On The Wave of MTV Mutilation — While taking a break from the Rolling Stones (especially Keith), Mick Jagger gathered a group of young Americans, who, just in time for Live Aid, took the 41-year-old Mick on the Rock N Roll ride of his life. (BERNARD FOWLER, DOUG WIMBISH, JOE SATRIANI)
The Second Coming of Mick. In the name of the Rolling Stones. Chuck Leavell — Macon to Miami. Joe Satriani — COOL #9 Bernard Fowler — Queensboro Bridge to Manhattan (London) Doug Wimbish — George Washington to Harlem Tack>>Head — European Underground. ON-U SOUND, Adrian Sherwood, the Mad Scientist. Bristol, England. Sinead O’Connor, UB40, The Slits. Post Punk Anarchists, Revolutionary Screamers, Gary Clail, Mark Stewart. The American Influence. Keith Leblanc (experimental drummer) Industrial Funk. Fat’s Comet. THE AMERICAN INVASION. Keith calls his Sugar Hill mates, Skip McDonald and Doug Wimbish (bass) to join him and Adrian in London.
“The Sugar Hill Rhythm section is the World’s finest.”
1980 — So wrote the New York Times, in an early review of Hip-Hop’s emergence (1980)
1985 — Music Saves the World We Are The World Live Aid Artists United Against Apartheid Farm Aid … 1986 — Keith LeBlanc Major Malfunction Joe Satriani Not Of This Earth 1987 — Hail! Hail! Rock N Roll Chuck Berry Keith Richards Eric Clapton
Guns N’ RosesAppetite For Destruction “Rocket Queen” 1988 — Vivid Living Colour MTV (Music Video Awards) SNL (“Cult of Personality”) Grammy Awards Best Hard Rock Performance (twice) Taking Mick for A Ride. 1988 — Vivid Living Colour “Cult Of Personality” Joe SatrianiSurfing With The Alien 1989 — Friendly As A Hand Grenade Tack>>Head “Airborne Ranger” / “Free South Africa” Rolling Stones Steel Wheels Best Newcomer International Rock Music Award (1989) “Johnny B. Goode” (video) Tiny Elvis Statues / Eric Clapton “E.C. Was Here” (“Tiny E” Rob Schneider on the dash/SNL) “Elvis Is Dead” Why Not A Little Jimi? Or A Little Chuck? MTV Saturday Night Live Grammy Awards (2) Jethro Tull vs. Metallica 1990 — Time’s Up
“White Lines” Melle Mel 1983 — The Original Sugar Hill Rhythm Section ((( Listen )))
Truth Be Told “Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You.” “Ask What?“
Opening with the prophetic “Cult of Personality,” Living Colour’s debut, Vivid, screamed volumes as it introduced Living Colour as a most serious, and surely influential, new character on the Rock N Roll stage. The band was the idea (creation) of a virtuoso instrumentalist (guitarist), Vernon insisted Living Colour had an equally powerful voice, as he, as an artist, has a social cause, no less important than the music. Whether playing a stadium with the Rolling Stones, or in a small, crowded club at home in New York City, Living Colour is “proud,” talks loud, and and always has something meaningful to say.
Cult Of Personality b/ Living Colour Vivid (1988) ((play))
— Up On The Roof
Vernon Reid and Living Colour took advantage of MTV launching the music industry into a more visual, fashionable space. Their debut, Vivid, is often, deservedly so, referred to as a “MASTERPIECE,” one of the most significant pieces of 1980s Rock ‘N’ Roll art.
When MTV introduced its new way of “presenting” music on television, Vernon Reid was playing in the darker, more experimental, underground clubs in downtown New York City.
Living Colour’s rise was fast. Saturday Night Live appearance (April 1, 1989) introduced the band to a national audience. Vivid’s opening tune, “Cult Of Personality,” won a “Best Rock N Roll Performance” Grammy Award and pushed the record to platinum.
Mick Jagger, who invited the band to open the North American (1989) leg of the Rolling Stones legendary STEEL WHEELS TOUR.
December 14, 1989 — Vernon Reid, wearing a “Burn Baby Burn” (American Flag) T-shirt, and the rest of Living Colour, after nearly a year on the road, joined the Rolling Stones onstage in Montreal, at Olympic Stadium, for an end-of-tour (Steel Wheels) “It’s Only Rock N Roll” jam.
“Honky Tonk Women” and Kick Ass Rock N Roll Recollection of seeing the Steel Wheels show at the Orange Bowl in Miami’s Little Havana (November 1989). The Rolling Stones and the last half of “Cult of Personality” as we walked into what was usually the Miami Dolphins and University of Miami Hurricane’s stadium.
