Circular No 849

Newsletter for alumni of The Abbey School, Mt. St. Benedict, Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.

Caracas, 10 of February 2018 No. 849

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Dear Friends,

Around the year 1969, on the occasion of the first modern festival of the Virgin Chinita of Maracaibo, Fr. Cuthbert came to Maracaibo with a steelband group from the village Tunapuna.

I met him and saw him in the enclosure where they were playing.

He told me that they were invited by an old boy? Living in Maracaibo.

Can Cheche remember?  I need the comments for the Circular.

What was the name of the band?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0E463tetL0,

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Sunday, February 18, 2001

AMOCO RENEGADES

Best of the best

Everyone has a favourite band, the steelband they think is or was the greatest.

Writer DALTON NARINE provides an assessment.

THE best you can say about anything is that it is the greatest in the world. Greatness is an absolute distinction that shouldn’t be measured, or taken, lightly. And it is in such regard that this writer must take issue with some people who tout this and that steelband as the greatest in the world, without backing up their claims.

Now, hype is hype, but pan talk is a serious preoccupation in down-to-earth T&T, the land of, well, the greatest steelbands in the world.

And there’s the rub.

The names of several bands rush to memory when superior quality and character are considerations in the best-steelband debate.

In alphabetical order, the list includes Casablanca, City Symphony, City Syncopators, Crossfire, Desperadoes, Ebonites, Cavaliers, Southern All Stars, Starlift, Tokyo and Trinidad All Stars. Here is a rundown, and the lowdown, on how these bands, and others, stack up against each other.

CASABLANCA:

The cross of Lorraine may be the emblem of this Gonzales-East Dry River-Belmont (depending on era) orchestra, but a star-crossed history is indicative of the band’s attempt at greatness. Oscar Pyle and other die-hard ’Blanca folks poured sweat and blood (literally) into the band’s machinery during its heyday in the 1940s and ’50s. But like Rodney Dangerfield, Casablanca got no wide respect...until classical music dominated the band’s repertoire in the ’70s and ’80s. Indeed, the old “double cross” was transformed into a magic wand when Anthony Prospect conducted the band’s victorious “1812 Overture” (Tchaikovsky) in the 1982 steelband festival, and many more times thereafter in concert halls in Britain and North America. Still, with an anaemic Panorama record juxtaposed against achievements of other concert-oriented steelbands, Casablanca has yet to attain quintessential glory.

CITY SYMPHONY:

One great and truly memorable performance is enough to qualify East Dry River’s City Symphony for Hall-of-Fame enshrinement. Cue the very early ’60s; listen to the syrupy sounds of the Bertie Marshall pans; focus on the new showcase instrument dubbed the double tenor; cock an ear to arranger Cordell Barbour’s compelling refrain: Hey, it’s an old weapon with a new fuse in the war of the “Bomb”. Isn’t that Cole Porter’s standard, “Night and Day”?

CITY SYNCOPATORS:

City Syncopators and ultimate greatness may be as uncomplementary as pan and the police in the old days. But dare we exclude the East Dry River group from consideration when its journey to fame as heavy roaders while entertaining some 3,000 “sailors” on the USS Detroit during the late ’50s was forked by the band’s scintillating performance of von Suppe’s “Poets and Peasants Overture” at a music festival not long after that?

CROSSFIRE:

Ah, Crossfire! It is easier for the St James band under legendary Eamon Thorpe to get into the kingdom of Pan Heaven with a singular offering—a Carnival Jouvert presentation of the utterly captivating standard, “On Another Night Like This”— than it is for supporters and spectators to ever forget that indescribable 1956 achievement.

EBONITES:

Ebonites of Morvant, which cloned Solo Harmonites, appeared in the late ’50s as fresh as a sno-cone. However, the band melted like the proverbial snowball in hell in just a few short years. Ebonites was long on good road music, though: Strauss’ “Roses of the South’’ and Liszt’s “Liebesfreud’’ jog the memory.

GUINNESS CAVALIERS:

The dregs of Cavaliers’ percussive style in the ’60s are extant in most Panorama performances to this day. The San Fernando band faded into oblivion decades ago, but should be remembered as those stout-hearted souls who, with the milk of a 1965 Panorama win fresh in their throats, literally ran the competition off the stage in 1967 with an uptempo version of “Mas”, then converted the all of Port of Spain into believers with a precocious hurry-hurry-come-for-curry pace on Carnival Monday. Couldn’t curry favour with time, though, and expired with a whimper.

