Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Saturday night, the Redbox, Lee Scratch Perry and the Mad Professor. A gig partly attended for my love of live reggae, partly for box-ticking ('yeah, course i've seen Lee Perry') but mostly cos i was bored and invited to go. Now I don't know if you know this, probably not since i think it's a bit of a well-kept showbiz secret, but in actual fact Lee Scratch Perry suffers from a form of mild eccentricity. So when he came on covered in cd's, christmas decorations, wearing a spangly wizard's hat and mumbling something about DUBlin being the city of DUB, i think some people remembered this long-whispered rumour. Nobody knows if it's really true of course - it's probably all an act. Just like burning down his own studio and all the master tapes back in the early 70's cos he thought it had got possessed. Pure theatricality no doubt. Just another publicity stunt.
Anyways, the reason I mention this is because he invited the audience to have an imaginary spliff with him, so we all followed his lead and raised our fingers towards our lips and took a big imaginary toke on our imaginary spliffs, blew out and then all cheered. All except for someone in the front row who obviously couldnt take it anymore and lit up a big grassy bomber for real. Perhaps they knew that if they held onto it that would spell financial and physical difficulties for them, security was already closing in, so they passed it on to the man himself who took a few puffs and passed it round the band while they played. I have not heard cheers like it in Dublin - everyone knew what had just happened and for a minute we all thought that chaos would take over and everyone would start skinning up. I was ready, anyway.
But no - the spliff went back to the crowd, got handed to a woman who traded puffs for kisses (i think it's fair to say that grass is not easily obtained in this country, so she got what she wanted and fair play to her as they say round these parts) and them on stage got on with the gig. Which was great, by the way.
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Anyways, the reason I mention this is because he invited the audience to have an imaginary spliff with him, so we all followed his lead and raised our fingers towards our lips and took a big imaginary toke on our imaginary spliffs, blew out and then all cheered. All except for someone in the front row who obviously couldnt take it anymore and lit up a big grassy bomber for real. Perhaps they knew that if they held onto it that would spell financial and physical difficulties for them, security was already closing in, so they passed it on to the man himself who took a few puffs and passed it round the band while they played. I have not heard cheers like it in Dublin - everyone knew what had just happened and for a minute we all thought that chaos would take over and everyone would start skinning up. I was ready, anyway.
But no - the spliff went back to the crowd, got handed to a woman who traded puffs for kisses (i think it's fair to say that grass is not easily obtained in this country, so she got what she wanted and fair play to her as they say round these parts) and them on stage got on with the gig. Which was great, by the way.
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