June 12, 2024 • 48 mins
All aboard! This week we head to Jamaica by way of Asbury Park New Jersey, joined by our friend and guide Joe K. Not only is he a great story teller, but the founder and owner of HoldFast Records.
We learn how Joe and his wife got started in the industry, the production work he cut his teeth on that gave him the tough skin, yet love for community that he takes with him on his trips to Jamaica. Joe has spent years cultivating relationships in Kingston, away from the safety of the resorts. While not for the faint of heart, with a tumultuous religious and government history, there is also such an important thoroughline of vinyl and music one which people would ‘climb the pole’ for. During these trips he’s met people who have created and built the reggae foundation we all know and love.
Check out:
https://www.instagram.com/holdfastrecordsnj/
https://www.discogs.com/seller/HoldfastRecordsNJ/profile
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_One_(record_label)
https://www.rockersinternational.com/
Thank you to Full Flower Moon Band, an alternative grunge rock band from Brisbane Australia; for the use of their song ‘West Side' off their album of the same name. Find more at: https://fullflowermoonband.bandcamp.com/music
Grab a copy of our book 'Women in Vinyl, the Art of Making Vinyl' out now! Learn more and buy a copy at: womeninvinyl.com/book
THANK YOU TO OUR SUPPORTERS! Keep your records clean and sounding great with GrooveWasher. Use WomenInVinyl10 at check out: www.groovewasher.com
Commercial-Free & High Resolution version of this podcast, along with membership options and ton of other discount codes available at: https://www.patreon.com/womeninvinyl
You can also contribute to furthering our mission by donating https://www.womeninvinyl.com/donate as a 501(c)3 all donations are tax deductible. Visit the website to check out past episodes, features, and our ever growing library of resources to further the education, demystification and diversification of the Vinyl Making Space.
We were listed as number 11 on Feedspot’s Top 25 Vinyl Records Podcasts! Don’t forget to like, subscribe and give us a review on your favorite podcast delivery method! Want to be a sponsor or just get in touch? Email us: info@womeninvinyl.com
We learn how Joe and his wife got started in the industry, the production work he cut his teeth on that gave him the tough skin, yet love for community that he takes with him on his trips to Jamaica. Joe has spent years cultivating relationships in Kingston, away from the safety of the resorts. While not for the faint of heart, with a tumultuous religious and government history, there is also such an important thoroughline of vinyl and music one which people would ‘climb the pole’ for. During these trips he’s met people who have created and built the reggae foundation we all know and love.
Check out:
https://www.instagram.com/holdfastrecordsnj/
https://www.discogs.com/seller/HoldfastRecordsNJ/profile
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_One_(record_label)
https://www.rockersinternational.com/
Thank you to Full Flower Moon Band, an alternative grunge rock band from Brisbane Australia; for the use of their song ‘West Side' off their album of the same name. Find more at: https://fullflowermoonband.bandcamp.com/music
Grab a copy of our book 'Women in Vinyl, the Art of Making Vinyl' out now! Learn more and buy a copy at: womeninvinyl.com/book
THANK YOU TO OUR SUPPORTERS! Keep your records clean and sounding great with GrooveWasher. Use WomenInVinyl10 at check out: www.groovewasher.com
Commercial-Free & High Resolution version of this podcast, along with membership options and ton of other discount codes available at: https://www.patreon.com/womeninvinyl
You can also contribute to furthering our mission by donating https://www.womeninvinyl.com/donate as a 501(c)3 all donations are tax deductible. Visit the website to check out past episodes, features, and our ever growing library of resources to further the education, demystification and diversification of the Vinyl Making Space.
We were listed as number 11 on Feedspot’s Top 25 Vinyl Records Podcasts! Don’t forget to like, subscribe and give us a review on your favorite podcast delivery method! Want to be a sponsor or just get in touch? Email us: info@womeninvinyl.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Welcome to the Women in Vinyl Podcastwith Jen du Genie, founder of Women
in Vinyl, and contributor Robin Raymond. This podcast facilitates conversations with those working
in the vinyl record industry to educate, demystify, and diversify the vinyl community.
(00:40):
By right, I'll die all nightgoing bed seeing that gad is ever
(01:15):
the bedded our love about day AwayDay, Hodayday. You're joining us for
(01:42):
episode fifty two of the Women inVinyl Podcast. Thanks for being here.
You just heard west Side by Brisbanebased Full Flower Moon Band off their album
also titled west Side. Find moreand listen at Fullflowermoonband dot bandcamp dot com.
This week we had to Jamaica byway of New Jersey, joined by
our friend and guide Joe Kay.Not only is he a great storyteller,
(02:06):
but he is the founder and ownerof hold Fast Records. Joe has spent
years cultivating relationships in Kingston, duringwhich he's met people who have created and
built the reggae music we all knowand love. We learn how Joe and
his wife got started in the industryand how his passion for community has taken
him on a journey into the Jamaicanvinyl scene. Reminder to grab a copy
(02:29):
of our book Women in Vinyl TheArt of Making Vinyl Out Now go to
Women in Vinyl dot com slash book. As a reminder, we have commercial,
free and high resolution versions of thispodcast, along with our membership and
tons of other discount codes available atpatreon dot com slash Women in Vinyl.
Thanks to you, we're number elevenon Feedspot's Top Vinyl podcasts. Please continue
(02:52):
to like and subscribe. Now here'sthe episode. Thank you for joining us,
and could you tell our listeners whoyou are and a little bit about
how you got into records. Uh? Okay, my name is Joe,
one of the owners of hold FastRecords. My wife is the other owner,
and yeah, she's the hero.I'm just here for my looks.
(03:15):
So basically, we were working inproduction. My wife was a bar manager
and I was a running clubs andover the years we kind of both wanted
out, and you know, Iwas working seven days a week doing production
and running stages and we just nevergot to see each other. And we
(03:37):
actually ended up. I shouldn't saywe never got see each other. We
worked together every day, but wenever got to spend real time together.
You know. It was always that. So we kept saying we're gonna do
something else, We're gonna do somethingelse, and then one day we just
did something else. You know,we we just made the move. We
opened the shop, and really wehad we were broke. Yeah, there
(04:02):
was like there's a couple of timeswhen our our bank account went down to
one hundred dollars and we went toAtlantic City with one hundred dollars. Who
wow, you know, yeah,yeah, and Megan bartended, like I
said, double shifting, bartending andkilling herself. And then I would leave
the shop at seven and walk overto Bond Street Bar and work four nights
a week over there, working thedoor and helping them like kind of build
(04:25):
that bar up. And so Iwent from like running bars and being the
head of personnel on the boardwalk tolike working a door, anything we could
do to just get that shop open. But our theory with our shop from
day one was we're not cool,Like we we know we're not that cool
because we're kind of nerds, andwe just kind of get it and we
(04:45):
just kind of we're really annoyed withhow we were treated growing up going in
record stores. Does that make anysense, you Yeah, it just kind
of pissed us off, and wealmost open their record store out of spite,
you know. Yeah. And thenand then when people were like you're
you know Asberry. When we opened, the shop was still somewhat unpleasant and
(05:11):
wasn't all you know, they didn'tpolish the turd that much yet. And
you know, we were having draggingpeople out of the store drunk midday and
all we were still it was itwas rough. Nobody no other businesses were
opened past five o'clock, so wewere kind of keep an eye, keep
an eye on the street for theother businesses. And you know it because
(05:34):
of my relationships with the clubs andeverything else. Luckily, we had good
relationships with the people that live inthat city and they actually helped us and
they would call us, you know, all times a day and night.
Trust me, hey man, Ijust went in the basement. There's forty
records here. If it was tenrecords, we would go and it didn't
(05:55):
matter. But it almost became likea collective yep. So it looked like
and felt like everybody was kind oflike we kind of thought like the underdogs.
Maybe we weren't, but we feltlike we were so and I think
our customers kind of felt the sameway. Yeah, you know, like
we we had a pretty rough goof it, and everybody knew it,
(06:16):
like, you know, they sawit's working seven days a week and running
clubs and standing on stages and theyhad a picture of me. I fell
asleep under a stage, you know. But at the end of the day,
our shop is. Our shop startedbecause we didn't have a choice.
It was either we start a businessthat we loved because we love records,
(06:38):
and we actually just wanted to builda little community. But it's really because
me and my wife wanted to hangout. We didn't have a choice,
Like we either had to open abusiness where we hang out or we're gonna
have to go find other jobs.And like we just want to hang out.
We really like each other, youknow, I love that. Yeah,
yeah, it's pretty simple, right. And you guys were both record
collectors, like in your origin storyis too my wife not so much.
(07:02):
I kind of had a I kindof collected for years, but then it
just I stopped cold Turkey like everybodyelse. Things changed and I sold my
stuff to buy other stuff, andbills happened, and the one thing that
really changed for me was when Istarted working in the venues. I was,
you know, pushing gear up aramp and bar backing and anything I
(07:25):
could do to get my foot inthe door, sitting in my car in
front of the club every day justin case they needed somebody, you know.
And and at one point one ofmy buddies just said to me,
he's like, you do you reallyneed the records? And like, what
do you mean? He's like,dude, if you really love music,
it's the lifestyle. Everything else isjust things. And then I realized,
(07:46):
like, yeah, I don't needmy records. I don't need anything.
I just need to be involved.I need to swim in music, you
know. So I sold my collection. It's funny that buying, like buying
and selling record It's got me backinto loving music, you know. Yeah,
that's the beauty of it. That'sgood. If you're in production,
you know, all of a suddenyou stop knowing what bands sound like.
(08:09):
But you can say how much.You can tell how much they'll draw.
Yeah, yeah, people say,oh, you ever heard of this band?
I'm like, yeah, they drawlike two thousand people like you ever
heard of them? I'm like nope. I mean, and I've tried to
make a little bit more of aneffort to pay attention to the various acts
that I see on on the weekly. The thing that kind of killed the
the not even the love, butlike the appreciation for music was mastering to
(08:33):
be honest, Like I used toget jazz to be like, oh,
yeah, I've worked with that band. Oh, these guys are super rad,
and like I'm sure you've been therethere too. We're like, if
the band is really rad, you'llgive them a little bit more leverage or
like more of a chance. Soif their music's kind of like nah,
you're like, oh, but they'resweet dude, so they're like they're really
trying it. But like if theirdicks are like bye bye bye bye,
(08:56):
well yeah, we always say wealways say one thing. And I mean,
I'm sure you've heard this on thatend of things where it's like you're
standing on a stage and I saidthis. I won't say to who's tour
manager, but I just looked himin the eye. I was like,
hey, man, you know wherethe real money is. It's back here.
