Crazy Baldhead is a side project of
The Slackers
The Slackers are an American ska band, formed in Manhattan, New York in 1991. The band's sound is a mix of ska, rocksteady, reggae, dub, soul, garage rock, and jazz. The Slackers' notability is credited to their prolific career, tours of Nor ...
headed by
Jayson "Agent Jay" Nugent.
Crazy Baldhead plays an innovative style of music that mixed
reggae
Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, "Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use the ...
,
ska
Ska (; ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. It combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. Ska is characterized by a wal ...
,
dub,
rock
Rock most often refers to:
* Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids
* Rock music, a genre of popular music
Rock or Rocks may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...
and
dancehall
Dancehall is a genre of Jamaican popular music that originated in the late 1970s. Initially, dancehall was a more sparse version of reggae than the roots style, which had dominated much of the 1970s.Barrow, Steve & Dalton, Peter (2004) "The Ro ...
. Members of the band include
Eddie Ocampo
Eddie Ocampo is a drummer of the Third Wave Ska movement. He performed in several bands, such as The Insteps, Stubborn All-Stars, Dave Hillyard Rocksteady 7, the Jammyland All Stars, the Fandanglers, and many more Ska and Version City
V ...
,
Victor Rice
Victor Rice (born April 17, 1967) is an American musician, record producer and mix engineer from New York City. Raised in Huntington, New York, Rice attended the Manhattan School of Music and began his professional career in the late 1980s during ...
,
Vic Ruggiero
Victor "Vic" Ruggiero, (also known as Rugaroo, Bad Vic or Lord Sluggo) is a musician, songwriter and producer from New York City who has played in reggae, blues, ska and rocksteady bands since the early 1990s, including The Slackers, Stubbor ...
,
Dave Hillyard
"Disco" Dave Hillyard is a tenor saxophonist originating from San Diego, California. He has performed in groups such as The Slackers, The Rocksteady Seven, The Donkey Show, Hepcat, Stubborn All-Stars, and has guested with the likes of Rancid, ...
and
Glen Pine
Glen William Pine is an American musician and songwriter from Boston, Massachusetts. He is most known for his role in The Slackers where he plays the trombone and sings. Pine joined the Slackers before the release of The Question on which he co ...
.
Since 1997, Nugent has been a staple in the New York City ska community and the band released their first album in 2004. The shifting collective also feature popular
reggae
Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, "Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use the ...
artists such as
Victor Rice
Victor Rice (born April 17, 1967) is an American musician, record producer and mix engineer from New York City. Raised in Huntington, New York, Rice attended the Manhattan School of Music and began his professional career in the late 1980s during ...
,
King Django
King Django (born Jeffrey Baker) is an American bandleader, singer, songwriter, arranger, engineer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist, especially in the genres of ska, rocksteady, reggae, dub, dancehall, rhythm & blues and soul. Other influen ...
, Rocker T and Buford O'Sullivan. In 2007, Nugent released
Crazy Baldhead Has a Posse, which he produced over a 10-year period, featuring guest musicians in every song. Other bands That featured Nugent's guitar work in the 1990s includes: Agent 99,
Stubborn All-Stars
Stubborn All-Stars are an American, New York City-based ska band led by King Django, front man of Skinnerbox and owner of Stubborn Records.
In 1994, Django assembled Stubborn All-Stars for a studio session which resulted in the four-song ' ...
, Da Whole Thing and
Version City Rockers
Version may refer to:
Computing
* Software version, a set of numbers that identify a unique evolution of a computer program
* VERSION (CONFIG.SYS directive), a configuration directive in FreeDOS
Music
* Cover version
* Dub version
* Remix
* ''Ve ...
.
In 2008, Crazy Baldhead released
The Sound of '69
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in E ...
, an album which reflects Agent Jay's take on rock music from 1969, covering influential bands such as
the Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the most influential band of all time and were integral to the developm ...
,
James Brown,
Johnny Cash
John R. Cash (born J. R. Cash; February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was an American Country music, country singer-songwriter. Much of Cash's music contained themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption, especially in the later s ...
,
the Stooges
The Stooges, originally billed as the Psychedelic Stooges, also known as Iggy and the Stooges, was an American rock band formed in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1967 by singer Iggy Pop, guitarist Ron Asheton, drummer Scott Asheton, and bassist Da ...
and
the Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band formed in London in 1962. Active for six decades, they are one of the most popular and enduring bands of the rock era. In the early 1960s, the Rolling Stones pioneered the gritty, rhythmically d ...
. These re-interpretations of pop hits from 1969 are played in the style of Jamaican music of the time - that is, the raw, funk-influenced early reggae, often called to as
skinhead
A skinhead is a member of a subculture which originated among working class youths in London, England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its nor ...
reggae, championed by producers such as
Lee "Scratch" Perry
Lee "Scratch" Perry (born Rainford Hugh Perry; 20 March 1936 – 29 August 2021) was a Jamaican record producer, composer and singer noted for his innovative studio techniques and production style. Perry was a pioneer in the 1970s development o ...
and Harry J.
American ska musical groups
Musical groups from New York City
Third-wave ska groups
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