In the past few months I’ve dived into reggae music. One of my favorite artists is Max Romeo, and I was lucky enough to see this veteran reggae prince, here in Israel:
After a short warmup by his 7 band members, I was excited to see a 60+ man with long gray dreadlocks sing clearly and dance on the stage.
His repertoire includes lots of hits. He began with some big hits, but it seemed that it took him some time to warm up. At the beginning of the show he looked as if he had done this act too many times. His band was enthusiastic throughout the show.
Later on, Max Romeo and the crowd got closer together and the bass beat was felt strongly across the hall. The peak was his song “I chase the devil” which was renewed by The Prodigy years later, and was a big hit.
My favorites were “Little time for Jah”, “Three Blind Mice”, “One step forward”, “200 years of history” and “Public enemy no 1.” which wrapped up the show.
The crowd didn’t let go of him and demanded more and more songs. His guitarist promised that he’ll be back on the next day for another show…
A few more notes: his base guitar player (a female) played on headless bass and there was something that I’ve never seen before: Sometimes they began playing a part of the song, stopped playing, asked “Are you ready?” and then played the song from the beginning. Well, that was the first time I’ve seen this…
Anyway, it was a great musical and emotional experience.
Max Romeo, March 5th, 2008, live at “Barby”, Tel Aviv.