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--Herbisme (talk) 23:47, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Herbert V. Reid III | A Biography

Beginnings

Great writing doesn't always arise untethered from great experience, not all great art comes from great sources, and not all great music comes from famed musical roots. Herein is a case in point. A young boy, born and named after his father, Herbert Vincent Reid, experiences his youth in the late 1950s and 60s in Upstate New York.

The morality of the time was already strict, add to that the Baptist morality handed down to Herbert Jr. by his father and you have a recipe for a soul under pressure. Like many youths, the desire to rebel and break away from family was incipient in Herb's teenage years – New York City, not far away beckoned whenever he drifted into daydream.

Sometimes you know you're made out of a different fiber than others at a young age – like the ugly duckling growing into a swan – you know you're too big for the city of Buffalo, a house too small for two Herbert Reids, along with a mother, two brothers and a sister.

The naïve dream that many teenagers have that they can work at a job for minimum wage, save up enough money to go to college and live happily ever after isn't something that's easily disposed of, regardless of how, like our protagonist, how intuitive one is. He works after school at Kentucky Fried Chicken, doesn't waste his pay on exorbitance, puts a little away for rainy days (which come and go without any bank account withdrawls) and sets his eyes again on a new life in the big city after high school graduation.

Escape New York

Though the Big Apple offers many different places of instruction, the one that became most fitting, perhaps most fateful, was that of Manhattanville College. Perhaps it's because in his mind you can't lose yourself in a hamlet – the college isn't in NYC itself but is located in Purchase, NY – perhaps it's the perpetual feeling of “settling for second best” but the shoe they gave Herb to try on for size was maybe a little bit too small.

Still optimistic about at least getting closer to a big city and further away from Buffalo, Herb leaves home eager to immerse himself in new experiences, new people and new relationships.

He doesn't have a girlfriend, his vocation isn't set in stone yet – he knows he's not going to be a preacher like his father – and his musical interest is bubbling along in a cauldron of creativity.

So many things can happen to you when you're young, the pressure to perform a certain way is always there from family, not to mention friends. Searching for one's voice, one's true vocational talent in the world is process more often than product, a fact that may dawn on certain bright youths like Herb, even with the distractions of his new environ.

Theologians will say that youth needs religious instruction to find one's soul purpose, social advocates always recommend peer counseling, and of course there is the family that does the utmost to make one come out perfect.

Herb, like other youths of many eras, lets himself be shaped by nurture and culture forces but he has insight that many other youths lack – insight into expressions of human experience, expression that comes out in the creative arts – theater, fine art and specifically, music.

Expression Explodes

Our protagonist at this point is 16 years old, but is still battle weary from his claustrophobic home town. He knows he deserves new experiences, not the hand-me-downs of the past but something more vital, a fountain of youth and pool of real knowledge.

Unlike other boys of his age he isn't looking for a girlfriend – the buffet table of experience has boys and girls but somehow that isn't as delicious as what can only be called the “music of life,” and Herb wants to be part of this creative process.

Cheektowaga Records

Many argue that opportunities for African-Americans have never found real equity in American society – not at least in the Great Picture of Life. You can have programs put in place, put together promotional material and offer kind words but it's not the same thing as seeing real racial oppression in daily life and finding objectivity in the processing of wage and social equality. Some things don't pay off, some trains of thought are on the road to nowhere and Herb knows this well. So what does this situation lead to? Entrepreneurship.

College can't always prepare you for the real world. What you find out about reality is that it's something that you have to build on your own. Some people are builders, some merely dwell in the built. A record label, even a small label, run by a young black American was nearly unheard of in 1979, but it was a reality – a reality that Herb was able to build. It wasn't a rap label, wasn't a hip-hop, soul or R&B label it was focused on Independent Rock. College rock. The kind of thing with drums, guitars and young white guys screaming out their woes. Is this like a wrong number or just the way a talented person challenges themselves?

Taking the name from the Seneca for “Land of the Crabapples,” Cheektowaga Records graduated in 1979 from it's former title of “Snap Records” which had released only on 7” from Scotland's Dermot Brennan. Herb began his legwork, looking for unsigned talent and soon the label's roster began to fill.

Brooklyn's Box 7 was one of the first groups on the label, along with North Carolina's Next Generation. But what would become the flagship group for the label was welling up a fanbase in Upstate New York as well as NYC.

Zane Campbell and Hard Facts

How do you describe music with a painting? How do you describe a painting with a song? How do you describe life with an elaboration of expression in many dimensions? One person willing to test the boundaries of expression with Herb would be discovered in NY and go by the name Zane Campbell.

Later we are to learn that writing, art and music is in Zane's blood – just as Herb had fielded the creative fly ball from his own home plate. Zane was born to a family with a lineage connecting him to Appalachian folk musician Ola Bell Reed and his interests, perhaps not immediately obvious to the viewer or listener, were in the same field of inquiry – people, relationships, the play of natural forces, landscapes of the mind and the dull normality we return to after the shock of great art.

One thing that was obvious about Herb's selection process for his record label was that things had to respect their roots – Zane's was bluegrass, hillbilly music from the Carolinas but it was a new generation of musicians now, the 1980s were upon us and the twang of the banjo had transformed into the hum of an electric guitar.

Zane had teamed up with two other musicians for the tracks – Richard Gene on drums and Frank van der Lancken on bass and vocals. The three entered the Media Sound studio in NYC to ply out some tracks with Richard producing and Tim Hatfield handling the engineering chores.

Six tracks from Zane and his band came forth - “Hard to Forget,” “All Lost,” “If That's What You Want,” “Blast Off,” “Press the Button” and “All the Dreams.” Sometimes bleak in their deep lyricism, the three piece from NYC speak of the youth of the time –  the year is 1985.

Cheektowaga Part Two

Many things can happen when you mix rock and roll with business – it's a volatile mix which can produce both banality and chaos. In the case of Cheektowaga Records it was a little bit of everything – not aiming to become a super-corporate entity and always wanting to provide a voice for the musically marginalized. Success was something that Herb aimed for and success was definitely found as Cheektowaga Record's roster filled up to 10 artists.

One of these artists was Spanish-American singer Xica Jool, a young flamboyant chanteuse and witty lyricist from New York. Jool, also known by the name Nacha Mendez or Marghereta Cordero, was something different for Cheektowaga's style of musical product.

In the summer of 1985, Jool and 5 other studio musicians (plus some drum machines) laid down the groundwork for what was to become 5 tracks of club-friendly dance music. Singing in both Spanish and English, this EP would make Xica Jool a distinct artist of note on the mostly male independent label.