cgc wrote on Sun, 27 March 2005 00:21 |
Ryan Moore wrote on Fri, 25 March 2005 11:42 |
You can easily just call up Tuff Gong or any other studio & book time, it seems a very competitive scene there with minimal block bookings eg: people are booking short 3 hr sessions mainly.. so you can often book sessions with 2 or even 1 week notice...its about $30/35 US per hour for top studios like Tuff Gong (!)..
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Too bad the greatest Jamaican studio was destroyed over two decades ago. The Black Ark must be (re)built!!
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Apparently there was some kind of plan to rebuild the burned out shell of the Ark and even a $ allocation a few years ago by Lee Perry but not much was heard since then..
LP has lived in Geneva for years with his wife, a wealthy Swiss businesswoman and does live tours occasionally, ad libbing a stream of consciousness over whatever backing band he's with..
Someone once described LP's situation in Jamaica when his studio & productions were at their peak as being like an 'orange seller in Gaza'..
Quite an apt description!
His current situation must be far more comfortable..
I doubt we will see a return for him to producing or a revived Black Ark unf...
The fate of another legendary studio: Channel One,
The studio fizzled out after one of the owners was shot to death & the rest of his family moved to NYC...
Anyway, I heard its basically now a storage place for bicycle parts or something, as the area is just too dangerous to run a studio in (it was dangerous back in the day, but apparently back then they had protection from local gangsters who liked what was going on the studio and / or were clients !)..supposedly the great API desk is in storage, awaiting a possible new facility eleewhere in Kingston.