Later that year, Living Colour was asked to open for the Rolling Stones on its Steel Wheels World Tour, for which the band received critical acclaim and enhanced it’s reputation notably. Also in 1989, Living Colour was named “Best New Artist” at the MTV Video Music Awards, and “Cult Of Personality” won a Grammy Award for “Best Hard Rock Performance.”
Kick Ass Rock N Roll November 16, 1989 — Parked on the street in Little Havana. Two second row tickets for the Rolling Stones in the Orange Bowl, where the Miami Dolphins and the University of Miami Hurricanes play. Meet at the inflated “Bud” can. Passed out under the Visa banner. $300 Leather Jackets, rather than T-Shirts. Coffee-table, hard-cover, photography books, rather than a paper poster or ad-filled program. Entering the stadium, and looking down toward the mammoth stage in the opposite end zone, we saw Living Colour in the middle of “Cult of Personality,” the last tune in their set. Chuck Leavell, wish it was Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones, Yes, but it was Chuck taking a solo in
After Vivid and The Steel Wheels Tour, it might have been understood if Vernon took his well deserved, artistic time in making a second Living Colour album. Especially significant, given how hard an act Vivid was going to be to follow.
1989 — With a little help from friend Mick Jagger, Living Colour signed a deal with Epic Records and released its debut Vivid (May 3, 1988). The band’s rise in popularity was immediate, as it’s first single “Cult Of Personality” was played regularly in MTV’s primetime rotation, and Vivid climbed to #6 on the U.S. Billboard chart. Then, an appearance on NBC’s Saturday Night Live (April 1, 1989) was another high-profile opportunity for Living Colour to show off its psychedelic, day-glo, hard funk, metal attack.
For Vernon and the band, it was as if they had been invited aboard a rocket ship and suddenly had the opportunity to break free of the music industry’s chaotic atmosphere, and were living a dream, flying high above the daily grind, racing weightless and un-tethered, into a higher, freer space.
Living Colour had earned, and was deserving of, the immediate respect they received from the passionate audiences of CBGB in the early 1980s. Word of their electric live performances reached out of downtown Manhattan, and spread like fire all around New York City’s Five Boroughs (Beastie Boys), especially Brooklyn and the Bronx.
No matter their extreme talent and instant attraction, Living Colour, like any young band would have been, was of any young band, a sudden change to flying all across America, playing football stadiums, all across North America, to crowds of 100,000 Rolling Stones fans, was the thrown-into-the-deep-end, Rock N Roll moment in Living Colour history.
Vernon and the band took full advantage of the opportunity, impressing, not only millions of Rolling Stones and MTV fans, but also musicians and industry insiders alike, most importantly, the Rolling Stones themselves. In their time on the road with the Stones, Vernon and the band made friends with Mick and the others, and ever since, Living Colour, and many members of Living Colour musical family, have recorded and toured with the World’s legendary, and longest enduring, Rock N Roll bands, with the band as a whole, and with Mick, Keith, Charlie, and Ron, individually.
Home Again Naturally Eye & I (Vernon Downtown
Men In Black Bill Hicks, often mentioned in stand up comedy conversation, with Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, one of the most brutally honest and viciously funny voices of his generation. Often pornographic, and always true.
— CBS
1989 — Referred to as “The Dark Poet,” Bill Hicks occupied the #13 position on Rolling Stone Magazine’s best all-time stand up comedians. names Bill Hicks the best stand up comedian in its “HOT” Summer issue, CBS features him in their 48 Hours in Comedy episode, and he records an HBO “One Night Stand” performance at the Vic Theater in Chicago.
Time’s Up, Living Colour’s second album, was mostly written and being edited while the band was on the road with the Stones. Its being released so soon after Vivid and the Steel Wheels Tour, and receiving more critical admiration, did much to improve Living Colour’s already good reputation. After making their presence so well known, Vernon and the band continued to prove its worth and staking its claim in MTV’s visual in n the visually aware, MTV World of music.
1990 —
Archie Cocke I saw this tour in Chicago. My favorite American band. Equal amounts of raw fun, hard truth, deep skill and righteousness!
When Guitar World magazine featured Vernon on its January 1991 cover, Living Colour was preparing for Perry Farrell’s Inaugural Lollapalooza Tour, originally meant to be Jane’s Addiction’s farewell.
All this adding to Living Colour’s already well-earned reputation, as a socially conscious, virtuosic band, that consistently proves itself one of the finest live bands in Rock N Roll.
Lollopalooza Attracted (Lured) to The West b/ Jane’s Addiction ((audio))
— LOLLAPALOOZA (1991)
Inaugural 1991— As Vernon sat down for the picture to appear on Guitar World magazine’s January 1991 cover, he and Living Colour were preparing to play Perry Farrell’s Inaugural Lollapalooza Tour, originally meant to be a Jane’s Addiction farewell tour.
