Ras RoJah’s Reggae Ramblings By Roger Steffens Beat 1/07 Winter’s icy fingers are knotting our spines, and even in Southern Collie-for-Nyah yesterday our hose froze (no snide comments here, please). We’ve turned on the heat for the first time in nearly a year, and settled down in our deep-whorehouse-red antique sofa, curled up with a good book and an aromatic cup of cinnamon-inflected Mexican hot choclate called Ybarra, one of our lives’ greatest pleasures. Daughter Kate, wife Mary and I often trade books and magazines, and clear advance purchases with each other to avoid duplication. So this month, I’d like to recommend a few worthwhile reads, recently encountered. First off is my old friend Harvey Kubernik, perhaps Hollywood’s most overlooked historian of the relationship of rock music (including reggae) to film and television scores. Harvey’s been everywhere and seen it all. Nearly six feet tall, he’s a roundish man with still-brown curly hair, who has been covering the music scene since the mid-’70s. “I’m still recovering from a few different Bob Marley & the Wailers shows at the Roxy that decade,” he admits. He wasn’t just covering the latest, hippest, trippiest trends and trivia, but participating in some of its more inspired moments as well, as when he played on a number of late ’70s Phil Spector sessions with Dion, the Ramones and Leonard Cohen, alongside original members of Spector’s spectacular sixties Wall of Sound. His school mates read like a who’s who of the biz. But what makes this odd stew so much fun is Harvey’s style, the delight of someone in love with facts and trivia and context, one who was in the midst, and aware that he was, of history in the making. Today, his passion is to narrate the amazing bends and unexpected twists of his own journey, after years of bigging up others, with his wild, amazing insider stories that are, as Little Richard would say, “behind of behind.” His knowledge of film history and rock ’n’ roll is second to none. His first book, This is Rebel Music, showcases his wickedly ingenious interrogation style: part education, part banter, part kiss-ass, but always respectful for the works of both world-class megastars, and the movers and shakers that one seldom reads about, but whose artistic labors underpin the entertainment industry. He’s as at ease with Allen Ginsberg as he is with the daughter of a music plugger. Native Angeleno Harvey the K’s new book is called Hollywood Shack Job (also from the University of New Mexico Press). Its pages take us from “Rock Around the Clock” slamming off suburban movie screens in 1955; the first time Rock was heard like that; it was the first fire ’cross the bow of the Ship of Straights, and the world’s never been the same since. Harvey’s been accused of building a “John Ford Stock Company” of regulars who appear in both volumes, like the indescribable Kim Fowley (once a young gofer for legendary DJ Alan Freed), who is described thusly by Harv: “No one gets with the ‘Hollywood Shack Job’ program, from social politics, hustle, room-working, creativity, talent discovery, the country club rules, religion (not as faith but as entry and business opportunity), competition, replacement, networking, belief, betrayal, scamming, industry racism and reverse racism, sexism, producing and licensing rock ’n’ roll music content, to the current use of songs in TV, film, DVD, or new media, quite like ‘the Human Jukebox,’ Kim Fowley.” Harvey shuffles among D.A. Pennebaker, of Dylan’s Don’t Look Back, Ice Cube, Jim Jarmusch, James Ellroy, Andrew Loog Oldham (another returnee), Harry E. Northup, Curtis Hanson, Steven Van Zandt, Mel Stuart, Randall Poster and Robbie Robertson, showing how songs get matched to scenes, what worked and what (sometimes spectacularly) didn’t. You feel like you’re hanging out in one of those vintage Hollywood delis at a big round table with the machers and mavens and kvetchers, who will take the real truth of Tinseltown to the grave with them, unless they can find someone in the next generation to verbally download it on. It’s a great read for musicians, film-makers and music-lovin’ civilians alike. (Full Disclosure: There is a chapter about The Harder They Come, early rock movies from my teens in the ’50s, and other reggae films, in which I am the interview subject.) Finally, mention must be made of the illustrative use of Kubernik’s archives, original photos and super rare artifacts adding verity to the nostalgia. Roger Steffens is the co-founder of "The Beat" magazine, North America's oldest and most prestigious reggae and world beat publication, whose annual Bob Marley Collectors’ Edition he edits.  A former national promotions director of Island Records for reggae and African music, Steffens has been the chairman of the Reggae Grammy Committee since its inception in 1985. He and Hank Holmes began the award-winning “Reggae Beat” radio show on the NPR outlet in L.A. in 1979, and Bob Marley was their first guest.  Later the program was syndicated for four years to 130 stations worldwide.   Roger’s reggae collection fills six rooms of his Los Angeles home, floor to ceiling, and is known as Roger Steffens’ Reggae Archives, featured in 2001 for eight months in a public exhibition at the Queen Mary, in Long Beach, California.  In May 2004 he completed negotiations for his materials to move to Kingston, Jamaica, to become the founding collection of the National Museum of Jamaican Music.   Steffens has written several books about Bob Marley, but it is as an actor that he makes his living, primarily doing voice-overs.  He has narrated Oscar- and Emmy-winning films, and has been heard in “Forrest Gump,” “Wag the Dog,” and “The American President,” among hundreds of others.  He is also himself the subject of a 2005 documentary film called “Livicated,” directed by Erik Crown and produced by Paul Madelenat.  He is married and has two grown children.