israel vibration revisited
First came out the band of 5 people. 2 guitars, keyboards, drums and bass. They jammed for a few minutes and out came two large female back up singers. From the other side of the stage the two protagonists emerged, both in crutches! In fact all three of the original members met in a polio rehabilitation clinic in Jamaica. One of them was the first bald man I see with dreads and the other one looked like a tame version of Lee Perry, less flamboyant and with a natural grey beard as opposed to the red one that “scratch” has. The third original member has been pursuying a solo career since the mid 90s. The set was pretty good with a number of songs from their seminal 1978 debut album “The Same Song” which you should buy or download if you’re only going to own 10 reggae albums in your life. Anyway, the two main men seemed to dance with the crutches or in spite of them in a disjointed kind of way but their voices still had it and we ate up the show like a great Argentinean stake.
After the show I biked home and midway through the park I abandoned my hood and umbrella and just enjoyed the rain. It’s cliché but nice to do once in a while. However I have to say this about umbrellas: they do offer protection from eye contact. Now available for your favorite pet.
posted by George at 4:25 AM
2 Comments:
luis, first off, josh also stole a marley cd from me but i managed to get it back :-)
i promise to return with the top 10 reggae list on a proper post but for now let's talk roots and dub. you're right, the terms sound mutually exclusive but in fact they're not. roots reggae developed sometime in the early 70s with people like the wailers and israel vibration, mighty diamonds etc. the main characteristics are a trio of singers (usually) and a fair degree of rastafarianism in the lyrics. in fact it was these artists that catapelted this faith out of obscurity and the underground. the music is not dub but a lot of roots albums do have their own dub versions with a pronounced bass, electronic twicking and so on. i promise to come back to the reggae issue sooner or later. ah learning and doing something meaningful at the same time. what a life. the grass is always etc etc
5:57 AM
you saw gogol bordello on my wish list. is that a good album?
5:58 AM
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