pan podium special event feature
CROSSFIRE STEELBAND – ON AN EXCURSION TO RIO CLARO In the 1940s, fights in Trinidad were unfortunately a common occurrence, men with a fighting spirit would take any opportunity and sometimes no opportunity at all, just a glance could be enough to trigger their unrestrained and raging need for bloodshed, a need that always took over any common sense and there was no stop to their frustrated and fiery temper. One morning, fifteen of us from Crossfire steelband took our drums on an excursion to spend the day playing at Rio Claro, South East Trinidad. We played during the train journey, entertaining all the passengers in our carriage. While we were taking a break a voice was heard from the back of the carriage urging us not to stop, it was Carlton, better known as “Back Head’, offensive and dreaded for his constant need for a fight, a real “bad john “as we say in Trinidad. Not giving him the benefit of our attention we carried on playing and stopping at random when it suited us, we knew too well to ignore his presence but when he became so persistently loud and obnoxious we all decided to stop playing altogether. He suddenly got up, picked up two of our drums and threw them overboard, looking at us defiantly he took a knife out of his pocket, snatched two more drums and before he could throw them, Eamon Thorpe’s brother, Roger, (a bad john himself) stopped him by grabbing his arms while in the motion of swinging the drums through the open door, we just stood there looking at the knife and at the two of them holding and pulling at the drums when finally they fought fiercely with one another, everyone around them scampered to other carriages. While fighting, both coming closer to the door, Roger in a final struggle pushed ‘Blackhead’ out of the open carriage door, Blackhead fell out of the speeding train onto the rail tracks, and we all screamed, “He is dead! He is dead!” Roger, his face bleeding all over his shirt looked behind where Black Head would have been lying only to see him brushing off his clothes and walking away from the tracks. Our excursion had taken an abrupt turn and while accompanying Roger to the hospital he went into an epileptic fit. For this incident, ‘Blackhead’ was prosecuted and given a 3 months jail sentence.
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Pan Podium • Summer 2011 • Celebrating 60 Years of Pan in the UK
