The King of Pop Holds Court Inna Kingston, 1975

WERE YOU AWARE

that the King of Reggae once occupied the stage alongside the King of Pop? What is perhaps most amazing about this small bookmark in Marley’s life is that the odds of two future megastars meeting and performing together on the same stage are so infinitesimal that they are incalculable.




Original announcement of the concert

Advertisement in local Jamaican newspaper


The year was 1975, the same year that Bob Marley breaks internationally with the hit single “No Woman, No Cry” from his Live! album which was recorded over two consecutive nights at London’s Lyceum Theatre in July 1975. In Michael Jackson’s very first trip to Jamaica, Motown’s Jackson Five visited the island to perform a show headlined by Bob Marley and the Wailers.


Michael & Marlon Jackson at 56 Hope Road with Seeco Patterson (right)


Despite Michael and Jermaine’s solo successes, the Jackson Five, which also included brothers Marlon, Jackie, and Tito – and later Randy – were on the decline in 1975, and would leave the Motown label just one year later resulting in the group being sued by Motown for breach of contract. This meant little to the adoring fans in Jamaica who relished the opportunity to see Michael Jackson perform alongside their beloved Bob Marley. As a solo artist, Jackson had already sold several million records by the time the group made their first visit to Jamaica.


The Jackson 5 and The Wailers hang out on a fallen mango tree at 56 Hope Road
with promoter Chester McCullough and some close friends

The show, which was initially scheduled for February 15, 1975, was held at Kingston’s National Arena on March 8, 1975 and featured the Wailers original line-up of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer along with Carlton Barrett (drums), Aston “Family Man” Barrett (bass), Al Anderson (lead guitar), Lee Jaffe (harmonica) and a brass section of Bobby Ellis (trumpet) and Richard “Dirty Harry” Hall (saxophone). Also on the bill were Marcia Griffiths, Bongo Herman, and the I-Three. The Jackson Five took the stage nearly an hour and a half prior to the Wailers and gave a tremendous performance with their fancy footwork and hit songs.


Live shots from the Jackson 5’s concert in Jamaica, 1975


The show lasted for more than six hours with the Wailers playing until 4:00 a.m. The fans couldn’t get enough of Marley, Tosh, and Livingstone with the audience in the ten dollar section being forced to break through police barriers into the fifteen dollar seats in order to get a better glimpse of the stage.


The Wailers performing together for one of the last times, on the same bill
as the Jackson 5 at the National Arena in Kingston, 1975


According to a review of the show by Balford Henry which was published in the Jamaica Gleaner on March 11, 1975, poor seating organization and technical audio problems resulted in the show starting almost two hours after the scheduled start time. Comedian Ranny Williams had the unfortunate task of warming up a crowd already frustrated by the late start.





Bob live at the Wailers/Jackson 5 concert in Kingston, 1975

Marijuana makes for interesting news

Marijuana makes for interesting news, no doubt, and some of the stories we read in 2014 stretched the boundaries of belief.

This was a year of new ideas and changing ideologies. A wave of surprising pot products hit the market as entrepreneurs looked at every angle for cashing in. Outside of the U.S. pot shops, there were many intriguing global developments, from Jamaica loosening its marijuana laws to Uruguay progressing on its groundbreaking national marijuana program.

There were plenty of bizarre moments too: the week-long raid on a tiny Albanian village where 25 tons of marijuana were seized, daring smuggler escapes, a food truck selling marijuana-infused eats, okra plants mistaken for weed, the creation of a cannabis comic-book convention and a real police report where 1 gram of marijuana was reported stolen.

Ganja in Jamaica

A Rastafarian named Bongho Jatusy smokes a pipe of marijuana outside a museum dedicated to the memory of late reggae icon Bob Marley in Kingston, Jamaica. 

Ganja in Jamaica: After 100 years of prohibition, new law to decriminalize

KINGSTON, Jamaica — Jamaica’s justice minister said Tuesday that legislation has been drafted todecriminalize marijuana on the Caribbean island where the drug has been pervasive but prohibited for a century.

Mark Golding told reporters that lawmakers should make possession of 2 ounces or less a petty offense before the end of 2014. He also expects decriminalization for religious purposes to be authorized by then, allowing adherents of the homegrown Rastafarian spiritual movement to ritually smoke marijuana, which they consider a “holy herb,” without fear of arrest.

Golding said it will take longer to agree on more complex changes to Jamaica’s Dangerous Drugs Act needed to spur a medical marijuana and cannabis research sector. He said Jamaica, where scientists developed a cannabis-derived medication to treat glaucoma decades ago, is “well-positioned to be a forerunner” in efforts to research therapeutic uses of the plant.

“The world is

As Jamaica advances marijuana decriminalization, the government is committed to battling drug traffickers, Golding stressed. He said keeping marijuana away from children, the international black market and organized crime will be a top priority.

