Corie Sheppard Podcast
Corie Sheppard Podcast
Episode 227 | Ozy Merrique
In this episode of The Corie Sheppard Podcast, I reason with the one and only Ozy Merrique — entertainer, producer, author, and visual artist whose fingerprints are all over Trinidad and Tobago’s creative landscape. Ozy takes us back to his early start on Party Time, shares the hilarious story of how he borrowed (and somehow never returned) David Rudder’s classic 1986 Calypso Monarch outfit, and reflects on building spaces like Jam in the Junction, the weekly showcase that gave countless local artistes a stage before they had one.
We also dive into his life as a published author and his work as a painter and visual artist, exploring how his creative expression evolved beyond the stage and into new mediums.
Of course, no lime with Ozy would be complete without some laughs — including the unforgettable saga of Suck Tongue Sabrina that had the whole set nearly falling off their chairs!
From the early hustle to a lifetime of artistic contribution, Ozy’s journey is a reminder that real creativity never stays in one lane.
Help keep Jam in D Junction alive — click the link below to support Ozy’s GoFundMe
All right, we'll make sure his mic's working After 29 years, 30. All right, your mic's working Up. Muzi, everything good I did.
Speaker 2:I did. You got to make sure men remember the lyrics here. Alright, the mic's working. How's everything? Everything good I did, I did.
Speaker 1:You've got to make sure men remember in lyrics here. You know it's only tell me these things. You know it's not me who say so.
Speaker 2:How's everything, how's your season? Treaty and everything, ooh, just that bad. You know, I have no season. You have no season. That season, particularly, it was good. It's not my season.
Speaker 1:It's not your season.
Speaker 2:No, I have all seasons.
Speaker 1:That is something we had to get into, because you're really a man of all seasons. Yeah, we could get into that.
Speaker 2:But let me just call it ah right, so it was my season, because it was season two of the Jam in the Junction. Well, Well, that's where we meet up. That was amazing.
Speaker 1:I want to go back to where I met you originally, which was a show with Benjai in Kaiso Blues Cafe. Right we were down and taking to Benjai. Benjai had a show during the carnival season there and I see a fellow brisk boy moving, so he going, so I trying to figure out I said what is this man moving?
Speaker 1:so, brisk, you know what I mean, settling down at all, but them days you have a turban and you tie down. I'm a Yawas and my turban, so I ain't making all the face at all. And then Hakeem's Vidal. I started to talk to him a little bit and thing and he say, he say you know Ozzy. I say I say what do you mean if I know Ozzy? I say that yeah, you have my number for me. So look how you ride it Me and realize it's you passing up and not going in Peace.
Speaker 1:And then I learn about the Germany Junction on the Wednesday night, so that's something I'm continuing to enjoy.
Speaker 2:I come in there as much Wednesdays as I could get there, I know, I know Glad to have you so that was season two of Germany Junction. That was season up with the idea for that. It was a borough, really in terms of the name, because from a song by the Lady Brother Resistance RIP called Crucial Decision right. It's one of my favorite songs from him, but it's not necessarily in the top ten that people will quicken and say, oh, that's a resistance song.
Speaker 1:Is that B-side yeah?
Speaker 2:To some people, but it's always my A side and I always like that phrase. You know what this song is Crucial decision. But the part that I like is when the rap so jam in the junction. Jam in the junction and I see, you know you had to bring back. That's a good way to bring back a certain kind of energy inside of the rap. So energy, right. So that's how it started off. But also it's nothing new to me to do series like that. I've done series by Trevor's. I've done series up in. Trevor's is in the East, right.
Speaker 2:Trevor's, yeah, yeah yeah, a couple other places too, and there was one called the Junction. That was done. We were trying to work on the dates because the brain cell is not too kicking, but, um, it was down at the end of St James. It would have been just before 9-11, so that we just trying to place the time. Dating yourself, yeah, yeah. So, um, we used to do that down there and I think it was a Wednesday or Tuesday night as well. It was a Wednesday or Thursday night as well. It was called the Junction. It was a place called Caribbean Connection. I believe it was a store. Ken Valley used to own and run that spot. Okay, gotcha, we had a little bar behind. In front you used to do like local and Caribbean liquors and stuff, right, and in the back you had a little bar.
Speaker 1:This is Ken Valley the politician. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Ken Valley and we did that there. So I wasn't even thinking along the lines that I'm going to try to reproduce that with Jammin' the Junction. But then I step inside and I say, but wait, now I do this already. You know so, but I've been doing things like that over the years. But Jammin' the Junction came from that song and also because of the need I felt to create a platform not just for music but for art and writers and things like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had to tell people that it's really creating a platform, because it's more than just you have artists passing through which we will talk about, but you have your art on display. You have several different people who will come and sell their wares, whatever they're interested in or however they express themselves. Exactly. But going back to your early days of doing that in St James or in St Augustine, was it? It was just to do the same create platforms for people who had expression.
Speaker 2:Yeah, essentially it took on different kinds of forms at different times, you know, and it's also about paying a certain kind of respect and honor and giving recognition to the foundation of the thing, the people who have gone before you know. So I used to do something called before TTT and all come back. It was called Trinidad and Tobago Thursdays by Trevor's Nice TTT, the old logo and thing and whatever. And in that we would basically play old school, but we wouldn't just normally play the 70s, 80s mixed jam that everybody just normally hear, you know, with um, raise your hand and jam and that kind of thing. We go all the way back to our spoiler, go all the way back and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:And then what used to make it interesting is that we had something called the kaiso quiz. So you do a little quiz, a little multiple choice thing, so early in the night now, give out pens and paper and people sign up the thing, little questions and things based on the theme of the night. I would DJ and at the end of the night we'll do like a pick out and the person will win a little prize. So that's one aspect of it, but the other aspect in terms of the open mic element of it. I did something called Magic Mondays by Trevor Stewart, so it was the same kind of open mic concept. Did you have any junction elements of that? But it's a little bit more wider in scope. Try to embrace different kind of creative art forms and things.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. The first time I saw it on advertised on Raze Bar Instagram. Right, I saw Ben on our advertised on Raze Bar Instagram.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I saw Benjai performing there. Wow, the energy was something else. By that time you had been doing it for a while, right?
Speaker 2:We've been doing this since August last year. Right, yeah. So yeah, no season. You bring in some classes anytime. That was season one.
Speaker 1:So who are some of the people passionate for season one Season?
Speaker 2:one. A lot of it is what we planned, but most of it is how it evolved right. So we had kind of tried to focus on the young writers or not so young writers, storytellers, who have things in print that they have to sell. So it ended up being that we had well, we had theme nights, obviously, so we invited poets like Darren Darren, Sandy, Idris Salim, Ruth Osman.
Speaker 1:Ruth Osman is a singer too right. She's good jazz, right.
Speaker 2:Instrumentalist Right. Ruth Dury at that time had already launched his first chapter of. Well, first first version of Anansi Okay. So he came he read and stuff like that, and in between we had Charlene Bailey. But I would say I'd rather recall. You see, let me bring my files too.
Speaker 1:I intend to put you on this podcast. You test this memory here today.
Speaker 2:But I can say, though, that we ended up season one with a bit of a bang because we had um charlotte bailey, we had um remy, right and um it was an amazing you know actually an amazing night that particular night, because it was around christmas time now. So remy come and mash up the place and was that was around the same time he had dropped the karaoke. Of course, I see you do that right. It was that nice kind of, and that's how the thing was around the same time he had dropped the karaoke.
Speaker 1:Of course, I see you do that Right.
Speaker 2:It was a nice kind of and that's how the thing was happening at the time, because things was just happening Organic, nobody wasn't planning nothing, like I never planned the Remy thing, right? No, no here. Well, I'll give you a quick aside. I think Remy probably buys me the Monday or something like that right. Then I say he said, boy, we can do it today. You know, I have it ready for you by tomorrow. I said nah, boy, because in my mind I have to plan out the Wednesday night, of course. Right, I had to plan out the Wednesday night. I have all kinds of graphics to do and things. So I said you can do it Tuesday, friday. You say no problem, and things. And to be honest, I had not really spent going a deep dive into what he was doing. And I got up on the man's side and I see, okay, 67,000 views for Poser. I say, remy, you're doing this today because you know, make sure you ask nobody Wednesday night.
Speaker 2:That's how things are supposed to come together you come after that and perform to close off that particular season beautiful and you say most of the artists are coming through.
Speaker 2:On the strength is relationships's relationships basically, yeah, Well, that's the strongest part Because at the end of the day, it's a labor of love for everybody, including the owner. You know Akins, who provided the space and the platform and raised the bar for us to start and continue, and you know you took a chance on the idea and it's not a place where we charge at the door.
Speaker 2:Of course we do a collection after that and stuff so I think there is a certain level of goodwill and relationships that I had formed as well over the years. But also you try to be fair, because when all of a sudden, then you know this is my job. So I'm very fully sensitive to the fact that you can't pull a man out of your house just for fun and games, you know for the culture.
Speaker 2:Plenty of that there, but so I just try to balance it out and a lot of I see two things that end up happening. Some artists wonder sometimes it happens by accident and sometimes they realize they could do that where they would come and bust a tune that they released.
Speaker 2:Yeah, try it you know, feel it out, feel all the things, feel all the feel, all the audience and thing. And the next thing too, and I said is something that even when Omari performing, omari have t-shirts to sell, so it becomes a way of generating some kind of trade as well too. When Andy Venture performed too, when Andy Venture performed, he had his t-shirts you know, yeah, he don't miss a week either.
Speaker 1:He's there every week. You know what I?
Speaker 2:mean, and I had my art, my t-shirts and then, of course, the books was really the foundation of the thing. So we had a good couple of local authors providing Nice.
Speaker 1:Well, I fall in late. It is amazing for me to see some of them up close and personal, because I would have been real small when the man was in the heyday. But Crazy stood out and I'll tell you why. Like you that run up and down 80 something, yeah.
Speaker 1:I guess 85, I think well, you, you again, when I see you by your raise, or in Germany, junction, you're running up, so you run down, so you turn on. You're playing this music for the DJ. You're DJing for most of them too, pretty much, yeah. So I'm going to tell you why Crazy stood out right. I come in there now with an expectation, because I came and I saw Superblue, I saw.
Speaker 2:I see Johnny King already.
Speaker 1:I reached late for Johnny King. Johnny was done when he came. But this is men with catalog Songs that.
Speaker 2:I love.
