"Re­mem­ber when a mas band launch was free? Re­mem­ber how suc­cess­ful these were, when they were held by men like Raoul Garib and Glenn Car­val­ho?" These were the ques­tions poised by Car­ni­val band­leader Ron­nie Mc In­tosh dur­ing a ra­dio in­ter­view last Sat­ur­day. Fed up of the high costs paid by mem­bers of the pub­lic to at­tend a band launch, Mc In­tosh has de­cid­ed to launch his Ron­nie & Caro C2K12 pre­sen­ta­tion-The Mask of... -in a nov­el way. The four-time Band of the Year (Medi­um) win­ner is un­veil­ing next year's band with a street pa­rade, be­gin­ning at 3 pm to­day, at Memo­r­i­al Park, and pro­ceed­ing down Fred­er­ick Street, to City Hall, at the cor­ner of Knox Street, Port-of-Spain.

Ex­plain­ing the band's por­tray­al, de­signed prin­ci­pal­ly by his wife Car­o­line and her moth­er Car­lot­ta John, Mc In­tosh sug­gest­ed that po­ten­tial mas­quer­aders save their mon­ey, at­tend the free launch and pa­rade, and use the mon­ey to pay their reg­is­tra­tion fee. Ef­fu­sive in his thanks to Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing, for per­mit­ting the pro­ces­sion, and Carib, for spon­sor­ing it, Mc In­tosh said his ges­ture was an at­tempt to em­brace Lee Sing's idea of a mod­el cap­i­tal city, bring­ing back the days when Port-of-Spain was a safe place, en­er­gised by fun things for cit­i­zens to do, like win­dow shop­ping and just tak­ing a stroll at night. He said: "Ron­nie & Caro is com­mit­ted to bring­ing back pos­i­tiv­i­ty to Port-of-Spain, our cap­i­tal city. On Thurs­day, we in­tend to make peo­ple sim­ply come out and have good, old-fash­ioned, clean fun, bring­ing smiles to faces."

Mc In­tosh said aside from the mu­sic on the road, the pub­lic will al­so have the op­por­tu­ni­ty of see­ing on floats 25 mod­els dis­play­ing the band's cos­tumes. He added: "The Mask of.... is self-ex­plana­to­ry. We all have worn a mask at one point or oth­er in our lives. "The cheater must wear a mask to con­ceal his or her il­lic­it deeds. Most peo­ple live their en­tire lives hid­ing be­hind masks, nev­er show­ing their true colours or true self." Stat­ing that his cre­ative team usu­al­ly comes up with the band's theme by Ash Wednes­day, the idea for The Mask Of.... ger­mi­nat­ed a cou­ple weeks af­ter.

The son of high­ly ac­claimed mu­si­cian Art de Coteau, Mc In­tosh ven­tured in­to mu­sic and Car­ni­val as a per­cus­sion­ist, sub­se­quent­ly do­ing vo­cals and now as pro­lif­ic mas band­leader. As a vo­cal­ist Mc In­tosh won the So­ca Monarch ti­tle twice, in 1995 and 1997. (PRB)