A former colleague of mine was a guy from Jamaica named Kevin. We had a lot of shared interests like superhero movies, spicy food, and keeping old cars on the road. We constantly passed a bottle of either Tabasco or some Jamaican equivalent between us because the cafeteria food was inevitably a little too bland for our tastes. One day he sees me dousing my fries with Tabasco and asked, "Hey, does Andrea like spicy food, too?" I laughed. Apart from Andrea's mom, everyone else in her family has a low heat index. Andrea told me when she and I started dating, her mom enjoyed cooking for me because she could actually use pepper. "Nope. She's got a pretty low tolerance. We have to specify 'mild' chicken from Popeye's because the 'spicy' is too much for her."
"Hold up. Popeye's chicken is too spicy for her?"
"Yup."
"Wow. She sure is white."
Another shared interest of ours is keeping old cars on the road. His ten-year-old Nissan Maxima is approaching 200,000 miles on the odometer. It's in fantastic condition because he's fastidious about routine maintenance and keeps it immaculate with a weekly car wash. One shortcoming was the inoperable stock stereo. He was wanting to replace it but was concerned about putting money into a noncritical system in a car as old as his. I shrugged my shoulders. "So you want to cruise in the hooptie and be able to blast Peter Tosh. Nothing wrong with that." He stood and gave me a hug that caught me off guard. "Yo, dude! What the..." He stood back and made a show of wiping a nonexistent tear from his eye.
"I'm so proud of you, Wayne!" Knowing my penchant for classic rock, he was duly impressed that I laid down a legit reggae reference.
I thought about it and realized there weren't a lot of mainstream reggae artists back in the day. Apart from Peter Tosh or the Marleys, I'd be hard pressed to name another. Then I remembered Eddy Grant. Born in British Guiana and raised in England from the age of 10, he decided that his life trajectory would be in music after seeing Chuck Berry in concert. Grant's biggest stateside success was 1983's "Electric Avenue" which peaked at #2 on the Hot 100. A year later, Grant released "Romancing the Stone" which was supposed to be heavily featured in the Douglas-Turner movie of the same name. Disagreements with producers, however, winnowed the song's role in the movie to a single brief scene. "Romancing the Stone" didn't rise to the level of "Electric Avenue", but it's my favorite of the two.
If Kevin ever gets a new stereo, I'll get him this album to play alongside Peter Tosh while he cruises in his hooptie.
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