Speaker 1:And and so when I come in on the road right as I leave home, I started to think crazy, he go do this, he go do that, he go do this. All right, I've never been able to predict where you send the artist, because you have a way when you're going that dj booth. It is so crazy, you can't forget this boy. You had to give me this, you do that with crazy with screwdriver.
Speaker 1:Yes, I forget us. I'm completely. But of course I don't know, I might be the only man he said and the boy crazy went into the mood.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So you've been a student of this thing for a long time, oh, yeah, for sure, forever.
Speaker 2:And strange, you have to bring up that because in St George's College I went in to do A-Levels. I went to Holy Cross before that. So, st George's now I tell myself, well, right, give, holy Cross is that boy's school, st George's is that mix school. So I say, all right, I'm going on star now, I'm going to be the proper star I'm supposed to be. So I perform to all them, boy and them. So I go on in St George's now and I entered.
Speaker 2:St George's was unique in that sense because that's when they used to have lip sync was a thing beyond party time. So they used to have a double, that double crown. So they had a calypso crown and a lip sync crown. So I enter both now. Bit crazy, sujaima, oh serious, I enter both. Now. Bit crazy, screwdriver, oh serious. I am telling you, oh shit, yeah, I think the year was cardboard or brown paper or some kind of thing and a jumpsuit and a screwdriver. You know, Some of the teachers was like, ah, ah, yeah, no, no, hold on. And I think that year I won the lip sync but I didn't win the calypso. Right, I go back again the next year now, and this time you had a little group called Curry Crab and Dumpling Nice and I did a shadow.
Speaker 2:So there was an old skit that used to be on Sesame Street Pigs in Space where they'd pretend to be operating on this dude with power tools and saws and shit. Anyway, we reproduced that for the Shadow Arm. How you feeling the feelings, baby? So every time some fella is in Dr Mask and thing pretending I lie down on that table. So they would be like how you feeling the feelings, baby? Baby, I go feeling the feelings From the operating table. We know that. Nice, nice and boom. Now I go and I say I'm in Calypso too now. So I write a song called Young and Restless. This is going my mother addicted, father addicted, sister addicted, brother addicted too, the young and the restless. So I just gave you some play. I think she passed away. I can't remember her name right now. She used to play piano. So, coming down to the end of the song now, she started off with the young and restless theme Blum, blum, blum, blum, blum, blum.
Speaker 2:Ba-da-da-da I said hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, I'm done, I'm done, I'm done. I care if I win or lose, but I have to leave now. I have to go and watch my show. Yeah, I get your stories.
Speaker 1:I went on that too. Well then there's young wrestlers who would have been hated. That was what everybody yeah yeah, it's a pretty lie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a pretty lie, but I think my appreciation for quote-unquote, the culture, goes even further than that. You know, my grandmother was a queen and guire. I see she used to send for to come and teach when Woodbrook discovered folk Mm-hmm and my grandfather, who passed away a couple of years back he was the oldest Ghalib Sunian singing in the tent at the time. You might be surprised Nice. So I grew up around that. So, as I always say, sometimes you had to make a circle, everybody had to make a circle back to themselves. You know, some of them young boys. A young boy who had to start to play mass for the first year. It is good thing, I think. I made a small circle, right, right, made a small circle early in my life. So I was kind of frustrated that people didn't really catch the fact that what we have is so good that we had to represent locally and on the wider stage. You know. So Germany, junction is just crazy super, I mean yeah.
Speaker 1:Johnny King must have been nice.
Speaker 2:I heard it was nice originally but I heard it was nice, johnny was good yeah, yeah, real, real performer.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of classics too, but I always see you do that with artists. It didn't sound super. You did it with Super too, eh Song, where it's song, like them, and didn't come near to perform that bass.
Speaker 2:Hey, super, you had to give me this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's refreshing for them and also refreshing and a bit educational that you use that word in a creative context, but informative, you know, enlightening to the people who dare to know. And again, it's some homework. Go check a tune from Crazy called Creole Chocolate Creole Chocolate. The intro alone is about five minutes long yeah, that was the days for them.
Speaker 1:Long intro yeah, yeah, yeah, I can't call Beaver Henderson.
Speaker 2:Oh beautiful, and them had done it right, but just the intro alone is a whole jazz suite, right, you know. So I know them kind of things. So when I call for tune, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Of the top right.
Speaker 2:Them fellas are the singers.
Speaker 1:You education. I want to dive into it, you know. Let me talk about early life because I try to get education on where you from. Let me tell you what I come up with. I come up with guayam grandy, belmont, tunapuna woodbrook. It had no end to where you from, where you're from, tobago san agustin, um when you hear us in america capping him down. You cap it when I. When I check your name, it's about five different spellingings published.
Speaker 2:All about, you see what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:So where you from? Um, grandy, you're a Grandy man, grandy man, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Now you say you're a Grandy man, right, and you was talking about doing some themes for your series. I want to. I want to come to that. But your last show that you did because you closed off the second season of Jamming, the Junction with a show by Kali and them, which I was out of tongue so I missed as well. Alright, I saw the clips and it looked like it was a special night it was?
Speaker 2:yeah, it was, it was, it was amazing. I mean, look out for the clips, okay good or one of the clips, because or your water cup because, oh, you have more to come. Yeah, because at the end of this we're giving you all we socials and things beautiful. I will just say that in the middle of singing. So imagine this in the middle of singing take me home, mohamed and Lou.
Speaker 1:Free.
Speaker 2:Tongue was the guest at the time started singing the David Rudder hey Mass, yes, on the same chords and things. So, boom, now we used to walk right across the crowd and walk straight to the stage, david Rudder, I fall down, I pelt a chair. Oh, you didn't know, nobody knew. I tell myself I say, but wait now, I would have still pelted a chair. Oh, you didn't know, nobody knew. I tell myself I say but wait now, I would have still pelted the chair, you know. But I tell myself ooh, this is an amazing thing that Mohammed and them did, because I thought they invited him.
Speaker 1:Oh, so you don't know that them don't know neither.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know that.
Speaker 2:Them don't know, them don't know that. I don't know, brother. The story, according to Caffrey's son, is that there was by pulling to spring on them and they was on the way home. Caffrey was taking them home and then he say you know you're passing because you're having something by Carly. You're passing by Carly and you're passing by Carly. You walk up the step. He say, okay, I want to use the bathroom. So he's walking towards the bathroom and the bathroom on the side. So he's walking towards the bathroom on this side. So he walk into where's the bathroom. Man, he hear his song start. He say, okay, I will do that. After. Walk straight up to the stage. Boom, music start them singing.
Speaker 2:Mohamed fall on the stage. I pelt a chair quite so I start to sing and everybody's just going mad. Then you do so. Boom, I bust out in tears. Mohamed bust out in tears, umari bust out in tears. Because then everybody started to realize nobody planned this. You understand, I tell myself Kali, I feel this, kali planned this Because the way the thing happened right on time, and I tell it on time and that gave me that kind of encouragement to realize what it's you know it's, you know it's probably something I'm going to do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so, and to continue it as best as we could. You know, of course. So we ended with that. I must give respect, of course, to Darren Ellis on Pan, who performed as well. He and all Jumpy, yeah, genius, right. The next nice part is because Kwame, who's a resistance son, was doing the music, djing, but he's also played drums, so when a quarter way into a free town set he go on on the drums, boom. Darren Pan moved to the stage, so it was a full band. It was just supposed to be Lou on guitar and Mohamed singing and it ended up being a full band. Soul Fire performed. I performed a good bridge and my name Luke. Come out to the bush. You know who Luke is right, luke is a. I want to move to the west side, course in a best ride, cause I'm tired of the east side. Before you see the black side.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so he jumped out. It was an amazing night and I was putting it lightly, you know. So I'm probably a little bit frightened now. You could have topped that. You kind of put the jam in the junction and pause for a little bit. You try and kind of collect our forces and hit them again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you have our support. You have our support and it's something that I would encourage anybody to come and take in because the performance is special. You know, I always like to see every genre, see it a lot, and I found that growing up is not something you used to see a whole lot. Artist-to-artist interaction is something that I'm always fascinated by. For instance, you had Superblue there the night right, and while Superblue there, I'm talking to Omari. So this whole thing done surreal for me. Already I was a real, real groupie and fan of this thing right and Omari is telling me he say, boy, you know me and Superwork together a few times this, and that he said I produce one of Super the super biggest songs. And I wonder if he's going to figure it out. I'm trying to figure out what. I'm trying to match up with my age now to super age and say something I did not know what biggest song he could do.
Speaker 1:and then, when he was about to sing Sundar Pappu Kolo Mari, he said hey, come, you produce this song. I feel like into something there that people need to see more of that instance. It's called Obia. See if you can bottle some and live with that. Exactly, exactly no, but I love it. It's something that I keep doing.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that yeah yeah, yeah, David Rudder.
Speaker 1:now, David Rudder was part of your origin, part of where you start outside of the school and winning competitions there. Party time was a big part of what your next step was into entertainment. Huge eh yeah. I hear you telling a story about you and David Rudder. We're doing the same. Was it lip syncing as well?
Speaker 2:Lip syncing. Yeah, yeah, we went, we went. I took the same team from school Right and we went into party time in 89. And tell myself you know, we could more than likely win best local performance, because at that time everybody hip-hopping and dance-hall-ing.
Speaker 1:So that's how, in party time, most of the music that people going up with is foreign music 99, 99, 99%. And what kind of year this is? Yeah, what kind of year this is? Around what time? 89. 89.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 89. So August, july, August, july, august, 89. So I went up with our same team, curry Crab and Dumplings same concept and thing, nice, and we run through the semis and thing, thing, thing. Actually I think we had actually done much better in the semis. Something went wrong I can't remember exactly what it was, but we still end up in the finals. We run last in the finals but we win best local performance oh nice, so you run last and win best local.
Speaker 1:I ain't like that. I don't like it.
Speaker 2:I think we was the only local at the time. You know, I had to give respect to the two other people, I think before me who had done it was Oscar B. Right, he had done our Abrigo 87, somewhere around Some of them, so it wasn't party time too. Oh well, yeah, before a little bit before me. So you're going up there with the curry, crab and dumpling and ting ting.
