Apr 16th, 2013- The master tape for the new 12″ has been baked and transferred! Thanks to perfect storage by the original producer, it sounds as crisp as on day one! Better news: some unreleased cuts were unearthed… More info coming soon
In the meantime, there are a few copies left of Zen Bow’s Impression at Only Roots, Irie Ites, Crucial Tempo, Musical Riot, Selecta Cab (all from France), David Dubwise’s in London, and/or Ernie B (USA)…
Pardon our French, but there’s a really nice article summing up perfectly the whole Impression adventure on the Reagge France website -as stated, it’s all in français, though. Article to be found on this link.
Thanks, Seb Jobart!
The end of a long, interesting and just overall great journey, period: Reel-Heavy Music’s first reissue, Impression, is reaching shops worldwide by the end of the week! Goes like this:
A Side :
Impression (vocal)
Impression (clean instrumental) -Never-heard before cut! Sorry collectors, but you might have to get this one too, ha!
AA Side :
Impression (dub mix)
Wholesale: This record is available through Control Tower Distribution : dub@controltower.Fr
A few samples… Play them loud!
As the Impression reissue should hit the shops within a week or two, here’s Zen Bow’s interview regarding his childhood in Jamaica, his musical experiences and, well, how he got that name… Enjoy!
*******
Zenbar, where are you from in Jamaica?
ZB : I grew up in Falmouth, parish of Trelawny, Jamaica.
Same place than the Twinkle Brothers…
Exactly. We’re from the same block. I used to listen to them, Ralston, Norman… But they were older than us.
Were you already singing as a youth?
I was singing back in Jamaica among a group called Righteous Roots, small local band. But then moved to the US in my early twenties and did I some work -then I went back into the singing.
Why did you pick Zen Bow for a name? I thought that was after the book Zen Bow, Zen Arrow.
OK. Zen Bow was given me by my teacher. I used to love writing, I love to write. I had a pen pal back in Jamaica that instead of putting ‘Zenbar’ on his envelopes, he put ‘Zenbow’, so my class started calling me Zen Bow.
So how did Zen Bow got his break in the reggae scene in the US?
First thing I did in 1985 was to attend a talent shows where I lived, in Hartford CT. It was for reggae artists in town, I can’t remember exactly its name, it wasn’t broadcast. It was just a little thing to bring out the artists in Hartford. It was more of a talent search. I came second but caught the ear of the people in that band called Crucial, and they asked me to join. At first I said, “not really”’cause I didn’t want to take away the leadership of the band. But I went listen to them and I liked what I heard, and they liked what they heard from me.
So I joined, and we started to play around, you know, in places like in NYC, Rhode Island, Boston, year round. Jimmy Swing played lead guitar. There was a big bass player called Jimmy Rankin, “Big Bassie”. And you have Snow White on drums. We didn’t do no recording. We did live shows, that was they used to do before, cover songs, but since I joined the band, I always do the writing so I’d bring forward new material to the band.
So Impression was pretty much the first tune you recorded?
Yes. Now this song was inspired by an incident that took place in Hartford on a Sunday afternoon. Something went down and they started to say, you know, ‘rastaman did that, and Jamaicans did that’, and so, it kind of put a damper on the surrounding of dreadlocks and Jamaicans. So I became aware of the impression that we’re bad. And that was all how the song came about. It was an incident that I don’t wanna talk about -a shooting incident. Certain people did it and certain group of people did it. That was it so I decided to pen it into a song.
You recorded its instrumental with Crucial?
Yeah they’re the same band, Crucial.
And then you called your label Gramps, why is that?
Gramps was the lead singer for the group I was in back in Jamaica, Righteous Roots. His real name is David Robinson, he has a band in Milwaukee now called Road Damage. So for me to pay him tribute, I used his name, Gramps.
The other recorded tune of yours I know is Black and Beautiful with King Culture.
King Culture, yeah ! Someone told me about him for distribution in Canada. We spoke on the phone and we did some transaction and he distributed for me, then he proposed me to record, but I did my own production on this one too. I did another tune called Auction Block, but that didn’t go nowhere. That tune is saying that I’ve seen my stock rise and I’ve seen my stock fall cause I was a slave. And in America it seemed like I was controlled by a remote. I released it but it didn’t go nowhere. And I just did it for myself. I mean it came out but it didn’t go nowhere, I sold maybe 100 copies of it.
