Max Romeo and Tribu Acustica

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In 1999, Max recorded an album for Satta Records in Italy called ‘In This Time’. Accompanied by the acoustic ensemble Tribu Acustica, the album is a beautiful folk/world music version of Max’s roots lyric, a million miles from the rude boy beginnings of his music. What can you say about Max Romeo? By his own definition, he is ‘the oldest teenager in the business’ but he is also one of Jamaica’s most respected musical artistes. And, in a grim fundamentalist world, he is an old-school Rastafarian with tolerance and a sense of humour. These days, he is almost finished building his remote house in Jamaica and most of his royalties and touring money goes towards that. Ah, but once he was young and very much a ‘rude’ boy… Born Maxwell Smith in the Jamaican parish of St Ann on November 22, 1944, he recorded his first single in 1968 called ‘Put In Your Finger’. The next year, he met the ubiquitous Bunny Lee (then just a plugger for Coxsone Dodd) and, together, they came up with a tune that was so rude they could find no-one to sing it. Slim Smith turned it down, as did Roy Shirley and, eventually, Max had to sing it himself. The song was called ‘Wet Dream’ and, from its release on the Pama label in the UK, it was a skinhead smash> It was banned by the BBC and and went UK top 10! Max argued that the song was about a leaky roof (“lie down girl, let me push it up, push it up”…???) but the ban remained. On a roll, Max now did ‘Wine Her Goosie’ and ‘Pussy Watch Man’ but the mom

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