I said. You guys are alltemporary. I'll be here in five
(09:16):
years. You'll be playing some bumpkinbar next to a trailer park. Yeah,
so like you could be rude.Now tell your band to be a
pack of dicks. I'm okay withit, yeah, because guess what,
I got to hit a button.They sound like the cookie Monster. I
hit another button. They're smoked out, nobody could see them. And guess
I still have a job tomorrow exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(09:37):
And I mean like our our opinionof that goes a little bit farther
too, because we're the ones thatare going to talk to like other venues,
interior managers and stuff. We can, I mean we can shut down
like real quick and people don't understandthat sometimes. Oh no. And that's
that's the beauty of the Internet.There is some good size of the internet
finally, where you know, wewe worked with some bands over the years,
(10:01):
and I would say it was likephone calls were made, you know.
I was like, hey, yeah, these guys came in here.
We treated them like gold. BecauseI don't care who you are, if
you're a local band or if you'reGandhi, I'm going to treat you the
same. Yeah, because that's that'show I make you know, that's that's
how you do it. And youwant you want to destroy my green room
(10:22):
for no reason. You want tocomplain, you want a mouth off to
the sound guy. Cool, doit. But I'm just going to do
it the right way. I'm goingto warn the next five stage managers.
I'm going to make the call.I'm going to talk to your touring people.
I'm going to talk to all thepeople. I'm going to talk to
your A and R guy, I'mgoing to talk to your record I'm going
to talk to you. Yeah,the agents. I'll have a job tomorrow
because because now all my now mymy club offers are going to dry up.
(10:46):
So now the next band coming throughthat agent, it isn't five grand,
it's four grand or less. Oryou don't or you don't get an
answer when you email, you knowthere's no there's no dates available. Sorry
yeah, yeah fails. Sorry yeah, Well I'm running out of favors like
you're running out of stage. It'sto play on. It's so weird.
Yeah, I love it. Ilove it. I mean, but yeah,
(11:07):
it's funny that collecting and for thisstore was your like inlet back to
it. So I mean, whatare you were you guys like primarily just
getting used collections first before you startedto do the new kind of acquisitions.
(11:28):
So are even now our new stock, like contemporary new stock is only ten
percent, We are ninety percent usedat all times. Incredible, incredible.
We go out and we are onthe road every single day. We will
fly out. If it's twenty records, we go. If it's a house
with thirty third we go. Itdoesn't matter. Every rock gets on.
(11:48):
Oh, we turn over every rock. We don't care. And I say
this with such conviction because I wishI was lying, because I would sleep
more and i'd see wayless Montievannis.But the reality is, if you want
to do this right and bring peoplerecords at the right price, you have
to find enough where it's not atwenty dollars Fleetwood Mac record to you,
(12:11):
it's a ten dollars Fleetwood Mac record. Yeah. So we started fifteen years
ago, twenty years ago, westarted dealing with cleanout guys, and we
just put them all in our pocketand we said, if you call me,
even if I don't buy the records, I'll give you fifty dollars.
And we just became reliable. Theywould call us at two in the morning
and be like, hey, I'mon my way to the flea market.
Cool dude, We'll see you therein thirty minutes. And meeting these guys
(12:35):
at four in the morning, youknow. And and we up till about
three four months ago, well Ishould say longer, not because of my
health issues, but we were doingflea markets like Wednesday through Sunday, leaving
the house at three thirty in themorning. Wow. And then and then
we would be there at all eightor nine in the morning. We would
actually go through all the trucks,all the storage and everything before they would
(12:58):
put them out on the tables,right because any offer they got, we
would give double. When every heelse is paying fifty cents a record.
We were offering three to five,sometimes seven ten dollars a record. But
you know, if you want ashop, that's a scary position to be
in. They are always spending bigmoney. Yeah, So our thing is
this, we we go high volume. So I could tell you if you
(13:24):
if I can find twenty Fleetwood Maxrumors, I will sell twenty tomorrow because
as hard as we hustle to buy, we hustle to sell. But we
keep our number up. So ourmargin is not huge, and dudes know
that. Like people line up whenwe do our we do like dollar boxes.
Anything under VG plus and I'm stringent, unconc I'm insane about condition.
(13:48):
My VG plus is near men.Anything below VG plus is a dollar record.
I don't care if it's an eighthundred dollars blue note. I don't
care if it's an RL led Zeppelin. It's a dollar. We do dollar
dollar things. We get usually thirtyto fifty people lined up, and we
do like it's almost like a whistle. We're like, all right, how
about it, and then they alljump all over each other. Okay.
(14:11):
I actually love those because I feellike we need to come to that because
Jersey Jersey City. I do thosein Jersey City. I got to look
at things, but I do thosein Jersey City all the time. I
literally just put out like twenty orthirty boxes, and everybody stands in front
of a box and then we justliterally go all right, go and they
just all jump in. It's crazycool. Amanda shoots, Ben, this
is your notice. Yeah she knowsso Amanda, Oh no, Amanda seen
(14:33):
it. She sits there and laughsand stands next to me. She's like
look at them all. They're crazy. Well, one of the reasons that
Kathy connected us was because of Robinand I have been on this podcast virtual
Tour of the World, and youhave New Jersey. You called about New
(14:56):
Jersey. We did, yeah,I know, you know it, Yes,
by the seashore. We heard aboutyour amazing Jamaican connection. And to
preface for listeners, there's a lotof things that we can't really share,
(15:16):
but there are going to be.We just kind of wanted to talk about
the culture a little bit, whatthings look like there, So maybe how
did that get started and how haveyou sort of grown. So a buddy
of mine short version, there's reallyno short version, but I'll try.
But a buddy of mine, Tommywas a huge reggae guy, and I
was kind of in the reggae Iguess you know, it's a punk rock
(15:37):
retirement plan. You go from hardcoreto this to that, and then all
of a sudden you're a reggae guy. It's just I don't know, it's
the natural. Yeah, honestly forme, and you're a production person.
I have insanely severe tonight and I'malso partially deaf in my left ear from
working stage right for twenty years,so reggae was actually a choice, not
(16:00):
even a choice. It was almostlike, hey, this is all you
can listen to with that one toscratch your eye on. So I was
going out to Jamaica on you know, a honeymoon and maybe yeah, yeah,
it goes back to the Beautiful Wife'sSo so basically Augustus Publist on Addis
(16:22):
had come in our shop a fewtimes, and Augustus Pablo, you know,
famous melodica player, he came inthe shop a few times and everybody
said check out Rockers International and Kingston. But it's a little rough there,
this and that. So me,being the wonderful husband that I am,
I kind of set it up sothat when we landed we were going to
Port Antonio, we accidentally landed inKingston and I was like, hey,
(16:48):
why don't we go to this reallycool place? And she was just like,
oh God, you're the worst,But so we went. I mean,
she was a willing accomplice. Thedriver not so much. The driver
was like you to go where Noand Arne Street where Rockets International is a
good spot. I mean it's atough road, but there there's good people
(17:10):
on it. Ebo Spices there,which is a great vegan spot. There's
a really cool bar there because youknow, all these guys run across the
street and just that metal hangs outand but it is if you're not used
to that, it'll like I wasa little scared the first time I rolled
through Kingston. I was like,oh oh, a lot of shaking your
head and a lot of like,oh this is this is legitimately a city,
(17:32):
Like yeah, yeah, you're notscrewing around in Kingston. That was
my first run through. So wewent up, you know, guys standing
in front of the place while weshopped, kind of a thing to make
sure nobody walked up on us.And we bought some stuff, and then
I had the brilliant idea to goover to Studio one, which is,
you know, a couple of blocksaway. Ye keep in mind, we
(17:55):
know nobody other than like a phonecall we made, so we're just blindly.
Yeah. It was not the brightest. So we go over to the
studio on there's a bunch of yardsout front. Yardies are just like you
know, block kids hanging out,big gold sunglasses and boxed up to the
knees, fluorescent green. It's it'severy dance hall video you've ever seen in
real life. That's awesome. It'sit's awesome when you're looking at it from
(18:18):
inside the cart. Intimidating. Yeah, so being really you know, this
smart conscience is a great guy thatI am with my wife in the car
with a really scared driver. Igot out and yelled into the twelve foot
high gate with Barbera on it.Hey man, I have a lot of
money and I want to buy records. And the gateman, like most most
(18:45):
spots in Kingston have like a gateman guy just works the gate, you
know. And the yards all turnedand looked at me, you know,
and I was like, hey,yeah, I'm the dumbest guy in the
block. So and then a dudewalked down and he's like oh he said
end I quote boy, you betterget in here and walked me in.
And they car pulled in and thedriver was really nervous. He was just
(19:07):
like, Ah, we shouldn't behere, we shouldn't be here, we
shouldn't be here. And the amazingthing was at this point I'm inside the
studio one Yard, which is likethe Sun Records of Reggae. Yeah right,
and the man's you know. Theman said, uh, what do
you want, not very pleasantly,and I said, I said, listen,
I'm not I'm not here to doanything other than buy records. I
(19:30):
said, I just want to dobusiness, man, because I had heard
this thing over and over that everybody'stried an angle. Everybody said, Oh,
I'm doing a document. Oh I'mdoing this, Oh I'm doing Oh
I just want to be your friend. Oh I want to go home smoke
erb with you. Oh, let'shave dinner. So I just figured,
like, let's be honest. I'mhere to make money. I like reggae
records. It's a bonus. Ido what I love. But at the
end of the day, I gotto eat. So I just said,
(19:51):
I want to make money. Man, I said, I got a lot
of money. So he let meinto Studio one, which if you're a
reggae guy, that's it. You'venow crossed that line. You that's the
room, your it's your universe.You figured it all out, you know.
He pulled some records for me andlet me look at some stuff.
Not a lot. Very I said, what's in that room? You know
(20:11):
I was. I figured, Hey, the brazen stupidity worked let's keep with
it. And I kept saying,like, what's in that room? In
that room, and he's like yeah, he's like, it's a bathroom.
That's so I said, I gotnine bathrooms, amazing, you know,
Like he's like yeah, yeah,yeah, yeah, in five different Jamaican
ways, told me to shut up. So he said this is what you
(20:33):
can buy some very cool records.And I just said how much? And
he's like, you tell me thatright. There was clearly the first time
in my life that I knew thenext words out of my mouth were either
going to mean me and my wifewere leaving a property comfortably or I was
(20:56):
probably going to be dragged out.And I had said, you know,
I just looked at him. Isaid, I'm not going to play the
game with you. These are wortha lot of money. If you don't
set the price, I'm just notgoing to take them right hard ball.
And he said and he said,uh, let's do one hundred dollars.
So I gave him a thousand.Yeah, you know, and the eyes
(21:21):
went big and he said, allright, boy, have a good trip.
And we got in the car andwe left. Yeah, and we
went on vacation and my wife wasit was cool. We had a nice
vacation. We went home, andthen my phone rang a couple months,
a couple of weeks later, excuseme, and it was boy, you
should come back, and uh,I got back on a plane. Yeah.