How many copies of Impression did you press?
I mean, over a thousand only. Cause it was underground, independent.
Did you stop producing after that?
No, I was still producing but for myself. Cause it takes money. Not time, cause I had time but I didn’t have the money. At that time when my kind of songs was coming out, people weren’t that much into the culture rasta music, they were more in the punaany business. So I kind of got stuck in mid-stream. Mid-80s was a different kind of music coming about.
What have you been up to these days?
Well after my divorce, I moved to Atlanta in about 2006. I do work for a Japanese company. I still sing, and I would love to come up with something new pretty soon.
To contact Zen Bow for dubplates, recording or shows, please visit his Facebook page
Where were we? Sorry, it took me a minute to get to this one… Ah, yes : John Stroher at Penguin recording. Had the tape machine not been defective at the first studio I went to, I would have probably regretted it, as nobody seemed to have used it for a while…
The second I met John Stroher, though, I knew. For once, all the meager research I had been able to gather about the art of tape restoring sounded more than familiar to his ears: he was an expert at it. Restoring reels, to John, is far from being the annoying chore performed on outdated, space-consuming machinery it seemed to be for the other studios : it’s his life. That’s what he has always done -he even came up, after many years of meticulous trial-and-error procedures, with his own secret to baking the reels so they deliver their well-kept secrets in an optimal way (takes two days, but they’re worth it). Once I pushed the door of his Japanese-Zen-style home in the heart of LA’s tough area called Highland Park, I knew I had arrived. Impression‘s journey was reaching its end. What finished convincing me was the half-dozen reel tapes piled up on his desk (sorry for being a looky-loo… Remember I’m a journalist, right?) : vintage Motown reels, late 80s Def jam ones, all waiting to be resurrected.
The next few days felt like a dream. Before you go through this process, you have no clue how raw the straight studio recording sounds, pre-mix. I got really worried. That made the dudes laugh, a little bit. They tried to reassure me, sounding almost like, I don’t know, obstetricians talking to a chain-smoking dad-to-be at the maternity? “It’s OK, Seb. The tape’s in excellent shape, it was well-stored and taken care of.” Maybe, but why is that keyboard line running through the WHOLE tune? Why is it sounding so messy? Why is Zen Bow’s voice so loud? Why this and that?
I did underestimate the power of two pairs of classically-trained ears, I suppose. Two days later, John and Chris Doremus had done it. The vocal, the dub, one surprise cut. In the end, Impression sounded exactly like it did right before Zen Bow shipped it to the pressing plant in 1986.
This saga could go on and on, next came the whole adventure consistng of finding a pressing plant, distributors. But, hey, this is not Business Weekly over here, right? And there are more intersting things to post. For instance, as the Impression reissue will ship in two weeks, I thought it’d be nice if next posts were Zen Bow’s and Linell’s self-biography. so, that is coming. Hold tight!
Second-to-last part (I promise!) of the Impression reissue saga…
*******
It only took one sentence in our conversation to flip the script –or at least take it to an unexpected place.
When Zenbar asked me if I had a copy of Impression, I had to admit I never did, my obsession for this particular 12’’ being based on hearing it once at a dance, and a million times off the two same videos on Youtube. « I’ll get you some sent, » he promised. To which I felt free to note: « You really should consider reissuing that tune… It goes for crazy money on Ebay, and you see none of it. » He kept silent for a sec, and nodded, I imagine. “Yeah, that’s a good idea”… The next day, Zen’s childhood friend Linell Hilton was emailing me, asking for my address. Two weeks later, a package showed up at my door. It was unusually big for just containing a couple 12’’, I thought. And heavy, too.
Linell had done it: following Zen Bow’s instructions from Atlanta, he had gone to Zen’s ex-wife’s place (Linell still lives in CT) and after a reportedly heated negociation process, had found the records to send me, on the same shelf in Zen’s former living room than where he put them 25 years ago.