All this was Vernon and Living Colour living up to the high expectations of a band whose debut was Vivid, immediately recognized for its virtuosity, universally praised for its social consciousness, and often legitimately called a Rock N Roll “MASTERPIECE.”
Love & Happiness b/ Living Colour Biscuits
((audio))
— The End Of The Beginning
Before embarking on a future voyage, Living Colour made the good habit of leaving a collection of live and unreleased recordings for the memories.
1992—World Tour Muzz Skillings leaves the band after Europe, and is replaced by Vernon’s old, downtown NYC friend, the already legendary Doug Wimbish, Hip-Hop’s original bassist, who, with guitarist, Skip “Little Axe” McDonald and drummer Keith Leblanc made up Sugar Hill Record’s first House Band. In 1980, the New York Times called them “The World’s finest Rhythm Section,” the architects who layed the foundation for what became the next music and art revolution.
1993 — Biscuits is a collection of energetic live recordings and previously unreleased outtakes and B-sides recorded between 1989 and 1992, the years Muzz Skillings was in the band.
1993 — Stain is Living Colour’s third album, the first featuring Doug Wimbish.
— Living Colour’s Epic Launch
Back In Black Many, especially critics and industry professionals, argued that Living Colour’s third record, Stain, marked another exploratory change in the band. Thought to be darker and heavier than the first two, still virtuosic, but more pessimistic lyrically.
1993 — Stone Free: A Tribute To Jimi Hendrix (“Crosstown Traffic”) 1993 — Judgement Night (“Me, Myself, And My Microphone”) w/ Run DMC 1994 — True Lies Soundtrack (“Sunshine Of Your Love”)
1994 — (No) Dreadis a collection of unreleased and live recordings made during the year Doug Wimbish was in the band. Highlights include songs from Living Colour’s (1993) World Tour. Considering the quality of the performances, no one would have expected that, within a year, Vernon would dissolve Living Colour.
1993 — While working on a record to follow Stain, a disappointed Reid decided Living Colour should take a break.
In the meantime, Living Colour’s 1993 looked, on television, like things couldn’t be better. They had already written and recorded a number tunes for a new record, won another Grammy Award for a cover of “Crosstown Traffic” on Stone Free, a Jimi Hendrix tribute record, contributed to two high-profile soundtracks, recording “Sunshine of Your Love” for James Cameron’s True Lies, and write and record “Me, Myself, and My Microphone” with RUN-DMC for Judgement Day.
It was something of an illusion, all the accolades were for efforts already made, Vernon, at that moment, was looking for something different. After he officially ended Living Colour’s decade-long run, he immediately went on to work on a number of solo projects, including a multi-tune collaboration with Public Enemy.
After two Grammy Award-winning efforts in Vivid and Time’s Up, Stain receiving wide-spread critical acclaim, and the production of “No/ Dread,” a fine document of Living Colour performances (electric and unplugged) with Wimbish a permanent member of the band, Vernon was still disappointed in Stain, and decided to call it quits in 1995, immediately after finishing a tour with the D.C. punk band, Bad Brains.
“I want a closet big enough to live in. a closet big enough for the world to live in.”
1993 — Never reluctant to express their opinions, Living Colour played “Bi” (a song about bisexuality), on NBC’s Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
Visions b/ Living Colour “Bi” Not the usual for a Hard Rock band.
((audio))
After Living Colour’s dissolution, each member went on to work on solo projects, reunite with old bandmates, and join other bands, both in the studio and on the road.
1983—At home, in New York City, Vernon starts exploring his own musical ground, playing with a number of different musicians with the earliest versions of Living Colour, made up of musicians he had met while playing (“jazz”) downtown as a member (guitarist) in Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Decoding Society.
1985— THE FIRST LIVING COLOUR IS TOGETHER.
1985— PRINCE PURPLE RAIN (PAISLEY PARK RECORDS)
1988— Living Colour’s debut Vivid, a Rock N Roll “Masterpiece,” launches Vernon and the band into the Rock N Roll stratosphere, almost too fast to notice. While on the road with the Rolling Stones, Vivid‘s opening tune, “Cult Of Personality,” was achieving anthemic status, selling a million copies, and winning 1989’s Grammy Award for “Best Hard Rock Performance.” This, in addition to being named the same year’s “Best New Artist” by the International Music Awards, and making an electric, high-profile appearance on Saturday Night Live.
1990 —As the door to a new decade opened, Living Colour was still riding high on the MTV wave of evolution, Vernon was prepared for the ignition of his rocket’s second stage.
