And if we just do different things with it, we could take the world by storm.
1:08:01
Corie: Yeah, yeah.
1:08:01
Corie: Same thing Pelam saying, no, same thing about the rubric he was basically saying, like, hey boy, me are creating for that, you know.
1:08:06
Corie: Alvin Daniel said the same thing.
1:08:07
Corie: He's like, boy, listen, when I go and make something, I you're making something because it had to be great.
1:08:11
Corie: It had to be love, they had to be happy with the product and judges card it too.
1:08:15
Corie: No, but but coming back, uh coming back to the whole thing about like global success.
1:08:19
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
1:08:20
SPEAKER_01: The whole um aim is talk about the Grammys.
1:08:26
SPEAKER_01: I've been there.
1:08:28
SPEAKER_01: I know what I'm now in the door.
1:08:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I could talk from experience.
1:08:33
SPEAKER_01: Um of soccer.
1:08:36
SPEAKER_01: All right, what are the top four soccer hits globally?
1:08:41
SPEAKER_01: Hot, hot, hot.
1:08:42
Corie: Right, one that deal?
1:08:43
Corie: Yeah, Kevin Little, how do they call it?
1:08:45
Corie: Two and me on, yeah.
1:08:46
Corie: Rupee of this though?
1:08:48
Corie: Like two and me on.
1:08:51
SPEAKER_01: Tempted to touch.
1:08:52
Corie: Tempted to touch.
1:08:53
Corie: Tempted to touch, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:08:54
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:08:54
SPEAKER_01: Tempted to touch.
1:08:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but two and me on that's a little rich song, by the way.
1:08:57
SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
1:08:57
SPEAKER_01: Oh, it is and for I know it's it for what who led the dogs out.
1:09:03
SPEAKER_01: Of course.
1:09:05
SPEAKER_01: You notice no trinidad, yeah?
1:09:07
SPEAKER_01: Handslim.
1:09:08
SPEAKER_01: Handsome is a writer.
1:09:11
SPEAKER_01: You notice that no Trinidad artists there is because they seen something we're not seeing, or they're doing something we're not doing.
1:09:21
SPEAKER_01: Right?
1:09:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's not something that we cannot do.
1:09:24
SPEAKER_01: It's just that we're so focused on carnival that we're not seeing the bigger picture.
1:09:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:09:30
SPEAKER_01: So that is basically like what myself and my team we basically focus on now.
1:09:35
SPEAKER_01: And global.
1:09:36
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, for the last 10 years.
1:09:37
SPEAKER_01: All right, basically, since and what kind of open eyes to a lot of places that you couldn't see just normally, is when we did Ganja Farmer.
1:09:45
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:09:46
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:09:46
SPEAKER_01: All right, so of um of the artists that received Grammys so far, let me see, three, four, five Trinidad, I was trying to track down besides Heather um Headley and Billy Ocean.
1:10:04
SPEAKER_01: Right, there are three others.
1:10:09
SPEAKER_01: Marlon Asher.
1:10:13
SPEAKER_01: Anselm Douglas is songwriter, and a lot of people don't know Joanne Brown.
1:10:18
SPEAKER_01: Remember Meet Me on Level 2?
1:10:20
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:10:23
SPEAKER_01: She's a vocalist in um in the Brooklyn Tabernacle, the one Grammy, so she and she's one of the lead vocalists there.
1:10:29
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:10:30
SPEAKER_01: These three Grammy winners, I started their careers.
1:10:34
SPEAKER_01: And I'm also uh Grammy nominated.
1:10:38
SPEAKER_01: So something I'm doing right.
1:10:41
SPEAKER_01: So, and but the rest industry is quarreling about getting to the Grammys.
1:10:46
SPEAKER_01: And it's not hard to, it's just that you have to remove your blinkers from just the carnival thing and start a step aside.
1:10:54
Corie: But you're also saying we had to work together, it's better if we uh join forces.
1:10:58
Corie: That's just the only way, bro.
1:10:59
Corie: Okay, okay.
1:11:03
Corie: What was the experience?
