Bob Marley preached "One Love," but as fate would have it, it's been anything but, according to Aston "Family Man" Barrett, who with his brother, Carlton, helped form the band that would catapult Marley and reggae into the global consciousness. While the Wailers continue to tour with new lead singer Gary "Nesta" Pine, a young Jamaican by way of Brooklyn, keyboardist Keith Sterling, who played for years with The Wailers co-founder Peter Tosh (shot to death in 1987), as well as a number of other new faces, Barrett is involved in a court case with the Marley estate, headed by Marley's widow, Rita, herself a one-time backing singer for the band. (Carlton Barrett was slain by gunmen hired by his wife in 1987.)
"The name The Wailers, it means crying out in the wilderness, my man. Like, sweet cry of freedom, and by crying out our suffering and our separation, telling people what it really is, like the legal battle that I am up against right now," says Barrett. "I'm suing for back royalties, promotin' and merchandising money, and the battle-line is money. Everybody's after that. After all my hard work...promoting the catalog, year in year out, which no one does, not even the family - so that is more than crying out in the wilderness. It's crying out in the open land."
Aston and Carlton Barrett joined Peter Tosh, Bunny Livingston, and Bob Marley to form the core of Bob Marley and The Wailers in 1969. Prior to that, The Wailers had been a singing group -- almost like a barbershop quartet, headed by Tosh, Livingston and Marley, performing throughout Jamaica during the sixties. In the late sixties, they decided to move from simply singing into making music, and recruited the Barretts to be the rhythm section. Barrett had been playing in a number of bands in the sixties, the most famous being The Upsetters, who backed the legendary Lee "Scratch" Perry on many of his albums.
It was Barrett who, in 1971, apparently encouraged the band to go to England, where they met with success and secured a contract from Island Records.
"That stable-work that Bob took us out in, that stable was not happening. I was the mastermind behind believing that stable was to go to England to go to higher level," says Barrett in his thick Jamaican patois. "A guy who used to work for the stable but was not working then, I tell him to set up this thing, but I didn't know the day when it was going to happen, and Bob, Bun and Peter went. The three of them set up this label in Jamaica called Tuff Gong that they decided to lease to Island for 15 years. But before even ten years, Bob drop out."
Drop out, of course, is a euphemism for Marley's unfortunate death in 1981. Diagnosed with cancer (will they ever invent the low-tar joint?), he died following the release of the band's Uprising album at the age of 36. By then Bob Marley and The Wailers were already international superstars. Their album, Natty Dread, recorded after the departures of Livingston and Tosh in 1974, had scored them a Top 20 U.K. hit in "No Woman, No Cry," and they followed that up with successful albums such as Exodus (with "Jamming" and "One Love/People Get Ready"), Kaya ("Satisfy My Soul," "Is This Love") and Survival ("Ride Natty Ride"). The 1984 posthumous collection, Legend, would go on to sell over 10 million copies, and overall it's estimated the entire Bob Marley and the Wailers catalog has sold over 250 million copies worldwide, more than any other artist.
The Wailers have continued to tour, first with Junior Marvin (who joined the band following Tosh and Livingston's departures) on vocals, and now with the talented Pine. They've remained true to the spirit and tone of the message, even if the Marley estate has not. It's a shame because the estate is worth more than $200 million and there's no denying Barrett's crucial role in the ascent of reggae -- not only as the music's backbone and driving force as the band's bassist -- but as a composer and writer.
"That's how we used to be and how we used to work -- very collaborative. We moved together, we eat together, we write and play together, we smoked together and the man that was charged with keeping everyone together in the family is the "family man.' So the name become a legend," Barrett says in reference to his nickname.
It's a name he's hoping will get its due soon, not only financially, but in the musical record, where credit has been heaped on the leader to the exclusion of his band, such as the 2001 Lifetime Grammy, which was given to Bob Marley but not The Wailers.
"It's time for them to do the right thing because it's later than they think. It's time to unite and get their act together," Barrett says. "You can't use might and beat right. You learn about the rastaman's vibration which is positive. Leave it with the almighty God."
And as for the future of the band and reggae itself?
"Reggae music is like salvation -- the only thing that will last forever. It's like the moon, as we say: The older the moon, the brighter it shines," he says. "There's no end to this music, it will get bigger and bigger until it finds its rightful place. The message is for all time and all ages. It's for past, present and future. It's the beat of the people. It's the universal language. It carry that heavy message of roots, culture and reality."
-- Chris Parker
The Wailers play the Visulite Saturday, with the Mosquitos opening. Doors open at 9pm, and tickets are $20.