Speaker 2:But I find when people come in and shake my hand and congratulate me they're saying like okay, well, that's the consolation. You could never win against all them fellas who dancing, and the boyster men kind of style and this kind of thing. I say let me tell you something. In my mind I say let me tell you something. Why not? Why can't I go up with a local song where the supreme goal is to win? We're not less than we might be better than in many ways, but we're definitely not less than we. Start off with the assumption that we're less than then. We start off with the assumption that we're less than them. See me and this shippeners. So I say I'm going to do David Dutta the following year.
Speaker 2:So he had released 1990 in 89, actually Late 89. It was on an album called Sketches. I always remember that. No, I lie, I think he released it after Carnival. I think that was his first grand attempt to come out of the lockdown of the season. So he had released Sketches 1990. Was on that and became a big hit.
Speaker 2:So I said, well, I can't do it right now. So I got my boots, I practiced my limp, I said me alone going, this time I'm not going to win. I had some little tie-dye clothes or some kind of thing. Um, but that time I had a little picky drive. So you should reach about here, probably put some little bow on it and um, the, the neatly shaped bed was always the challenge, still a challenge for me. So this girl I should have recalled her name she had, she performed I think she had performed a sting or something like that, right, and she had a little beard. So she was a girl playing a boy. So when I found out how she did it now, she used to put Vaseline powder first and Vaseline, a little line of Vaseline Right and chip up hair from like a wig and sprinkle it on, so you make your own.
Speaker 1:David Rudder beard.
Speaker 2:I make my beard and things. So I go in these semis now I'm preliminaries, I get through. I didn't think I was doing 1990 at that time, I think I was doing another song. So I'm a limp and I think, and I go in through semis, come now and coup. The coup happened in July. So you see, well, it cancelled then. So, then, so the coup happened.
Speaker 1:Part time was going on. Yeah, oh, I thought yeah.
Speaker 2:I think the old prelims was already done. I think that was half into the semis.
Speaker 1:So this is, this happened in Westmoreland times. Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh show, okay, so we can't. Now it's for youths, right, right, so you just can't we?
Speaker 2:well, they basically figured out a way to cheat the curfew, right? So they used to run like maybe 11 to 4, right so they started it back, thank god. So by the semis now I say you know some? Um, I wonder if I could get actual clothes borrowed from other. This is just me guessing. I live in quite a lot. I live in something Pitti Valley side. So I get a number from him, I call him. I already know by then that I'm doing this now.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, you know you are created a little buzz in the party time thing. So I go on. He say, well, come on, come now. So I go on down my road, fine, leave Laocata. So I go and numb my rudder, find, leave, lockett, arima, port of Spain, pinty Valley, traveling. When I reach a dog there he bite me. I bumps up a man in the corner and say but wait, that's David. I say is this David rudder? He say no, that's David rudder brother. No, david brother, david rudder brother. So he point and wave. So I go on. The dog's still trying to bite me. So I go on. He say you could get this, you could get this. I say Alright, cool, I get it closed. I say what?
Speaker 1:kind of matting is this? So he just cool, you call him, and he acts, and he just say come true, you see what I'm saying, and I end up With the original clothes Because, remember, that's 89 and he would have been 86, 87, 88. Yeah, he'd be, he'd be.
Speaker 2:Clothes-wise and all fashion-wise he was tough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course, of course.
Speaker 2:I had the curve so I gave him the clothes. Now, boom, mash up the semis Going for finals now and I say you can get what I win with in 86. With the Yoruba symbols and the IFA symbols and things.
Speaker 1:That's the yellow suit red.
Speaker 2:and you know it, he said but anyway, I had to bring that one back. Yes, I remember the others.
Speaker 1:Seriously, he came.
Speaker 2:He knew all the things he said, but you said that one. I had to bring back that one. So he said I'm for to tell you what make the thing by Carly so special. Mm-hmm Me, I never invite him To the final Mm-hmm Up and up. No, I never invite him. Boom, now it's like a, a wave of a whisper Start to go from the door To the upstairs part.
Speaker 1:David Olaje, david Olaje.
Speaker 2:David Olaje In part, in part two For my final. So you just walk in, they watch you around going up the stairs, they put him satis-sit down. Well, that time I say, ah, I win. I have no choice at that point in time to get the man sat down right there. So said so done. So there was a kind of history repeating itself, done by Carly. Now, of course that is a surprise. The man just so. That was the party time. Party time story.
Speaker 1:Nice in a nutshell well, I don't actually this right because it's a plenty people listening who are not certain age. I can call the number, but when you say bella buzz, right, people's only thing that mean tiktok instagram, because then had none of that. So what was building a buzz then is any papers, and how are you getting To where the brother Know who you are If you?
Speaker 2:do an interview With Alison Hennessy On TTT. You'll be like Buzz that is D-Buzz One. Alison Hennessy, wait about 11 TikTok right now.
Speaker 1:Respect to her, respect to her, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So we used to do that little route. I think I don't think I'd Encountered Peter Blood Until route. I think I don't think I'd encountered peter blood until kiss kitty, though. So, but some kind of papers thing went on, so it was like two little story in the papers and then people were covering it, covering it, um, and there was nothing else to do on watch on tv on a saturday morning. Anyway, you know it's a rush that was really young and and restless.
Speaker 2:then the youths had a nice time because it was recorded by TTT.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so the buzz, it was already national news Understood and you have a name that unforgettable when we play Ozzy Merrick it's hard to forget.
Speaker 2:It's about to ring. You're bound to be a heart, isn't it? I don't read them, did I? But Ozzy Merrick is my father, so he passed away. So you're Ozzy Merrick Jr. No, I'm Ozzy Merrick now, but I was a junior before. No, there's no junior, no senior, it's just one. It's just you. It's just one Now you know? Yeah, it's just one.
Speaker 1:So from party time. Yeah, man, how you reach from there, you have a buzz. People know your name. And then, how did Kiske Di Caravan part come about? Now, because I'm hearing a story that a little buddy told me that Kindred was supposed to be three people and Ozzy was the third. How it come to that? What were you doing that caused you to get picked up on your radar? Kiske Di Caravan or Kiske Di Records?
Speaker 2:well, omari had basically opened that door, but that's a fast forward. So if you throw, throw back, I say, but wait now I can't be a lip sync artist. There's no such career in that. You know, I'm like best I be a Michael Jackson in posting it or something yeah, because in school you done writing and singing songs.
Speaker 2:I was writing and singing and by that time I was heavy into writing poetry as well too. One of my first appearance I made on television wasn't even part of the time. Ralph Marad used to have a show on Channel 4 called Book Talk, and by that time I had my full collection of poems ready to release. So I'd be the next Derek Walcott you know what I mean?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah so that kind of expression was always part of the thing. And then I said I like to perform, I like to write, I love local Rapso. So I started to write Rapso on my own, just a create my own collection and thing, and I think it was 1991. Um, I said this is what I want to do. Um, so I wrote my first Rapso, conscious Beat, my first official Rapso. I used to write in what you would call local parlance before that, but sometimes, and conscious beat, I took it to resistance on the drag mall. He said you like it? Ting ting ting. He said, yeah, some vibes. And then I said but what do I do with this now? So even all them time Omari and them used to be with a group. Well, he told you the story, but it used to be.
Speaker 2:That was a whole kind of Barataria renaissance with Gage and Gatorians and everybody from that time right, and Omari and Akinde had performed in a show they had called Youth Fest. And in Youth Fest they run on with a rap song. In the middle of the hip hop set, I hip-hop set. Now I was like what the hell is this? I'm in the crowd. Oh, you did that time. I was in the crowd. I was no part of that, yeah, but you just attended. I searched out to marry. We sit down, we talk, we start meeting Uwe.
Speaker 1:So this is after the performance you went on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I found him out and met with them and we started to talk and around that time I still wasn't sure what I wanted to do. So I was still in UWE, so I didn't want to leave. I was kind of neither here nor there now. And so when they got the opportunity to run with the Kiskidi well, the first no Compromise album I said fellas, you know I will come. You know I come. In. Just now and a couple of years after the next year I formed Homefront Right. And coming just now and a couple years after the next year I formed Homefront Right.
Speaker 1:And well, the rest is yours. So what caused you to not end up with Kindred? What went on? You just decided to stay in UWE at the time.
Speaker 2:Well, I was torn to tell you the honest truth. I mean, you have an opportunity for tertiary education and this and that, but I tell myself I do an English lit. And you said one or two little creative courses at the time. And then I say but wait, now, this is all I want to do, more creative everything. But you couldn't even do it as a minor, you couldn't. So it was like studying the classics and breaking things down.
Speaker 1:So what they call in the classics then is British.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but then, yeah, still a large extent Mm-hmm, but then at the point, so I say I will stick with it, because the other lecturer called the late great Gordon Rowlett Mm-hmm, and Gordon Rowlett used to introduce us to the spoken words then of the time. So there's like Okwunura Ota, Jamaica, mikey Smith, muta Beruka I see Resistance from Trinidad, and one day we sit down in a class and spend two hours analyzing Jose by David Rutter. I say, but wait, now, it is your favorite class now. Well, no, it wasn't, it was my worst class. Because I say, why am I sitting here and I could be already making records? It's true, it's true.
Speaker 1:Why am I sitting here and I could be already making records? It's true, it's true.
Speaker 2:Why am I sitting here? I am a contemporary, you know, in fact a little bit younger than this dude, so I could be already doing this thing, and that was kind of, so I say, look, I'm done with that. So at the point I said, let me stay and give it a try.
Speaker 1:I see, and then, yeah, yeah, then you decide to stop studying literature and contribute and be literature I got you. I got you. Now I had to ask you right, a random question. But when you say I went and find David or I find Omari, it's something like such a like no, you have so much access to people you could, you could DM anybody, right, right, but I don't know, maybe back then it was easier to just pull up on a man and meet them and that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:No, you had little connections and things Because I went to Georgia's so at certain times we would have bounced up within a circle. So it may not have actually been me meeting him for the first first time.
Speaker 1:But after I see that show.
Speaker 2:I had him, I had to go and I had to say, go on the road with a bag of shillings and call, and then he is he pay phone?
Speaker 1:and?
Speaker 2:he mother go answer and say yeah because he's doing the homework. Now. He's doing the homework now. You could rather call him back tomorrow, some kind of thing like that. You know so it was. But it was fun though, because I remember when I tried to find, I tried to remember who I went by. But it wasn't.