1:11:04
Corie: How would it start off?
1:11:04
Corie: What was your Genesis project?
1:11:07
SPEAKER_01: Um Jeron Woodruff, which I knew, who was one of the artists from the Kiskity Caravan, right?
1:11:14
SPEAKER_01: I was at Amar Studios at the time.
1:11:17
SPEAKER_01: He said, Came to me and said, Be if I have this um this artist with a song, boy, I feel something could happen.
1:11:24
SPEAKER_01: He said, But, you know, as a young artist, he said, but I know money and then, you know.
1:11:29
SPEAKER_01: I say, well, G, we'll have some faith in you, with your judgment and stuff.
1:11:33
SPEAKER_01: Let's try it.
1:11:34
SPEAKER_01: Um, so we went through the whole process and the recording and stuff.
1:11:40
SPEAKER_01: Marlon got sick in between, so he'll stop for two months because his health was, you know, he got some kind of bad cold and virus and stuff.
1:11:47
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, when we finished it now, I won't forget, I played it for two of the top um radio program directors.
1:11:58
SPEAKER_01: Out of respect, be very nice in our butt.
1:12:01
SPEAKER_01: You know, once you have that butt was happening.
1:12:03
SPEAKER_01: I might be lucky to get an interview.
1:12:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, you know, out of respect, I mean, they won't disrespect me.
1:12:09
SPEAKER_01: They'll give me an interview and nice, be a nice, nice try, you know what I mean?
1:12:13
SPEAKER_01: So we just we didn't waste our time to go down that road.
1:12:16
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:12:17
SPEAKER_01: So I realized the only way this can work is, and at that point in time, I didn't know the policy on radio was no local reggae.
1:12:26
SPEAKER_01: As a policy?
1:12:27
SPEAKER_01: It was, yeah.
1:12:27
SPEAKER_01: In other words, they'll play a reggae from Jamaica, London.
1:12:31
SPEAKER_01: Because I only found out afterwards there were other guys surfing them doing reggae recordings, but it would never hit the radio because the policy was no.
1:12:39
SPEAKER_01: That's not a real reggae, so don't play.
1:12:42
SPEAKER_01: Right?
1:12:42
SPEAKER_01: So what we did is was while I'm in session, before I leave, I would burn five, ten CDs of the song.
1:12:50
SPEAKER_01: On the way out, go to the gas station and maxi there, give them a copy.
1:12:54
SPEAKER_01: So, in other words, within six months, KFC on the Independence Square, busy corner, Shogunas, High Street, Cureb Junction, it was a hit within a year.
1:13:06
SPEAKER_01: It was massive, but nobody knew the song above that.
1:13:11
SPEAKER_01: And then, well, Jeron had organized with Gage Black Chariot to send it outside, and it was New York, um, Germany, London, Africa, all over.
1:13:23
SPEAKER_01: Came came back a year that um Ishmael did an edit of it and put it on 96.1 and it blew up.
1:13:31
SPEAKER_01: Demolition?
1:13:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:13:32
SPEAKER_01: Did you?
1:13:34
SPEAKER_01: And everybody was ringing Jamaica off the hook to find Marlon Asher.
1:13:38
SPEAKER_01: Of course, it's not a local rigging at that point, it comes from somewhere.
1:13:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:13:42
SPEAKER_01: And Jaron and myself sat on the laugh for three months, watching the country trying to find Marlon Asher in Jamaica until somebody was gonna kind of hoodwink somebody, a promoter, to pay 5,000 US for Marlin to come from Jamaica.
1:13:57
SPEAKER_01: Um, and then the story bus.
1:14:00
SPEAKER_01: But the door opened.
1:14:02
SPEAKER_01: And I wouldn't forget there was a particular um, I won't call it a minister who was a friend of mine, a schoolmate of mine, say, Diva, what are you doing this for?
1:14:11
SPEAKER_01: This is not our culture.
1:14:13
SPEAKER_01: And like I explained to him, I said, we have been trying with Calypso and Soka for decades.
1:14:19
SPEAKER_01: We doing the same over and no success.
