SMALL CHANGES STARS R
A LARGE vintage
concert in
They
seem to really like it that way, so the surprise of unbilled performers on
Saturday night's edition of the series disturbed the equilibrium significantly,
one in a very good way, the other in a very bad one
The
very good was George Nooks, coming on just before the
Nooks
hit the stage after Rankin Trevor and Daddy Shark, the latter, especially, started
the night off on a rollicking dancehall note. Karen Smith was sheer class and
charm, doing a version of Sugar Minott's take on Good Thing Going, honouring Desmond Dekker
with Intensified and closing with R-E-S-P-E-C-T to Aretha Fanklin
All soul
from harriot
DERRICK HARRIOTT had a few surprises of his own in structuring his somewhat
extended set, going on the soul side of life to very good effect in the early
going, and then the patter between song and in songs connecting with the
audience, notably in the double-cheating song Checking
Out.
"I thought tonight I would do it a little different," an affable Harriott said, before Skin to
Skin.
He accelerated to a stirring, legs-dropping finish with Loser, Solomon, Stop That Train, Penny For
Your Song and Long Story
Then
came the burst of singalong energy from Nooks, his
stint much like a Usain Bolt 100m run when he had
just started running the shortest sprint in competition - unexpected,
explosive, intense from start to finish and leaving the audience breathless.
From Riding For A Fall through Left With a Broken Heart, the knee lifts on Forty Leg (which preceded Zion Gates this time around) to a
glorious God Is Standing By, it was a blast. Nooks
left the stage, but his return a foregone conclusion. "Mek
wi keep it in the same spot,
God spot. Sunday morning," he said. How Great
Thou Art
duly massaged the audience's G Spot
Then
Stars R Us slowed down.
The
announced five-minute break turned out to be half-hour.
On
the return, members of the Minott family paid homage
to their father, Sugar Minott, while the audience was
respectfully attentive, Lincoln's crouched over histrionics on his father's Never Give Jah Up did not do much (it did
not help that his vocals did not come through the music
clearly). Pashon's dramatics on DC, slinging a bag over her shoulder as her father would have
toted a much larger 'collie carrier', aroused some interest. Paul Elliot, who
tends to be very impassioned, was brief and not effective in a setting where
the audience was more attuned to easy-flowing melody.
Which was what was expected of The Mighty Diamonds,
a vintage favourite. But at a time when the concert
very badly needed a shot in the arm, the unbilled performers did not provide
it. There was a hint of disconnect between themselves and the band, that
indefinable lack of pizzazz which screams a deficit of rehearsal. So, after
starting out with Right Time and hitting a decent
enough note with Have Mercy, the Diamonds ventured into less familiar musical
territory with Lying Lips and
Diamonds
dilemma
One
song later, a man at the back of the audience shouted, "Oonu gwaan now nuh bredren!" Of course,
they could not hear, but they certainly heard the chorus of "No!"
when, on the slow song There's No Me Without
You,
one Diamond asked "You enjoying yourself?" and the audience thundered
a negative. Still, they continued and another member enquired, to a louder
"No!".
The
final Diamond asked three times if the audience was enjoying them and got a
louder negative each time. "I hear yes, I hear no," he said. So the
handclaps started and the Diamonds soon departed, Pass The Kutchie the parting shot.
The
mood of the night changed with Ken Boothe, who
did not shrink from the down moment by snipping his set. From the opening
Errol Dunkley does not have as many hits as other
vintage concert regulars, but Movie Star
Black Cinderella and I
Won't Be Long
are powerful, steady rocking tunes, coupled with Dunkley's boyish charm and
easygoing presence. He bowled the audience over (even though they wanted the
tried and proven and resisted his Second That
Emotion), closing with the uptempo OK Fred
John Holt wrapped up a seesaw night, on which the good far outweighed the
down moments, on a high, from Love I Can Feel through Stealing, Stick By
Me and Tribal War. As is his wont, he took requests and did a
line of Ali Baba without music. It was
obvious that things were being rushed, though, and at
Gregory
Isaacs was not the only billed performer who was missing, the others being
Little John and Dennis Walks, for whose absence there was no explanation. And
there were too many pauses that cause a concert to lose steam at critical
moments as well, that brief delay when band and performer sort out things.