Luton Outlaws - Independent Message Board for Luton Town FC

Barrow was born in London in 1945 and came to music through the same routes that shaped a generation of British reggae enthusiasts: record shops, sound systems, and the community of people orbiting both. After leaving school in 1962 and working various jobs, he studied Graphic Design at East Ham College of Technology between 1970 and 1974, then moved into the music business proper, writing for publications including Black Echoes and the NME, operating as a sound system selector, and spending formative years behind the counter at Honest Jon’s record shop in Portobello Road. It was there that he met Peter Dalton, with whom he would later co-write The Rough Guide to Reggae, still considered one of the genre’s definitive reference works. Between 1979 and 1980 he compiled a series of Island Records releases, and from the 1970s through to 1992 he compiled albums and wrote liner notes for Trojan Records in London, building a body of archival work that gave serious documentation to music that the mainstream had largely ignored.