Johnny Eye Glass he'll always be

THE EDITOR: Johnny Eye Glass and the Spectacles was our combo side. And by “our” I mean RACA (Ryerson Afro-Caribbean Association). Almost every Friday night, for the four years I was there at Ryerson, during the 1970s, we came together for either a RACA meeting or just to unwind and lime.

The place was the Oakham House on Gould Street, Toronto; meetings were upstairs and liming and feting, downstairs. They played without renumeration. Scrunting students, as we were, all we could have afforded were support, encouragement and admiration.

Speedy gave them their sobriquet. They made it easy for Speedy. They gave him mucho material to work with. For example, if my memory serves me correctly, Johnny Eye Glass wore one of those glasses that were somewhat fashionable during the 1960s and 70s. His was similar to the pair Dwayne Wayne wore in A Different World.

Basically it was a normal pair of glasses, but attached to the normal pair of lens was a pair of clip-on sun-shade lens. The wearer would flip the sun shades down when in bright sunshine and flip them up during darker hours. When indoors they were always flipped up, presenting a comical and alien look; like a pair of protruding and mechanical eyelashes waiting on a signal to begin flashing like Miss Piggy’s of the famous Moppets.

So Johnny Eye Glass wore one of those flipping glasses, but the Spectacles, all three of them, wore normal glasses. To us they were our four, four-eyed nerd musicians (some might say six-eyed ); three guitarists and one percussionist, with Johnny on lead guitar.

They played with gusto until either Winston or his wife Coretta shouted, “Pelau ready.” Johnny Eye Glass and the Spectacles would then join the throng of hungry students, all anxious to fork out a hard-earned $1 for a plate of pelau made from canned pigeon peas and Uncle Ben’s rice.

After the pelau, a DJ took over; he was the rent-a-tile-tune DJ. Al Green, The Stylistics, Marvin and others of that ilk hypnotised the dancers, so each pair of dancers became stuck to one tile, per tune. I can’t remember ever seeing Johnny Eye Glass and the Spectacles dance. They were of the group that stood in a corner to observe those who were gifted with twinkle toes.

During the week, Johnny Eye Glass attended hospitality classes. Sometimes he would show up at the “political table” in the basement of the business building. He would sit there quietly taking in the various debates and arguments by the “more conscious” students: Ox, Speedy, Roger and the Doc.

If you didn’t know who George Padmore was, you sat and listened; if you didn’t know anything about Pan-Africanism, you sat and listened; if you weren’t conversant with terms like proletariat and detente and entente, and Marx and Mao and Ho Chi Minh, you sat and listened; if you couldn’t tell the difference between race and nationalism, you sat and listened. So Johnny Eye Glass, like most of us, sat and listened – learning.

He returned home to TT after graduation and switched from hospitality management to journalism, with a political edge. I was never privy to the reason for his switch. But there might be clues. He had a successful career in journalism, working with almost all the major media houses in TT. Later he became a triathlon advocate. He attained celebrity status, his opinion treasured by many.

I will always remember him as Johnny Eye Glass for the joy he and his Spectacles brought to my friends and me on those cold winter nights. His public who knew and loved him, knew and loved him as Ian Gooding, the Big O. Rest in peace, brother.

JOHN CAMPBELL via e-mail