Previous efforts to decriminalize marijuana, or “ganja” as it is largely known in Jamaica, failed to advance because Jamaican officials feared they would violate international treaties and bring sanctions from Washington. But those concerns have eased now that a number of nations and some U.S. states have relaxed marijuana laws.

Golding said the regulatory framework needed for a medical marijuana and research industry in Jamaica is still being hashed over. Setting maximum limits on pot cultivation is not anticipated, he said, but the government wants to ensure that small farmers “are not excluded and it does not just become something exclusively for major capital-intensive investors.”

That’s a lot

Ethan Nadelmann, head of the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance, a pro-legalization group based in New York, called Golding’s announcement a “significant step forward.”

It’s “both noteworthy in that Jamaica is reforming policies on possession, religious use and medical use at more or less the same time, and politically important in providing leadership in the Caribbean,” he said.

A recent preliminary report by the Caribbean Community of 15 nations and territories said medical marijuana could help boost the region’s economy.

The Lemonade Stand

Budshot: Larry Romulan Kush

CANNABIS CULTURE - Larry Romulan Kush bud by 420WeedMaster John Berfelo.

The History of Cannabis in Canada – Part 6: 1960s, Psychedelics, Hippies and The Summer of Love

CANNABIS CULTURE - Despite draconian laws, cannabis use dramatically increased in Canada during the 1960s.

Read the rest of the articles in the The History of Cannabis in Canada series.

Psychedelic Culture Blossoms

Despite draconian laws, cannabis use dramatically increased in Canada during the 1960s. The popularity of beatnik literature and folk music on college campuses helped "beat" culture to flourish, evolving into a larger movement the media first called "fringies" and then "hippies."

The sudden popularity of a new substance called LSD altered the consciousness of a wider counter culture, urged by psychedelic advocate Timothy Leary to "tune in, turn on and drop out" of conventional society.

The first generation to grow up in fear of the nuclear bomb also became a generation which questioned the establishment. Marijuana was widely used by the hippies, who helped to inspire new social movements such as anti-war demonstrations, political activism, feminism and environmentalism.

Folk-rock singer Bob Dylan introduced the Beatles to pot in 1964, and their extremely popular record Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) and subsequent Magical Mystery Tour did much to popularize drug experimentation. Many of the legendary rock bands of the late '60s were inspired by grass and psychedelics, including Canadian artists like Robbie Robertson, the Guess Who and Steppenwolf, and US bands like The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and The Doors.

This was a period of dramatic expansion for cannabis culture. The number of Canadian pot smokers doubled between the years 1960 and 1965, then doubled twice more between 1966 and 1970. In 1966, one post secondary student in 25 was a marijuana smoker and that total leaped to almost one in three by 1970.

The Summer of Love

1967 was the "Summer of Love" when thousands of hippies and young runaways descended into the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. The new psychedelic rock music called "the San Francisco Sound" spread the message to "feed your head."

The "heads" gathered together, first at "love-ins" held in city parks, then at large rock festivals held at remote rural locations where thousands of people could listen to the new acid rock bands and smoke pot openly without the presence of police.

All across North America, a new feature was being added to apartments and college dormatories: the "head room."

With day-glo psychedelic posters, lava-lamps and covered windows, the head room was a sanctuary were marijuana users could shut themselves away from police and be with others of their own kind.



Songs with lyrics about marijuana played constantly on popular music stations. Some references were explicit, while others were hidden between the lines to bypass censors.

In an era when poets strove for metaphors to avoid persecution, "Flower Power" became a way of saying the unsayable about marijuana: its spirit was an essential driving force behind the cultural revolution.

Draft Dodgers and Communes

From 1965 to 1973, the United States entered full-scale into the hideous Vietnam War. Peace-loving Americans flowed northward, fleeing conscription. Canada became saturated with American poets, peace activists and pot growers.

These illegal refugees were unable to hold legal employment, and so many turned to growing cannabis. Many settled in British Columbia, bringing with them innovative indoor growing techniques. While beat poets puffed pot in crowded Toronto nightclubs, back-to-the-land hippies lay naked on the sand and huffed herb in places like Vancouver's nudist Wreck Beach.

Communes were most prolific on the West Coast, but the most famous of all was Southern Ontario's Church of the Universe, founded in 1969. Church members professed marijuana to be the sacred Tree of Life.

Did George Washington Use Medical Marijuana?

Before “Choom Gang” Obama or “I didn’t inhale” Clinton, the first president likely smoked pot.

Presidential aspirants smoking pot, states growing hemp for industrial use—2015 sounds a lot like 1776.

In fact, America’s first president may have been one of the nation’s original users of medicinal marijuana.

George Washington’s rotting teeth and the dentures that replaced them—made of hippopotamus ivory, gold springs, and brass screws—caused enormous pain, which some believe he alleviated with weed as evidenced from a passage from one of the president’s letters:

“Began to separate the male from female plants rather too late...Pulling up the (male) hemp. Was too late for the blossom hemp by three weeks or a month.”

The implication is that the Father of the Nation was going for female plants with higher THC content.