Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste - Lester Bangs [131]
Of course, in Jamaica not even Grounations can come off on time— it's my guess they might be sacrilegious if they did, so we wait well into the evening by the pool with Tom Hayes, an Island employee who, I have been told, is responsible for much of the label's business dealings with artists. So I ask him: “How much does a group like Burning Spear get from Island as an advance?”
“You should ask them that,” he replied. “I don’t think it would be ethical for me to tell you.” He pointed at Gonzo. “That would be like me asking him how much you make; don’t you see the unfairness of that?” Then, turning to Gonzo: “Ready for another Heineken's?” And gets up and splits for the bar to buy us a round of drinks.
Later, we’re finally ready to go to the Grounation, and when the Rastas are ready for us it seems we’ve momentarily lost Gonzo, who is flying in the face of experience (namely his burn upon arrival) by trying again to cop dope, I mean herb, from the guy in the hotel parking lot. When he gets in the car, I ask him, “What the fuck is the matter with you? We’re going to a Grounation, a festival of Rastafarians, don’t you realize there's going to be more dope there than you could smoke in three lifetimes?”
“I know,” he says, “but I gotta have some for later when we get back to the hotel and to get me through my flight back to New York tomorrow. I’m addicted to the shit!”
A few minutes later, Wooly and I somehow get onto the subject of Rasta sexuality. “The Rastas are not a particularly sexual people,” he says, adding that “I’ve never seen one come on to a chick.”
“Oh, really? What do you think would be the factors in that?” I had noticed that Jamaican men did seem to believe in keeping the woman home tending to the babies—you seldom saw them in record shops, for instance—although it is well known that the Rasta men do a lot of cooking and will not let the women prepare the food when they are menstruating. In fact, Jamaican men seem to have a whole fixation on the subject of the menstruation cycle—the most popular swear words are “bloodclot” and “bummaclot pussyclot,” which are the worst things you can call somebody.
“I think it goes back,” answers Wooly, “to the thing you see in lots of primitive societies: the belief that women are polluted, somehow identified with the forces of darkness, like witches….”
“I bet I know why they don’t care if they fuck or not,” interjects Gonzo. “Because they’re too stoned all the time! Hell, man, I’ve smoked so much dope before I didn’t give a fuck about pussy.”
Wooly begins to get defensive—Jesus, man, don’t call the Rastas eunuchs—and brings up Marley's four wives and numerous children before dropping the subject like a set of barbells even though I want to pursue it further.
The seven of us—Wooly, Gonzo, Peter Simon, his collaborator Stephen Davis, Tom Hayes, me and a Rasta named Killy who is taking us—ride to the Grounation in two cars. I jump in the Volkswagen Killy is driving and begin asking him if he doesn’t think this white media influx might dilute the purity of Rasta ritual. He has long thin dread-locks running streamers past his shoulders, and is wearing a T-shirt I had seen on Wooly and others this week that says “ROOTS” with picture of same on the front and commemorates Burning Spear's recent gig at the Chela Bay hotel