But wait, there was more… When I opened the package, I understood what was anchoring it : besides a few brand new copies of Impression, and a couple of Zen Bow’s other 12’’ (Big, Black and Beautiful, King Culture label), it contained a 2-inch reel tape. The. Original. Impression. Tape. Wow.
I called Linell. « Zen told me to send it to you, so I just did, » he confessed. May next phone call was to Zen.
– « Well big man, you said it should be reissued, right ? » Zenbar laughed, amused by my puzzlement.
– « Well, yeah, but… by you ? »
-« If you found me all the way from France and knew that song, I thought you wanted to do it yourself, » he continued. « Do what you gotta do. Keep on trucking, Sebastien ! »
At this point, it was really hard not to see it as a sign. The sign. The one that pushes you on the other side of the line, the one that parts the fantasy reissue label you’ve been dreaming of for years, and the reality of daring to make it happen.
How to follow up, once you manage to pass the initial shock, and honor, of such a gift?
It took me a minute to learn the process. It might be common knowledge amongst studio people, but there are basic things I didn’t know. Such as : did you know a 2-inch reel has to be baked before being legible again ? I sure didn’t. And finding a proper baking machine in Southern California in 2011 wasn’t the easiest of the processes. I even ended up calling Ampex’s headquarters to help me find one –I know, I should have searched on Facebook, rah rah rah. Ampex still had a « baker » dude on file in the Bay Area, a legend of sorts who happened to not really know -or really care at all, let’s be fair- what he was doing (long story).
When I brought the baked tape to the studio I had found in the LA area, their reel machine, I got informed as I reached, just crashed the night before, we-re-so-sorry-but-it’s-gonna-take-months-before-we-get-it-fixed. Back to square one, once again. As I was going to wonder if «the sign» was maybe one of doom, finally something good happened out of the mishap. The people at this studio knew of somebody specializing in tape restoration and transfers. A real man of passion for this kind of thing, who charged decent rates. “He works with Motown, vintage Def jam rissues, has amazing ears and equipment,” they said. That was the sun ray I had hoped for. And that’s how I met John Stroher at Penguin Studios…
(Continued in Part V aka “the last episode”. Stay tuned!)
Sorry for those who think it might be part of a well-thought and Machiavellian marketing/buzz plot-I’m not delaying the 12″ on purpose. Just dealing with usual production delays when it comes to putting vinyl out, no big deal. Test presses were received and sound crisp!
Regarding an actual release date, “Impression” should hit distributors some time around May 10th – 15th. Spread the word!
In the meantime, I’ll try to fill the void by wrapping up the Quest For Zen Bow saga on the blog, and various other posts and interviews. Stay tuned, and be brave : it’s coming!
Part III of the adventure that led to Zen Bow Impression‘s 12″ being reissued. A good way to sit on the usual pressing plant delay on this one… Right?
********
… This kind of (non)conversation always takes a few days to shrug off. What to do now? A last internet search for the road with Zenbar’s name, just to bid the quest an official farewell, maybe? I took this one as some sort of grandiloquent gesture, the cyber equivalent to pouring that first gulp of alcohol on the floor when somebody passed away. Allright. Just for the sake of it.
And then… could it be? «Zenbar Bennett is now on Facebook,» my screen informed me. Pure luck. It had just happened in the very period since I had started looking for him. Why didn’t I « check him on Facebook instead of calling half of the world ? », as BAFer Edgar once wondered? Well, just cause there was a time, believe it or not, where Zen Bow was not on Facebook. Me neither, by the way. I had to make the biggest concession with my (very private) self, and promptly started an account -that bared for years just this one friend, on a side note.
Once friends added on both sides, Zenbar finally replied, and sent an email address to reach him on, and explain what I was in here for. The Zen Bow interview was on, after that unusually long, and oh-so frustrating so far, research process. It wasn’t the end of the story, though.
