"i hesitate to call someone like, say, mavado, a tourist, but he laughed at some of the hotels we wanted to put him up at lol."

and re: your posts I think "Soul Rebellion" -- if you don't mind me asking, what's your role in the reggae music business in these times?

When I had to return to the US after living in Jamaica for a long time (late 1970's) and had child upon child.. I ended up starting a reggae booking business. In these times many a musician, who "got through' immigration out of jA with this star and that star 'bailed out' and ended up in Brooklyn visa-less.

A great majority of these musicians were absolutely amazing musicians & their sounds of their 'backing group' were phenomenal. Some of them ended up living in abandoned buildings in the Bronx and Brooklyn & even in some upstate NY abandoned 'formerly' fancy Catskill resorts.

I began gathering up some of these musicians and worked on getting them gigs at clubs and colleges in NY, CT, MA, Washington DC, etc. The dates were between their gigs with famous reggae artists who they would go on tour with (only in the U.S. because most of them were at this time illegal aliens).

Since I was a stay-at-home mother, it was fairly easy to learn the business though it involved HUGE amounts of time on the phone. Colleges were the BIG paying people & I would incorporate club dates into the college dates.

YOW! I learned so much about sound requirements (both at the low end and high end) -- some of the first cities I "worked" were Woodstock NY , Ithaca, NY, Rochester, NY, Buffalo, NY, Burlington, VT, Washington DC. The club dates were put between college dates (high paying).

So here I had all these dates for these sometimes backing groups of all of the reggae stars of that time (Itiopia, Moonyaka) and other groups like Black Sheep (originally from Philly). Some of them had NO driving skills, a borrowed van with crappy tires, and this was in a time when there were no cell phones.

Each and every club owner / college entertainment coordinator were "blown away" by the groups. I somehow (most of the time) was able to get each of the groups into the venue by their contract / check in time. BUT THERE WERE PROBLEMS!! sometimes !

Can you imagine, in the late 1970's early 1980's a group of dreadlock Rastafari men and women traversing the countryside of NY, MA, CT, VT & then into DC without police intervention upon the road?

And the Police would dismantle the van / van carrier / musical equipment looking for herb of course. But all of the musicians knew the rules of the road and that once they reached their destination, they would be rewarded for having ABSOLUTELY NO HERB while they travelled.

I was on the phone continually, booking jobs, tracking down each musician for the other musician in CT, Brooklyn, Queens & had a total understanding of White Plains Road (Bronx) & the fact that the subway/train passed through every five minutes so you just had to wait on the phone to hear.

And the phone call from the organist from Detroit who was on tour with Sugar, who had gotten busted at the airport for having not one but two fake ID's.

Not to mention being 8 1/2 months pregnant and having to deal with Black Sheep openining for James Brown at a (great paying) college gig and looking so ridiculous in getting everything together while looking totally ridiculous as a promoter / pregnant to the max.

May 28, 1984... I quit !!! The backing group that I had arranged for Ziggy Marley's performance in Harlem at The Appollo Theatre were late... and unrehearsed. It was a problem from the beginning "solar enterprise" didn't give them an upfront monetary amount and promised downpayment for rehearsal space. And there I was actually delivering a baby with all these phone calls coming in with this problem and that problem.

Wow, Sharleen...you are a tough lady, kudos! Sounds exciting, though!

sharleen, wow lady you have lived i life some would love to have experienced...so enjoy your stories...hope to hear more...monk???