Speaker 2:It was in the later half. I used to go by Sprung for all my old time music Gotcha Used to give me like hard drives and stuff. It was somebody I went by but I was looking for a chuck who, god bless. No, I didn't want to. There's an old shadow Fall in love again. Love is too much pain. Anyway, I had to look for that track, so it wasn't Rocky McCullough, some other collector at the time. So I had to go. You had to blow out all the muds and things Go in the thing. Then you had to find a way to sample that and then, he said I can't sample that, but I'll lend it for you.
Speaker 2:You gotta bring it back tomorrow, then I'll go by, maybe somebody like a Robin Foster, and then I'll sample that, and then I'll put it on a duct tape and boy at that point you're listening to that music to create.
Speaker 1:So when you say sampling, you're gonna use it to do something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a time I'd kind of temporarily signed to Ritual Records and I'd done two tracks, one called Let them Talk and another track, actually, with this guy from Diego Martin Can't remember his name right now. But, yeah, I'd done tracks. I was looking to sample some old-time kaislan thing in it gotcha.
Speaker 1:So this is in between. This is before you get picked up by uh amar and him no that that that time was out when I was looking for them chucks. Okay, okay, so that's after. So the the pickup with amar, because, again, listening to our sister on here to marry here and they were telling these stories sister and say ain't invite you to the kiskidi Caravan thing. I had to deliver that message in person. She say anytime you're doing a Kiskidi reunion call her, she will fly in and she will do it right, documented right.
Speaker 1:But the original album was Gage and them it was Gatorians, it was Sister Ron and General Grant Kindred Grand, well, grand Do Shot Call. I guess that's A runaway record, but all those Records stand up Up to today. Yeah, it's right when they find you, or where you find them so that you became Part of I used to be.
Speaker 2:In and out of the studio While them fellas Was recording still, you know.
Speaker 1:When.
Speaker 2:Kinjo was recording. So I was part of that whole process as well. So I used to be in there and already, um, I'd already, robert and them had already known who I was, you know. So sometimes I might spit that verse here and there, but so you know, but I didn't have a concept or a group or a plan?
Speaker 2:Oh no group yet Nah, okay, um, I think it was as it is straight up. Um, it would have been when, when that first case did come out 93, it would have been the Christmas of 92, when they were supposedly looking for people and stuff like that. So I think I had a little footing, because people tell me of the kind of pain and fear, fear and losing when they had to go and audition for shock now. So it wasn't easy. What, seriously? Well, so I hear, because I now realize I had a little bit of ends, because I remember bouncing up shock, straight up. I bounced up shock by Coconuts at night some Wednesday or UV night or something.
Speaker 2:I think he was playing because he's a DJ too, right, and I say shock already. So I'm ready. I say yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I say I have a drummer, a man playing African drum, and he makes two real kind of conscious vibes. He said come in. So we went in the following week, you know. But it wasn't a big drama because he didn't know who you were. Okay, okay, so, um, so then we picked the pick. We had sung two tracks to them and they had like Free Yourself, mm-hmm. So they said we'll go with Free Yourself. The other track was called um Shouter.
Speaker 1:So Free Yourself was the original um Homefront track. That was the one that, paul, you know.
Speaker 2:We had about five tracks, supposedly. Well, we had about perform acapella with drums or whatever right, but then out of that five you would have picked those two, and then out of those two they picked Free Yourself as the first single.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what they're going to promote.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So home front. Who's the original three? Yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the original three. You know I must pay respect to Brian Kinky Danford, right, he's been a friend, a company, a company and an advisor. Right, like I'm a risk owner. Yeah, but an African drum from even before. You know, when I was on campus I used to go up and I like all them little concert and thing and perform poetry and things I wrote and or sometimes just get kicks, you know, and I used to go and check him because he used to work here and live right and perform poetry and things I wrote and or sometimes just get kicks, you know, and, um, I used to go and check him because he used to work here and live right around the corner from you. So that has been and still is a spot by Monty Grant.
Speaker 2:We go and rehearse and write and you know, and jam and um, so it was me and him working together on some stuff. And Gillian was an old friend of mine but she had just come back from the States and so I said, what are you for? She said, well, what are you for? And then we just kind of talk. We used to actually paint t-shirts together and go and sell in all the little markets and them and Frederick Street and in UV and things. So we had a t-shirt business called period designs. Gotcha shut up and then then, um, so we started to write, you know, and um, I'll tell you straight up, she came and she says ozzy, I dream this, this melody, you know, dream this line. And she started saying give yourself a chance, let your spirit start to dance. Free yourself to dream that. Yeah, and then I jumped with the bombarding and then I kind of flesh out the verses and the little chant in the middle and work on the production and things like that. So, yeah, so that was that?
Speaker 2:so that's that's where it went on with the initial and then, yeah, we had a little thing and we was well under the high heavy dashiki and thing too and and thing you know. And so it started off with primarily she and I doing performances. Then we kinky then became an integral part of it. Thought it was just cool. And then, um at a clan. Um, mark Jimenez at a clan. He was not a clan at the time.
Speaker 2:I had known Mark from and Mark Jimenez at the clan he wasn't at the clan at the time. I had known Mark from, seeing him around on Frederick Street, seeing him in parties used to have long plots at the time and used to sell bags, I believe, and he mentioned to me he have a midnight rubber style. I said, thing, thing. I said, well, we done record already, no, done, you see, not die nothing you know. And he had known Jillian as well. Thing I said, but we done record already, no, done, you see, not die nothing you know. And, um, yeah, none, children as well too, I think both of them used to model with Richard Young. And, uh, we hook up. And I said, well, all right, cool. I said, yeah, what to do Before we record another song?
Speaker 2:The little chant in the middle free yourself, you go running and do that, and then the three of we well, it ended up being four of us officially. Really Right, we go run it hard and we run a good couple of shows with that unit Mm-hmm. And then, um, that didn't quite work out, mm-hmm, no, so no. Then, um, yeah, um, we kind of went our separate ways in that sense. My children started to do one thing. You know well, mark went on to do amazing things as a clan, but then Lisa Romany came in, kind of mid-local tour, mid-kiskeedi tour, and so the three of us ended up being the proper home from the I don't want to say proper, but the one that a lot of people yeah, that's the one that people know the visual that people recognize.
Speaker 2:So that's we. Three of us went to New York, miami.
Speaker 1:Atta Klan on board that time?
Speaker 2:no, no before we did Jump Started, oh, that's before we did the Cannes Carnival tracks. Boom Generation and Jump Started. And I'm rolling.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that time. Atta Klan not in home.
Speaker 2:No, that was you know. Looking back on it now, it feels like it was like at this big long era. Yeah, it's like what did that happen within like about four or five months, really Well, after the Chucks got released, like in May that year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, until then.
Speaker 2:And then our Chucks, our tracks got released, first because they thought the rap soul wasn't really the the big thing, it wasn't the Danitop and the.
Speaker 1:Oh, they wasn't pushing that.
Speaker 2:Oh, crowd ball out for me and stuff. So they say, well, technically they said we probably needed a bit more push. Oh, okay, so Kendra had, can you Take it on? So so that bus like me, by June, july we were in Laokita, maloney. July we were in the Savant no. July we were in Brian Larratt's promenade. Then end of July, august we were in Tobago and all of that and by the end of August it was over. Yeah, but looking back at it, now, it was so much it was impactful.
Speaker 2:You see, watch me, young and dutish to us, you're good. Yeah was so impactful. You see, watch me, you're going to do this to us, you're going to get it. Yeah, I said, and somebody I said I'm most likely he was a proper asshole at that time too. But that's the story behind why the group yeah, I think I put the blame on me you and everybody.
Speaker 1:Good now I see you and Atta Clan performed for the K Kid. It was nice to see spring chicken. Again, water under the bridge, you know they say it is either another time or another energy, exactly, exactly, exactly. No. But the impact of that was felt and you know it's really nice to hear these stories from you guys because the reaction to people when Sister Run came here and say, well, I do the no Compromise album, but I was never on the tour with yourself like Homefront Idur.
Speaker 1:Rinkin and Superchild yeah is that a little bit of revisionist history going on there? Because people tell she she lie, so we only could come and confirm that everybody was like nah, I know I see you in shows and things.
Speaker 2:Mandela effect, Mandela effect right.
Speaker 1:She said I was living abroad, and that feel that way now that you're telling me that about Atta Klan, because I felt as if I mean I jumpstarted on them things.
Speaker 2:Well, I was in it and I said it felt like it happened over like a three year span or some kind of thing. There's so much intense emotions up.
Speaker 1:I would imagine young, yeah, youth. So let me talk about Jumpstarted now. At that point you're writing. You're writing the whole song. You're writing for the group yeah what's the idea there, how you come up with it, because it's something that's so relevant up to today. I see you sing it on Remy yeah and the reaction.
Speaker 2:You see the reaction on social media too. Right, yeah, it's of no generation that can connect with it. Yeah, that song just would not go away. You want it to go? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Again, I've come to terms with that as much as I've come to terms with other things. You know, it's like a bugbear setup, it's like an irritation, like come on.
Speaker 1:So much artists. When you talk to them, the song that everybody loves is the one that they found a performance.
Speaker 2:I love it now though. All right, nice Typical artist thing, huh, I say you like that, but yeah, but listen to this. Of course this has more oomph.
Speaker 1:Of course. Well, you say you went and dig up some shorty songs that nobody ain't knowing, so that's in there. You're looking for certain amounts of depth in your song Adept in it, so I hope.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Our rolling started Well. It has certain Burrows in it. The obvious Burrow is that Around that time it had a guy called Out and foreign. I guess he must have said that X or something Right. He had a truck Used to go Question why is it that every time During the time that was almost. The whole track right.
Speaker 1:It was just talking, talking.
Speaker 2:So I said, why don't I start that tune with question? You know, and the whole premise of truck shutting down was very current in our young imagination at the time. It used to happen every year. By that time I went in town, like two or four years or not. But bet you. But at some point in time you're following some truck and it shut down. So you had to stand up there for hour and a half. People had to try and fix it and I say, okay, that's a good matter for them. And I and and this is the opportunity that I just hardly get to tell people it started off with me trying to motivate, almost in the same vein as give yourself a chance, but in a carnival space, meaning that we got to start back rolling. You know, on the right track. You know, pick yourself up and move to.