(21:42):
I just went down there, meand my buddy and we just like
threw mud against the wall and hopeit stuck kind of thing, and it
was. Uh. This has beengoing on for over twelve years now,
and I can tell you as manyof these places I've been in Studio one,
Penthouse Records, Like we've fought upwith Jermaine from Pentaus, who is
one of the biggest dance hall producersin the world who you know, Boujou
(22:04):
Bontan and like all the dudes youname it, that dude has done it
as far as dance hall goes.What I've learned it through all this and
what got us through all this isobviously we love the crap out of Vinyl,
but what they're doing there in Jamaica, they hand out forty fives,
like to hand out business cards.I mean, I've had Jamaica dudes that
(22:27):
DJ with me show up with fortyfives on a rope over their shoulders.
Yeah, yes, stack, Iknow it's wild, and being on the
island and going through these spots,I'm like, hey, man, i
can't get to the top shelf andthey literally stack up LPs for me to
stand on. And I'm standing onlike five thousand dollars worth of dub records
to get like the ten thousand dollarsworth of plates. You know. So
(22:51):
what we realized pretty quickly over thefirst two or three trips was that this
was wayby on us, that weare merely like passengers and that everything we're
going to get to see is agift. And it really has been.
Not to sound cheesy, but I'mnot a very spiritual guy. I'm a
(23:12):
pretty clean, pretty cold cut guyon that end of things that I will
tell you what music does there,how Vinyl plays into it. It's insane
to watch. You have people whoclimb telephone poles to run electric illegally for
(23:33):
run pressing machines, and they're losingpeople, They're dying. They're literally getting
electrocuted and dying doing this because theyneed. That's my biggest question, because
because it is such, it hasbeen such an integral part of the culture,
and it has been such a lynchpinof export to get reggae and dub
(23:55):
and all of this like culturally significantand influential music around the world. Why
did the pressing plants just evaporate?Well, you have you have an infrastructure
there that's that's somewhat completed. Obviously, you have a lot of poverty,
you have a lot of people tryingto do the right thing. But there's
one basic underlying issue with almost everybodythat you deal with in that community,
(24:21):
and it's one word paranoia. Theyare all getting ripped off regularly. They
know it, and there's only somany people that you can work with there
that aren't paranoid about also other peopleon the island, not just Americans ripping
them off, Jamaicans. So it'sunfortunate because they're sitting on what could be
(24:44):
this amazing thing, but they've they'vebeen screwed so many times, and you
almost fall into the trap when you'rethere that you know, people go with
me to the island. Now,I'll take a friend. We vet people
very heavily before we take them,because if you say one wrong thing,
you could get us killed. Sowe go down there and some of these
(25:04):
guys, their headachesplodes. I'm like, hey, dude, here's an entire
pressing plant that hasn't been moved.It hasn't moved in twelve years. Here's
all the stampers, here's the plates, here's this, here's that, and
where do we peek? I go, oh, there's no bathroom. Yeah
you know. I go go outside, go out there, and you'll see
where they cut down someone like cutdown the telephone pole and took the power
(25:29):
and cut it with a hatchet.And it's just set idle for over twelve
years, now fifteen years. Andwhen it was open, it ran for
six months. That was it.Before that was closed another ten years.
So what you have a lot ofyou have issues, and you have this
beautiful island. You have this thepeople on Orange Street trying to do everything
right. Mitchie at Rockers, youhave Penthousi's doing great things. You have
(25:52):
Harry Jay's, you have the SugarmanKnot Yard. But there's just this underlying
corruption. There's this standstill slow motion. You know, to get it done
would take so much, and youneed every little link on that gear to
work. And then Jamaica and guesswhat one link is always not going to
(26:15):
work, right, We've been doingthis for ten years. I flew southside
Johnny down there, of all people, there's a huge rinking you know,
he's a huge record guy, andhe was blown away. He was just
like, how did you just walkme into three hundred thousand records in four
days? Yeah, and we can'tfigure out how to get a pressing plant
running down here. I mean it'sfunny too, because, like, especially
(26:40):
with Jen and I and this entiregoofy business that we find ourselves in and
all of these incredible conversations that wefind ourselves in, we know what it's
like to work at pressing plants.So I mean we know that it's not
as easy as just like, yeah, flip and the switch and pressing a
button. But the chemicals, listen, there's a scary thing. And you
(27:03):
know from working on a plant.There's a spot near one of the places
we go, I can't say thename of, but one of the places
we go, there's a big circleand the land is gray and it's where
they used to just dump the chemicalson the ground. And everybody says the
same thing. Don't go over there, don't not not like, just don't
go over there. Why we didn'tknow what to do with the chemicals.
(27:26):
And there's another spot. I thinkI think I showed you some of these
pictures, just the labels, butthey cut all the vinyl off, would
remelt it and press with with youknow, they're stamping over other records.
Yeah, yeah, so you're gettingghost tracks. It's one of the Yeah,
(27:47):
I got to connect you with oneof the owners of our record store
because he's got the biggest deb collectionin Canada and that's that's been his whole
thing. And he used to getdub plates cut in Jamaica, like in
the early night and stuff. SoI mean, you guys should be homies.
Anyway, He's really great. Butyeah, he's he's a super knowledgeable
(28:07):
guy. But like he's been givingme, like gifting me some some goofy
sevens and I mean yeah, likesome of them are just melted to shit,
and like the lead in is sonoisy. I'm like, oh,
this is weird. But then oncethe first beat drops and it's like it's
perfect, and I'm like, howdoes shit does this play? It's great.
It's like that that mystical thing thatsurrounds blue notes, Like blue notes
you can stand on them and rubthem with brillope pad and they'll still play
(28:30):
truly, And that that's kind ofwhat happens with the Jamaican stuff, one
way or another. I mean,yeah, I'm like talking to one of
the ladies that used to work thePlan. I'm friends with and she's eighty
years old, I think seventy eight, Yeah, she's I call her and
I just say, hey, Igot this record. She goes, only
fifty made. She's like an encyclopediafor this stuff. Wow. And I'm
like, hey, I just foundthis one hundred and twenty five copies.
(28:52):
She goes, yeah, we nevergave it back because they never paid for
it. So you're the only guywho has them. WHOA So all of
a sudden, you own jam makinggospel that's never been released. Yeah,
you know. But what this allcomes back to is like you look at
the culture, you look at what'sgoing on there, and this for some
of the guys on the island isthe only way out. So they're selling
(29:15):
records, they're doing everything they can. You know, Rockers Internationals doing great
things. He sells a lot ofguys online, He's doing everything he can.
But there's this one thing that justseems to be missing, And the
reality is it's because you can't getwhat you need. They're done the right
way sometimes to get from point Ato point B. It's it's not a
(29:37):
straight line. And because of theparanoia. You add paranoia into something that's
already very hard to do in anothercountry, and you add in crime and
guns, and you know, oneof my buddies said, well, if
you have access to three hundred thousandrecords, why do you just buy them
all? I said, I can'tafford the amount of tax it would cost
to put it on a boat.He goes, oh, shipping wouldn't be
(30:00):
that bad. I said, oh, it's not the shipping, it's getting
it from here to there, right. We have to pay off dudes and
drivers and security and oh you makeit must be awesome. We see,
you know, there's police checkpoints,military checkpoints. Of course, a couple
guys that have gone with us theirheads exploded the first day because they're like,
(30:22):
so, I'm like, what doyou what? This is your day?
Now? This is what you needto do to buy records. Here.
You need to get stopped at amilitary checkpoint, you need a gun
pointed at your car. You needto know how to talk to people.
You need to walk in the localbar and put fifty dollars and say,
hey, everybody drinks for feet free, to wear off the block. You
need to know how to navigate througha situation where you're not going to get
(30:45):
robbed because people are greedy. Youmight get robbed because people are starving.
Yeah, we don't understand that asAmericans. And then people say, well,
you're doing all this for records.The reality is I look at myself
and the guys that bring down thereand other people that do travel. There's
not a lot of us. Weare the only outlet for some of these
(31:07):
people, and they deserve better,you know, they really do. They're
working way harder. I was goingto say, like, you know,
it's always going to play into thesekind of conversations because there's always kind of
that like white savior mentality when there'syou know, poverty and developing nations and
things like that, and now you'relike the outlet. You're the guy.
(31:30):
You're the the guy that's going inthere and making things accessible to all these
other people. Like does that wearon you at all? No? What
wears on me is there's not morepeople who have enough balls to do it.
Uh huh. Keep telling me howmuch you love records, Keep telling
me how much you love reggae.I can tell you right now, I
can name five people that I knowthat have pictures in front of some of
(31:52):
these old buildings that they got outof the car and stood in front of
it. They did the bullshit andthen jumped in the car. And you
know, I've lost some friends overit, because I'm like, dude,
you went to the island. Youdidn't stop here. You went to the
island, didn't stop there. Whydon't you tell me. I'll make a
call. You can go in thereand shop. No, dude, like
that was crazy. That was crazy. I'm like, so you got the
selfie, but the dude still can'tpay his bills. Yeah, you're for
(32:15):
the wrong reason. Yeah, youknow, and not to drop the F
bomb, but there's a whole lotof fuck off in my brain when when
I hear that, because that breaksmy heart. Yeah, because you'll pay
to go to these resorts. Thatdoesn't you know they'll pay to go to
resort, they'll pay to do allthis stuff, but they'll spend an hour
in Kingston. Nah, you mentionedtoo in one of the emails about how
(32:38):
nuns helped homeless children through music andhow there's this movement of women kind of
making moves in Kingston, and I'mcurious if you could expand a little bit
more on that. There's a thingcalled the Alpha Boys' School that started over
one hundred years ago, I believeit is. They were nuns. They
were finding homeless children on the streets, bring them to the schools and handing
(32:59):
them instruments and just saying, okay, now you're a horn player. Okay,
now you're a drummer. And theirsuccess rate is insane because I'm sure
you've heard of the Scatellites. Yeah, they are all members of the Alpha
Boy School. They were all trainedat the Alpha Boys School by nuns.
They were all built as a bandat the Alpha Boys School. And then
the Alpha Boys School still actively hasa huge gathering every Sunday and they do
(33:24):
masks and they have a ska bandplay it's like twelve pieces. Now it's
not exactly what it was, butthat's how they learned most of their music
from radio bouncing off of Cuba intoJamaica. So they learned a lot of
blue beat and blues and jump beatand stuff like that, and basically you
would just get handed a trumpet andthey'd be like, you know what,
(33:45):
guess what, Tommy McCook, you'rea horn player. Now. Well,
I mean, if we know anythingabout nuns, they're pretty liberal with their
ruler applications. So I mean,I was a new instrument every week.
There's a reason they're really good.That's what I mean, instrument every week.
If I had somebody wanting to wrapmy knuckles with the ruler. But
(34:06):
the cool thing is if you checkout check out the Alpha Boys School.
Rate their website. They have aradio station that runs. It's all members
the Alpha Boys School and it's likeeverything you've ever heard reggae, from John
Holt to Bob Marley, all theseguys at least one member on every song
they play at least one members fromthe Alpha Boys School. It's it's amazing.
