Full Watts Book #1

A strong passion for reggae music has inspired people like Beth Lesser & Dave Kingston, Lol Bell-Brown, Penny Reel & Nick Kimberley and Ray Hurford to publish reggae-zines such as “Reggae Quarterly”, “Boom-Shacka-Lacka”, “Pressure Drop” and “Small Axe”. Also California based Steve Milne, who was inspired, encouraged and supported by Small Axe’s Ray Hurford from London UK as he states at the beginnning of this book, started publishing a reggae-zine. His excellent, extensive roots oriented “Full Watts” was first published in 1997. Initially it appeared three times a year, with every issue containing articles, interviews, discographies and reviews of albums, singles, books and magazines. In the first half of the new millennium “Full Watts” didn’t appear that regular anymore (there was even a 2 years absence), and then the publishing of the well respected reggae-zine stopped…

And now, Steve Milne (in collaboration with Ray Hurford) comes up with the “Full Watts” book, which features content taken from various issues of the reggae-zine. The “Full Watts” reggae-zine was known for its faultless and beautiful presentation and thus it’s obvious that this also goes for this book. Besides mostly fascinating indepth interviews with artists such as Mikey Chung, Albert Griffiths (of Gladiators fame), Ronnie Davis (The Itals), Earl Zero, Joseph Hill (the sorely missed lead singer of Culture), Linval Thompson, The Congos, Prince Malachi, Alpheus, Yami Bolo, The Abyssinians, Jah Warrior, Ras Michael, Barrington Levy and Monty Alexander, there are also a few articles included here such as Kung Fu Reggae, Album Reviews and Version Galore, which puts the spotlight on 12 versions of the “Freedom Blues” riddim. All in all a great read!! This book is definitely worth purchasing. Good to know Steve Milne is working on the next book, which will feature interviews with Alton Ellis, Mikey Dread, Marcia Griffiths, Prezident Brown, Clive Chin, Johnny Clarke, Sugar Minott and more.