It’s Sept. 25, 1985 at the Palace Theatre in downtown New Haven, Connecticut, and the buoyant staccato guitar rhythm, breezy sax and distinctly ’80s synth-pop has the crowd footloose. UB40, which has ...

A few years ago, Jamaica was seeing a roots reggae revival. After dancehall took hold in the ’80s, reggae had receded a bit, becoming more of a tourist attraction than a vital current in Jamaican ...

What a good-humored chop. Major Mackerel, a top Jamaican reggae star from the ‘80s, was briefly hospitalized with cuts to the head and hand after a jealous husband attacked with a two-foot samurai ...

That fall at Tipitina’s, they opened for another New Wave reggae band, Talking Dreads. (Aiges had originally considered that same name for his band, before settling on a mash-up of a Jamaican pun and ...

Late one night after his wife and kids were asleep, Scott Aiges started strumming Tom Petty’s “Refugee” on guitar, but with a reggae lilt. A light bulb went off: Wouldn’t it be great for a band to ...