ROM MICHIGAN PALACE TO CBGBS As critic and writer Lucy Sante writes: ‘Felice Rosser brought her Detroit ears to punk, having been teethed on Motown, the 1967 riots, Funkadelic, the MC5, and the Stooges, not to mention church, which you can hear in her voice, too. Reggae became a powerful influence, starting with Bob Marley, and then Burning Spear, the Mighty Diamonds, and U-Roy.’
She soon became a unique presence in the Punk clubs of lower Manhattan. ‘There weren’t so many black people on the scene at that time,’ but Punk,’ she admits, ‘was a liberator for women. Young black women played violin and piano when I was growing up in Detroit, but not Rock’n’Roll instruments – bass, guitar and drums.’
Good friends with Patti Smith and Samo – Jean Michel Basquiat’s tag at that time – she started playing bass and writing songs. Inspired by Punk’s DIY attitude, Rock’n’Roll, Funk, Free Jazz, Dub, Reggae and burgeoning Hip Hop, she was the bass player in Brooklyn’s all-female reggae band Sistren. In 1988 she formed FaithNYC, a band in Vernon Reid’s Black Rock Coalition (BRC).
Featured on BRC’s fortieth anniversary album Rock’n’Roll Reparations, is ‘I Stood Up’ – Felice’s anthem of resistance against self-doubt from Love Is a Wish Away.
PULSATING ROCK, COOL SOUL, BUBBLING REGGAE The album was produced by guitarist Justin Adams, who’s played with Robert Plant, Jah Wobble and Sinead O’Connor. He produced Rachid Taha, Suad Massi and Tinariwen, and also plays guitar on the LP. In his words, Felice’s “commanding, muscular voice” reminds him of Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Wire music critic Michael A Gonzales says Felice’s unique vocal styling has “a texture of whiskey and honey, and a chameleon-like versatility from the cool swoon of adoration on ‘Love Is a Wish Away’ to stylings reminiscent of guitarist Joan Armatrading.’
Percussionist and partner Fin Hunt joins her on the LP’s highly personal songs, from the addictive R&B bassline-driven title track to the dub and jazz echoes in ‘Love In a Silent Way’. Heartfelt ‘Eagle Street’ and ‘Can I Make It Up to You’ are elegiac, while ‘Everything Is All Around You’ and ‘Overpass’ are flat-out, gutsy Rock’n’Roll. ‘Climbing All the Way to Zion’ is dedicated to her great grandfather, as a young man walking up the road in Milledgeville, Georgia.
DUBLAND The limited edition double album features two new dubs by the legendary Youth – ‘Dub Is a Wish Away” and ‘I Stood Up’, alongside his remixes of those songs. New York electronica maestro Pablo Martin worked with FaithNYC to remix the evocative ‘Useless’, about losing a job in cutthroat New York. He dubs out on ‘Can I Make It Up to You’ and ‘Everything Is Always Around You’. The cover for the limited edition album, ‘Map of Felice’, encompassing Detroit, JA, and Lower Manhattan musical landmarks, is by special effects artist Kevin S, who’s worked on Brad Pitt’s legs in Troy and The Veiled World of Nick Cave.
In the double album liner notes, oral historian Bud Kliment calls FaithNYC’s Love Is a Wish Away, “Music for moderns, part false, part true like anything. You might notice hints of Sly, or Sly and Robbie, or the Doors or Nina Simone in the blueprint, but the construction is fresh, built to last. It mirrors New York’s ebb and flow, the hunt for the new, to be played at maximum volume.”
