Page 95 - Reggae Festival Guide Magazine 2019

familiar with them, helps, as do the introductions

from Bartsch and his editor and the informative
preface from reggae historian Noel Hawks. The

photos themselves are marvelous, like a joke
that grows more subtle with each telling, and

notes from artists, record producers, graphic
designers, label employees and the original

photographers add valence and make for a very

informative side-history that delves into the
history of the music itself.

Covers: Retracing Reggae Record

Sleeves in London

By Alex Bartsch

(One Love Books, 2018)

Born in Long Beach – Southern California’s first
film capital (in the silent days) – and hosting a

radio show out of North Hollywood, I have a
fondness for books that revisit sites where old

movies were filmed. Some of these locations
I pass quite often and it’s enjoyable to think

of some of the great film-makers, from Buster

Keaton to Billy Wilder, who worked there. Alex
Bartsch has come up with a new twist on the The Marvellous Equations of the Dread:

concept with a book of photographs, in which A Novel in Bass Riddim
he locates a place where a classic reggae album

cover was photographed and holds up the cover By Marcia Douglas
to show you how it fits. It may sound nutty, but

it makes for a very entertaining book, and I’m (New Directions, 2018)
sure locating all these original sites was a gas! he “reggae novel” has a history all its

Being a record collector who has most of these Town, from the straight-up storytelling of
records, or is at least more than moderately Michael Thelwell’s The Harder They Come to the

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