By Mel Cooke, Freelance WriterWESTERN BUREAU:
UP TO, and maybe even after, Dr. Sick high-stepped his outlandishly-dressed figure to the microphone, the 'One Love Reggae Party' seemed as viable as getting life insurance on one of the persons it was dedicated to.
These included Dennis Brown, Bob Marley, Jacob Miller and Garnett Silk.
However, Dr. Sick's comedic deejay routine proved to be a turning point for the party, held at Club Inferno in Montego Bay, St. James, and endorsed by Red Stripe Reggae Sumfest 2003.
Whether the party improved during or after Dr. Sick's stint on stage depended on if a routine that featured him repeatedly intoning 'pull up' without a line being uttered frustrated or amused.
There was no doubt, though, that the man, whose get-up included a 'red head', ended on a high with a take-off of Copacabana for a Japanese woman, during which he spoke and deejayed in Japanese. There was general applause when he deejayed that she came to Jamaica for the 'big bamboo'.
Before Dr. Sick, there had not been many people inside Club Inferno to move to Bob Clarke's selections of Zion Gate, Run Free and the triple punch of Greetings, Half Pint and Alicia. Bob Clarke worked up to a competition in which persons vied for a performance spot on dancehall night with a series of Gregory Isaacs songs, including Tune In and Soon Forward.
The crowd hardly grew and the atmosphere barely registered on the 'vibes scale' until, or after, Dr. Sick.
However, when Soul Action disco came in after Dr. Sick had healed himself with music, they came hard. It was as if someone had loosened a stopcock at the gate, since a steady stream of persons came in after. There was never enough to earn 'One Love' the title of being a hit, but there were sufficient to 'build a vibe'- and that is what they did.
HARDCORE SINGING
Soul Action went the hardcore singing route, with dub plates from Tony Curtis and Anthony Cruz to start out rocking. However, when they hit the 'rub-a-dub' of Sanchez's Living Up, there was an eruption and they had to pull up.
Sizzla's Love Is Always There and No Time To Gaze 'bus the place' and Soul Action went the hardcore deejay route of Big Motha Mouth Lashy and Karate to have limbs flying and lungs stretched as persons sang along.
It was back to the competitors, with mixed results, before Olympic came in for 10 minutes. They gave an excellent account of themselves, a 'toaster' moving up front to introduce Natural Mystic, Three Little Birds and One Love, which got the audience, now near its peak, singing and dancing along. The Dennis Brown segment was enthusiastically received, with Promised Land getting many to stand up and 'skank'.
Olympic continued on the 'roots' route with Sizzla's Just One Of Those Days and Thank You Mama, before doing a short dancehall juggling that was 'sweet to de belly', before handing over to Leftside and Esco at 1:15 a.m.
Opening with It Was Written the duo rocked the house, working up to a nice end with Elephant Man reeling off the dances as some of the 'One Love' party fans followed as best they could. Quite a few of the number that was not quite a crowd chose to stay back and rock, instead of getting up front and close to the sound.
Leftside and Esco tossed in unexpected mixes such as Chi Chi Man Fi Get Kick In A Face and Baby Cham's Brown Man, as well as going back the equivalent of a few decades in dancehall time for Bounty Killer's Mystery. They went hip-hop with Independent Woman and whipped the house into a frenzy with a dub plate of TOK's Chi Chi Man as well as Sizzla's Give It To Dem, both on hip hop rhythms.
Renaissance opened on a hip-hop note as well, with Bob Clarke and his bag of old hits tricks awaiting the One Love Reggae Party.
SUMFEST SPOT
Fitzroy Allen, performing the humorous Country Duppy, and the all-male trio Bandooloo Works, which harmonised and also went hardcore on Rainy Day, earned themselves a slot to perform on 'Dancehall Night'. They topped a field which included deejays Mikey Ranks, Leopard and sole female entrant Mona Lisa, poet/chanter Rankin Bagga and singer Michael Godfrey, who did a fair job of Luciano's Over Hills And Valleys.
There was laughter when Allen outlined how the 'country duppy' cast a shadow on the wall as he and his father debated whose it was, while Bandooloo Works' rapper worked very hard and long to seal the audience's approval for the hip-hop style entry.
Two persons won tickets to Red Stripe Reggae Sumfest's Dancehall Night.