Mosquitos' buzz proves real; second record trumps debut
How the Mosquitos came to be is a story with so many Hollywood twists and turns that it seemed unlikely the band would ever be defined by anything but the pull of its media orbit.The band's music, a sunny mix of indie pop and bossa nova, got a big boost when NPR championed the self-titled debut in an August 2003 segment; the single "Boombox" became the soundtrack to a ubiquitous Bailey's Irish Creme ad. But the music became so enmeshed with the Mosquitos' story that once the fickle media glare began focusing elsewhere, some assumed the band's 15 minutes of fame -- along with their music -- would fade as well.
But anybody who believed that was the last buzz from the Mosquitos underestimated the strength of the band's musical vision and their commitment to it. Their second record, Sunshine Barato (Cheap Sunshine), is a great leap forward that adds textures and depth without sacrificing the original recipe. It's proof that the trio of guitarist/singer Chris Root, singer Juju Stulbach and keyboardist Jon Marshall Smith are having too much fun and making music too good to be lightly dismissed.
"We've all been together for a long time now," says the vivacious Brazilian Stulbach from the band's van somewhere in Wisconsin. "So what happens is that the three of us participated now and that dynamic was completely different. So I think the sound of the second record is a child of that."
The band's first record was primarily a product of Root's and Stulbach's, with Smith adding accents to what was in essence a group of finished songs. And how that happened played a big role in the band's initial appeal. In September 2001, Root accompanied a filmmaker friend to work one day, where they came across a beautiful woman wrapped in bubble wrap, smoking like a chimney and humming samba songs. Root, who claims to have been reared on Brazilian music in the womb, gave Stulbach a CD of his band's music, which she took with her back to Rio de Janeiro after her work visa expired. She wrote to Root to tell him how much she liked his music. Within a few weeks, the New Yorker Root was in Brazil convincing Stulbach (who'd studied dance and acting) she could sing, and the two wrote most of the debut on the beach at Ipanema.
"I loved how he simply got to the point of a lot of things, and the way he did it," says Stulbach, who soon fell in love with Root. "It wasn't very obvious and it wasn't wanting to be anything else, the way he could make a simple thing look more magical. But very simply, not like trying to make it magical -- just the way he sees things is very interesting. That's what attracted me. And then I heard a little bit of the bossa nova, too, which was already there, so I felt at home."
The result was like a gauzy dress in the sun, a light, carefree bossa nova-tinged pop record with keyboard washes that felt like summer, rum drinks and falling in love. Root and Stulbach split singing duties on the songs, simple titles like "Love Stew," "Policeman" ("You took our money/but you can't take our fun") and "Juju & Blue" (Root's love song for his new band mate) that captured the music's laid-back vibe. Stulbach's breathy voice and Portuguese lyrics were a perfect foil for Root's child-like vocals, and when the two sang together you could practically feel the electricity between them.
After the record's surprising success, the Mosquitos found themselves on tour with, among others, the French electronic popsters Air, playing to audiences sometimes reaching 3,000.
"You know what was great," says Stulbach, "clearly nobody was there to see us, like they didn't even know who we were, but by the end they were loving it -- those days were great."
While there are songs that share an Air-like feel on Sunshine Barato (especially "Vagalume"), the added dimensions to the new disc are primarily more rock oriented -- as though the band toned down the pop without sacrificing the summery feel entirely. Root's hooks are stronger (and they weren't weak to begin with), the electric guitars are further up front in the mix, and there are some songs ("Shooting Stars," "27 Degrees") with a melodic feel similar to Yo La Tengo -- probably picked up from haunting the same East Village watering holes since no one in the Mosquitos cites the Hoboken band as an influence.
"I didn't know and I still don't know very much the music of Yo La Tengo," Stulbach says, "but I guess I should hear a little bit because you're not the first one that says that."
Whatever the sources, the change from one album to the next is subtle but still obvious. Along with the band's growing familiarity, Stulbach credits Smith with the group's expanded sound.
"He's got a wonderful interesting brain, and he brings that into the trio, so it's like brain, heart and humor, and then it switches around," she says. "It's funny, we three people, we happened to meet in life, you know, and we think we complete each other -- not alike, but complete, you know? You learn a lot from each other."
Which would explain the good vibes the band gives off, musically and otherwise. Stulbach has to interrupt the phone conversation at one point for a good two or three minutes because she was laughing so hard she couldn't catch her breath, the rest of the van convulsing along with her.
"There's no room in this van," she says, "it's crazy, too packed. We're like a little sardine, so we'll have to have a good time or kill each other, you know?"
Which is easier to do with a soundtrack like the Mosquitos' virtually daring you not to have a good time.
-- John Schacht
The Mosquitos open for the Wailers at the Visulite Saturday. Doors at 9pm, tickets $20.
