Babylon Warriors
"The Whisky A-Go-Go" 1980
BW SLIDE SHOWS - Reggae
BW SLIDE SHOWS - Punta
Babylon Warriors
---- Gloria Heller 1979
The group got its start about 1978 when Patrick began thinking of putting together a new sound for the Los Angeles area: “Reggae music is going to be the sound of the ‘80’s.” Rehearsing in a garage that is steadily progressing into a full-fledged rehearsal studio for the BABYLON WARRIORS, the group began with copy tunes, focusing primarily on songs by Bob Marley, Third World, and Peter Tosh, among others. Their initial performing efforts met with considerable success, and so they rapidly moved on to writing their own songs. This originality, the group’s distinctive sound, forms the basis of their appeal. There is an enthusiastic following for their original tunes, such as ”Right Now” (I wanna know how you’re feelin’, you feelin’ all right?”),”One Love”(we are the new generation”), and “Dread Situation” (what you gonna do when your world falls apart, what you gonna do when your days go dark?) Among other gigs in the area, the BABYLON WARRIORS have appeared at the Arena, the O.N. Klub, the Starwood, the Whiskey-A-Go-Go, Cal State San Bernardino ,and University of Southern California at Irvine, and they have recently been videotaped for Channel 3’s New Wave Theater.
The members of the band feel engaged in the fight against “Babylon,” which is the Rasta word for “the system.” Most of the musicians in the group were born in Belize, the British colony on the Caribbean coast of Central America that used to be called British Honduras. The different sound of the BABYLON WARRIORS can be attributed partially to these Belizean roots, which run deep. That would include Lem Vaughn, the group’s arranger, on bass and vocals, Manny Good the drummer, Calbert Bucknor on keyboards, and Patrick Barrow, the leader, on rhythm guitar. (Patrick, a master furniture refinisher, owns and operates Pat Barrow’s Refinishing in Los Angeles, a successful business specializing in custom refinishing and repair and restoration of antiques.) Reggae actually reached Belize not long after its popular inception in Jamaica, through the efforts of Byron Lee and The Dragonaires, who brought Ken Lazarus (The tomorrow’s Children), Eric Donaldson, and other reggae singers from Jamaica to tour the country in the late sixties. It was the music more than the message that formed the immediate appeal in Belize. As Patrick describes it, “The reggae beat is like 20,000 tons of bass thrown right at you while the drummer is setting up the time for a double explosion.”
The other BABYLON WARRIORS are Jesse Easter, a street-wise rogue from Oakland, lead guitar and vocals, and Lewis Sampson, lead vocals, a yard-man who believes in his lyrics.
