Contents - Beth Lesser

from having more mouths than they could feed. Lists were also big. Metro
could list everything from capitol cities of the world to race horses whose
names end with ‘o’.
In fact, Metro‘s long, brain-busting stories became his trademark. Papa
San, a popular deejay who became a successful humorist and top lyrics writer,
heard Metro and took it as a challenge. He went home and wrote the longest
song he could. “That’s the first time I met Papa San, Metro recalls. “He made
a loooong lyrics - longer than mine at the time! I said to myself, ‘No, man,
this guy is really bad!’ Because I’ve never seen anybody go around my lyrics in
terms of the length. We started to spar together because he loves my style and
I love his style as well.”
Peter shone brightest when spinning a humorous or moral tale. In his 1986
‘Obeah in America’ (Jah Life), Metro expresses his surprise at finding common
Jamaican country superstitions alive and well in New York City. The
story was inspired by a girlfriend whose father, a Pastor in a Revival Church,
used to deal with such things as curative oils and special sprays which claim
to attract money or scare away the evil eye. “A lot of people would come at her
house and say ghosts is following them, and ghosts is in their home and they
buy a lot of stuff, burn a lot of candle. And I said, ‘I never know that was in
America. I thought that was in Jamaica alone’. That is how I come with that
song. That is real. And that girl became a baby mother of mine today.”
Peter proved to be a brave writer who was willing to tackle controversial
subjects live in the dance. No other deejay could, or perhaps had the fortitude
to talk about life in the ghetto the way Metro did. He didn’t record these
lyrics, but flashed them in a dance where the people who needed to hear the
messages, could hear them. 1
maSSive dread
Various guest singers and deejays would drop in, like deejay Massive Dread
(Dennis James), from Rema. Massive’s presence, however sporadic, gave the
sound another unique touch. Massive had his own style and was on the charts
for a couple of years with the biggest calypso derived hits of the early ‘80s,
including the classics ‘Melda’ and ‘This Is Massive’. ‘Melda’ was a version of
the classic Sparrow calypso ‘Obeah Wedding’, and ‘This is Massive’ featured
the chorus, ‘Soca rumba, Aruba the Bubbler’. * Formerly, Massive Dread had
been known as a heavy roots deejay. He recorded for Tappazuckie’s Stars label
in the later ‘70s, and an LP, shared with Ranking Dread, came out on Silver
Camel. The only other LP featuring his early work was recorded with Militant
Barry on vocals, in 1979, and released on Gorgon Sounds.
The match up seems unlikely. Massive had been touring with Byron Lee
and the Dragonaires whose specialty was calypso, not reggae. Yet, something
* The 1982 LP, Strictly Bubbling was produced by Valerie Chang- Cowan for the Wailing Soul’s UFO
label and the 1983 It’s Massive was produced by the Wailing Souls on Upfront
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