Pe­ter Ray Blood

The week­end past was a mixed one as I suc­ceed­ed in bal­anc­ing my dad­dy chores with some hard­core lim­ing on the Ar­rival Day hol­i­day on Mon­day. Col­in Mur­ray of Carib Brew­ery suc­cess­ful­ly in­vei­gled me to make on­ly my sec­ond vis­it to San­ta Rosa Park race course in Ari­ma, where his com­pa­ny host­ed cus­tomers and friends. It was the stag­ing of the first of the 2010 "Triple Crown," with the Carib Brew­ery Ltd Guineas be­ing the day's blue riband event. I must ad­mit that it was an af­ter­noon of good fun, blessed by fair weath­er, and com­pli­ment­ed by sump­tu­ous serv­ings of food and pre­mi­um liquor, with live en­ter­tain­ment by Carib Wood­brook Play­boyz, JMC 3Veni, So­ca Elvis, and Nali­ni Akal.

Even for­mer So­ca Monarch Ron­nie Mc In­tosh couldn't refuse an in­vi­ta­tion by 3Veni leader Veeren­dra Per­sad to get up on stage to do a few of his gold­en oldies. As with all Carib pro­mo­tion­al events, the Carib Girls were al­so in at­ten­dance–six gor­geous young women, el­e­gant­ly at­tired, all mak­ing guests feel at home. Plain talk, bad man­ners, but this bevy of beau­ties is the best I have seen Carib present in re­cent times. I al­so had a chance to rem­i­nisce with for­mer Miss T&T beau­ty pageant en­trant Tri­cia Lee, one of the first ever Carib girls.

Not know­ing A from Z in horse rac­ing I sto­ical­ly kept my mon­ey in my pock­et through­out most of the evening. But tempt­ed by my friends from Cheers Pub, one of St James most pop­u­lar wa­ter­ing holes, in­clud­ing Steve Boland, Chin, Raj, Sean and Sab­ri­na, I must con­fess I made a wa­ger on the fea­ture race. Call it be­gin­ner's luck, and thanks to our new prime min­is­ter, I won. Let me ex­plain, there were 12 hors­es in the race, but just one was fe­male. It didn't hurt that she was al­so the favourite. And so, my capriche worked, with woman emerg­ing as boss one more time, and me thank­ing the own­er of Grande Riv­iere, Neil Poon Tip, and jock­ey Bri­an Hard­ing.

The Edge of fun and food

I must ad­mit that I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised last week­end to see the amount of good times peo­ple are en­joy­ing in the south land at Paria Suites and The Edge in La Ro­maine. The Edge has this Fri­day af­ter-work lime that just keeps go­ing and go­ing, not stop­ping un­til the wee hours of Sat­ur­day morn­ing, while neigh­bour­ing Paria Suites has this tremen­dous Sat­ur­day night of­fer go­ing, of a rack of ribs for just $99. The ho­tel's restau­rant, run by a most af­fa­ble food and bev­er­age man­ag­er in the per­son of Car­ol Cowie, has al­so be­gun a Sun­day morn­ing fam­i­ly break­fast, com­pris­ing of ten dif­fer­ent dish­es.

BLOOD­NOTES

The back cov­er of Tam­bu the Jour­ney with gui­tarist Ju­nior Whar­wood pic­tured sec­ond from right with mem­bers of Char­lie's Roots. Pho­to: cour­tesy Nicholas St Bernard

Ju­nior re­mem­bered

This com­ing Sun­day–June 6–marks the 19th year of the pass­ing of a mu­si­cal icon; Ju­nior Louis Whar­wood, gui­tarist/vo­cal­ist of Char­lie's Roots, the na­tion's first so­ca band. Ac­com­pa­nied by fel­low gui­tarist Tony Voisin, Ju­nior served up some out­stand­ing mu­sic for not just Roots but was one of the most sought af­ter ses­sion and stu­dio mu­si­cians in his time.Ju­nior may be gone but he's cer­tain­ly not for­got­ten.

Is Car­ni­val time again in town

It's start­ed–Car­ni­val 2K11 is al­ready bub­bling with band­lead­ers be­gin­ning to swamp me with no­tices of the up­com­ing launch­es. It seems that first out of the blocks will be for­mer King of Car­ni­val Pe­ter Samuel who is re­turn­ing to the band­leader's chair with a pre­sen­ta­tion ti­tled Skull­dug­gery....the dance of de­ceit. On pa­per, and well ad­ver­tised on Face­book, Pe­ter Sam's band is be­ing served by some mu­sic that can on­ly de­scribed as "sen­sa­tion­al," name­ly David Rud­der & Char­lie's Roots, and 3Canal. Yes, ex­pect the re­turn of so­ca's bedrock. The launch of Skull­dug­gery is sched­uled for Ju­ly 4, Amer­i­ca's In­de­pen­dence Day, at the re­cent­ly re-opened An­chor­age, Ch­aguara­mas, at 5 pm.

As ex­pect­ed, the band­lead­ers are play­ing their cards close to their chests but I have man­aged to learn that triple-crown Band of the Year (Medi­um) cham­pi­on Ron­nie & Caro is launch­ing its C2K11 pre­sen­ta­tion on Au­gust 28, fol­lowed by Pulse 8 on Sep­tem­ber 10. Be­cause of its com­mit­ments to Carib­ana in Toron­to, Cana­da, Tribe is said to be con­sid­er­ing a date some­where around Ju­ly 24. It's well known that Lega­cy is al­ways late out of the blocks and "Big Mike" An­toine said that he's con­tem­plat­ing a date be­fore Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val this time, in Oc­to­ber. Oth­er ten­ta­tive launch dates are Spice (Ju­ly 7); Is­land Peo­ple (Au­gust 13 or 20); and God­frey Enile's Show­time (Au­gust 22).