1969 — Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin 1 1970 — Black Sabbath Black Sabbath 1970 — Deep Purple In Rock 1972 — Carlos Santana Caravanserai 1973 — Pink Floyd Dark Side Of The Moon 1973 — Billy Cobham Spectrum 1974 — Jeff Beck Blow By Blow 1975 — Deep Purple Come Taste The Band 1975 — Roy Buchanan Live Stock 1976 — Sea Level / Wishbone Ash / Spyro Gyra Chuck Leavell Sea Level (1976) Cats On The Coast (1977) On The Edge (1978) Long Walk On A Short Pier (1979)
Ballroom (1980) 1977 — Saturday Night Fever (Soundtrack) Bee Gees
Studio 54
David Mancuso The Loft
Paradise Garage 1978 — Rick James (Bitch)
“Ghetto Life” 1978 — Jean-Luc Ponty Cosmic Messenger 1979 — The Police @ Disney World 1980 — XLos Angeles TelevisionMarquee Moon
CBGBs 1980 — Tom Petty
College Life (Gainesville, Florida) 1981 — MTV / Columbia (Inaugural Space Shuttle) 1982 — Herbie Hancock Future Shock 1983 — Herbie Hancock Future Shock 1984 — Hip-Hop In Hollywood
Colors Red, Crack, & Blue NWA (1987-1991) ICE-T VAN HALEN STONED AGE Back To The Beach Frankie Avalon & Annette Funicello FISHBONE Dick Dale / Stevie Ray Vaughan SRV Gary Hoey / Kennedy (Republicans Who Think They’re Cool.” MTV SPRING BREAK (BEACH) SPECIAL SNL SPRING BREAK w/Ted Kennedy TEDDY’s SEXY ROMP (New York Post) ENDLESS SUMMER II / SURFERS: THE MOVIE BUS BOYS Eddie Murphy 48 Hours Beverly Hills Cop Fast Times at Ridgemont High David Lee Roth Steve Vai Dweezil Zappa Eric Johnson — Austin, Texas Joe Satriani — Westbury, New York
w/ David Letterman Band (1985)?
w/ Deep Purple (1993) Guns N Roses SUNSET STRIP Decline Of The Western Civilization SEATTLE Nirvana Pearl Jam >> YO MTV RAPS Do The Right Thing SPIKE LEE >> TOOL
— The Sunset Strip
1980 —Vernon Reid.
As a member of Ronald Shannon Jackson and The Decoding Society, and later, playing and recording with DEFUNKT, and EYE & I, Vernon has always had, and maintained a close connection to the underground, jazz and avant-funk scene in downtown manhattan. ,both popular bands in the darker, underground clubs of downtown Manhattan. While above ground, and Uptown in The Bronx and Harlem, B-Boys (DJs, MCs, Graffiti Writers, and Break Dancers were plugging into parks and abandoned buildings, and were , and using the power to MC parties behind the unlocked, chain-link fence.
— OriginalNoise.Org
Underground, Ronald Shannon Jackson, The Knitting Factory, Defunkt, Eye & I, Screaming Headless Torsos, Graffiti Cemetery, and reaching up to the Hip Hop (above ground) urban world. Harlem World, The Original Sugar Hill Rhythm Section. Sugar Hill Records House Band.
Vernon earned an early reputation as being among the best young, experimental guitarist playing in New York City’s Avant-Funk, Outside Jazz UNDERGROUND. DOWNTOWN, almost invisible, in the shadow of a Hip-Hop movement that was attracting the bright-light, pop-music attention of a “brand” new television, music video production idea called MTV.
DOWNTOWN, on the Island of Manhattan. It was there and then Vernon was inspired to step out on his own and form a number of bands, all of which he called Living Colour.
— 1981
• Liquid Sky (1982)
• After Hours (1985)
1990— The incarnation of Living Colour (Corey Glover, Muzz Skillings, Will Calhoun, and Vernon Reid) recorded two albums, Vivid in 1988, and Time’s Up in 1990. Called “more experimental,” Time’s Up exhibited a number of musical styles [jazz, fusion, punk, blues, hip hop, funk, thrash, metal, jive, electronica] w/ guests, including Little Richard, Maceo Parker, Queen Latifah, and Doug E. Fresh
An excerpt out of Time Tunnel, an out-of-print Living Colour documentary, including performance clips and interviews with Vernon Reid, Corey Glover, Will Calhoun, and Muzz Skillings, telling the story of the band from its inception, to the success of Vivid, touring with the Rolling Stones, and starting work on Time’s Up.