But once again, this goes backto the record thing. Yeah,
(34:28):
Tommy McCook, the scatellites, theyfinally get out, they finally learn all
this stuff. They put out records. They make money. Guys like Earl
Chinna Smith, who wrote a goodamount of Bob Marley's guitar. You know,
his songs and everything else. Whogot paid forty dollars. Yeah.
I did a bunch of records forAla Anderson not long ago when he did
a North American tour, so Imean yeah, I mean, and that
(34:50):
was that was a cool through linefor me too, because he was one
of the original whalers too, AndI was like, man like, really
this is okay, okay cool,but yeah, I'm on the phone with
the dude like Slian Robbie played theSaint in Asbury Park to fifty people.
Yeah, they've done more rhythms andplayed on more records than I mean,
name somebody. Yeah, I mean, do you do you think that dub
(35:12):
and reggae is still kind of likethat undiscovered kind of country because it is
primarily record based. Still, Ithink I feel like there's a huge gap
in people that don't get it,know it, love it, especially in
a live scenario. I think there'sa huge gap in people in general with
music. Over the last twenty years. I think, honestly, reggae has
(35:35):
been put into like this little boxand left there and it's like I only
like it when and people don't giveit much more than that rock and everything
else you can always any rock soundsgood at a barbecue, but reggae doesn't.
I don't know, everybody's different,but with reggae, I think part
of the issue is you look atthese ups and downs like any other genre,
(35:58):
but then like Chronics come out.We have this huge hip. Chronics
is everywhere and he's big, andthen it just disappears for whatever reason.
They don't seem to be able tocarry as long as a lot of other
genres. And that obviously, youknow you're in industry that also has a
lot to do with who's pushing it, and whose money is going where,
and who's getting their tour paid forand who isn't. And I think reggae
(36:23):
does get shorted a lot of timeswith that. As far as the live
crossover, reggae's never been a bigdraw in the US. I mean,
it's great in the UK, butit's always been a light in the US.
You could put anybody on that stageand it's not gonna drop. It's
regagae the US. It's very hard. You look at somebody like Coffee.
I don't know if you know anythingabout Coffee. She's one of the bigger
reggae artists coming out in the lastcouple of years. Started as a sixteen
(36:44):
year old dance hall girl who justwas like crazy hip hop slash dance hall,
unbelievable. She's been up for somemore awards. I feel like if
she was released as an American artist, she'd be, you know, up
there with all the big names.But because of a Jamaica upbring, because
of the Patois, because of allthese other things that she sings about,
(37:06):
she just doesn't get what she deserves. And I think that plays into the
fact that I'm not going to getdark on you here, but I think
sometimes the music industry doesn't want certainpeople to make it. Yeah, I
mean the racism is certainly apparent.I don't think it's it's not only racism,
it's cultural a little class absolutely.Yeah, there's a lot here.
(37:30):
There's a lot, and Jamaica paysfor that. Jamaica is misunderstood in so
many ways because as much as Ithink, oh, it's crazy, there's
gone I mean Kingston this and that. I'm also sitting on a curb and
I watched Southside Johnny have a fourhour conversation about the Philistines. I talk
music with dudes who I watched SouthsideJohnny play with Earl Chinn Smith in his
(37:52):
front yard for ten hours while guysfrom all over the yard, dudes would
dudes just walked like kids, walkedup and just picked up instruments and they
just jammed for ten hours. Andthen I realized, I'm like, this
is I've been. I've seen millionsof bands. I've sat on stages ranging
from two hundred bands, you know, two hundred cap rooms to forty thousand
(38:15):
person festivals that I'm running. Andthen I'm sitting there and I'm like,
this has been the most musically noword for it. It's spiritually changed me
because I watched music get made forreal for the first time, you know,
watching them move the plants around theyard to change how the sound is
in the yard. Just an amazingmoment. I mean, the sound system
(38:40):
part of the whole thing alone,like the dancehall culture and understanding of sonics
and speaker building and everything is onanother level anyway. Like, and don't
get me started, because everybody's everybodyhas their whole fear on hip hop.
I don't want to hear it postingstarted hip hop, sure, Jamaican culture,
but yeah, it's The amazing partwith all this, to me once
(39:00):
again is the fact that these guys, no matter how bad it is for
them, no matter how hard peopleare trying to keep them down, sometimes
they're not paranoid. They are gettingripped off and people are out to get
them. I had somebody from amajor record label reach out to me an
old friend, and said, giveme three reggae artists, and I went,
yeah, you can go fuck yourself, and he's like, what,
(39:23):
I'm like, I'm not going tobe a part of that, dude.
I know where they end up with. You guys, you're gonna shelf them
because you'll find some other dude whokind of fits what you need. Yeah.
So, I know we hit sixforty five and I'm sorry, but
really, for me, what thesedudes do down there. Car Al over
at Randy's record shop, Mitchie overat Rockers International, Jermaine over at Penthouse,
(39:47):
who's still active and he's helping youknow, Boogie you get his tour
together for the US, and allthese other guys that are out there.
Harry J Studios, they're now runby his daughter. They don't give a
shit ship if they're failing or not, because to them survival is success and
(40:07):
we don't understand that. You can'tunderstand that, and I don't understand that.
So the white savior thing and allthat nonsense, I'm just another tool
in their arsenal to get by yeand God damn it, that's an honor.
That's an honor. No, it'smore like when people are looking on
the outside that don't know, youknow, oh yeah, you want you
(40:30):
want to piss me off, putout a record if you're not from Jamaica
and use your bullshit pets wall,these DJs who are like, oh yeah,
but I'm like, look, dude, I'm on that island. I
know the history of that, Iknow the culture, I know the religion.
I do it all the day.You hear me, use the pet
wall, take me to the pastorand shoot me. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, what are you the gatekeeper? Give me the Are you the gatekeeper?
(40:53):
And I go, no, I'mnot the gatekeeper, man. I
just respect it. And that's wherewe're losing a lot here. Well,
you know we're fit in and that, and I think that's that's the most
powerful part. So the follow upquestion, if you just if you have
a minute, is like, howis that translating into your store. So
is there are you creating? Idon't have a store anymore. Oh,
(41:15):
I don't have a store anymore.I'm on the road. I closed this
for a couple of years ago.I'm on the road. But by your
buyership, like you meet your people. Yeah, yeah, so we do
our business. We changed the entireway we ran our business when we started
going down to Jamaica. We noware on this theory that everybody has to
eat, so it costs us more. What a concept, but it finds
(41:37):
us. Yeah, we just lookaround and we go listen. If if
you're gonna sell me records, I'mgoing to pay you the right price.
So you keep selling me records,which is just good business. But also
we look at it as we don'tadvertise much. Yeah, because we think
good people will bring us more goodpeople. And the reality of it is
(41:58):
we've surrounded ourselves with some like we'revery, very lucky that we've surrounded ourselves
with people, and if they domess around and do business with other people,
we're the consequences. We think,if you rip somebody else off,
when we find out, fuck youstarve, that's it. We don't do
business with you. Anymore, We'redone with you. Jan You don't know
me very long, but I'm surea Manda told you. I'm kind of
(42:21):
you screw around with one of thepromoters and you're on a show. Guess
what, I'm the first guy towalk over, and I'll tell you like,
yeah, dude, you don't belonghere. Yep, right, because
you know what, what are yougonna take away from me? What are
you gonna do for me? Andthat's what I learned from the Jamaican culture
and the music culture down there,is like what are you going to take
away from me? Nothing? BecauseI'm doing it right. Sometimes it's okay
to have the right enemies in thisindustry. Whether it's on the stage,
(42:42):
whether it's at a record show,it does not matter because if you dislike
me, the right guy's probably gonnalike me a little more. But do
you are you? Are you findingthat you're selling a lot more of the
reggaee? Like, are you findingthat you're like our reggae business? Yeah?
We do very well with reggae.Yeah. I show up usually bring
(43:04):
a minimum thousand, forty five pershow. You know, I have probably
thirty or forty thousand sitting in storageready to go at all times. We
buy out large collections. We dowell with reggae. We bring back three
to four thousand records every trip wego to Jamaica. Wow, we overnight
them through fed X. We don'teven screw around. Yeah, we may
we do fine with reggae, butyou know we also do the same thing
(43:25):
where with everything else, I couldI could break eve, I could break
even on reggae all day, andI'm happy with it because guess what,
Billy Joel pays my bills. Youknow, reggae, Reggae fills my heart,
but Billy Joe pays my bills.Billy Joe's band don't get paid by
Billy Joe. Look at it inthis this goes back to that whole that
(43:49):
whole thing with like we started doingour business different. If I give the
punk rock kid a good punk rockrecord for ten bucks instead of fifty bucks,
he'll spend five hundred over the nextyear. Yeah, with the reggae
stuff. If I can give themthe right records and it helps their mental
health, who the hell am Inot to do that for the Jamaicans right
exactly? That's it. I mean, there's it doesn't get any heart that
(44:14):
there's no other math we need todo. If we're keeping them sane and
we're giving kids an outlet, whetherit's punk, rock or reggae. Ye,
well, as long as they're alive, they're going to spend money with
me. Yeah. Yeah, wedon't have to be cool, we just
have to be right. Yeah.Well, I know that you need to
go. So I want to askyou. I want to ask you our
impossible question, which fits so perfectlywith what you're doing down there. If
(44:37):
you could create your own forty fivewith anything on the A side and anything
on the B side, what wouldyou put? Do you want to make
it a reggae addition that's cool,that's so hard, or like the King
I'm going to call it the KingstonSpecial and it's like ghost pressed on something
(44:57):
else. I would just I wouldjust would. It would have to be
a twelve inch. It would justhave to be like let King Tubby loose
for like two sides. Ah yeah, I keep that's wicked. Yeah.
And then let Vaughan Benjamin from Midnightwho passed away, you know, may
he rest in power like passed away, Let him just come back and do
a vocal track for me. Cooland just let him let him rip.
(45:19):
I'll let him rip. I'll letyou have a twelve inch. I think
you deserve it. Culture, whatdo you get? That's why I have
forty five. I'm like, ohcool, can I have a six minute
song? Please? Ipposed to betwo minutes? Put Those crazy bastards used
to cut six minutes seven forty five. So like those six have like that's
(45:39):
melimeter runouts and you're like, thisis so stressful. What is happening?
Everything's off? I mean or duringthis very short stories I have to go.
I actually bought like a great fortyfive down there and never played the
B side. I was like,this is I don't know what it is.
It's amazing. I played I GetHome, I play the B side.
On the beat, they had aKink's track for some reason, Yeah,
(46:02):
I Swear to God. I waslike, what are we doing?
It is recycling. I was like, what are we even doing here?
My buddy's like, you said thisthis track was awesome. I said,
dude, this is the B side. It's swear to God. The A
side is so good. And he'slike the Kinks. You went to Jamaica
for the Kinks. I was like, no, this forty five is what
Jamaica is all about. Yeah,Like the A side was good, but
(46:25):
the B side not that the kinksare bad. It's just not what I
expected. Yeah, I mean thatthat I've never been to Jamaica, and
I mean that there's been a Yeah, I mean a few reasons that for
those kind of things. I mean, women traveling to sometimes sketchy areas is
sometimes it's a little hard. Yeah, it's hard to accept. Listen,
(46:47):
it's very hard to accept a lotof that culture. But it's also harder
to except that we're not going tochange it in a day. Really.
