Hi, 

I'm a journalist & musician from Prague. A few years ago, I've met the legendary reggae singer Roy Ellis aka Mr. Symarip as the member of one of his backing bands called The Chancers. 

Once, on the way from a sold out gig in Bratislava, sitting on the back seat of the van, Roy was telling me one of his incredible stories about his life & music career. And I suddenly realized more people should know all those incredible things about him. So I proposed to him, that I will write his biography.

Roy Ellis is a living legend. Born in Kingston, Jamaica. He escaped from the threat of imprisonment and came to England. He learned trombone from Rico Rodriguez, backed all the Jamaican artists from Owen Gray, Prince Buster and Laurel Aitken to Millie Small. He pioneered reggae music through Europe. And of course... created the genre of skinhead reggae with his famous Skinhead Moonstomp.  

We started to talk during the lockdown, spent our time on the line from Prague, where I live, to Roy's house in Switzerland and back. And that's how I started to write the true story about the boss skinhead himself. 

I guess now is the time to tell you more about me. I've been a music journalist for more than 20 years. I wrote the official biography of Ivan Kral from Patti Smith's Group and Slovakian star Miro Zbirka. I'm a reggae and ska lover. As the saxophone player of The Chancers I've spent 18 years on the road. We were playing as the backing band for a lot of well known artists including Rhoda Dakar and The Heptones.  Now I'm playing the saxophone with a new Prague reggae outfit called All Mad Here. 

The book about Roy Ellis aka Mr. Symarip will be ready in 2021. Meanwhile I've decided to start recoding Boss Talks series for Youtube to give you an insight into what we're doing. We're keeping the whole project 100% DIY.

If you like it, you can buy me a beer. Or get a membership to see more from the backstage.

So let's start getting happy now.

Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, yeah yeah, yeah yeah!