1:14:22
SPEAKER_01: So you have to approach it slightly different.
1:14:24
SPEAKER_01: So our my up my personal approach was if I'm getting a door open with what they call a reggae, and it was global, people didn't realize how big this song was.
1:14:35
SPEAKER_01: If I'm getting a door open, at least this allows me to be able to go into certain offices to talk business and talk, they can see it.
1:14:43
SPEAKER_01: So again, after asking that two, three times, I walk away.
1:14:47
SPEAKER_01: You didn't say that, eh?
1:14:48
SPEAKER_01: I woke away.
1:14:49
SPEAKER_01: Still love and respect, yeah.
1:14:51
SPEAKER_01: So, but 22 years later, still getting my royalties of football.
1:14:56
SPEAKER_01: Went on Burn a Boys' album, Grammy nominated.
1:14:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:15:00
Corie: So I did something right.
1:15:02
Corie: Easily one of the biggest songs that ever come out of Trinidad.
1:15:05
Corie: Sung by a Trendad in this time, right?
1:15:06
Corie: Okay, was that Ganja Farmer?
1:15:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, easily.
1:15:08
SPEAKER_01: No, it's the biggest song ever to come out of Trend Lad that has not been touched by a foreigner.
1:15:14
SPEAKER_01: I see.
1:15:14
SPEAKER_01: That's the careful thing, I'll be.
1:15:16
SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of songs that went big and stuff, well, I know went bigger than that.
1:15:20
SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah.
1:15:20
SPEAKER_01: Um, but um we always had anything for it to go global.
1:15:25
SPEAKER_01: Well, maybe we had to call somebody from London or send it to London to finish or New York to finish.
1:15:30
SPEAKER_01: But you don't have that mice.
1:15:31
SPEAKER_01: You you're you don't you you the only pick person besides me that touched Ganja Farmer was Martin Meis Raymond, who mastered it for me at the time.
1:15:40
Corie: So where are you coming with a written song at a point in time?
1:15:42
SPEAKER_01: You have it about a rough or no, he was performing it on yeah, and that's how Jeron brought him to me because he was singing it on this rhythm this week and somebody else wrote that.
1:15:53
SPEAKER_01: No, yeah, it was you know, we're just looking to go, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:15:57
SPEAKER_01: Shipwreck, of course.
1:15:59
SPEAKER_01: A couple dollars.
1:16:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so nice part of the repertoire, a man put on the rhythm, of course.
1:16:03
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I could sing a ganja farm on that.
1:16:04
SPEAKER_01: I mean, so he came to a song like very loose endings, and I basically structured this song after he was finished.
1:16:11
Corie: Right.
1:16:12
Corie: And yeah, I guess well, you you have evidence of that before.
1:16:14
Corie: We got a response to it.
1:16:16
Corie: If you're talking about jihadie by being one of them songs, because I remember hearing that at the time, it was very, very different from anything we were hearing.
1:16:21
Corie: Oh, jihadibhai?
1:16:22
Corie: Yeah, for sure.
1:16:23
Corie: Oh, no.
1:16:24
SPEAKER_01: Again, because I blessed that.
1:16:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, situations have presented themselves to me in life.
1:16:31
SPEAKER_01: And one of the situations that presented itself to me was in 1980 when I did um Ohm Shanty album, who was recording at the time, and one of our regular clients was a guy called Moheen Mohammed, who had Windsor Records Shop.
1:16:46
SPEAKER_01: He was the biggest distributor for East Indian music in the Caribbean.
1:16:49
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:16:49
SPEAKER_01: I was my real partner.
1:16:51
SPEAKER_01: And then after the Ohm Shanty success, a day came for session.
1:16:57
SPEAKER_01: He watched me say, Beaver.
1:17:00
SPEAKER_01: The Creole and them taking we thing and putting the thing and calling usoka.
1:17:04
SPEAKER_01: So, why you think we could borrow something from the Creole and put it in we Chutney music and then?
1:17:09
SPEAKER_01: I say, brilliant idea.
1:17:11
SPEAKER_01: That was the birth of Chutney Soka.