Instead of Zen Bow, a gentleman by the name of Linell Hilton, based in Connecticut, got in touch. Linell presented himself as Zenbar’s childhood friend. They went to the same school in Falmouth, Jamaica, were the typical childhood buddy duet. They migrated to the US on separate instances but never lost touch, and reunited in Connecticut when Zen Bow reached in the early ‘80s. Anything of importance that Zen’s ever needed advice for, he’s always asked Linell’s opinion –and vice-versa. In this case, Linell’s role was simple : trying to figure out if this was some kind of joke at best, scam at worst, that somebody was trying to play on his friend. They had all the reasons in the world to wonder, after all : 25 years after that obscure record you did, how in the world would some random guy from France have heard about it and even weirder, why would he contact you to do an interview about it?
Fast forward a few emails, I think I passed: soon enough, the Holy Grail materialized : Linell sent me Zen Bow’s current number in Atlanta, along with a very detailed biography he wrote of the two of them growing up (a next post on the blog, don’t fret). This time, I knew I had reached. Zenbar Bennett picked up, in his typical enthusiastic fashion : « Seb? So, that was true? Whaddup big man ? » The interview could start. Little did I know what it was going to lead to…
Reissuing a record is a long and costly process, but rewarding in a few ways: as a lot of times in life, it’s equally about the journey than the destination. Tracking Zen Bow to reissue his record took almost two years and it started in a really coincidental way. I thought it’d be funny to share a bit of the behind the scenes on this one -I’m sure every single label who’s reissued any old tracks has similar (probably more “spectacular”, too) experiences… But here’s part two of mine/Zen Bow’s.
*******
I dialed the number. And immediatley got served with a music digger’s least favorite three musical notes to hear, followed by a suave voice announcing, that, well, “We’re sorry, the number you are trying to reach is no longer in service or was disconnected.” Then again, what are the odds that a 25 year-old phone number might still be working? I know. You always need the thrill to have at least tried.
Back to square one with just a name, “Zenbar Bennett,” and that hopeful gut feeling that where he recorded Impression was so random, he might as well still be somewhere in Connecticut. That’s the thing with the great Jamaican immigration wave of the early 80s: a lot of the artists who settled down outside the big immigration hubs (NYC, Miami) have tended, I’ve noticed, to sort of stay in the countryside they ended up landing in, and start a career or a family out there.
There’s a lot of unexpected people along the backroads of America. Over the years I got lucky to be able to chat with Brigadier Jerry in a very foresty town in the middle of Connecticut (strange coincidence, innit?), catch up with Keith Rowe (of Keith and Tex fame) in the heart of New Jersey, 20 minutes away from my wife’s grandma’s, not to mention that after years of (pre-internet) chasing Tony Chin, I discovered that he was living a whopping 10-minutes bicycle ride away from my inlaws’, in California’s Inland Empire. Small world. Where surprises aren’t always happy ones : after months trying to get a number for Barrington Spence in Texas, I was requested an hefty amount of money to be “graced” with an interview. An offer, of course, I could, and did, refuse…
But anyway. Back to Zenbar. With an usual name and a supposed State of residence in hand, I turned up to the ever-useful White Pages. No disappointment this time, as an on-screen miracle happened : there was ONE current number for “Zenbar Bennett” in Connecticut. Which I immediately dialed, pondering the usual concerns : is it gonna work? Does it lead to the right Zenbar? More so: Is it just plain weird? I mean, to call somebody like that, out of the blue? Ring.. ring.. ring… a raspy female voice answered. Mmh. How do you explain clearly, in a pretty thick French accent mind you, the whole obsessive journey you’ve embarked on a few weeks ago? “Iz it the household of ze singer once known as Zen Bow?” is probably what it sounded like.
Silence. “What do you want from him?”
I took it as, “Yes it iz.”
“Well, I loved his song Impression that he did in 1986 and I’d like to interview him about it for a magazine”. Sweat beads on my end, a longer silence on the other one.
“How did you find this number?” the questionnaire continued.
“In… the… White Pages?”. Pause.
“Is Zenbar home perhaps?”
This time, the silence didn’t last.
“No sir, he’s not home sir, because we divorced years ago and I have no idea where he went. Don’t call back.” Click.
Well, that was that. All the info I had was used at this point. Was Zen Bow going to join the long list of these MIA singers I always end up trying to get back in touch with? It could have, if another idea hadn’t burgeoned in the very next days…
(Part III coming up next week… stay tuned!)
