If you have a three hour Reggae festival starring Mavado, Beenie Man, and Mr. Vegas you could have something on the hand. You could have the Rhymes and Riddems, hardcore, Dancehall saga of the year. Or you could have an atrocious, poorly managed disaster where two and a half hours were wasted and all three major acts were squeezed into the last half hour, and Mr. Vegas, was relegated to less than ten minutes.
We got the latter on the single worst concert of the year, da Reggae Tip at Hammerstein Ballroom, Friday, August 31st, 2012, This is the fault of Hot 97 DJ Jabba, hogging the stage for the vast majority of the evening, and who should be summarily fired for this display of rampant egotism and laziness. Wasting time with endless shout outs to the country of Trinidad, though it was obvious the audience was from Jamaica or the Bronx. And if it wasn't obvious where the audience from, perhaps the inane, relentless "Is Connecticut In the House…" (it isn't) as well as a roll call of every Caribbean Island and all five Boroughs (Staten Island wasn't there either) might have clued them in. This roll call occurred before, after and during every set. Also, since everything was DJs and backing tapes, there was no set up necessary between sets. Zero reason for the set to have not run on time.
But much worse, when the stage manager finally realized one of the biggest reasons we were there would have no time to Toast or sing, Jabba came back on stage to… remind us for the 50th time that his birthday party is September 22nd, the post-concert party was at BB Kings, and, infuriatingly, refused to bring Mr. Vegas on stage till everybody raised their cell phones. Jabba spent more time introducing MR. VEGAS then Vegas entire concert. It was Jabba's fault I had blown 80 bucks to not see musicians I had been told I'd be seeing and he still couldn't just say here is Mr. Vegas and get off stage.
How was Mr. Vegas? Who knows. A couple of hits, nothing from Mr. Vegas excellent Lover's Rock Sweet Jamaica, Mr. Energy lived up to his name for one brief shining moment and then it was over. The audience left the Ballroom in a state of shock.
Neither Beenie Man nor Mavado had the chance to make any real impression either. For sure, Mavado was there to sing and wasn't given the opportunity. Despite a best moment of the night "Survivor", and a fierce, almost brutal, toasting style, he came and left without doing much of anything except looking cool in his white suit.
Beenie Man, dressed in Black and green with yellow shoes, took us back 20 years and despite falling into the too toooo much dithering around problem was pretty good, though, really, none of the three major, major Reggae superstars performed remotely close to the set, what I took away was Mr. Vegas wasting what little time he had saying "Turn On The Lights", "Turn Off The Lights".
Alison Hinds, Queen of Soca, teetering about on high heels, performed an attention deficit set, stopping and starting and calling out to the women in the audience and calling out to all five boroughs, and dicking about with the DJs , before bringing out two back up dancers. The penultimate song, basically toasting over a DJ played record, had a wonderful effect with the entire audience on the dance floor swaying back and forth in time to the music.
Indeed, the audience were the fifth Beatle, a glorious, happy thing while Konshens lead a terrible, terrible set. I thought Ganga not crack was the drug of choice. I don't think Konshens set, (longer than the three headliners combined) sang one song all the way through. Baby Cham performed the best set of the night, maybe the only set of the night. A terrific "This Is Why I'm Hot" was good enough , and two songs mid-set by the great UK singer Estelle, a thrill, was better. Baby Cham was the only person who could really dance, and he twisted himself like a stick insect before playing patty cake with the floor. No real melodies but riddems to go and a great "Wine" followed by "Forever Young" to take us home.
But really, this was a terrible night for music as a whole and Reggae specifically.
Happy Birthday Trinidad.
Grade: D