Versions Galore and more at Crucial
By Chris Ziegler

PHOTO by JOHN GILHOOLEY

As the man once said, you can get it if you really want, and if you try—well, those who go to Crucial know how that goes. Almost five years ago in the dead part of December, there started up a dub/roots/reggae club in a cowboy bar across from an old Safeway parking lot where the tow trucks prowl, and now Crucial is one of Long Beach’s most notable monthly nights—part of the city’s proudest private reserve, where they use special discretion to play only the strongest stuff. On virginal visits to LA dancehall clubs with former Long Beach reggae evangelist Courtney Minors (then the owner of the Kulcha Beat record store, now living back in Jamaica), selector Virginia Slim discovered the feeling she’d put back into Crucial years later: “I’d be all bright-eyed like, ‘What’s this? A dancehall club?’ It was dark and seedy and people were just winding in the corners,” she says with a little grin, “and I was like, ‘Yeah . . . yeah, I like this! This is cool!’”

Long Beach got that first Crucial as an early Christmas present in December 2002, with today’s senior selectors—co-founder Sonic Dread, Gregory-G and Virginia—all attached as friends to club co-founder Prince Rod-I, one of Long Beach’s most versatile and best-loved DJs, since relocated to Osaka. Dread and (real name) Rodi and Good Foot’s Dennis had tried an earlier reggae club called Heavy Manners at Que Sera, but the night never got out of the water. Relocating a couple hundred feet down the other side of the street at the Prospector found new roots—outsider soul singer Cody ChesnuTT was scooting around the very first night (“Random!” says Dread) along with a healthy population in front of Dread and Rodi, whose role as the new Crucial’s de facto diplomat soon made Virgina and Gregory (and Far East Sound’s MC Chicho) principal club residents. That little cowboy-and-western bar made a good match for 50 years of Jamaican music—if you ever saw The Harder They Come, it makes simple sense.

Kind of her dream club, Virginia says now—Crucial selectors get unlimited license to pull and play anything they want, to drop transmission from macho digital dancehall back to sweetheart classics by Toots or Sugar for a crowd that will follow the setlist all night. Gregory-G—who cracked his knuckles for years at clubs in Orange County just because he wanted to DJ so badly—remembers this good advice: “I had a friend who told me, ‘Play what’s in your heart—no matter what the crowd is, you’ll win them over.’”

So inside his heart is a box of those pasted-label import 45s? “Among other things,” he says, groaning like his heart just deflated when I ask a stumper record-collection question about the best year reggae ever had. Suffering for art right out in public—“There’s a not a year I don’t love! You’re killing me right at the moment!” he says, as Dread (’70s rockers) and Virginia (the early ’90s/late ’80s dancehall she very first found) give less damaging answers about their personal favorites.

His years DJing have taught him how to listen, says Dread, who grew up on reggae radio in Detroit while young Gregory first learned what reggae was on the day Bob Marley died. (“I thought he was just a singer,” he says, “and then I looked in deeper.”) Now as each night’s atmosphere gets sweeter, Crucial gets as cozy and personable as a house party: “All I remember is shirts coming off,” says Virginia. “And pirouettes!” 

CRUCIAL THE PROSPECTOR | 2400 E SEVENTH ST | LONG BEACH 90804 | 562.438.3839 | MYSPACE.COM/CRUCIALSOUNDSYSTEM | SAT 10PM | AND FIRST SATURDAY OF EVERY MONTH | $5 | 21+