HIGHLANDERS:

Now, here’s a band that could have been the greatest ever had it not been blinded by its own brilliance (read tuner Bertie Marshall’s brilliance. Marshall eventually joined that other Laventille band, Despers, thereby lending currency to its mystique and perceived perpetual greatness). Highlanders innovated the double tenor, truly amplified pans, jazz-based classical arrangements (probably influenced by Invaders’ jazz phrasings and “Professor” Les Slater’s tinkering of the band’s early works) and the ultramellow tone. Hey, during the ’60s, the colourful Highlanders forged ahead of its time by some 35 years. (History and prevailing steelband trends could widen the disparity.) And the orchestra was as comfortable playing exotic arrangements of calypso fare as it was at blazing a hard trail with music from the masters, calypso-style—Gounod’s “Faust”, Rossini’s “Italian Girl in Algiers” (the best Bomb tune ever), Handel’s “Let Every Valley Be Exalted”, and Haydn’s “Gypsy Rondo”, among other scores.

INVADERS:

Invaders was Ellie Mannette and Ellie Mannette was the Boss long before Bruce Springsteen picked up the moniker. Invaders spawned Starlift, which, in turn, begat Phase II. One of the oldest steelbands, Invaders resisted the musical idiom of of the ’60s by playing at an exciting futuristic level, considering tonal quality and the band’s stylish locution on its very own family of instruments. “Liebestraum’’ and “With a Song in My Heart’’ were provocative Carnival themes 40 years ago, but Invaders meant much, much more. Invaders was Woodbrook, a cultural happening, middle-class values, Shell Oil, And yes, Invaders were the “harps of gold”.

PHASE II PAN GROOVE:

Phase II of Woodbrook joins the elite steelband group by virtue of its back-to-back Panorama titles in 1987 and 1988 while playing its own compositions as an unsponsored band. Its music is arranged by Boogsie Sharpe, arguably the best complete panist in the world.

RENEGADES:

Many years ago, a man left his hilltop retreat in Surrey (Lopinot) and became an urban renegade in Port of Spain. His name was Jit Samaroo and the guys he hung out with called themselves “Renegades”. He carried a swagger all right, but it was in his music, his mellifluous arranging style. In 1982, when Renegades won its first-ever Panorama title, a young band member boasted of playing more than 200 notes in less than a minute while capturing a stylish interpretation of the melody. Renegades retook the title in 1984 and won again in 1985, and seemingly again and again—nine times in all, to be sure—as the band adhered to a trend of playing Kitchener’s treacly compositions. It became trendy, too, for Renegades to place among the top echelon in major pan contests since that fateful day when Surrey lost a son.

SILVER STARS:

Formerly known as the “B” class college band, Silver Stars under Junior Pouchet could make a legitimate claim to “Best Steelband” by virtue of its vastly underrated performance on the road. The Newtown band had never won a pan title, yet rival steelbands gave Silver Stars an “A” for its consistent record in the turbulent ’60s: “Military Polonaise” (1960), “Salut D’amour” (1961), “Die Fledermaus” (1962), “Ghost Riders in the Sky” (1965), “Elizabethan Serenade” (1964), “Wonderful Land” (1966), “Dr Zhivago” and “Gaudeamus Igitur” (1967).
For sure, Pouchet should be anointed one of pandom’s gods. Who’s to argue?

SOUTHERN ALL STARS:

Southern All Stars’ rush to glory: Consider the San Fernando unit besting top Port of Spain bands, including Trinidad All Stars, at Roxy Theatre in 1954 in a striking but controversial Music Festival performance of “Anna”, complete with extemporisation by Theodore Stephens, then believe that fame can be fleeting.

SOLO HARMONITES:

The Desperadoes of the East, Solo Harmonites of Morvant, won Panorama titles in 1968, 1971, 1972, and 1974, Harmonites’ music was renowned for its kinetic energy—to wit, “The Wrecker”, “St Thomas Girl”, and “Bongo”—and its fiery arranger Earl Rodney, who once attributed his gruff but supercharged demeanor to “the struggle of the steelband man” in him. An adept panist who led the way for Boogsie Sharpe and Robert Greenidge, Rodney still clings to the fame he acquired some three decades ago with “Friends and Countrymen”, a critically acclaimed jazz-laced recording that found a groove in eclectic jazz shows on American radio.

STARLIFT:

Memories of Starlift, circa the 1960s, are dog-eared with “ole talk”. Small wonder. The “Lift”, with Ray Holman as avant-garde composer-arranger and supported by pan groupies, redefined entertainment in the panyard as well as in the dance hall. With “I Feel Pretty” as prologue, Starlift was the story on the West Side in 1961. There followed a succession of Beatles’ hits and Holman ditties, and, by dint of musical wizardry, the Woodbrook band became the toast of the entire country. Starlift didn’t affect only style, but also panache. And when Holman left to explore the universe, after copping pan honours in 1969 and 1971, Herschel Puckerin took control of the good ship and gave Panorama judges “pan ache”, with an explosive version of Sparrow’s “Du Du Yemi’’ in ’78. One of the best road bands to come down the pike.