1:17:13
SPEAKER_01: A lot of people don't understand that.
1:17:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:17:15
SPEAKER_01: And he brought down a guy called um uh Anu Jalota from India.
1:17:23
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:17:23
SPEAKER_01: Right?
1:17:24
SPEAKER_01: Brought him down.
1:17:25
SPEAKER_01: And well, I didn't take him on.
1:17:27
SPEAKER_01: I said, yeah, great idea.
1:17:28
SPEAKER_01: But two weeks later, he said, yeah, Anub in tongue and the I walk in the studio, Anub Jalota, beaver this Anub, Anub, this is beaver.
1:17:37
SPEAKER_01: You all go in the studio and do something, just create something.
1:17:40
SPEAKER_01: And Harry Mahabia, Indian Orchestra inside there, or they just come up with something.
1:17:46
SPEAKER_01: That was the first Mastanahabara pageant album.
1:17:48
SPEAKER_01: It's Sunday, all the greats on it.
1:17:50
SPEAKER_01: And that was the birth of Chutney Soka.
1:17:52
Corie: Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
1:17:53
Corie: Somebody was here saying that the first time we had Chutney Soka was from Carl Jacobs.
1:17:56
Corie: In terms of the name, what's any name together?
1:17:59
SPEAKER_01: Nah, we didn't name it we didn't name it.
1:18:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because it was.
1:18:02
SPEAKER_01: You know, and you see, because you have to understand too, that was again.
1:18:06
SPEAKER_01: Um I found myself on the on the edge of breaking boundaries with the East Indian culture because it was rejected for two years after that, you know.
1:18:15
SPEAKER_01: Because in other words, you're stepping on kind of hallowed grounds there of their culture.
1:18:19
SPEAKER_01: Of course.
1:18:20
SPEAKER_01: Um, and they weren't comfortable with it, but it slowly edged in and etched in and etched in.
1:18:29
SPEAKER_01: And here we are today.
1:18:30
Corie: Yeah, yeah, it's coming also.
1:18:32
SPEAKER_01: All right.
1:18:33
SPEAKER_01: But the but the difference is, all right, so again, all my music is different.
1:18:36
SPEAKER_01: So let's go back one step, ganja farmer.
1:18:39
SPEAKER_01: Ganja Farmer is not a reggae.
1:18:41
SPEAKER_01: What do you have with us?
1:18:42
SPEAKER_01: Gancha Farmer is a soccer at 80 BPM.
1:18:48
Corie: So if you speed it up, you're gonna feel of soccer.
1:18:51
SPEAKER_01: Listen to it without the vocals.
1:18:53
SPEAKER_01: It is listen to the the pattern, the drum pattern.
1:18:56
SPEAKER_01: It's so it's soccer with a reggae artist and a reggae strummer load.
1:19:04
SPEAKER_01: In other words, there's no band up to today that has been able to play that song like it's originally written.
1:19:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, none, none.
1:19:11
SPEAKER_01: They still they all play it as one drop.
1:19:13
SPEAKER_01: It's not a one drop.
1:19:14
SPEAKER_01: And the first person that got caught with that was Maxi Maxi Priest drummer.
1:19:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:19:19
SPEAKER_01: He tried to anyway.
1:19:20
SPEAKER_01: He realized, no, this is not a one drop.
1:19:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's not a one drop.
1:19:22
SPEAKER_01: And he just settled for one drop after that.
1:19:25
SPEAKER_01: But if the song feels different when played in one drop, right?
1:19:30
SPEAKER_01: Then, all right, so come to the Chutney Soka thing with an inshorty experience.
1:19:38
SPEAKER_01: Marvin's Jahachi Bai.
1:19:40
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:19:41
SPEAKER_01: Denise Plumonal Leaving.
1:19:44
SPEAKER_01: All the same thing.
1:19:45
SPEAKER_01: It's just what's on top is different.
1:19:47
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:19:48
SPEAKER_01: You know.
1:19:48
SPEAKER_01: So, in other words, all those things are all hybrids of who we are as Trinidadians.