Speaker 2:Like that old man, say them young people crazy. Oh, they're getting on so damn lazy. But the music creator frenzy and the reason remain a mystery. All we know we pushing soul, pushing the music into the world, using the power inside the soul to make sure we start back to roll. So that was the full metaphor. But then we started the party, you know. So we say, well, jump started, that's a dance, push started, okay, that's a dance. And hand on your bumper, I say, oh, that is the dance. All this still in the chalk zone. I said, oh, all that is the dance, all this is still in the chalk zone. I think one of my. Then I say, you know, I say finish this whole song without using the word wine. Why are you giving yourself work, extra work? Don't ever use the word wine, but make sure people wine. See, hand on your bumper, put your back in it so you listen to that song and never say wine.
Speaker 1:There's a hell of a instructions of wine, yeah, hand on your bumper, put your back in it.
Speaker 2:You listen to that song and never see wine, but it's a hell of a instruction to wine. Yeah, hand on your bumper, and bumper went and took over the wheel.
Speaker 1:After that, all barbierats and all them places you hear the metaphor to the bumper and the truck.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Don't say it like it's obvious. It's a hell of a thing. But now that I listen back to it, I mean the motivational part in it. There it really is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And I think what has ended up happening as a writer, especially in your writing inside of a dance space, is that you just had a, you had the motivation first, you know, and then you had the hooks, and then there are certain times you're trying to write to suit the dance and the hooks take over the motivation and the entire motivation is lost. People have no, because it might have been deep or at least not so obvious in a song like Rolling Mm-hmm Nobody even catch. If you think Rolling used to give me problems. I had a track called Fan my Polari. Yeah, that one, yeah, yeah. What was the problem, boy, how it go here? My man, I was working with our producer at the time. I think everyone's looking for the rolling part too, okay. So I think I went like two hooks too far.
Speaker 2:So by the time that happened now people lost the fact that the idea is that this couple selling Polori around the Savannah for carnival A couple, and they're trying to build a business and stuff like that but the woman there's a man and a woman and the woman's saying you know some people having that time, why is I doing commerce? You know why we had to be hustling in that time. Why is I doing commerce? You know why we had to be hustling. I could be jumping up in the barn.
Speaker 2:So she say she could make one rounds around the savannah and come back and help himself. But she say, while I go and make sure somebody find the polar, you know, with you Nobody got that. Really, lord, I wish it is a nightmare for a poet, you know, because I tell myself, you know it's about that kind of urge and sometimes you know the little stress, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know relationships, it's hard to go through, yeah, because you're trying to build a business and people having a good time and you're sweating with a cold pot and whatever you know. And she said we'll just take one round and come on and jump in a band and come back around, but while I'm gone, fan Mepuloid yeah.
Speaker 1:That sounded too strong, too strong. All I do when you are here and that is Fan Mepuloid.
Speaker 2:Man waiting for that part to reach.
Speaker 1:So that's the issue with rolling People. Didn't get the depth of the song.
Speaker 2:I think as a writer and I think I'm a little bit too, because I mean I realized, oh God, it's not a book I'm writing, it's a song. So I need to find different ways of balancing, you know, the messaging and the madness and things like that.
Speaker 1:That is fair. That is fair, yeah, you know. Now you say you're not writing a book, right, I want to talk about a book you work with today. You work with a book called Towns and Villages. Yeah, this is Michael Anthony.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is my new Maxi book, Mm-hmm. So I'm reading that and Hardy Boys are hardy boys you're hardy boys.
Speaker 1:What do you say? You know how long me need about hardy boys.
Speaker 2:I just pick up, take and say well, alright, irish and Tongue, whatever. That's a good two hours, an hour of reading so. I pick this one up now, and this is a whole Guayaguari man too.
Speaker 1:Guayaguari man. Why you say two? Because you say from Grandy. This is why this book's so fascinating to me. Right, I want to tell people where's the chapters in the book. Right, when I pick it up, I pick up the contents page, which is usually further size reach in any book that I pick up and the contents say let me see if I could find it Arima, aruka, blanchishes, kaiwal. What's the wrong side, right, caranage, korra, sidra, shogunate? I don't know. The first thing I look for is if St James Day is not, but it's part of Port of Spain. And I find it so fascinating that you reading a book like this now, especially against the backdrop of me, trying to find out where you're from and can't come up with a definitive answer. So you say Gwaya 2, you're from Gwaya 2 because you're Thelma Grandy.
Speaker 2:Um yeah, Okay, so let me um my mom family from Manzan, Right, Okay, so let me my mom's family is from Manzan, my father's family is from Gwaya, so they come together and end up in Grandy, so that whole East Coast is where the roots still exist. You know, everybody know, michael Anthony as the fiction writer um, green Days by the River and yeah, in San Fernando, and things like that. But he also has done these amazing books dealing with kind of, you know that history that people are not even familiar with. And, um, it's not the first time I'm reading it.
Speaker 2:Uh, just pick it up the other day and I see them go through it again and but the the magical thing about reading this book Wild in the Maxi you're reading about, you're reading about Tanapuna in 1845, and you're driving through Tanapuna and you're looking around and you're saying, but wait, now, wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold, on, hold on. All here was just sugar and bullcat. And you know, and you're, and you see the visual in your mind. So I, I know I think there's a particular reason I'm going through that, because I think it helps me to see where we live in, a different life, a different kind of perspective. So, like before I come and meet you now, I kind of went over Sawa.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we meet up in sour, right, yeah, we bones up in sour. Ozzy, you can't get no horrors and men and get your metaphors. You wanna kind of understand that this is normal people you're creating for. But there's a, there's a hell of a connection here, because you're coming through the bus rooms and half the places that's written in this book but it's.
Speaker 2:I think I have a little bit of a skill to kind of humanize. And then about another story you remember just now, yeah, tell me.
Speaker 2:So in one of Michael Anthony books now you talk about this guy who was going to a cycling competition in Curacao or somewhere along on that side the details may not be proper and he ended up at the bottom of a ship, either a British ship or a German ship, but he had a bicycle and he was down there in the dark. He down in the hull and, unbeknownst to him, now World War II, world War II start and they call for the ship and tell the ship okay, party start, you need to turn around now, come, drop what you doing ship. So this poor fella end up either in Germany but everything might be Germany, just he and the bicycle alone, and had to spend the whole world war somewhere where nobody knew where he was and all this kind of thing it's a fresh start in the world war.
Speaker 2:So, besides the whole history and the background and things I said, imagine you are that guy down inside this dark ship and you walk up and see sunlight. You want to pull out your bicycle and see where you're going and go to the meddling cure, yeah, unimaginable.
Speaker 1:What the hell is life like at that point in time when you get that news Exactly.
Speaker 2:So he's got these nice little anecdotes. That is really humanizing too, right, right.
Speaker 1:So you're drawn towards this book because you casually sit down here and say well, I'm not married, I'm embarrassed, I'm not going to go mad. And you seem to be fearless in your journeys wherever you get a call in your head, isn't it?
Speaker 2:And being semi-famous is the best you could get to in Trinidad. It used to kind of affect me in that type of way, you know, because I used to like to move On the low. Yeah, you know, sit down and watch people, you know, like too many people, too much people watching me. So I like to sit down, you know, watch people, take an abseil and write background stories on people and stuff like that, and I guess I, as I said, thin line between fearless and stupid, take some kind of chances. I'm kind of a bad man thing, you know. Just live certain places and I say, yeah, what's going on? I tell my lady, tell me. She say, good friend of mine. She said I have an apartment for you.
Speaker 2:Now I say, well, I grew up in Lockett. She says, yeah, it's on Nelson Street. So I tell myself, oh, planning's bad. Okay, let's go. When I do so now, it is a building like on the edge, right Between between the pannier and where the planning starts. Right, it's a two-story building. When you're going upstairs it's a one-bedroom, black and white tiles, bathtub. I sit and weight. Now I'm in the penthouse.
Speaker 2:Life's sweet that's a small little story.
Speaker 1:You seem to be going, you're on the move, yeah, yeah, it's just like when I say my calendar and I don't know You're on the move, you make it. So I had to ask you because, as a man who went to UWE right, I had a story. I always tell people I went to undergrad and I do business at the time and I wasn't sure if I I wasn't sure what I wanted to do my first. I was first accepted in UWE to do was the name of the program? Yeah, I applied for business but my grades wasn't good. So they tell me you accepted, but you do carnival arts, right. And I remember telling my mother I said girl, I get accepted to do carnival. She said korea. Can I draw a straight line you're going to carnival arts thing. Now that I'm doing this, I feel like if that was a calling, I might have missed it but I catch it back but I finished the degree in ue at the time and um all of was applying for masters.
Speaker 1:All my partners and them said they're doing an MBA. Now I see Lisa, the Apostles and them fellas bright. All of we apply. But the thing about me is it's kind of similar to you. You see, anywhere we're offering, I work it.
Speaker 1:So, I work in since I was 15, 16. So one of the issues was them fellas had to get in to do their masters. So I remember applying and then I alone got accepted for masters. Well, no off-rightener, because I know me ain't no master at nothing and I need them to pass any course I do in. So I come home the day to tell my mother I got accepted to them days it was UE, iob, institute of Business, I see it was Tuna Puna, pashy, tyree, you know everywhere in Trinidad.
Speaker 1:And I come home to tell my mother that girl, I get accepted but I don't want to go because I'm waiting for my partners and them when they go work and they go get eaten right. And when I say I get accepted, my mother thingy about in tears and hug me up. I say, oh God, wrong person, boy to go home. And I call my father and I say he's a more reasonable man. You know my father, a young fella. I said, boy, here we go, I can't accept it, or nothing. He said, boy, you're telling me you don't want to go and think about it Now, I had to do my masters right. So I always wonder like that's funny what is it like?
Speaker 1:your parents were supportive.
Speaker 2:They never met my mother no yeah, she was there a couple of nights. Well, my mother is an amazing, just an amazing, that's all. That's all she is because she, she grew up and, interestingly enough though, she made certain choices in life. Obviously, she had kids young, got married young, but she was bright as a bulb and I was like first batch or second batch in Northeastern College in Trangrandi, right, and she pick up sewing and well, you know, she's proper designer.
Speaker 2:She is going through years, take care of five kids, six kids, and had little jobs here and there, and I still don't know how this woman had done it. Yeah, right, you know, but she picked that creative route and I think with me, I think there was always a healthy or unhealthy degree of skepticism with me as a child. Anyway, then, okay, I got you. So I don't think they were particularly surprised. You know there might have been nah, this might be a bad idea, you know, you're sure you want to do that and stuff like that. You know, but I was performing Paul Keane's Douglas skits in primary school, yeah, singing Calypso. Well, I went to SDA school so I couldn't really sing calypso, but you were singing calypso. Yeah, come up the road, sing calypso every year in Holy Cross, writing, drawing, creating, jumping off the roof, you know.