— video (“Time Tunnel”)
1991— Of note was Perry Farrell inviting Living Colour to join Jane’s Addiction on the inaugural Lollapalooza Festival Tour, originally scheduled to be Jane’s Addiction’s farewell. That first year’s lineup also featured: Siouxsie & The Banshees, Nine Inch Nails, Fishbone, Ice T & Body Count, Butthole Surfers, Rollins Band, EBN, and Violent Femmes. Living Colour also released Biscuits, an EP of outtakes, and on the Japanese pressing, a number of live performances, including “Love & Happiness.”
After a month touring Europe, enjoying time back home in New York City, a travel-weary Muzz Skillings chose not to continue on to Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Rio de Janeiro. Fortunately, the timing was right for Vernon to ask old friend Doug Wimbish if he might consider filling in for Muzz, helping Living Colour to finish its first world tour. Tack>>Head, Doug’s band (with Original Sugar Hill Rhythm Section mates Skip McDonald and Keith Leblanc, with Bernard Fowler and On-U Sound’s Adrian Sherwood) was taking a break after releasing it’s second record, Strange Things, allowing Doug to join Living Colour in South America.
1993 — After completing the South American leg of Living Colour’s 1991 world tour, bassist Doug Wimbish accepted the band’s invitation to join the band permanently.
Doug’s contribution, as a writer, player, and producer, are significant in what critics called the “darker” tone of Living Colour’s third album, Stain.
Because Stain came at a time (March 2, 1993) when Seattle, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and a new genre called “Grunge” were commanding most popular attention, it was overlooked compared to Living Colour’s first two albums, Vivid and Time’s Up. Despite praise from critics and fans, both who appreciated the record’s harder, industrial edge, Stain reached only #26 on the Billboard chart, and because a guy named Jon Stainbrook with a band called The Stain filed a lawsuit and had production of Stain stopped. The record remained out of print until 2013, when it was released on disc, and made available to download.
Equal Opportunity b/ Living Colour “Bi” Not the usual for a Hard Rock band.
CREDIT: Larry Colwell/Anthony Barboza/Getty Images
By 1990, New York City’s Living Colour were one of the hottest new rock bands in America following the success of their debut LP, 1988’s Vivid, and a cherished opening stint on the Rolling Stones’ Steel Wheels tour.
“When we got to Time’s Up, we could reach out to all sorts of people and it was kind of wild,” guitarist Vernon Reid says, noting how the band landed most of their cameo wish list for the recording sessions.
“I mean, we got one of our heroes, Mr. Richard Penniman, who just passed away, to appear on ‘Elvis Is Dead.’ Mick Jagger also appears on that song. The other special guest we had on there was Maceo Parker. So we had Little Richard and Maceo Parker on the same track. Then we had Queen Latifah come through for ‘Undercover of Darkness,’ Doug E Fresh for ‘Tag Team Partners.’ It felt like all these little magical moments we were able to bring together. There was a lot of inside baseball going on with this record. It was amazing.”
But as all four original members (Reid, singer Corey Glover, bassist Muzz Skillings and drummer Will Calhoun) tell SPIN, their acclaimed second LP was more than a good time in the studio. As Jesse Sendejas Jr. surmised so aptly in his recent story for the Houston Press, the album — which turns 30 today — addresses deeper, more serious concerns: “It was actually released 30 years ago,” he writes, “but its themes speak directly to matters of race, police brutality, the value of science, who controls information, even who is the rightful ‘king’ of rock and roll – all topics that have jammed U.S. news feeds since the beginning of May.”
Listening to Time’s Up three decades later — in the context of a new Civil Rights movement pushing up against a global pandemic and a worsening environmental crisis — it’s impossible to ignore the prophetic quality of lyrics to keynote cuts like “Pride,” “Someone Like You,” “Type” and the Talking Heads-evoking “Solace Of You.” On the album’s title track, the band pushed the era’s boundaries by raising awareness of the growing concern over climate change.
“It’s funny because some of the things that happened seemed very quirky at the time,” Reid explains. “Corey came up with the lyrics for ‘Time’s Up,’ and that became the title of the album. It was a little bit of an homage, that song, to our friends in Bad Brains. We all came up together in the CBGB scene in the ‘80s. And at the time we did it, nobody was doing hardcore tunes about the environment. And we just went with it.”
“I was sitting in my apartment and watching the news,” Glover says. “And they were always talking about the ozone layer. It was also the time there was that garbage barge in New York City that couldn’t find a place to stay. So there was always this background noise as to the environment going under, and if we don’t do something [it was] gonna get worse in the next 20 or 30 years. And then I was weird about the places where they were getting rid of the garbage. Based on whatever it was, it was usually on the other side of the railroad tracks, and in neighborhoods that couldn’t do anything about it. It was always in places other people didn’t care about.”
