XLR8R on Bullwackie (2003): »Lion in the Bronx«

Stumbling upon the artwork above on Deadly Dragon’s Facebook page reminded my that I still have not been able to get hold of »Bullwackie«, a documentary about Lloyd »Bullwackie« Barnes and his label, Wackies.

So I got back on Google where I couldn’t find the movie once again, but at least I found a nice story Matt Fisher did about Barnes and his label for XLR8R magazine back in 2003. It is called »Lion in the Bronx« and is not to be confused with the New York Times’ story on Bullwackie from last year which was called »New Roots in the Bronx for a Lion of Reggae«.

Here’s a little excerpt:

… as the political and economic realities of Jamaica soured in the late ’60s, Barnes immigrated to the US to find work and wound up settling in the Bronx in 1968. Missing the communal atmosphere of the dances, Barnes started his own sound system called Bullwackie’s Disco, spinning Studio One tunes and dubs at various locations around New York. “I didn’t have a car, so we used to move our things around on the trains,” says Barnes. “Somebody would take the records, the speaker and turntables and we’d just load up the subway car and ride it to different parts of the city.”

Read the whole article here.

PS: If you wanna do me something really good, let me know where I can find the Bullwackie documentary and/or buy me the whole Wackies back catalogue reissued by Basic Channel.

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