Speaker 2:So at times they say, well, nah, this boy gonna be an engineer. So this man was passing around selling with a kind of component toy system, where it was like for ages 13 and up I was like 7. They say, nah, you're right, so they buy this thing for me, where you had the kind of you could technically build a radio by all the different you know, the little modules and things. Like I kind of pop in something now. Well, I take all that engine, I make fun. I think I make a kind of pseudo race car and I don't know. I think it had some little wrong ball bearings and stuff, a picture of that. So that was a lost cause, you know.
Speaker 1:But the thing about it is that I think it had some Little wrong ball bearings and stuff.
Speaker 2:I picture that. So that was a loss Cause you know. But the thing about it Is that I think why they thought that that would have Been what my thing was Is like they have a little Transistor, you know I open that, take out all the parts, cause I wanna see how it work when I put back the parts correctly or put them back at all is another question. But you'll take it apart, but I'll take it apart. He says, yeah, that boy's going to be an engineer. Of course I just curious, you know, I just want to know how the thing working from the inside.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, after that, I good, I want you to figure this out, you all right, I good, you need to know nothing else. So by that time I suppose they know they have a son who interested in the arts, because that time You're drawing and painting and stuff already by that time I was already painting T-shirts, going on the road and sell it.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I used to do business With her actually Because she would make T-shirts, I'd go on the outfit. So they knew that was my inclination. They probably just smelled that rat long time, gotcha, yeah. So it wasn't really a big, it was a little bit. My father was a little bit more. He was like quietly skeptical. Yeah, he was a kind of cut he was a kind of cut-eye kind of guy like eh, really that's it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but we can. Now I have a kind of template and a formula for this podcast right, where I put people in different brackets in my mind Maybe it's you eating right With all these other courses but I say, all right, well, I have an artist this week. I have a performer here. I had Ben Geyer last week Amazing sculptor, you know what I mean. And then I have a business person. When I had Conrad here, I don't know where to put you Ozzy players. You're creating a little bit of an issue here for me, because I'm feeling like every time we reach a certain part, I want to go back to the start and wait, wait, because the business part outside, outside the art, and we get to the art too, because you're working a book here I want to touch on. But you seem to have always had the entrepreneurial dress from childhood or where you get out.
Speaker 2:I think my mom has and she's, I really think, well her side of the family today. On this shoot, my father obviously had a strong creative foundation as well. Um, but my mom, my aunt now, who live in Manzan she's basically the, the mayor of Manzan, you know, she doing her thing, um, but my mom, my, you know, you know I can begin off to call her Kamzin.
Speaker 1:Kamzin is the ultimate problem solver there is, yeah, me and my aunt no, that's, that's my aunt my mother.
Speaker 2:She's the. She is the ultimate problem solver. There's not a problem. In other words, then she see a cup and she at no point would I have ever remember saying there's no ice in this cup. You know it's a poor example, but I'm just trying to see. Ah, you were making a joke the other day, how to survive. Now I see, if you're making a, you have nothing in your kitchen to cook, but you have some split peas and you have some flour. You can make some dumpling and split peas, dumpling and lentils. And we used to have this joke that you could put a piece of pig tail on a string and just dip it to you, get a little flavor, shake it out, put that back on, put that away for the next time. That's my mum, she would she, yeah, not literally, obviously, but uh yeah, she's fixing it yeah, yeah, she's a fixer.
Speaker 1:But you too, you recognize that. Yes yeah, well, okay, good, you're saying where you get it from so the art and thing that you you're in so much different areas, I start to understand why you're no season, because in so much areas of creativity it must be a most comfortable space, like I like to ask performers where, where, where the most comfortable? Is it in writing, is it in studio? Is it in performing on stage, where you feel?
Speaker 2:Um, a pen and a paper is is, um, is right, is write pen on a paper.
Speaker 2:So it means that if I have, if I have an inspiration or something right, that pen on a paper could turn into four lines, or it could turn into four lines in terms of a painting right, or a sketch or some kind of thing. Then you had to add music to that and then you know I had this and that and the other, and then I had to have meetings with radio stations and then things had to have meetings with radio stations and then things had to get complicated. That. But for the last, I'd say probably even 15-20 years, painting has more or less been the center. So I kind of now starting to shit like come out in a bit of a light in terms of performances and even if it's a remembrance of the things I've done before, um, but painting a remembrance of the things I've done before.
Speaker 2:But painting is you get the idea, or you work on an inspiration, or you follow your path, put it together. You show somebody, they say that is shippiness. You say, alright, cool. Show the same painting to another person. They say, oh, this is the most amazing thing I've seen.
Speaker 2:You know I say all right, of course, x, Y, z, boom, boom, boom. You do the exchange and you go home. Music, right now at least music from where I started, which has been a recording artist recording and releasing music to the world. That's a much more complicated exchange now. And why get to realise something too in the Wednesday night, because I know you realise the times you've been there is that I would play this mix of certain tunes. Some of them not necessarily the Kiske D ones or the popular ones, I play tunes that I know and certain other heads would know, that man work on and release 10 years ago that never get the kind of radio forwards that would have made everybody else love it. But by the second or third time people hear it they say, but wait, now it's a new tune. I say I mean not release yeah, because it's new to them.
Speaker 2:I suppose you, you dig and I get to realize that that is like reclaiming that kind of independence of distribution, because distribution broadcast Of course People just think broadcast is radio or even YouTube or whatever. But broadcast in terms of having live bodies in a room you have a couple hours on a night in a club. So that's the kind of underground goal that I spot too. So I just play rhythms, I just play tracks from people and they go like, oh, this bad boy, this bad who sing that. And I can most of the time point out I say yeah, that fella, he sing that and you write it, yeah, exactly, and you're right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, yeah, as you take with it. Right, because I want to get into your book you work with today as well. When I say your book you work with, that was written by Michael Anthony, but the one that you write I want to get into, yeah, go ahead, yeah. But I want to ask about your final space to create where the legends could be. Almost, I like what you say in terms of telling people it's a new song, it's new whenever it's new to you, right, right, and you bring the legends there. You almost give them a nudge to perform some songs that people like me would appreciate or miss or might not ever have heard before. Right, because you do the same thing with Oscar B. He and all seem to be almost like we're fine, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:He has my energy on his own, but in the midst of that you create a space for artists that maybe nobody would have heard about before, don't know at all, and I find some gems listening to the Wednesday Night. There's some talent in this country that's going underappreciated.
Speaker 2:Here's some of the younger guys doing this more straight-up soca, yeah, all kinds of different things. Tchenko and them, them, get a mic. It's as a man that they hold that pavement. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was surprised because I was like who's this fella? I never heard about him before.
Speaker 1:Oh, so you're just giving the space so that come from the same open mic thing.
Speaker 2:That's when you're trying to recreate a good bit of those guys came because Atkins Atkins kind of know, of them and how long time I do music with Chenko. But the other guys, you want to do the the bag and tune and whatever. I don't really know them like that.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, but you bash up the place. Yeah, you know, it's just so funny that, just to give people the visual, there's another band next door to raise, right? You ever realize it's just draw the audience, you know, and sometimes the newest artists you know create them out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I want to thank you on behalf of them because I always feel like there's a limited amount of spaces for very new artists in Trinidad and Tobago, the radio being the most limited of them all. But you know, seeing spaces where they come in to perform, and I feel like it's an important thing because I had Omari, feel like it's an important thing because I, I don't worry. One of the most profound things I hear umari say I was repeating on my mind is like performing a song that nobody don't know and getting them to move to it. You were telling me that about kmc, where you say, listen, I'm coming through, but I want to try.
Speaker 1:Some of you, yeah try some new stuff yeah, so it's nice to have new artists there, that that, that that give in that space and get introduced to them. I love to see when you know jamaica was. I live in jamaica for a while right and there was a lot like that.
Speaker 1:You would line by a normal pool hall, yeah, and you see a youth man come out and he sing a tune and he tank everybody and he go on, and then that youth man turned out to be sean storm. You know, it happens a lot there. They have a, they have a system, maybe just bigger, I don't know what leading to it, but there's, there's, there's a little bit more tolerance by the crowds to take in a new artist, or what they have to say, or what they have to do, or how they express themselves.
Speaker 2:I can see that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but that tolerance might be low, I don't know sometimes, but you you create something on Cipriani there that people listening when a new artist it took, it's take, I don't know.
Speaker 2:But like I used to feel so guilty, I used to be much more hasty because sometime I did, you know, and I played some tunes, whatever it is. I now started to play from my head. Some crew lineman upstairs, you say, oh God, dj, around the crowd, reach. Yeah. I said, geez, I need just to do this. I'm going up now and, um, say cheese and ages. Well, how to do this? I'm going up now and I apologize. I say, well, you know he's really having a live show tonight and this is what we do. I say, but you know, you can make some selections and make some requests and I'll try to accommodate you as a birthday thing and whatever. They say wait, wait, wait, wait he can't go under the radar.
Speaker 2:The next man say but wait, we'll go with his neighbours and lock it up. Boy, serious. So if I had to go aggressive now would I be a different turnout. But you hear the greatest part of that. I think it was Remy. That night Remy had performed and Remy, when they hear Remy started singing Mr Santa Claus and the thing, they run downstairs.
Speaker 2:You really call down some of them, pick them up, put them wind down to the ground. You understand they had the best time and the late. So the point I'm making is that sometimes the host or whoever that host is how to kind of sometimes make that extra effort to bring them in. You know, and that's why I like to do the mixes now, because I will do a mix where I will do very, just say I do two Marshall, marshall, marshall, marshall, and then, boom, I drop a Andi Venture or drop a Ski 2 or somewhere in between in the mix. They may even realize why I do it. By the time they reach to that thing they're not dancing already, you know. So things like that. So, as I say, responsibility for the people who put anything on to provide the platform, yes, but also to kind of pacify of course, as you say that it's like hey, oh gosh, five minutes here, time that I'm with us just trying to show a film.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there wasn't here in that. Yeah, not that I went tonight when the drinking boys.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, people had done bad already. I understand, no, but that's good that you're doing the work to sensitize them. You know you're softening up the crowd basically, yeah, exactly, I'm with you, I'm with you, I'm with you. So the book you do I was taking in this book and that's part of your Wednesday nights as well. You sell the books, your paintings and so on, so you work with the book, right? The book seemed to be describing some of the paintings I would have done over the years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Actually that's more true of the other one. The first one, right, this is like. This is how to put it. Boy, this is like if, if we growing up, or me, and I said I can't really clock your age yet Good, your age yet good, if we had, if we had internet, this would have been facebook post. Yeah, kinda, and I haven't thought of it like that before, but I would say it's like you know the experience of growing up in a certain kind of period in life and that we it's almost things that we never really talk about and there's no reference nowhere except in our minds and our memory, and some of us just erase that, of course try to act like something else you know. So there's like a lot of like, um, dead Man's Hill you have a minute? Yeah, I'm with you.