TOKYO:

The John John band with its hoary past of conquering foes, struggled in Panorama contests but never could win the biggie: always the bridesmaid and never the bride. However, theirs was a marriage of sweet pan and hot asphalt, for the “road” was their altar. “Finlandia’’ was their theme song. Alas, no one—not even Clive Bradley, or Beverly Griffith—has been their saviour.

PAN AM NORTH STARS:

Defunct Pan Am North Stars of St James shot to fame when it won a festival in 1962 with Strauss’ “Voices of Spring”. Thereafter, the band won successive titles in ’63 and ’64, and claimed Panorama’s very first title in ’63. But Pan Am’s greatest achievement came in the late ’60s-early ’70s while the band toured the world with pianist Winnifred Atwell. Leader Anthony Williams is still revered as a pioneer and former cultural ambassador, and the band is fondly remembered as one that carved an unparalleled niche in pan. Indeed, North Stars’ recordings have become keepsakes, unlike many other bands' offerings.

Second runner-up.

TRINIDAD ALL STARS:

Trinidad All Stars, renowned for its odd slant on history as a 66-year organisation, perhaps the oldest steel band on Earth; for its lockstep with discipline; for its long embrace of former leader Neville Jules, who gave the band character and success and still had enough leftover humility for himself; “El Merengue”, the first-ever pan “Bomb” (mid-’50s); cluster bombs, as in “Intermezzo”, “Bacarolle”, “Liebestraum”, and “Humoresque” (1959); a 3,500-strong “sailor” band mimicking Gene Kelly to the strains of “Anniversary Waltz” and “Musetta’s Waltz’’ (1960); notorious for 4,000 supporters costumed as sailors and cavorting to “Cara Nome’’ all over downtown; classical music (local stage); classical music (festival); classical music (international stage—Africa, Asia, Europe, North America); Panorama victories under Rudy Wells and Leon “Smooth” Edwards—four titles in all; 50th anniversary concert featuring classical fare—including music by Bizet, Massenet, Mozart. Glinka, Telemann and Tchaikovsky—under the direction of Gerry Jemmott; marked for its 1987 presentation of “Classical Jewels VI”, a varied repertoire that featured pan and choir, pan and clarinet, pan and opera singers, “Rhapsody in Blue”, “In a Monastery Garden”, and Kalinkoff’s “Symphony No 1 in G minor, 4th movement” (Jemmott again); notorious for its “Hell Yard” birth (East Dry River), its earthy virtues, Chaguaramas basses and heavenly sounds.

First runner-up (THIS CLOSE).

DESPERADOES:

Presenting the Greatest Steelband in the World: Desperadoes!! Hailing from Laventille, Desperadoes may have been served the greatest leader in pan history in Rudolph Charles, with apologies to Neville Jules and Ellie Mannette of Trinidad All Stars and Invaders, respectively, (strong debate here in defence of Jules and Mannette, with no apologies to Charles). But we won’t get into an argument on personalities. Or, Desperadoes could boast the most professional panist in the world in Robert Greenidge; the best pan tuner in the world in Bertie Marshall; the sweetest pans in the universe, and on and on. Truth is, Despers has the best Panorama record of any steelband, including championships in 1970, 1976, 1977 and 1983 with arranger Clive Bradley at the helm, and in 1966 and 1985 under the musical leadership of Beverly Griffith. (Former manager Robert Greenidge co-arranged in 1985 and copped two titles himself.) What an enviable achievement! And Bradley delivered in back-to-back Panoramas in 1999 and 2000, bringing the total to ten championships. But Despers also won the 1986 Steelband Festival with Borodin’s “Polovetsian Dances”, following a 16-year hiatus from the competition, and beating the mighty All Stars. Then won again in 1988, and three-peated in ’92.

Moreover, Desperadoes has performed at concerts around the world like a computerised entertainment machine, what with an array of calypsoes and pop songs programmed into their deep repertoire.

The band is deserving of the sobriquet, “The Greatest Steelband in the World.”

It’s the best one can say about the champions, with nary an apology to aforementioned bands.

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EDITED by Ladislao Kertesz,  kertesz11@yahoo.com,  if you would like to be in the circular’s mailing list or any old boy that you would like to include.

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Photos:

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