Marley Brothers Legacy Tour - Austin Texas

[gbougard]

J'ai ecrit ce truc en Anglais pour 1 autre site, trop la flemme de traduire

Dragged my son to the Marley Brothers (Ziggy, Stephen, Damian, Julian and Kymani) in Austin last Sunday. They played at a superb open air amphitheater in front of 10,000-odd people. Crowd was mostly middle aged: white people wearing tie dyed shirts, blacks being mostly Caribbean, close to zero Asian and very few Latinos. Only about 15% were under 25-30.

The show was good, starting with Natural Mystic, with each brother doing a verse. All of Marley's hits were played very similarly to the live versions we are all familiar with. Very few variations, except at times when Damian inserted a DJ verse which was OK and added energy. Only one song was not by Bob, when Ziggy did a thing on Israel-Palestine called Shalom Salaam. Not very good, quite frankly, and it was a cruel reminder how totally off the chart Bob Marley's song writing and compositions were compared to the material his kids have been able to eke out of their brains!

I can't find their names on the internet, but the band looked like Ziggy's band. I would have loved to see Santa on drums, but no.

Everyone enjoyed it.

Having seen Bob Marley and the Wailers in 1980, I couldnt help reminiscing how ABSOLUTELY POWERFUL Bob and his band were. They owned the music they had written and composed, had rehearsed for years together, Bob lived his lyrics because it was him that had been chosen by the Most High to sing those songs. Bob had Aston, Carly, Tyrone, Al, Junior, Wya, Seeko and the I-Threes. Like the 1992 Dream Team or the 2013-2015 All Blacks, this combo cannot and will not be surpassed, period. They created musical perfection.

While the Marley Brothers are probably the next best thing, the fact is that they are a tribute band and that's a huge difference, no matter how well and faithfully they reproduce the Wailers and Bob's music.

Having said that, I was able to let go of the nostalgia, and when I closed my eyes and let the music take me places, I had a fairly good time. Then I decided I had seen and heard enough and we left at Three Little Birds, beating the crowd and the traffic back home.