LBDAS Performs in Philly with Half Pint and Barrington Levy

The Long Beach Dub All-Stars are made up of many former members of the band Sublime, whose lead vocalist died during the height of their popularity. Sublime's biggest commercial hit was "What I Got," which borrowed its infectious hook directly from Half Pint's 1980's dancehall classic "Loving." It's odd happenstance that Pint should tour with LBDAS this fall considering that Sublime didn't get initial permission for the use of Pint's "Loving."

In any event, Pint and the crew are all very good friends these days, and it showed last Monday night in Philadelphia during LBDAS' stop at the Theatre of the Living Arts on South Street. The boys started off the night with some light dub sprinkled with alternative and punk sounds from their new CD, Right Back on Dreamworks. After five or six tunes, they introduced Half Pint with a deserved amount of respect.

Pint came out to a significant crowd response, especially considering it was mostly made up of high school kids whose exposure to reggae was limited to Legend. He performed a number of his classic tunes, including "Greetings," "Level the Vibes," and "Cost of Living" as well as a new tune composed with the LBDAS titled "Pass It On." Pint's voice was golden that night, a lucky break since during the show I had been to last November, Pint's voice was hoarse from a straight week of performances. There's no doubt that Half Pint has one of reggae's most distinctive voices and that he's one of the most genuine artists in the industry; it's a great thing to see him being so well-received by a new generation of fans after what's already been an illustrious career.

LBDAS played a few more of their tunes, none really standing out in my head as anything spectacular (though I've heard some very good cuts from various bootlegs floating around). After a brief intermission, they returned and eventually brought on "Mr. Cool and Deadly" himself, Barrington Levy. Levy goes back to the 1970's when he performed as a teenager and became known as the "canary" for his melodic, wide-ranging voice. As with Pint, Levy was was maximum strength, showing an outstanding amount of energy. He did several of his classics ("Here I Come" and "Murderer") as well as a couple of new tracks with LBDAS, "Eyes So Red" and the wicked "Righteous Dub" (which wasn't exactly a dub live, obviously).

An interesting point came about five minutes after Barrington Levy left the stage and LBDAS was about to go into a punk song. Levy came back out onto the stage, took a microphone and told the group to stop. They looked genuinely surprised (which is very possible since this was Levy's first date with the group on this tour). Levy then went into "Black Roses" (a sort of sequel to the storyline in "Here I Come") including his famous "Mi take off the S off of Superman's chest, / And take off the B off of Batman's belly, / That's how mi get the name Barrington Levy" lines. He then invited Half Pint onto to stage with him; Pint looked as surprised as the Dub All-Stars who continued to improvise the backing music. Pint broke into a tribute to Dennis Brown with an outstanding (but too abbreviated) cover of "Revolution." According to Russ at Artists Only!, Pint just recently added this song to his repetoire at a recent show in Los Angeles. It was amazing, especially with Barrington adding some backup vocals. This short interruption was the highlight of the night for me -- two of reggae's best voices on stage together. These two have got to collaborate more. As far as I know, they've only done one song together, over ten years ago as a single on Powerhouse titled "Go Do It" (and thanks to Tim at Rasslin Records for hooking me up with this just two days before the show).

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