Yeah, so when we're down there, we have no when we're down there
in North nor should we. Yeah, we respect their rules and their religion
when we're down there a lot oftimes. But I will tell you this,
they also respect us now and willnot do certain things around us,
(47:07):
some of them, and I thinkwe have in some ways, there's ninety
nine percent good people down there.We have in some ways though, showed
them like, hey, if youwant to do business with us, that's
not how you're going to talk tosomebody. Yeah, we're not the dudes,
Like we're just not the does wejust won't feed you. We don't
give a shit. We're out like, we don't need to make money off
you, and you don't need tohave our money if we can't act appropriately,
(47:29):
record sure mob mentality. I'm sohere for it. Awesome, Well,
Joe, thank you so much.Yeah, your time. Yeah,
thanks many, It was a pleasure. Thank you, and may you find
good stuff with the out there.Yeah all right, be good. Thanks
for listening. Don't forget to like, subscribe and leave us a review on
(47:49):
your favorite podcast platform. Join theconversation on social media at Women in Vinyl.
We want to hear from you.Shoot us a message for topics you
want to hear, feedback and moreto info at Women Invinyl dot com.
Huge shout out and thank you forall our supporters, affiliates and sponsors like
Marshall Headphones. Visit our website Womeninvinyldot com for ways to get involved.
(48:13):
And you can always contribute to theeducation, demonstification and diversification of the vinyl
industry by donating at Women Invinyl dotcom slash donate See you next time.
This episode has been brought to youby Women in Vinyl and Red Spade Records.
Thank you for listening. Please rememberto subscribe and you can always contact
(48:34):
us directly by visiting www dot com. Women in Vinyl dot com
Welcome to the Women in Vinyl Podcastwith Jen du Genie, founder of Women
in Vinyl, and contributor Robin Raymond. This podcast facilitates conversations with those working
in the vinyl record industry to educate, demystify, and diversify the vinyl community.
(00:40):
By right, I'll die all nightgoing bed seeing that gad is ever
(01:15):
the bedded our love about day AwayDay, Hodayday. You're joining us for
(01:42):
episode fifty two of the Women inVinyl Podcast. Thanks for being here.
You just heard west Side by Brisbanebased Full Flower Moon Band off their album
also titled west Side. Find moreand listen at Fullflowermoonband dot bandcamp dot com.
This week we had to Jamaica byway of New Jersey, joined by
our friend and guide Joe Kay.Not only is he a great storyteller,
(02:06):
but he is the founder and ownerof hold Fast Records. Joe has spent
years cultivating relationships in Kingston, duringwhich he's met people who have created and
built the reggae music we all knowand love. We learn how Joe and
his wife got started in the industryand how his passion for community has taken
him on a journey into the Jamaicanvinyl scene. Reminder to grab a copy
(02:29):
of our book Women in Vinyl TheArt of Making Vinyl Out Now go to
Women in Vinyl dot com slash book. As a reminder, we have commercial,
free and high resolution versions of thispodcast, along with our membership and
tons of other discount codes available atpatreon dot com slash Women in Vinyl.
Thanks to you, we're number elevenon Feedspot's Top Vinyl podcasts. Please continue
(02:52):
to like and subscribe. Now here'sthe episode. Thank you for joining us,
and could you tell our listeners whoyou are and a little bit about
how you got into records. Uh? Okay, my name is Joe,
one of the owners of hold FastRecords. My wife is the other owner,
and yeah, she's the hero.I'm just here for my looks.
(03:15):
So basically, we were working inproduction. My wife was a bar manager
and I was a running clubs andover the years we kind of both wanted
out, and you know, Iwas working seven days a week doing production
and running stages and we just nevergot to see each other. And we
(03:37):
actually ended up. I shouldn't saywe never got see each other. We
worked together every day, but wenever got to spend real time together.
You know. It was always that. So we kept saying we're gonna do
something else, We're gonna do somethingelse, and then one day we just
did something else. You know,we we just made the move. We
opened the shop, and really wehad we were broke. Yeah, there
(04:02):
was like there's a couple of timeswhen our our bank account went down to
one hundred dollars and we went toAtlantic City with one hundred dollars. Who
wow, you know, yeah,yeah, and Megan bartended, like I
said, double shifting, bartending andkilling herself. And then I would leave
the shop at seven and walk overto Bond Street Bar and work four nights
a week over there, working thedoor and helping them like kind of build
(04:25):
that bar up. And so Iwent from like running bars and being the
head of personnel on the boardwalk tolike working a door, anything we could
do to just get that shop open. But our theory with our shop from
day one was we're not cool,Like we we know we're not that cool
because we're kind of nerds, andwe just kind of get it and we
(04:45):
just kind of we're really annoyed withhow we were treated growing up going in
record stores. Does that make anysense, you Yeah, it just kind
of pissed us off, and wealmost open their record store out of spite,
you know. Yeah. And thenand then when people were like you're
you know Asberry. When we opened, the shop was still somewhat unpleasant and
(05:11):
wasn't all you know, they didn'tpolish the turd that much yet. And
you know, we were having draggingpeople out of the store drunk midday and
all we were still it was itwas rough. Nobody no other businesses were
opened past five o'clock, so wewere kind of keep an eye, keep
an eye on the street for theother businesses. And you know it because
(05:34):
of my relationships with the clubs andeverything else. Luckily, we had good
relationships with the people that live inthat city and they actually helped us and
they would call us, you know, all times a day and night.
Trust me, hey man, Ijust went in the basement. There's forty
records here. If it was tenrecords, we would go and it didn't
(05:55):
matter. But it almost became likea collective yep. So it looked like
and felt like everybody was kind oflike we kind of thought like the underdogs.
Maybe we weren't, but we feltlike we were so and I think
our customers kind of felt the sameway. Yeah, you know, like
we we had a pretty rough goof it, and everybody knew it,
(06:16):
like, you know, they sawit's working seven days a week and running
clubs and standing on stages and theyhad a picture of me. I fell
asleep under a stage, you know. But at the end of the day,
our shop is. Our shop startedbecause we didn't have a choice.
It was either we start a businessthat we loved because we love records,
(06:38):
and we actually just wanted to builda little community. But it's really because
me and my wife wanted to hangout. We didn't have a choice,
Like we either had to open abusiness where we hang out or we're gonna
have to go find other jobs.And like we just want to hang out.
We really like each other, youknow, I love that. Yeah,
yeah, it's pretty simple, right. And you guys were both record
collectors, like in your origin storyis too my wife not so much.
(07:02):
I kind of had a I kindof collected for years, but then it
just I stopped cold Turkey like everybodyelse. Things changed and I sold my
stuff to buy other stuff, andbills happened, and the one thing that
really changed for me was when Istarted working in the venues. I was,
you know, pushing gear up aramp and bar backing and anything I
(07:25):
could do to get my foot inthe door, sitting in my car in
front of the club every day justin case they needed somebody, you know.
And and at one point one ofmy buddies just said to me,
he's like, you do you reallyneed the records? And like, what
do you mean? He's like,dude, if you really love music,
it's the lifestyle. Everything else isjust things. And then I realized,
(07:46):
like, yeah, I don't needmy records. I don't need anything.
I just need to be involved.I need to swim in music, you
know. So I sold my collection. It's funny that buying, like buying
and selling record It's got me backinto loving music, you know. Yeah,
that's the beauty of it. That'sgood. If you're in production,
you know, all of a suddenyou stop knowing what bands sound like.
(08:09):
But you can say how much.You can tell how much they'll draw.
Yeah, yeah, people say,oh, you ever heard of this band?
I'm like, yeah, they drawlike two thousand people like you ever
heard of them? I'm like nope. I mean, and I've tried to
make a little bit more of aneffort to pay attention to the various acts
that I see on on the weekly. The thing that kind of killed the
the not even the love, butlike the appreciation for music was mastering to
(08:33):
be honest, Like I used toget jazz to be like, oh,
yeah, I've worked with that band. Oh, these guys are super rad,
and like I'm sure you've been therethere too. We're like, if
the band is really rad, you'llgive them a little bit more leverage or
like more of a chance. Soif their music's kind of like nah,
you're like, oh, but they'resweet dude, so they're like they're really
trying it. But like if theirdicks are like bye bye bye bye,
(08:56):
well yeah, we always say wealways say one thing. And I mean,
I'm sure you've heard this on thatend of things where it's like you're
standing on a stage and I saidthis. I won't say to who's tour
manager, but I just looked himin the eye. I was like,
hey, man, you know wherethe real money is. It's back here.
I said. You guys are alltemporary. I'll be here in five
(09:16):
years. You'll be playing some bumpkinbar next to a trailer park. Yeah,
so like you could be rude.Now tell your band to be a
pack of dicks. I'm okay withit, yeah, because guess what,
I got to hit a button.They sound like the cookie Monster. I
hit another button. They're smoked out, nobody could see them. And guess
I still have a job tomorrow exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(09:37):
And I mean like our our opinionof that goes a little bit farther
too, because we're the ones thatare going to talk to like other venues,
interior managers and stuff. We can, I mean we can shut down
like real quick and people don't understandthat sometimes. Oh no. And that's
that's the beauty of the Internet.There is some good size of the internet
finally, where you know, wewe worked with some bands over the years,
(10:01):
and I would say it was likephone calls were made, you know.
I was like, hey, yeah, these guys came in here.
We treated them like gold. BecauseI don't care who you are, if
you're a local band or if you'reGandhi, I'm going to treat you the
same. Yeah, because that's that'show I make you know, that's that's
how you do it. And youwant you want to destroy my green room
(10:22):
for no reason. You want tocomplain, you want a mouth off to
the sound guy. Cool, doit. But I'm just going to do
it the right way. I'm goingto warn the next five stage managers.
I'm going to make the call.I'm going to talk to your touring people.
I'm going to talk to all thepeople. I'm going to talk to
your A and R guy, I'mgoing to talk to your record I'm going
to talk to you. Yeah,the agents. I'll have a job tomorrow
because because now all my now mymy club offers are going to dry up.
(10:46):
So now the next band coming throughthat agent, it isn't five grand,
it's four grand or less. Oryou don't or you don't get an
answer when you email, you knowthere's no there's no dates available. Sorry
yeah, yeah fails. Sorry yeah, Well I'm running out of favors like
you're running out of stage. It'sto play on. It's so weird.
Yeah, I love it. Ilove it. I mean, but yeah,
(11:07):
it's funny that collecting and for thisstore was your like inlet back to
it. So I mean, whatare you were you guys like primarily just
getting used collections first before you startedto do the new kind of acquisitions.
(11:28):
So are even now our new stock, like contemporary new stock is only ten
percent, We are ninety percent usedat all times. Incredible, incredible.
