BY BEN MAPP, Voice, May 9 1989
"Behold, Behold, Behold, a Spear burning, burning, burning over yonder", Burning Spear's voice boomed from the wings just before he marched onstage April 25 at the new Ritz. The chilling incantation was a call to arms with an intensity that brought to mind both distress signals and battle cries. Clad in a torn Chicago Reggae Vibrations T-shirt, ripped-up jeans, and sneakers, Spear himself looked like he'd just come out in from a war zone. The fashion statement said less about punky-reggae chic than it did about Spear's grit, built up over 20 years of making music whose calling card simply reads HARD. The graying Spear stood motionless in front of an audience full of hyped fans and roared through "Spear Burning" and "We Are Going" with a characteristically stoic, all-penetrating stare. Right there, half the story was already told: Burning Spear had come to do damage.
The other half was that, since recording Live in Paris Zenith '88 (Slash), Spear's latest battle hasn't been against the mythic Beast, but against his own Burning Band, resulting in a rearrangement of some faces. He told The Beat that bassist Devon Bradshaw was booted in Hamburg because, during the African leg of their tour with Sly & Robbie, Bradshaw strayed away from the aggravated rumble of the Burning sound by mimicking the melodic, dancehall riddims the Taxi Gang rides on. Bradshaw's brother, rhythm guitarist Anthony, was also shown the backside of the tour bus. The brass section of Pamela Fleming, Jenny Hill, and Nilda Richards became history later under uncertain circumstances. While some say they left in support of their friends, Spear claims the too were "part of the bad weed."
The uprooting of a perceived internal insurrection is a strange twist for Winston Rodney, aka Burning Spear, a man who took his stage moniker from Mau Mau revolutionary leader Jomo Kenyatta. But then who said bands were democratic institutions? Like Sun Ra, Miles Davis, and Bob Marley, Burning Spear graduated from the old school of band-leaders, where tradition is a tyrannical teacher and not knowing your chops will get you left behind. In Spear's band heavy manners beget sharp, heady music. Nevertheless, the regrouping of the band has left Spear holding the short end of the disciplinarian's stick.
Gone are studied musicians who fine-tuned the Burning sound into one of the tightest, most searing outfits in reggae, as evinced by the Live in Paris double album, The brass trio of Fleming, Hill, and Richards was the most critical loss. When they joined the band four years ago, they raised the roof of the Spear's sound, changing it from a densely packed house of living dreadbeats to a domed hall specially designed for high-altitude flight. On Live in Paris their punchy attacks and meandering flurries sting like killer bees. Any bandleader would sing the blues over their departure, and with the new Burning Brass too shrill and choppy to snap, shimmer, or pop, Spear's rent clothes might well have been mourning garments.
The time-tested phrases of the Burning sound were guided solely by the obese bass lines and adventurous dub improvs of former Hollywood Beyond member Paul Backford and the stilletto-sharp snare and bass-drum bombbeats of veteran Nelson Miller. This rhythm duo commandeered a show that, unlike the Live in Paris set, featured grooves from the days when Spear - the self-dubbed Creation Rebel - was defining reggae as rugged, radical, and righteous through his hard-core reggae. Taken in during one extended listening session, Spear's output could either deconstruct your worldview, cause a revolution in your mind, or both.
Thematically, the tracks on Live in Paris lack the uncompromising prophetic force epitomized by Hail H.I.M., or Fittest of the Fittest. But it does present Spear in high-voltage performance, and it reflects two key turning points: it's (presumably) the last recording with this dynamic, seasoned collection of musicians; and it's one of the rare albums to not include a song eulogizing, recalling, or profiling Spear demigod Markus Garvey. The omission points to Spear's decision in recent years to deemphasize his customary hard line and pointed lyrics. The new songwriting is more anecdotal, with lyrics that come on less like a polemicist's credo than a semiotician's delight, telling stories through loosely held together sign and symbol. In "We Are Going," Spear describes waiting for a red, gold, and green train, but doesn't give the destination; the riddle is answered later in "African Postman," when he receives a telegram from Mama calling all her children Home.
The real-life Spear can't escape his Jamaican heritage either. He was born in St. Ann's, the same rural parish that spawned Garvey and Bob Marley - two rough acts to follow. On the Ritz stage, Spear had to feel his heavy legacy clash massively with his new lighter-weight band. As if intent on proving he could still rock the hard jams and teach & preach to the converted and the unconvinced alike, the set included some of his most scathing material. "African Postman," "Slavery Days," "Never Run Away" and four Markus Garvey ruminations were belted out with the full force of an upbeat revival meeting. Spear made a special effort to stoke the crowd with call-and-responses of "Love Garvey" and "Do You Remember The Days Of Slavery?" - two vintage hooks which demonstrated that Burning spear's known how to throw a conscious party long before the term was considered oximoronic.
It was a "special effort" because onstage Spear usually pays little attention to the usual gimmicks of crowd control. It wasn't until the show's fifth song that he openly acknowledged the crowd's presence with a "Thank you, thank you, people" directed nowhere in particular. No matter. Everyone was already inside Spear's tightly guarded world and feeling irie. Prime lure: his arresting, how-low-can-you-go boombox voice, which sounds as if it's coming at once from On High and from the bowels of a bottomless pit. Spear bent, twisted, sometimes shouted whole phrases, whole songs, with the unfettered spontaneity of a jazz improviser on a solo tip. His ability so unleash floods of wrenching emotion from quick jerking, twitching, and in-step jogging spasms recalled (again) the subtle, impromptu signals Miles or Sun Ra flash when orchestrating their bands. Busting some of that old-school science from his introspective inner sanctum, Spear left no one in the house out of his reach.
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