“I remember reading about that,” adds Skillings. “And the fact that governments and corporations were making deals to the detriment of their own population across the U.S. Even though we are American citizens — and proud ones at that — we still felt strongly about the things we thought were wrong. And one of the cool things that Corey did [was writing] those lyrics that delved into things that weren’t being talked about. But he understood that these were things that moved slowly. And like Vernon and Corey said, with ‘Time’s Up’ we were influenced by Bad Brains and really connected to their freneticism and their energy, and we wanted to marry those messages.”
In our nearly two-hour conversation, Living Colour described how their surroundings in 1990 directly informed the direction of Time’s Up — and how the Black Lives Matter movement could use the album and its themes as a guidepost for a more promising future. This is the highlight reel of the chat.
Corey Glover: I remember when I was in junior high school and people were coming in to talk with us about the environment and the need for things to change. So we did paper drives and all this dumb shit that really didn’t mean anything because 30 years later it is still happening.
Vernon Reid: Speaking of which, one of the most powerful things about the song ‘Pride’ that Will Calhoun wrote was when he hits that line, “History’s a lie that they teach you in school.”
Will Calhoun: I went to private schools growing up in the Bronx. Actually, one of my classmates was the late Scott La Rock of Boogie Down Productions. And Scott was very, very intelligent. He was an incredible athlete and an A student. So when we were both in history class, we would talk about things like Egypt and the Black Panthers and things like that. And our teacher — it was a Lutheran school and very conservative — would get pissed and say we needed to stick with the syllabus. But we would always question why we couldn’t talk about the real history of what was going on. Before doing that song when writing Time’s Up, the most challenging thing for me was going to Los Angeles. We had toured a bunch, and I was really trying to stay in New York.
But before I left for L.A., I grabbed some of my old songwriter journals, and I found my high school journal and grabbed it and threw it in the bag with my other stuff. When we got there to L.A., I was running through my old journals, and that line about history came from my time in high school and being in class with Scott La Rock and calling it out because they were not dealing with the real issues that were going on. It was really just a piece of my life and how we’d all go into this classroom to sit down and be lied to, basically. And that happened throughout our entire educational process with history. Our parents were the ones who made sure we had a black history program every February in our school. That was our parents, not the school.
Vernon Reid: It’s not so much about the state of education, but it’s also about the state of education in teachers. This is a multi-tiered thing that goes back to the founding of the country. You can’t avoid it. And it goes back to things like the vagrancy laws. Vagrancy and loitering were invented after the abolition of slavery. How did they populate the chain gangs? They did so by using people who were out of work. It was not based on actual crimes, but they invented a law that made it a crime to just be walking around. You had to be gainfully engaged.
The other thing about how this all ties in with white supremacy is the discretion of the law enforcement officer, which means equal protection under the law is a sham. We still have this today — the discretion of the officer. All we’ve been asking for centuries, really, is “same crime, same time.” We’re not asking for special treatment. If we get caught with our hand in the cookie jar, fair enough. But judicial discretion and law enforcement discretion means that you get more time for the same crime because you are deemed such by a jury of your “peers.”
Will Calhoun: Ava DuVernay, in my opinion, did a fabulous series with How They See Us, which dealt with the realities of the Central Park 5. And although they were exonerated, there was no real apology. People broke the law to put those five young men behind bars. Judicial people, police officers and the district attorney — they all broke the law. You didn’t need DNA evidence to know those people lied. I was there when they were arrested, and I was at the Abyssinian Baptist Church when they were released and had a service for them. I sat next to those fathers, and it was deep. And in connection to what Vernon was saying, although these things are still happening, that was really a modern case where, in my opinion, at least an apology could have been made.
Corey Glover: To a large degree, none of this has really changed, even with the five young men who got arrested. Because authorities still think they had to have been guilty of something. If the reverse were true and it happened to be someone of a lighter hue, like that guy Robert Chambers who killed his girlfriend in the park. When was the last time you heard someone talking about Robert Chambers? That shit happened the same year!
CREDIT: Frank Micelotta/ImageDirect
Muzz Skillings: I’ve seen some of the videos the kids are doing on TikTok, and you got all nationalities understanding that Black Lives Matter. They understand that it’s not about the color, but it’s about due process and justice and fairness and just common sense. And they seem really powerful. One thing that I would just like to put out there I would hope that this generation of children would benefit from the council of people from my generation and even earlier ones.
Those of us who understood what happened to the hippie movement of peace and love and how that fizzled out and were undermined. There’s cultural changes around it today that effectively neutralized what they did in the 60s. There are agencies in our culture who are watching this, and they are figuring it out. I’m hoping that this movement learns how the other movements were undermined and neutralized, and if they really go for it and understand the power that they have they could really make a change.
