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Photographer's Preface
- University Press of Mississippi
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Photographer's Preface You Never Sawa Pocket Like This I Swear, We Ain't Going Nowhere The day hustler and lead talker Kenny Magee asked me to join Petworth Band, 1 was across the street from Paul Laurence Dunbar High School with Itchy,Vic, and Moose, standing around a yellow and chrome Deuce and a Quarter (Electric 225) and listening to a Rare Essence tape. The moment Itchy told Kenny that 1 owned a set of rototoms like the ones David Green played in Essence, I was in. By neighborhood standards, our tape was clear enough to share with anyone who walked by, especially the honeys; and I know because I spent three hours holding my boom box above the Howard Theater crowd. I'd done everything right, pressed Play and Record then Pause. The red light came on. I'd even caught the beginning of the show by releasing Pause a few moments before Tricky Rick, the D.J.,asked, "Who's the trickiest guy in town?" Catching the beginning of the show was a big deal, especially to those of us who would eventually graduate from listening to playing. A good show was one when the band both cranked and grooved, your name was called, you met a girl, and you(and your whole damn crew) were photographed by Mr. G., the smoothest PictureMan in the history of Go-Go. How many times did we jump, last minute, into The Original Petworth Band (featuring Thomas Sayers Ellis), Mr. G., 1981. xvi The Beat Shredded go-go poster. one of his flicks, orjust stand there (three of us, one in a wicker chair), kneeling and pointing and looking away, in a pair of school boy frames, a Members Only jacket and a pair of Jordache jeans? Looking back it's amazing how much posing went on and how it influenced what many of the bands played. Our all-time favorite song to pose to was Herman Kelly and Life's "Dance to the Drummer's Beat" and posing was so popular that when Experience Unlimited performed "E.U. Freeze," Sugar Bear chanted "Aw pose y'all" and "Take the Picture." We loved the stop and go, and a spotlight was our camera as we danced like sharp, human shutters. I left Petworth and joined Heavy Connection because they were opening shows for Trouble (later Trouble Funk) and because they got their name and logo on the Globe Day-Glo posters that mysteriously appeared on trees and abandoned storefronts while we slept. At Dunbar, I was a member of the Creative Writing club, an editor of our school paper, and a Humanities [3.235.130.73] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 23:55 GMT) Preface xvii Little Benny Harley. Student, and although I played in a band, I secretly wanted to be a writer. I left Heavy Connection and returned to Petworth my senior year of high school and wrote many of the words to our grooves. Our band's name on a poster was like being published for the first time. My first 35 mm camera cost $40 and it was "hot," slang for stolen. I purchased it from a trombonist who had played in several bands. He popped his trunk on Georgia Avenue and there it was. I just happened to be home from school for the weekend and just happened to run into him and just happened to have access to a dark room in the house I lived in, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One of my housemates taught me how to develop photographs, and I took my first serious pictures at James Baldwin's funeral in 1987. My first Go-Go related photos were of the show posters. Often they would stay up for weeks, stapled one on top of the other, creating collages that were brilliant, textual documents. When Me'Shell Johnson (later Ndegeocello) joined Little Benny and the Masters , the focus of my photography shifted to the inside of the Go-Go where my instincts as a percussionist allowed me to think of the camera as just another instrument in the band, a participant in the performance and one that could actually photograph the music as well as the musicians. Two years earlier, I had xviii The Beat played cowbell at Breeze's with Rare Essence during the John Cabalou era when I auditioned for the rototom-timbale spot, so I did not see myself as separate from the band. I've also been lucky...