We go out and we are onthe road every single day. We will
fly out. If it's twenty records, we go. If it's a house
with thirty third we go. Itdoesn't matter. Every rock gets on.
(11:48):
Oh, we turn over every rock. We don't care. And I say
this with such conviction because I wishI was lying, because I would sleep
more and i'd see wayless Montievannis.But the reality is, if you want
to do this right and bring peoplerecords at the right price, you have
to find enough where it's not atwenty dollars Fleetwood Mac record to you,
(12:11):
it's a ten dollars Fleetwood Mac record. Yeah. So we started fifteen years
ago, twenty years ago, westarted dealing with cleanout guys, and we
just put them all in our pocketand we said, if you call me,
even if I don't buy the records, I'll give you fifty dollars.
And we just became reliable. Theywould call us at two in the morning
and be like, hey, I'mon my way to the flea market.
Cool dude, We'll see you therein thirty minutes. And meeting these guys
(12:35):
at four in the morning, youknow. And and we up till about
three four months ago, well Ishould say longer, not because of my
health issues, but we were doingflea markets like Wednesday through Sunday, leaving
the house at three thirty in themorning. Wow. And then and then
we would be there at all eightor nine in the morning. We would
actually go through all the trucks,all the storage and everything before they would
(12:58):
put them out on the tables,right because any offer they got, we
would give double. When every heelse is paying fifty cents a record.
We were offering three to five,sometimes seven ten dollars a record. But
you know, if you want ashop, that's a scary position to be
in. They are always spending bigmoney. Yeah, So our thing is
this, we we go high volume. So I could tell you if you
(13:24):
if I can find twenty Fleetwood Maxrumors, I will sell twenty tomorrow because
as hard as we hustle to buy, we hustle to sell. But we
keep our number up. So ourmargin is not huge, and dudes know
that. Like people line up whenwe do our we do like dollar boxes.
Anything under VG plus and I'm stringent, unconc I'm insane about condition.
(13:48):
My VG plus is near men.Anything below VG plus is a dollar record.
I don't care if it's an eighthundred dollars blue note. I don't
care if it's an RL led Zeppelin. It's a dollar. We do dollar
dollar things. We get usually thirtyto fifty people lined up, and we
do like it's almost like a whistle. We're like, all right, how
about it, and then they alljump all over each other. Okay.
(14:11):
I actually love those because I feellike we need to come to that because
Jersey Jersey City. I do thosein Jersey City. I got to look
at things, but I do thosein Jersey City all the time. I
literally just put out like twenty orthirty boxes, and everybody stands in front
of a box and then we justliterally go all right, go and they
just all jump in. It's crazycool. Amanda shoots, Ben, this
is your notice. Yeah she knowsso Amanda, Oh no, Amanda seen
(14:33):
it. She sits there and laughsand stands next to me. She's like
look at them all. They're crazy. Well, one of the reasons that
Kathy connected us was because of Robinand I have been on this podcast virtual
Tour of the World, and youhave New Jersey. You called about New
(14:56):
Jersey. We did, yeah,I know, you know it, Yes,
by the seashore. We heard aboutyour amazing Jamaican connection. And to
preface for listeners, there's a lotof things that we can't really share,
(15:16):
but there are going to be.We just kind of wanted to talk about
the culture a little bit, whatthings look like there, So maybe how
did that get started and how haveyou sort of grown. So a buddy
of mine short version, there's reallyno short version, but I'll try.
But a buddy of mine, Tommywas a huge reggae guy, and I
was kind of in the reggae Iguess you know, it's a punk rock
(15:37):
retirement plan. You go from hardcoreto this to that, and then all
of a sudden you're a reggae guy. It's just I don't know, it's
the natural. Yeah, honestly forme, and you're a production person.
I have insanely severe tonight and I'malso partially deaf in my left ear from
working stage right for twenty years,so reggae was actually a choice, not
(16:00):
even a choice. It was almostlike, hey, this is all you
can listen to with that one toscratch your eye on. So I was
going out to Jamaica on you know, a honeymoon and maybe yeah, yeah,
it goes back to the Beautiful Wife'sSo so basically Augustus Publist on Addis
(16:22):
had come in our shop a fewtimes, and Augustus Pablo, you know,
famous melodica player, he came inthe shop a few times and everybody
said check out Rockers International and Kingston. But it's a little rough there,
this and that. So me,being the wonderful husband that I am,
I kind of set it up sothat when we landed we were going to
Port Antonio, we accidentally landed inKingston and I was like, hey,
(16:48):
why don't we go to this reallycool place? And she was just like,
oh God, you're the worst,But so we went. I mean,
she was a willing accomplice. Thedriver not so much. The driver
was like you to go where Noand Arne Street where Rockets International is a
good spot. I mean it's atough road, but there there's good people
(17:10):
on it. Ebo Spices there,which is a great vegan spot. There's
a really cool bar there because youknow, all these guys run across the
street and just that metal hangs outand but it is if you're not used
to that, it'll like I wasa little scared the first time I rolled
through Kingston. I was like,oh oh, a lot of shaking your
head and a lot of like,oh this is this is legitimately a city,
(17:32):
Like yeah, yeah, you're notscrewing around in Kingston. That was
my first run through. So wewent up, you know, guys standing
in front of the place while weshopped, kind of a thing to make
sure nobody walked up on us.And we bought some stuff, and then
I had the brilliant idea to goover to Studio one, which is,
you know, a couple of blocksaway. Ye keep in mind, we
(17:55):
know nobody other than like a phonecall we made, so we're just blindly.
Yeah. It was not the brightest. So we go over to the
studio on there's a bunch of yardsout front. Yardies are just like you
know, block kids hanging out,big gold sunglasses and boxed up to the
knees, fluorescent green. It's it'severy dance hall video you've ever seen in
real life. That's awesome. It'sit's awesome when you're looking at it from
(18:18):
inside the cart. Intimidating. Yeah, so being really you know, this
smart conscience is a great guy thatI am with my wife in the car
with a really scared driver. Igot out and yelled into the twelve foot
high gate with Barbera on it.Hey man, I have a lot of
money and I want to buy records. And the gateman, like most most
(18:45):
spots in Kingston have like a gateman guy just works the gate, you
know. And the yards all turnedand looked at me, you know,
and I was like, hey,yeah, I'm the dumbest guy in the
block. So and then a dudewalked down and he's like oh he said
end I quote boy, you betterget in here and walked me in.
And they car pulled in and thedriver was really nervous. He was just
(19:07):
like, Ah, we shouldn't behere, we shouldn't be here, we
shouldn't be here. And the amazingthing was at this point I'm inside the
studio one Yard, which is likethe Sun Records of Reggae. Yeah right,
and the man's you know. Theman said, uh, what do
you want, not very pleasantly,and I said, I said, listen,
I'm not I'm not here to doanything other than buy records. I
(19:30):
said, I just want to dobusiness, man, because I had heard
this thing over and over that everybody'stried an angle. Everybody said, Oh,
I'm doing a document. Oh I'mdoing this, Oh I'm doing Oh
I just want to be your friend. Oh I want to go home smoke
erb with you. Oh, let'shave dinner. So I just figured,
like, let's be honest. I'mhere to make money. I like reggae
records. It's a bonus. Ido what I love. But at the
end of the day, I gotto eat. So I just said,
(19:51):
I want to make money. Man, I said, I got a lot
of money. So he let meinto Studio one, which if you're a
reggae guy, that's it. You'venow crossed that line. You that's the
room, your it's your universe.You figured it all out, you know.
He pulled some records for me andlet me look at some stuff.
Not a lot. Very I said, what's in that room? You know
(20:11):
I was. I figured, Hey, the brazen stupidity worked let's keep with
it. And I kept saying,like, what's in that room? In
that room, and he's like yeah, he's like, it's a bathroom.
That's so I said, I gotnine bathrooms, amazing, you know,
Like he's like yeah, yeah,yeah, yeah, in five different Jamaican
ways, told me to shut up. So he said this is what you
(20:33):
can buy some very cool records.And I just said how much? And
he's like, you tell me thatright. There was clearly the first time
in my life that I knew thenext words out of my mouth were either
going to mean me and my wifewere leaving a property comfortably or I was
(20:56):
probably going to be dragged out.And I had said, you know,
I just looked at him. Isaid, I'm not going to play the
game with you. These are wortha lot of money. If you don't
set the price, I'm just notgoing to take them right hard ball.
And he said and he said,uh, let's do one hundred dollars.
So I gave him a thousand.Yeah, you know, and the eyes
(21:21):
went big and he said, allright, boy, have a good trip.
And we got in the car andwe left. Yeah, and we
went on vacation and my wife wasit was cool. We had a nice
vacation. We went home, andthen my phone rang a couple months,
a couple of weeks later, excuseme, and it was boy, you
should come back, and uh,I got back on a plane. Yeah.
(21:42):
I just went down there, meand my buddy and we just like
threw mud against the wall and hopeit stuck kind of thing, and it
was. Uh. This has beengoing on for over twelve years now,
and I can tell you as manyof these places I've been in Studio one,
Penthouse Records, Like we've fought upwith Jermaine from Pentaus, who is
one of the biggest dance hall producersin the world who you know, Boujou
(22:04):
Bontan and like all the dudes youname it, that dude has done it
as far as dance hall goes.What I've learned it through all this and
what got us through all this isobviously we love the crap out of Vinyl,
but what they're doing there in Jamaica, they hand out forty fives,
like to hand out business cards.I mean, I've had Jamaica dudes that
(22:27):
DJ with me show up with fortyfives on a rope over their shoulders.
Yeah, yes, stack, Iknow it's wild, and being on the
island and going through these spots,I'm like, hey, man, i
can't get to the top shelf andthey literally stack up LPs for me to
stand on. And I'm standing onlike five thousand dollars worth of dub records
to get like the ten thousand dollarsworth of plates. You know. So
(22:51):
what we realized pretty quickly over thefirst two or three trips was that this
was wayby on us, that weare merely like passengers and that everything we're
going to get to see is agift. And it really has been.
Not to sound cheesy, but I'mnot a very spiritual guy. I'm a
(23:12):
pretty clean, pretty cold cut guyon that end of things that I will
tell you what music does there,how Vinyl plays into it. It's insane
to watch. You have people whoclimb telephone poles to run electric illegally for
(23:33):
run pressing machines, and they're losingpeople, They're dying. They're literally getting
electrocuted and dying doing this because theyneed. That's my biggest question, because
because it is such, it hasbeen such an integral part of the culture,
and it has been such a lynchpinof export to get reggae and dub
(23:55):
and all of this like culturally significantand influential music around the world. Why
did the pressing plants just evaporate?Well, you have you have an infrastructure
there that's that's somewhat completed. Obviously, you have a lot of poverty,
you have a lot of people tryingto do the right thing. But there's
one basic underlying issue with almost everybodythat you deal with in that community,
(24:21):
and it's one word paranoia. Theyare all getting ripped off regularly. They
know it, and there's only somany people that you can work with there
that aren't paranoid about also other peopleon the island, not just Americans ripping
them off, Jamaicans. So it'sunfortunate because they're sitting on what could be
(24:44):
this amazing thing, but they've they'vebeen screwed so many times, and you
almost fall into the trap when you'rethere that you know, people go with
me to the island. Now,I'll take a friend. We vet people
very heavily before we take them,because if you say one wrong thing,
you could get us killed. Sowe go down there and some of these
(25:04):
guys, their headachesplodes. I'm like, hey, dude, here's an entire
pressing plant that hasn't been moved.It hasn't moved in twelve years. Here's
all the stampers, here's the plates, here's this, here's that, and
where do we peek? I go, oh, there's no bathroom. Yeah
you know. I go go outside, go out there, and you'll see
where they cut down someone like cutdown the telephone pole and took the power
(25:29):
and cut it with a hatchet.And it's just set idle for over twelve
years, now fifteen years. Andwhen it was open, it ran for
six months. That was it.Before that was closed another ten years.