Corey Glover: This isn’t the first movement made for active change. We went through this in Ferguson. We went through this after the L.A. riots. We went through this in New York when Eleanor Bumpurs got killed by the police. The point I’m trying to make is that you have to keep the fire stoked. The thing about these movements and why they fizzle out is because there’s fatigue about it. Unfortunately, the system doesn’t want to stop doing what it’s doing, what we are rallying against. Police are still doing what they are doing. The only reason why we have this movement right now is because we are in the middle of a global pandemic and we got people stuck in their houses watching this on YouTube, watching this on TikTok, watching this on Twitter.
We have to put something in place for people to keep their eye on this thing. And I — at one point — thought it was music, but it’s not just music. We had songs from the ‘60s and ‘70s that rally people around certain things. That’s all great. There has to be something that solidifies this idea and crystallizes it in the mind of the body politic. Nothing else will register real change. We can’t change these things with a hashtag. We can’t keep these videos going. We can’t keep these songs. You know, “Pride” and “Someone Like You” are classic examples of talking about where we are.
Muzz Skillings: The first time I encountered police killing people with impunity it just blew my mind. I read a Village Voice article called “Cops Who Kill” — I still have the paper. And it details what went down in Brooklyn, from witnesses and from one of the guys who the cop literally stepped on his head and proclaimed him to be dead. He survived, and was able to give the account about how he just wanted to go in and murder them all. Then I started to see how it was not an isolated incident. I was seeing how it was a pattern. So at the time we made Time’s Up, we weren’t trying to be political. It’s a weird thing. I could be talking about something that happened to me like I couldn’t get a cab. That’s my story, man. Then someone will turn around and ask why we were being so political when I was only telling a story where I couldn’t catch a cab.
We had that forced upon ourselves. We were also coming to terms with discrepancies we were outraged by and we had to express it. That’s what we did: Will, Vernon, Corey and myself. And so with a song like “Someone Like You,” particularly the police verse, I was like, “OK, this is going on, but I don’t want it to be so ham-fisted about it.” Then we tried to put it in human terms: “Police they chased my brother / Policeman license to kill” — I never say he shot him, I wrote, “Oh how I miss my brother / Good shoes are so hard to fill.” That’s what hits the heart, and that’s what I wanted to have happen.
Vernon Reid: This is part and parcel to why our lives were as such back then. It’s weird, because people would say how we’re this political band. Well, yeah, because politics is a part of life. But we wrote about all kinds of things. Songs like “Undercover of Darkness” and “Love Rears Up Its Ugly Head” were never any less to us. But we also had to have songs like “Someone Like You.” It’s part of our coming of age. We were forced to grow up with these extra things. Girls and cars, we loved all that, too. But when we get pulled over by the cops, we have to worry about the cops’ next move.
Corey Glover: We wanted to also talk about where we want to continue in life, and “This Is the Life” did that, right? That song asks us to move forward from where we are now. We wanna know where our tomorrow is and how our tomorrow will advance change. That was our hope in doing Time’s Up. Because we were dealing with the success in the music business and the question of who we are and where we came from. You must not be those kinds of black folks; you must be different. And we had to tell them, through Time’s Up, we’re still black. We were still living in the time of Crown Heights just as the riots were starting there. We were still in the middle of it. We were still getting pulled over and being harassed by the police who then recognized me.
Will Calhoun: I think also in this capitalistic society, outside of the pandemic which is horrifying enough, people don’t have money. They’re not working. They’re being furloughed or laid off. Even in terms of the music industry. I’ve reached out to my drum company and my cymbal company, and I’m getting emails back mentioning they had to lay off 140 people. They let go some of the designers, the people who design the gear. These are key people. There’s also the reality that people can’t pay the rent. They’re thinking about food. Those of us who have children, schools are going all virtual in many cases, so you got some of this digital stuff that is on the up and up. Even us as musicians, we are teaching online now. And that makes the situation really more, in my terms, severe on top of the pandemic. In terms of systematic change, we gotta push that vehicle over the cliff.
Muzz Skillings: So it’s an opportunity to catch people and pull them into something that could evoke long-lasting change. People who have had their paradigm shifted enough in a visceral way, to go back to the norm may not even be possible. And in terms of the kinds of change we are talking about, that is actually an opportunity because that’s the mindset to change. That entrenched behavior and entrenched expectations about what you are gonna get out of your life that you thought you were gonna get. Now that’s been shattered, and a lot of people are much more sensitive now and open to like, “OK, maybe we can have a larger systemic change that creates equanimity across the board.”
