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Aura Lewis - Full Experience |
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AURA: In the end, I got screwed by Jimmy! First of all, Jimmy was shocked when he heard what we had been doing. He had been busy getting his productions out and he didn't even know we had been doing all of this with Lee. When the time came and he went to listen to it ... from the moment I did that, when Jimmy met Lee Perry, it was like I never existed. They made a deal between them. I don't know what happened. From the moment Jimmy got the masters, he would never let me hear what happened on the tape. He took it to remix it, because it all had been done on four track and he felt like certain things needed to be done. I don't know how he thought he was going to do things without consulting me, but he had gone anyway and put the band on an eight track or a sixteen track. I think when Lee gave the tape to Jimmy, he gave Jimmy a bad master on a bad tape. Then Jimmy gave me five songs on the worst master quarter inch that Lee had given him. He said, "Well, you know we can't do anything with this thing. I've taken it everywhere and they say they can't do anything with it". Jimmy had given me a contract first and when I went to a lawyer, the lawyer said it was no contract! When I went back to Jamaica, Jimmy gave me the story of how it wasn't working, but if I wanted, he would give me five of the songs. But I know that Jimmy had put the whole album on a good tape and he was holding onto it. I almost went crazy, I almost flipped out. I felt so used and then the way it was done. I couldn't even say anything to Lee. What could I say to Lee? All he would say was, "yeah, you took it away from me and then you went and got fucked. You took it from a Rastaman, you gave it to a Baldhead." So this was the chaos that was taking place out of that wonderful thing which had started so beautifully. By the end, it had gotten into the regular old problem with Jamaican music, the reason why today the music is where it's at. |
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When I finished that thing, the voices were upfront and it was great,
with the rhythm track and Lee's mixing and all that. Afterwards, when Lee and Jimmy started trying to work the thing by themselves, they want to add horns on it, while it was still on the four track. By adding horns, the voices were taken too far back. I guess Lee charged Jimmy all this money and then he gives Jimmy this thing where the voices where too far back because he knew Jimmy would have a hard time dealing with it. Then the whole thing went down the drain. Anyway, I kept my little five songs and after a while I gave up. People were saying, "yeah, if we had the masters, we could overdub, we could modernize the sound". After three years of that, I decided to forget it. I put it to one side and I started doing other things. Twelve years later, I found myself in France, sick of the United States, wanting to hear nothing about Jamaicans and wanting a change - some fresh air. I came to France because I was interested in what was happening with the African scene in France. I met Jose - he's done a lot for reggae music here. He's the one who introduced me to Blue Moon. Jean Coton heard it and he said "Man, this is the old sound of Scratch! Don't worry, we'll put it out". DAVID: Tell me about the song "At Midnight". AURA: Scratch is one of those prolific poets. I think he missed his calling. He is a great poet in the sense of rhyme and he's so funny with the things that come out of his head. It was one of those nights that we were really feeling good and we'd been working all day. It was at midnight and it was a full moon, one of those wondrful Jamaican nights. We were saying "Wow, it's midnight!" and I said something like "At midnight", and Lee Perry went "When the clock strikes". That's how the song came about, right like that in the studio. The musicians just got into the rhythm. 'At Midnight' was one of those studio songs which gave me a lot of pleasure. I love the way Scratch uses words and phrases. We used to do all the time off tape, but this time it worked (on tape). |
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DAVID: What about 'Full Experience', the song itself? AURA: 'Full Experience' was the song I wrote for this idea I had of putting the two other women, black women, as a group that would be three women from the three parts of the african diaspora, which is the Continent itself, the Caribbean and America. With Pamela Reed, Candy McKenzie and myself, I thought it would be perfect, because we all happened to be in Jamaica at the same time. I had just written the song and Lee Perry loved it. Boris Gardener was the bassist - I love the bass line. We sang the song and Lee did the arrangement. I love it, I really love the arrangement of "Full Experience". We all had such individual songs. This was really the thing that excited me. We all had our own tonalities. If it could have worked, that would have been one of the baddest (groups). On top of it, we could have done music from anywhere, we could have done any style. |
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DAVID: What about 'Young, Gifted and Broke'? AURA: 'Young, Gifted and Broke' comes from a song that I love, Nina Simone's 'Young Gifted and Black'. I thought about that and I said to myself, "why not Young, Gifted and Broke", because that way, we cover more youth, we cover the whole world. Rather than "Young, Gifted and Black", this was my idea. I wrote te lyrics with that in mind, making it more universal. |
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