So what you have a lot ofyou have issues, and you have this
beautiful island. You have this thepeople on Orange Street trying to do everything
right. Mitchie at Rockers, youhave Penthousi's doing great things. You have
(25:52):
Harry Jay's, you have the SugarmanKnot Yard. But there's just this underlying
corruption. There's this standstill slow motion. You know, to get it done
would take so much, and youneed every little link on that gear to
work. And then Jamaica and guesswhat one link is always not going to
(26:15):
work, right, We've been doingthis for ten years. I flew southside
Johnny down there, of all people, there's a huge rinking you know,
he's a huge record guy, andhe was blown away. He was just
like, how did you just walkme into three hundred thousand records in four
days? Yeah, and we can'tfigure out how to get a pressing plant
running down here. I mean it'sfunny too, because, like, especially
(26:40):
with Jen and I and this entiregoofy business that we find ourselves in and
all of these incredible conversations that wefind ourselves in, we know what it's
like to work at pressing plants.So I mean we know that it's not
as easy as just like, yeah, flip and the switch and pressing a
button. But the chemicals, listen, there's a scary thing. And you
(27:03):
know from working on a plant.There's a spot near one of the places
we go, I can't say thename of, but one of the places
we go, there's a big circleand the land is gray and it's where
they used to just dump the chemicalson the ground. And everybody says the
same thing. Don't go over there, don't not not like, just don't
go over there. Why we didn'tknow what to do with the chemicals.
(27:26):
And there's another spot. I thinkI think I showed you some of these
pictures, just the labels, butthey cut all the vinyl off, would
remelt it and press with with youknow, they're stamping over other records.
Yeah, yeah, so you're gettingghost tracks. It's one of the Yeah,
(27:47):
I got to connect you with oneof the owners of our record store
because he's got the biggest deb collectionin Canada and that's that's been his whole
thing. And he used to getdub plates cut in Jamaica, like in
the early night and stuff. SoI mean, you guys should be homies.
Anyway, He's really great. Butyeah, he's he's a super knowledgeable
(28:07):
guy. But like he's been givingme, like gifting me some some goofy
sevens and I mean yeah, likesome of them are just melted to shit,
and like the lead in is sonoisy. I'm like, oh,
this is weird. But then oncethe first beat drops and it's like it's
perfect, and I'm like, howdoes shit does this play? It's great.
It's like that that mystical thing thatsurrounds blue notes, Like blue notes
you can stand on them and rubthem with brillope pad and they'll still play
(28:30):
truly, And that that's kind ofwhat happens with the Jamaican stuff, one
way or another. I mean,yeah, I'm like talking to one of
the ladies that used to work thePlan. I'm friends with and she's eighty
years old, I think seventy eight, Yeah, she's I call her and
I just say, hey, Igot this record. She goes, only
fifty made. She's like an encyclopediafor this stuff. Wow. And I'm
like, hey, I just foundthis one hundred and twenty five copies.
(28:52):
She goes, yeah, we nevergave it back because they never paid for
it. So you're the only guywho has them. WHOA So all of
a sudden, you own jam makinggospel that's never been released. Yeah,
you know. But what this allcomes back to is like you look at
the culture, you look at what'sgoing on there, and this for some
of the guys on the island isthe only way out. So they're selling
(29:15):
records, they're doing everything they can. You know, Rockers Internationals doing great
things. He sells a lot ofguys online, He's doing everything he can.
But there's this one thing that justseems to be missing, And the
reality is it's because you can't getwhat you need. They're done the right
way sometimes to get from point Ato point B. It's it's not a
(29:37):
straight line. And because of theparanoia. You add paranoia into something that's
already very hard to do in anothercountry, and you add in crime and
guns, and you know, oneof my buddies said, well, if
you have access to three hundred thousandrecords, why do you just buy them
all? I said, I can'tafford the amount of tax it would cost
to put it on a boat.He goes, oh, shipping wouldn't be
(30:00):
that bad. I said, oh, it's not the shipping, it's getting
it from here to there, right. We have to pay off dudes and
drivers and security and oh you makeit must be awesome. We see,
you know, there's police checkpoints,military checkpoints. Of course, a couple
guys that have gone with us theirheads exploded the first day because they're like,
(30:22):
so, I'm like, what doyou what? This is your day?
Now? This is what you needto do to buy records. Here.
You need to get stopped at amilitary checkpoint, you need a gun
pointed at your car. You needto know how to talk to people.
You need to walk in the localbar and put fifty dollars and say,
hey, everybody drinks for feet free, to wear off the block. You
need to know how to navigate througha situation where you're not going to get
(30:45):
robbed because people are greedy. Youmight get robbed because people are starving.
Yeah, we don't understand that asAmericans. And then people say, well,
you're doing all this for records.The reality is I look at myself
and the guys that bring down thereand other people that do travel. There's
not a lot of us. Weare the only outlet for some of these
(31:07):
people, and they deserve better,you know, they really do. They're
working way harder. I was goingto say, like, you know,
it's always going to play into thesekind of conversations because there's always kind of
that like white savior mentality when there'syou know, poverty and developing nations and
things like that, and now you'relike the outlet. You're the guy.
(31:30):
You're the the guy that's going inthere and making things accessible to all these
other people. Like does that wearon you at all? No? What
wears on me is there's not morepeople who have enough balls to do it.
Uh huh. Keep telling me howmuch you love records, Keep telling
me how much you love reggae.I can tell you right now, I
can name five people that I knowthat have pictures in front of some of
(31:52):
these old buildings that they got outof the car and stood in front of
it. They did the bullshit andthen jumped in the car. And you
know, I've lost some friends overit, because I'm like, dude,
you went to the island. Youdidn't stop here. You went to the
island, didn't stop there. Whydon't you tell me. I'll make a
call. You can go in thereand shop. No, dude, like
that was crazy. That was crazy. I'm like, so you got the
selfie, but the dude still can'tpay his bills. Yeah, you're for
(32:15):
the wrong reason. Yeah, youknow, and not to drop the F
bomb, but there's a whole lotof fuck off in my brain when when
I hear that, because that breaksmy heart. Yeah, because you'll pay
to go to these resorts. Thatdoesn't you know they'll pay to go to
resort, they'll pay to do allthis stuff, but they'll spend an hour
in Kingston. Nah, you mentionedtoo in one of the emails about how
(32:38):
nuns helped homeless children through music andhow there's this movement of women kind of
making moves in Kingston, and I'mcurious if you could expand a little bit
more on that. There's a thingcalled the Alpha Boys' School that started over
one hundred years ago, I believeit is. They were nuns. They
were finding homeless children on the streets, bring them to the schools and handing
(32:59):
them instruments and just saying, okay, now you're a horn player. Okay,
now you're a drummer. And theirsuccess rate is insane because I'm sure
you've heard of the Scatellites. Yeah, they are all members of the Alpha
Boy School. They were all trainedat the Alpha Boys School by nuns.
They were all built as a bandat the Alpha Boys School. And then
the Alpha Boys School still actively hasa huge gathering every Sunday and they do
(33:24):
masks and they have a ska bandplay it's like twelve pieces. Now it's
not exactly what it was, butthat's how they learned most of their music
from radio bouncing off of Cuba intoJamaica. So they learned a lot of
blue beat and blues and jump beatand stuff like that, and basically you
would just get handed a trumpet andthey'd be like, you know what,
(33:45):
guess what, Tommy McCook, you'rea horn player. Now. Well,
I mean, if we know anythingabout nuns, they're pretty liberal with their
ruler applications. So I mean,I was a new instrument every week.
There's a reason they're really good.That's what I mean, instrument every week.
If I had somebody wanting to wrapmy knuckles with the ruler. But
(34:06):
the cool thing is if you checkout check out the Alpha Boys School.
Rate their website. They have aradio station that runs. It's all members
the Alpha Boys School and it's likeeverything you've ever heard reggae, from John
Holt to Bob Marley, all theseguys at least one member on every song
they play at least one members fromthe Alpha Boys School. It's it's amazing.
But once again, this goes backto the record thing. Yeah,
(34:28):
Tommy McCook, the scatellites, theyfinally get out, they finally learn all
this stuff. They put out records. They make money. Guys like Earl
Chinna Smith, who wrote a goodamount of Bob Marley's guitar. You know,
his songs and everything else. Whogot paid forty dollars. Yeah.
I did a bunch of records forAla Anderson not long ago when he did
a North American tour, so Imean yeah, I mean, and that
(34:50):
was that was a cool through linefor me too, because he was one
of the original whalers too, AndI was like, man like, really
this is okay, okay cool,but yeah, I'm on the phone with
the dude like Slian Robbie played theSaint in Asbury Park to fifty people.
Yeah, they've done more rhythms andplayed on more records than I mean,
name somebody. Yeah, I mean, do you do you think that dub
(35:12):
and reggae is still kind of likethat undiscovered kind of country because it is
primarily record based. Still, Ithink I feel like there's a huge gap
in people that don't get it,know it, love it, especially in
a live scenario. I think there'sa huge gap in people in general with
music. Over the last twenty years. I think, honestly, reggae has
(35:35):
been put into like this little boxand left there and it's like I only
like it when and people don't giveit much more than that rock and everything
else you can always any rock soundsgood at a barbecue, but reggae doesn't.
I don't know, everybody's different,but with reggae, I think part
of the issue is you look atthese ups and downs like any other genre,
(35:58):
but then like Chronics come out.We have this huge hip. Chronics
is everywhere and he's big, andthen it just disappears for whatever reason.
They don't seem to be able tocarry as long as a lot of other
genres. And that obviously, youknow you're in industry that also has a
lot to do with who's pushing it, and whose money is going where,
and who's getting their tour paid forand who isn't. And I think reggae
(36:23):
does get shorted a lot of timeswith that. As far as the live
crossover, reggae's never been a bigdraw in the US. I mean,
it's great in the UK, butit's always been a light in the US.
You could put anybody on that stageand it's not gonna drop. It's
regagae the US. It's very hard. You look at somebody like Coffee.