2003 — February 7, Vernon Reid was among the group of musicians, all colors, shapes, ages, and genres, that took the Radio City Music Hall stage in New York City, to pay tribute to the one passion they all had in common — THE BLUES. Shared with thousands of fans in attendance, legendary performers from the roots of rock, blues, jazz, and rap joined forces for a once-in-a-lifetime salute to the blues benefit concert whose proceeds went to musical education. Executive produced by Martin Scorcese, produced by Alex Gibney and directed by Antoine Fuqua, LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE captures the night’s magic and weaves a history of blues through the juxtaposition of performers, backstage interviews, rehearsals, and archival clips of some of the greatest names in American music. Part concert, part history lesson, part summit meeting, and all blues, Lightning in a Bottle puts a bright spotlight on this quintessential American music. There are some heavy hitters at work here, both behind the camera (Martin Scorsese executive produced, while the film was directed by Antoine Fuqua of Training Day and King Arthur) and especially in front of it, with a superb house band and a mind-boggling array of musicians (including B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, Solomon Burke, Keb’ Mo’, Macy Gray, the Neville Brothers, Robert Cray, John Fogerty, and Vernon Reid, to name but a few) performing at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in February, 2003. The idea was to trace the music from its beginnings; thus we get an African song (by Angelique Kidjo), some early gospel blues (the great Mavis Staples), acoustic Delta blues, and so on, right up to blues-drenched electric rock and even some rap (a riveting version of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor” by Chuck D.). Virtually all of the immortals who defined the blues (Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, and even Jimi Hendrix, whose fiery style is re-enacted by Buddy Guy) enter the picture, either through vintage film clips or new performances of their songs. One might wish for more insight into the influence of the blues on jazz (Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” sung here by India.Arie, is a fine song, but it’s not a blues tune) or country, but overall, Lightning in a Bottle is an edifying and, most important, highly entertaining portrait of the music and its heritage. There are a few bonus tracks/scenes inserted by production that are not listed below. With that in mind: Complete List of Musical Performances
1. “Zélié” (performed by Angelique Kidjo)
2. “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” (performed by Mavis Staples)
3. “Gamblin’ Man” (performed by David “Honeyboy” Edwards)
4. “Love In Vain” (performed by Keb’ Mo’ & Danny Kortchmar)
5. “Jim Crow Blues” (performed by Odetta)
6. “St. Louis Blues” (performed by Natalie Cole)
7. “Sittin’ On Top Of The World” (performed by James “Blood” Ulmer & Alison Krauss)
8. “Mama (He Treats Your Daughter Mean)” (performed by Ruth Brown)
9. “Men Are Like Streetcars” (performed by Natalie Cole)
10. “Can’t Be Satisfied” (performed by Buddy Guy)
11. “Strange Fruit” (performed by India.Arie)
12. “Hound Dog” (performed by Macy Gray)
13. “Hear The Angels Singing” (performed by Larry Johnson)
14. “Midnight Special” (performed by John Fogerty)
15. “Okie Dokie Stomp” (performed by Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown)
16. “Coming Home” (performed by Bonnie Raitt)
17. “I’m A King Bee” (performed by Steven Tyler & Joe Perry of Aerosmith)
18. “Killing Floor” (performed by David Johansen & Hubert Sumlin)
19. “I Pity The Fool” (performed by Shemekia Copeland and Robert Cray)
20. “Big Chief” (performed by The Neville Brothers)
21. “Turn On Your Love Light” (performed by Solomon Burke)
22. “Red House” (performed by Buddy Guy)
w/ VERNON REID
23. “Voodoo Child” (performed by Angelique Kidjo & Buddy Guy)
24. “Boom Boom (No War)” (performed by Chuck D & The Fine Arts Militia)
25. “Sweet Sixteen” (performed by B.B. King)
26. “Paying The Cost To Be The Boss” (performed by B.B. King, Robert Cray & Bonnie Raitt)
Virus In Paradise
2020 — Living Colour’s Journey was again interrupted. This time, at the end of two, back-to-back, week-long, cruise ship appearances, their docking in Fort Lauderdale was delayed because the Coronavirus had spread like Donald Trump, Fox News wild fire.
July 4th Resurrection
2021 — Living Colour (Hudson Valley, New York)
VLADIMIR / VENGENCE / VIRUS
Right Wing Media (Propagandists) and a
Dim-witted, easily angered, uneducated Social Network (Facebook/Twitter)
The White Nationalist Nuclear Weapon
FIRST STRIKE
Afraid It’s Already Been Dropped.
Drop The Bomb (Italian)
Spanish Singer “X” Gaia Stalla, Esther, Julio Lobos
Almost Home, directed by Brad Lichtenstein (2006) PBS Independent Lens.
music supervisor for the film Mr. 3000, starring Bernie Mac and directed by Charles Stone III (2004)
About the Author
A Florida Journalist, Photographer, and Art Director with an eclectic client list of individuals and organizations with musical, visual, educational, and editorial interests.