1:19:54
SPEAKER_01: You know, so I don't get into people's politics and this is we culture and that.
1:19:58
SPEAKER_01: We are Trinidadians and that's all music.
1:20:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:20:02
SPEAKER_01: That is why I'm I still judge Jutney Soka Monarch.
1:20:04
SPEAKER_01: I can still judge Soka Monarch.
1:20:06
SPEAKER_01: I could, you know, I'm in all spaces.
1:20:08
Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:20:09
Corie: Well, you said it in the beginning, too.
1:20:10
Corie: If we if in this constant cadence of Carnival, Rest Carnival, Band Lodge Carnival, I'm not sure if we get in there.
1:20:16
Corie: But I feel we're in good hands with you.
1:20:17
Corie: I feel we're in good hands.
1:20:18
SPEAKER_01: No, but we trust me.
1:20:20
SPEAKER_01: But the only thing I am still disappointed in this country as a whole is the educational side of the industry.
1:20:27
SPEAKER_01: That's the only thing that disappoints me.
1:20:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
1:20:30
SPEAKER_01: Um, I've been still at knock on too many administrative doors that you have to get that into the communities.
1:20:37
SPEAKER_01: And you talk about crime and all them things.
1:20:40
SPEAKER_01: Once you get into that creative space, them kids don't want to hear nothing about crime.
1:20:44
SPEAKER_01: A hundred percent, a hundred percent.
1:20:46
SPEAKER_01: For instance, they know they're arguing and they're talking about um uh the local dance hall, Trinybad.
1:20:53
SPEAKER_01: Why do you think Trinybard came about?
1:20:55
SPEAKER_01: Trinity Bad came about because every other door was closed.
1:21:00
SPEAKER_01: You shut down every door to them.
1:21:02
SPEAKER_01: What do you expect them to do?
1:21:04
SPEAKER_01: Sit them like Moo Moo's, don't sing, don't do it.
1:21:06
SPEAKER_01: Don't do nothing.
1:21:07
SPEAKER_01: Them kids are not moo, they're brighter than some of them kids brighter than their parents.
1:21:12
SPEAKER_01: You know, they're born into a world of technology.
1:21:14
SPEAKER_01: Them kids recording on their phone, they headset as a microphone.
1:21:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:21:18
SPEAKER_01: And when they put this stuff on YouTube, two, three, four, five million hits.
1:21:23
Corie: Of course, like you say, they see in places that we might not see if we stick to the same thing.
1:21:26
Corie: Trinity Bart is the biggest growing genre in the Caribbean right now, bro.
1:21:31
Corie: Where even Jamaica is, you know, we're entangling.
1:21:34
Corie: Of course, of course, of course.
1:21:35
Corie: It's important.
1:21:36
Corie: I feel it's important for them to hear you say that.
1:21:39
SPEAKER_01: Because as somebody who was at the leading edge of the thing, and if you say, I mean, it's surprising to me to hear you say I will go at the mountaintops, and because I've I've I've worked with some of the kids, and it's hurtful to see some of these kids who have so much talent just be boxing and shut out.
1:21:53
SPEAKER_01: Of course, of course.
1:21:54
SPEAKER_01: And you know, you talk about you know why the kids enter the crime and walking the wrong road is because if you shut on every day every corner, the wrong people will come knocking on the kids' doors to take them where they're gonna be.
1:22:08
Corie: If you shut along every other outlet, it's outlet.
1:22:12
Corie: Young people, you know what I mean?
1:22:13
Corie: And the energy to burn.
1:22:14
Corie: Yeah, of course, of course, of course.
1:22:16
Corie: But listen, you give them the template, right?
1:22:18
Corie: You show them how to jump over keyboards and then sort of pictures, they come in and that kind of outlets too, right?
1:22:23
Corie: We need that picture for the episode.
1:22:24
Corie: We don't ever put David's own that's gonna put pictures on the episode, right?
1:22:27
Corie: But one picture I want to put on the episode for sure.
1:22:29
Corie: It's all high, you're jumping out that thing is just thank you very much for the picture.