Speaker 2:So it's a hill coming down from Calvary and Arima, right when I went to school, holy Cross. Well, technically there are three hills, three access points. You could have come straight up from by the downhill church, bend the corner and coast up the winds to school. You could have come from by the Wasser station on the eastern side, where Socktown Sabrina used to live right. You could have come from by the Wasser Station on the eastern side where Sockton Sabrina used to live right. Stop by Boss for a pie and wait till they get to school and eat one from Miss Furman, or you could have come up on the cemetery side. The cemetery side had one steep, no-ass hill that seemed to go straight into a graveyard no lie, and people used to roller skate down it.
Speaker 2:Yes, now at the bottom of the hill, harris RIP used to live. Harris was my best bredren. Harris was gangster with a love of literature and mampies. To say Paris was a kind of idol to me is an understatement. A way to get through with the girl's style and, most important, a house mostly to himself most of the time, and creative ways for me to get into mixes, mix sex schools for christmas parties and such, pretending to be actual students. But that's part two part. Cheesy lady used to live next to him, used to pee on her back step. Her name was splash out, true story.
Speaker 2:This is about hill number three. Hill number two was for going down, not up, unless you live right close to the base. What make young folks feel? The carola skate down that hill escaped me until I was challenged. We never even get the big wheel skates we got the white ones with the skinny wheels Was like the batter bullet of skates. So see me standing on top of that hill now and see the outline of tombstones down in the cemetery and knowing I awkward as F with some shit skates and I say, see me, I wasn't even prepared to skate down hill one. I take them off and put on my slippers, yes. Next thing I hear somebody tried and dead or broke 17 bones or hit the head or end up a vegetable. Wasn't nobody from my school Shooters? May not have even happened to be, may not have been anybody at all, but we were all told and many still do tell the story as if someone's kid on the hill straight into the grave. Dead man's hill 1984. Who sabrina is it? We're just shooting at 150 now who's Sabrina?
Speaker 2:you say Sok Tong Sabrina.
Speaker 1:Alright, I just wanted to make sure Names would change to protect me.
Speaker 2:That's not her name. She's still around. She's still around. I just want to shut up now and then, but you're shorter, yeah.
Speaker 1:Every village needs a Sok.
Speaker 2:Tong.
Speaker 1:Sabrina, come on, where's that village? You know so the theme behind the book, because you have. You have several paintings On the pages of the book as well. Those are your paintings, your creations, and so it's not describing the inspiration to the paintings, the paintings.
Speaker 2:Is that unrelated? No, it's Not completely, because for the shadow track, for the shadow track it's like I match Some of the paintings To the works, gotcha right. So I have a story called me shadow and I'm the pascatch, so we have the shadow. Ah, with you you dig good kind of shadow shadow painting, I see, I see. So it's not. It's not a cat dog kind of association and I have some rap so lyrics here, which is what makes this book a little bit different from the first one. So like Nigerian money and things like that actually have like a person chorus.
Speaker 1:I'm with you. I'm with you. So you make the books available, your paintings still available for sale. Those things are sell-ready, or those things that you have, you know, as you're saying that I want to the next.
Speaker 2:I really want to make it More of an art Word book. This was, as I said, not really structured like that Gotcha, but this new collection, I'm doing these 4x4 let's kind of call them smalls, right, you know? And I come with a nice little easel too. I feel like we're on the shopping channel now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let me go. What's the price? What's the price? Now is the time. Yeah, yeah again price. There's a price.
Speaker 2:Now is the time, yeah, again, this one cool 250, nice, right, signed, authenticated. But again back to what you were saying. If I this series is a nice series because it is always kind of get a quick sense of completion when you finish a small piece, like yeah, you're done and you move on. Yeah, and also it helps to like people who want to try the collection of paintings, because you know so it's a nice prize and I've started to write some work associated with each piece. So when I reached like about 40 pieces, you know, something happened with you, with you, with you.
Speaker 1:So galleries and things.
Speaker 2:That's things you did before, like displays, like you do, I did my last major exhibition was in 2019, before the COVID, so that kind of of course, everything kind of yeah, we had to figure out what the world is now right yeah, and then I did a small show couple a four day show at it's that same art studio, art gallery on Cipriani. There TAW.
Speaker 1:Think that work. Oh, just filled up from there. Yeah, filled up, gotcha.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure if I'm going to do an exhibition this year We'll see but I think this is the perfect opportunity to make this particular pitch, because all the nice talk and sweet talk, we're talking, corey, this thing about mathematics that we don't really know how it works. We just do it, do it, do it. And there's a point where we reach where we really can't continue doing it without some help, right, of course you know what I mean. So if anybody, everybody, you know, I guess we'll have all the contacts and things. There's a GoFundMe going to start as well, but we need the support because the series is primarily well, essentially free to enter, you know, a small intimate vibe space. But just to cover some of the costs, you know, make sure the artists can get something fair, yeah, of course. So we're trying to raise those funds in a very serious way, right? So 1-800, 1-800. No, that's not even a number. 1-800-help what?
Speaker 1:I will do is, when you have the GoFundMe, send it for me. I'm going to put that in the episode description because I want to make an appeal. I have a consistent among the listeners who are listening to this every week for the last three years years, yes, and it has always been about about you. In whatever form you come in this culture, it has always no matter why you're talking about. It always comes back to who we are as a people, right? So if we have people who serious about it and I I mean I've given him a word that this thing on a wednesday is something I would pay for, and I'll go, I'll extend it to say that anything you do is something I would pay for, because you ain't living here with that painting or that book.
Speaker 1:So I don't want to talk to him about the rest right, but the thing is I feel like it's important. You know, one of the biggest regrets I don't like the word regrets too much, but one of the biggest regrets I have with this I tell people all the time is trying to get explainers to come on and him saying yes and me not doing it and him passing away. You understand so when I see you put crazy there, you put super there. It's so important to me as a man can't stay up past seven, eight o'clock in the night, but for you I will. As the song goes right, I come in there because to see crazy on that pavement and to see I see some young people set up here, yeah, yeah, no.
Speaker 2:Somebody said oh, super lip sync and say hello, you pay Super lip sync and one super rich. Step on up, grab that mic and go. Ooh, ooh, you've already gotten your money's worth A hundred percent.
Speaker 1:Aussie a hundred super lip sync. Have that respect Super do enough in this world Disrespectful.
Speaker 2:It.
Speaker 1:You know, I see him saying in an interview recently he asked him when he knew he was an artist and he said well, when I come out of my mother's womb he said, I take my first breath in the key of life. You know, he didn't do it by being born. He don't have a shot. As a matter of fact, if you do Germany Junction 10 years from now and all Super do is come, we go pay to see him. I want to do something with Sparrow Bad. I would love to see that. I would love to see that. So I think the things need the support. You know, I had a young fellow here, a younger fellow. I would say Again you're my age, right, 45. He's 40. So that's young to me. But Adrian Schoon is the CEO of WoW Events and he does the Sokka events as well as Spirit Mass. Right, yeah right, no.
Speaker 1:And I found it so encouraging to hear somebody like him say how important the culture is to him, the traditional characters. He doesn't have fed by the name of mecca every carnival friday night and he very, very connected to the culture, right. But I was also very, very encouraged to him saying this had to be profitable, it had to make money. The commercial thing is there, and he said that the arts is where our competitive advantage is as a nation, right. So I feel like as people who would have listened to this as a region too.
Speaker 1:Well, of course, as a region, 100%. So when you're doing things like this, I think people need to pay to do it, because I see here, for instance, you might get somebody to pasture and then we pass a bucket and people put that is noble, but I think people should pay every week, including myself, which I I think you might be surprised.
Speaker 2:There's no door, really, that's the problem that's the problem.
Speaker 1:So salute to raise, and, and, arkeens and everybody. But there has to be a way that people pay to partake in this thing and a price that is published on that kind of thing. You can figure it out. Good, good, good, and wherever they go, fund me is lemon, I don't know where it is I'll get our, our. Our contributors, our listeners will contribute it. I could guarantee that For sure, because we want to see it continue, especially because it's such a. I consider myself a bridge, I, I, I. You know how long we're trying to organize this, me and you. I miss a day, you think, but we figure it out Because I feel it's important for young and now coming in this space. Like you say, you say as a hasty fella, glad I meet you when I meet you, you say as a hasty fella, when you was young.
Speaker 1:It's important for you to still have that energy to be hasty to hear your story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's critical. And you doing that same bridge work, because before I see Crazy the Night, I see several artists who just try it you know what I mean and who trying. You know what I mean and who experts. And you're seeing the what you used to call self-actualization, when they grab that mic and they take they in, transform completely. Me didn't know there was artists. I see them sitting down there and I who is this person? I see Levi Myers and I'm so glad to see him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he and all did some new tracks oh man, first time ever to perform anywhere else, you know you know, I hear him say too he come into terms with performing his father's music.
Speaker 1:He almost say it's something I never used to like to do, but he say I love doing it now in tribute and honor to my father, nappy Myers. Right, so you're creating a space that people must pay for. I put it out there. For that, whether it is truth, go fund me or pay by the door.
Speaker 2:Do it like Swizy Rankin, go figure out some kind of cure.
Speaker 1:However, we must pay. We must pay Too important to not pay for. So where are you seeing it going in terms of the Germany Junction now? Where do you feel is?
Speaker 2:next, I want to be careful in terms growth could sometimes go in the opposite direction, the vibe, but at the same time the thing had to had to be at a certain kind of level where it could be fair, as I said, to the artist, to the bar owner and to myself. So somewhere inside of that, I'm thinking, the brand could easily become something like this, you know, like radio, tv and all. So that's, that's down the road, but I want to. I was telling you the idea, the ideas I had for season three, which is going to have to be put off a little bit more because, as I said, we had to raise some funds. Um, where each each week is like question, right? So one of the first I get yelled at, question, right, so one of the first I get yelled, so one of the first questions.