I don't know if you know anythingabout Coffee. She's one of the bigger
reggae artists coming out in the lastcouple of years. Started as a sixteen
(36:44):
year old dance hall girl who justwas like crazy hip hop slash dance hall,
unbelievable. She's been up for somemore awards. I feel like if
she was released as an American artist, she'd be, you know, up
there with all the big names.But because of a Jamaica upbring, because
of the Patois, because of allthese other things that she sings about,
(37:06):
she just doesn't get what she deserves. And I think that plays into the
fact that I'm not going to getdark on you here, but I think
sometimes the music industry doesn't want certainpeople to make it. Yeah, I
mean the racism is certainly apparent.I don't think it's it's not only racism,
it's cultural a little class absolutely.Yeah, there's a lot here.
(37:30):
There's a lot, and Jamaica paysfor that. Jamaica is misunderstood in so
many ways because as much as Ithink, oh, it's crazy, there's
gone I mean Kingston this and that. I'm also sitting on a curb and
I watched Southside Johnny have a fourhour conversation about the Philistines. I talk
music with dudes who I watched SouthsideJohnny play with Earl Chinn Smith in his
(37:52):
front yard for ten hours while guysfrom all over the yard, dudes would
dudes just walked like kids, walkedup and just picked up instruments and they
just jammed for ten hours. Andthen I realized, I'm like, this
is I've been. I've seen millionsof bands. I've sat on stages ranging
from two hundred bands, you know, two hundred cap rooms to forty thousand
(38:15):
person festivals that I'm running. Andthen I'm sitting there and I'm like,
this has been the most musically noword for it. It's spiritually changed me
because I watched music get made forreal for the first time, you know,
watching them move the plants around theyard to change how the sound is
in the yard. Just an amazingmoment. I mean, the sound system
(38:40):
part of the whole thing alone,like the dancehall culture and understanding of sonics
and speaker building and everything is onanother level anyway. Like, and don't
get me started, because everybody's everybodyhas their whole fear on hip hop.
I don't want to hear it postingstarted hip hop, sure, Jamaican culture,
but yeah, it's The amazing partwith all this, to me once
(39:00):
again is the fact that these guys, no matter how bad it is for
them, no matter how hard peopleare trying to keep them down, sometimes
they're not paranoid. They are gettingripped off and people are out to get
them. I had somebody from amajor record label reach out to me an
old friend, and said, giveme three reggae artists, and I went,
yeah, you can go fuck yourself, and he's like, what,
(39:23):
I'm like, I'm not going tobe a part of that, dude.
I know where they end up with. You guys, you're gonna shelf them
because you'll find some other dude whokind of fits what you need. Yeah.
So, I know we hit sixforty five and I'm sorry, but
really, for me, what thesedudes do down there. Car Al over
at Randy's record shop, Mitchie overat Rockers International, Jermaine over at Penthouse,
(39:47):
who's still active and he's helping youknow, Boogie you get his tour
together for the US, and allthese other guys that are out there.
Harry J Studios, they're now runby his daughter. They don't give a
shit ship if they're failing or not, because to them survival is success and
(40:07):
we don't understand that. You can'tunderstand that, and I don't understand that.
So the white savior thing and allthat nonsense, I'm just another tool
in their arsenal to get by yeand God damn it, that's an honor.
That's an honor. No, it'smore like when people are looking on
the outside that don't know, youknow, oh yeah, you want you
(40:30):
want to piss me off, putout a record if you're not from Jamaica
and use your bullshit pets wall,these DJs who are like, oh yeah,
but I'm like, look, dude, I'm on that island. I
know the history of that, Iknow the culture, I know the religion.
I do it all the day.You hear me, use the pet
wall, take me to the pastorand shoot me. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, what are you the gatekeeper? Give me the Are you the gatekeeper?
(40:53):
And I go, no, I'mnot the gatekeeper, man. I
just respect it. And that's wherewe're losing a lot here. Well,
you know we're fit in and that, and I think that's that's the most
powerful part. So the follow upquestion, if you just if you have
a minute, is like, howis that translating into your store. So
is there are you creating? Idon't have a store anymore. Oh,
(41:15):
I don't have a store anymore.I'm on the road. I closed this
for a couple of years ago.I'm on the road. But by your
buyership, like you meet your people. Yeah, yeah, so we do
our business. We changed the entireway we ran our business when we started
going down to Jamaica. We noware on this theory that everybody has to
eat, so it costs us more. What a concept, but it finds
(41:37):
us. Yeah, we just lookaround and we go listen. If if
you're gonna sell me records, I'mgoing to pay you the right price.
So you keep selling me records,which is just good business. But also
we look at it as we don'tadvertise much. Yeah, because we think
good people will bring us more goodpeople. And the reality of it is
(41:58):
we've surrounded ourselves with some like we'revery, very lucky that we've surrounded ourselves
with people, and if they domess around and do business with other people,
we're the consequences. We think,if you rip somebody else off,
when we find out, fuck youstarve, that's it. We don't do
business with you. Anymore, We'redone with you. Jan You don't know
me very long, but I'm surea Manda told you. I'm kind of
(42:21):
you screw around with one of thepromoters and you're on a show. Guess
what, I'm the first guy towalk over, and I'll tell you like,
yeah, dude, you don't belonghere. Yep, right, because
you know what, what are yougonna take away from me? What are
you gonna do for me? Andthat's what I learned from the Jamaican culture
and the music culture down there,is like what are you going to take
away from me? Nothing? BecauseI'm doing it right. Sometimes it's okay
to have the right enemies in thisindustry. Whether it's on the stage,
(42:42):
whether it's at a record show,it does not matter because if you dislike
me, the right guy's probably gonnalike me a little more. But do
you are you? Are you findingthat you're selling a lot more of the
reggaee? Like, are you findingthat you're like our reggae business? Yeah?
We do very well with reggae.Yeah. I show up usually bring
(43:04):
a minimum thousand, forty five pershow. You know, I have probably
thirty or forty thousand sitting in storageready to go at all times. We
buy out large collections. We dowell with reggae. We bring back three
to four thousand records every trip wego to Jamaica. Wow, we overnight
them through fed X. We don'teven screw around. Yeah, we may
we do fine with reggae, butyou know we also do the same thing
(43:25):
where with everything else, I couldI could break eve, I could break
even on reggae all day, andI'm happy with it because guess what,
Billy Joel pays my bills. Youknow, reggae, Reggae fills my heart,
but Billy Joe pays my bills.Billy Joe's band don't get paid by
Billy Joe. Look at it inthis this goes back to that whole that
(43:49):
whole thing with like we started doingour business different. If I give the
punk rock kid a good punk rockrecord for ten bucks instead of fifty bucks,
he'll spend five hundred over the nextyear. Yeah, with the reggae
stuff. If I can give themthe right records and it helps their mental
health, who the hell am Inot to do that for the Jamaicans right
exactly? That's it. I mean, there's it doesn't get any heart that
(44:14):
there's no other math we need todo. If we're keeping them sane and
we're giving kids an outlet, whetherit's punk, rock or reggae. Ye,
well, as long as they're alive, they're going to spend money with
me. Yeah. Yeah, wedon't have to be cool, we just
have to be right. Yeah.Well, I know that you need to
go. So I want to askyou. I want to ask you our
impossible question, which fits so perfectlywith what you're doing down there. If
(44:37):
you could create your own forty fivewith anything on the A side and anything
on the B side, what wouldyou put? Do you want to make
it a reggae addition that's cool,that's so hard, or like the King
I'm going to call it the KingstonSpecial and it's like ghost pressed on something
(44:57):
else. I would just I wouldjust would. It would have to be
a twelve inch. It would justhave to be like let King Tubby loose
for like two sides. Ah yeah, I keep that's wicked. Yeah.
And then let Vaughan Benjamin from Midnightwho passed away, you know, may
he rest in power like passed away, Let him just come back and do
a vocal track for me. Cooland just let him let him rip.
(45:19):
I'll let him rip. I'll letyou have a twelve inch. I think
you deserve it. Culture, whatdo you get? That's why I have
forty five. I'm like, ohcool, can I have a six minute
song? Please? Ipposed to betwo minutes? Put Those crazy bastards used
to cut six minutes seven forty five. So like those six have like that's
(45:39):
melimeter runouts and you're like, thisis so stressful. What is happening?
Everything's off? I mean or duringthis very short stories I have to go.
I actually bought like a great fortyfive down there and never played the
B side. I was like,this is I don't know what it is.
It's amazing. I played I GetHome, I play the B side.
On the beat, they had aKink's track for some reason, Yeah,
(46:02):
I Swear to God. I waslike, what are we doing?
It is recycling. I was like, what are we even doing here?
My buddy's like, you said thisthis track was awesome. I said,
dude, this is the B side. It's swear to God. The A
side is so good. And he'slike the Kinks. You went to Jamaica
for the Kinks. I was like, no, this forty five is what
Jamaica is all about. Yeah,Like the A side was good, but
(46:25):
the B side not that the kinksare bad. It's just not what I
expected. Yeah, I mean thatthat I've never been to Jamaica, and
I mean that there's been a Yeah, I mean a few reasons that for
those kind of things. I mean, women traveling to sometimes sketchy areas is
sometimes it's a little hard. Yeah, it's hard to accept. Listen,
(46:47):
it's very hard to accept a lotof that culture. But it's also harder
to except that we're not going tochange it in a day. Really.
Yeah, so when we're down there, we have no when we're down there
in North nor should we. Yeah, we respect their rules and their religion
when we're down there a lot oftimes. But I will tell you this,
they also respect us now and willnot do certain things around us,
(47:07):
some of them, and I thinkwe have in some ways, there's ninety
nine percent good people down there.We have in some ways though, showed
them like, hey, if youwant to do business with us, that's
not how you're going to talk tosomebody. Yeah, we're not the dudes,
Like we're just not the does wejust won't feed you. We don't
give a shit. We're out like, we don't need to make money off
you, and you don't need tohave our money if we can't act appropriately,
(47:29):
record sure mob mentality. I'm sohere for it. Awesome, Well,
Joe, thank you so much.Yeah, your time. Yeah,
thanks many, It was a pleasure. Thank you, and may you find
good stuff with the out there.Yeah all right, be good. Thanks
for listening. Don't forget to like, subscribe and leave us a review on
(47:49):
your favorite podcast platform. Join theconversation on social media at Women in Vinyl.
We want to hear from you.Shoot us a message for topics you
want to hear, feedback and moreto info at Women Invinyl dot com.
Huge shout out and thank you forall our supporters, affiliates and sponsors like
Marshall Headphones. Visit our website Womeninvinyldot com for ways to get involved.
(48:13):
And you can always contribute to theeducation, demonstification and diversification of the vinyl
industry by donating at Women Invinyl dotcom slash donate See you next time.
This episode has been brought to youby Women in Vinyl and Red Spade Records.
Thank you for listening. Please rememberto subscribe and you can always contact
(48:34):
us directly by visiting www dot com. Women in Vinyl dot com
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