David Muehlencamp and I went to see the Wailers on Monday.
Dave wrote the review yesterday and I had a couple of thoughts.
1. Dave told me this is a much younger Wailers than the previous one’s he had seen. Which would explain why it is such an exciting and energizing take on the great canon.
2. I have never seen a band ride a bass player as thoroughly as the Wailer’s rode Aston “Familyman” Barrett. I guess when you have the man who helped forge the bass lines on so many music changes hits, you can let it work for you.
3. I wasn’t so crazed over Duane Stephenson’s “A Step For mankind” though you can’t gainsay a benefit song where “all proceeds will benefit the World Food Programme” The bass line is terrific and the verse and bridge jam, but the chorus isn’t there. Though, given the tone of the song, saving the world tends to heavy handedness, I’m not really complaining.
4. Are the Wailers 2010 really the Temptations? Or the Drifters? What I mean is, since Bunny Wailer is still alive and producer Lee “Scratch” Perry is still alive, surely, along with Ashton, wouldn’t that be a less nostalgia based, more tangible, attempt at maintaining the Wailer’s name?
5. Overall: The Wailers were a) young, b) more than able to breathe life into the canon, and c) with one of the greatest catalogues in the world to raid? I only wish they had played longer and d) The extended jam in the end? Makes you wish they’d do more of that.