Here is a story that hurts the heart of reggae lovers around the world.
Master recordings and concert footage of reggae icon Bob Marley were recently destroyed in a warehouse fire in Aburi, Ghana.
Details are sketchy, but the warehouse was under the care of Marley's wife, Rita, who had planned to convert the building into a solar-powered studio.
It seems that at a time when some music fans are treated to rediscovered "lost recordings" and "buried treasures" of music greats who have passed away, the catalog of Marley music and video is shrinking.
This should be a crime.
Someone who agrees with this sentiment is longtime Los Angeles reggae DJ and Marley archivist Roger Steffens, who introduced me to Marley's early recordings long before Marley drew international recognition with Island Records in 1972, with the landmark 'Catch a Fire' album.
As music writer for a small central New Jersey newspaper around 1988, I reached out to Steffens for an article I was writing on Reggae Sunsplash, the annual Jamaican music festival.
After a few conversations on all things reggae, Steffens said he was going to send me a package, and that all I had to do was promise not to sell any of the contents.
I was thinking (hoping) he was talking about something smokable, but to my surprise, a bulging manila package arrived at the newspaper office with 20 or more cassette tapes of early and unreleased recordings of Marley, Burning Spear, Peter Tosh, Joseph Hill and other reggae icons.
Talk about a great day!
Those tapes provided the entire listening library for my roommates and myself for years.
The only time we took the tapes out of rotation was when I decided to copy them on to the highest quality TDK recording tape I could buy -- just in case the cassette player decided to eat my tapes, I had originals that would be protected.
Not exactly rocket science, I admit, but I wish that simple precautions had been taken by the keepers of the lost Marley tapes in Ghana. It should be a standard procedure.
28-July-10 - An Ohio woman who helped counsel countless couples experiencing marital discord was found stabbed to death on Monday. The suspect is her husband.
27-July-10 - Mocienne Petit Jackson, a Netherlands woman who claims to be the child of pop sensation Michael Jackson and Diana Ross' sister, Barbara Ross, has filed documents in a Los Angeles court, according to TMZ.
23-July-10 - Could it be that Rangel simply forgot the rules? Did it slip his mind that he wasn't supposed to use his letterhead to get corporate donations for a building named after him, as charged? That's not the Charlie Rangel I knew, but that Rangel will surely be exposed when his trial starts.
23-July-10 - R&B heartthrob Brian McKnight, who was accused of being a long-lost baby daddy to a 14-year-old Florida boy, is not be the child's biological father.
22-July-10 - Staying out of trouble is not an easy feat for rapper Foxy Brown, who was arrested in Brooklyn on Wednesday for violating an order of protection, according to TMZ.
23-July-10 - A child pyromaniac is suspected of murdering his mother and siblings, setting fire to his home, and then slitting his own throat with a razor.
22-July-10 - Ieshuh Griffin is a legislative candidate from Wisconsin who seems willing to do whatever it takes to get elected. In the five words that candidates are allowed to put on the ballot to describe themselves, Griffin put the phrase, "Not the white man's b*tch."
21-July-10 - DeFarra Gaymon, a father of four and the CEO of Credit Union of Atlanta, was shot to death in a Newark, N.J. park known for male prostitution.
20-July-10 - Snoop Dogg and his wife revealed to People Magazine that the discovery that their then-6-year-old daughter, Cori, had lupus helped bring their family closer.