Speaker 2:Suppose you still had federation, suppose federation had worked, and then we start that and then we actually engage people to answer that question. Actually I had some footage already. Omari did the response and then I say let me deal with some music. So we deal with Sparrows, if you know you didn't want Federation. Then we deal with Caribbean man, but then we deal with the obscure one which is Federation by Small Island Pride. Okay, okay, small Island Pride. Now you know Mastiffé Mastiffé, he's famous for that. No, yeah, I don't know Mastiffé Mastiffé, that's his famous for that.
Speaker 1:No, yeah, I don't know his actual name.
Speaker 2:Mastiffé, mastiffé, meet me down by the quays eh.
Speaker 1:Cuttauta.
Speaker 2:Cuttauta, cuttauta Right, that's his famous for that. But he have a bunch of other tracks and his flow is immaculate. He was the first rapper, but that's another story. Small Island Pride are singing a tune about a Grenadian and a Vincentian having an argument. Two women around the Federation and one saying last night she was with a Grenadian, night before she was with a Barbadian. She make a child for a Chinese man and she say bet your life that's a duration. Yeah, she take it to the next level. That is what you call federated.
Speaker 1:That is what you call federated.
Speaker 2:So it opens up the door now for discussion generally of what's happening, going back to some of the old Kaisos and asking the man on the floor because actually, what inspired that is like? You know, you're talking red, yellow, green, blue and I say, but what about the Caribbean? You know, I mean, because I think that's wild thoughts again If we had one answer to all the madness going on up the road, you know what that could have been. It could have failed, you know.
Speaker 1:You wouldn't have these kind of problems. That's what I said.
Speaker 2:I prefer to talk about Federation than talk about some of the bacchanal that's going on here.
Speaker 1:Of course, of course.
Speaker 2:But going forward. Now it's have things like you know. Question is are we a kick-soft country? Have things like you know. Question is are we a kick-off country? And then I go deal with some comedy, humorous calypsos and spoiler and things like that. So it's going down and that's the theme. So the Gandhi night was supposed to be will still be. I ain't calling no name yet.
Speaker 2:But Gandhi has most easily outpost back in the day was where everybody used to end up. You know there's a big call up, so call Arima tonight Sangi Grandi, tomorrow night A female stick player from Winnie living Sangi Grandi, that's Zanduli. So the Grandi night will happen. He's a Grandi man now he's a Grandi man.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah. All right, I'll listen for. But from my memory, some of the artists you know to tell you who your book, right, but grandies are, you know they have some special places, like this book you work with today. Right, and that has some special places, grandies one it's like an ozzy merrick. It's talking scrunter. It's talking poser. It's talking this young fella the kutain, who to me is a genius.
Speaker 2:It's talking treason and m1, yeah so.
Speaker 1:So that's the name of you yeah, and sapari is a place like that's a big way of energy. So so your idea going for the germany junction is to to spot a theme that I love, the federation theme. Yeah, because you, your theme goes far beyond the artists they invite. Like you say, you, you put a lot of thought into this damn thing and I want to sing your praises a little bit, God.
Speaker 2:listen to the music. Some people don't feel as good, just show up.
Speaker 1:It's because you've run up and down plenty. It looks like you're hustling it looks like you're not organizing, but the music you play as a DJ on a Federation night more vast than the artists you could invite. Some of the artists I'm here with are talking about the Federation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I think it's worth the support. I love the idea of the themes. By the way, the first time I heard about that I said nah, boy, because you know I enjoy that drive from home trying to figure it out. I say let me see where he'll come with. I say I know he'll sing this, he could play that, he could play. And I was wrong every single time, including today. I was wrong every single time when I feel a no thing. Yeah, just understand.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I don't know until I know, until they tell me. You say it's Obeah, that is what it is.
Speaker 1:That is what it is, so we can expect to see some changes.
Speaker 2:But we know Jammin' E the junction coming back, it's the jam yeah, and the vibe will always remain and we're trying to maintain that, and what we're going to do is beyond the jam and how we started the conversation right, the jam bram is like the extension, so that has been happening by Kaiso Blues, carl Jacobs Spot, and we're going to have that more than likely, sorry being promoted as soon as we send all our information as well, too.
Speaker 2:So, Jambram is where you pay to come in and we're going to have some artists. I'm talking to a couple of people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can't wait. The answer will be yes.
Speaker 2:The.
Speaker 1:O'Byrdors will come. The O'Byrdors will come, yeah. Talking to a couple of people you know, yeah boy, yeah boy and Jambram. Is we're going to pay by the door?
Speaker 2:yes, no tickets?
Speaker 1:no, we have a link for tickets too good good, good, good, good, good, good, good we have a link for tickets too, again up to the time. Finally, yeah, good you saying up to the time, but you're so far ahead of your time. I was watching an interview with you the other day and you say you had done paintings as the ticket to entry to our event. You had done pieces. So you say when you buy the piece, that is your entry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, something I want to do as well too, but when that ticket might be 700, that's not what we're going to have People paying thousands of dollars for a good thing.
Speaker 1:Nobody art.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I had to find a way to you know, I'm thinking I might actually Do original prints so that every ticket Is an original print Of an art. For me to sit down and pay an hundred tickets For $50? No, no, no.
Speaker 1:Sorry, it's an original print. That jersey you're wearing, that's your thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's one of my prints here.
Speaker 1:What is it of To break it down?
Speaker 2:for me, this was the original adoptionation face. It's an exhibition I did a couple years back and I was using this as the main promotion. So it's like basically my face with inlaid art, right, you know. So you have to kind of step back to see it really.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, you know, but we also have the Homefront T-shirts and a couple of the original prints as well, too Generally Ozzy, Merrick, RRIQE or anything galvanized-oriented on all platforms.
Speaker 1:I forget to say that Wait, wait, wait. We had to go back Hold on.
Speaker 2:I was going to wrap up.
Speaker 1:But before I get to it, where did galvanize come from?
Speaker 2:I just like the idea of the flying galvanized. You know the myth, I don't. The myth of flying galvanized, no Boy, that was like worse than the boogeyman, because growing up country and thing they say do not stick your head out the window during any hurricane or big storm, and thing, because it had a time in 1946. A man did stick his head out the window and a piece of galvanized fly off from the roof next door and cut off his neck clean. Visually at four years old. Five years old, you've seen that. Yeah, hold on to that Flying galvanized whatever. So any little small brief splash, you're inside, so you're not venturing by that window at all. So some people know about the reference.
Speaker 2:So Flying Galvanized Disco. It come out from that kind of lighthearted reference to that story, old Wife's Tale, whatever. And it started off as being A sound system, kinda boring From the sound system culture. But this time Is based on Let me see, roots, rapso and you know Local vibes, yeah, and that's how we do Like it wasn't even Supposed to be like A hundred Right, just even for like A 70-30 when we still play Some popular Urban style tunes, but it's set up like a sound system.
Speaker 2:Flying Galvanized Disco, you think I wasn't. I could hold my own on a ones and twos after a little while and get rusty now, but it was also always supposed to be a two-man job. Now the MC and the the selector never find a selector to commit. So but then I say the selector Never find a selector to commit. But then I say I'm going to bring back the name because it's still, you know, even though I can do the mixes and stuff like that Gotcha. So Flying Galvanize the score and then Galvanize because of what the name means to us. It's also to kind of spark a movement. Yeah, to create, to create that spark that will grow into something bigger. So I think that's what I do. So galvanize is galvanize. Gallery refers to the shop, the store, the works and the. Flying galvanize the squares who put on the show and the musical armor, the thing. But galvanize, as I say once you do flying galvanize or galvanize gallery or Aussie galvanize, mary, you can find me On any platform you should be able to have.
Speaker 1:So that's all your platforms Aussie, galvanize, merrick.
Speaker 2:Primarily there's artists Aussie Merrick too but as I say, I tell people it's not hard to find nobody if you really want to find them. Well, you proved that.
Speaker 1:Yes, I did.
Speaker 1:I didn't even if you had a kill people. What and correct spelling of Ozzy is Ozzy. Why Ozzy? Why Merrick? Right on all platforms Ozzy, merrick. That's how I find you on Instagram as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So listen, we're looking forward to where you come back with. Wherever you come back with, you have our full support and talking on behalf of everybody who take this in you have it, you have it. You have our full support and talking on behalf of everybody who take this in you have, you, have it, you have it, and we will figure out how to get the support done virtually for those who care. Be here in person. Exactly, don't forget sister run say next time you do a thing, she could be here in person so saran, so saran, and he started singing this song and sister run.
Speaker 2:why? It was just a glitch in the matrix, because I called actually I I'm telling that part I called her and tell her about the show and then something come up and we had to put off the show and then she said, oh shame's boy, she was leaving the following week. But it turns out she might have been here, but then we had to go on with the show because I thought she was already gone Gotcha.
Speaker 1:Well, these things just happen. The truth about it is, judging from the response from her episode, people want to see she and General Grant do that song. You know what I mean. So we had to make that. We had to make that?
Speaker 2:Well, let's make that happen.
Speaker 1:All right, good, good, good. Confirmed.
Speaker 2:Jam Bram. Yeah, boy, look at that. Boy, look at life Do you have any links with Caribbean Airlines?
Speaker 1:Well, what we might have to do is do it in the States. You know what I mean. Do you have any tariffs, and so on?
Speaker 2:The guy Gavin was on Party Time. The CEO of Caribbean Airlines.
Speaker 1:Was that Party Time man Gavin Medina? Yes, yeah, he's not taking my calls, all right well maybe lip syncing, still How'd it be Gavin, let's talk. Yeah, gavin, let's talk. We have things to talk. We have things to advance. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, so we'll take care of the kid. Bring down Lisa and all two. Oh yeah, boy, it's true.
Speaker 1:It's true. It's true to the home front. Yeah, forward to everything that you're doing. Thanks very much. I appreciate you coming through. We're trying to do this for a while, like I tell you. I tell them only the back behind the scenes, right, I book wrong date. Then when I call them I say, boy, I booked the wrong damn time.
Speaker 1:I book at 8 o'clock in the morning, all kind of thing going wrong, but you and the OBL had this was a great, great conversation and only look for the rest of painting and then look for the rest of smalls because this one gone. Outro Music.