Don Letts passed by the store the other day before his gig with Big Audio Dynamite at the O2 Academy in Leeds.
Don Letts is a British film director and musician. He is credited as the man who through his DJing at clubs like The Roxy brought together punk and reggae music.
Letts was born in London, England and educated at Tenison’s School in Kennington. In 1975, Letts ran the trendy London clothing store Acme Attractions selling, “electric-blue zoot suits and jukeboxes, and pumping dub reggae all day long.” Letts was deeply inspired by the music coming from his parents’ homeland Jamaica, in particular Bob Marley. After seeing one of Marley’s gigs at the Odeon in Hammersmith (June, 1976) he was able to sneak into the hotel and spent the night talking to and befriending Marley. By the mid 1970s Acme had quite a scene attracting all the like of The Clash, The Sex Pistols, Chrissie Hynde, Patti Smith, Deborah Harry and Bob Marley.
Seeing the crowd at Acme, the then promoter Andy Czezowski started up the Roxy, a London nightclub during the original outbreak of punk in England, so that people could go from the store and have some place to party. As most bands of that era had yet to be recorded, there were limited punk rock records to be played. Instead, Letts included many dub and reggae records in his sets, and is credited with introducing those sounds to the London punk scene, which was to influence The Clash and other bands. As a tribute, he is pictured on the cover of the album Super Black Market Clash. He was able to use the fame and money from DJing and the Acme story to make his first film, The Punk Rock Movie (1978).
Since this first movie, Letts has expanded to doing documentaries and music videos for multiple bands. In 2003 his film Westway to the World won a Grammy Award.
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