Easy Star All-Stars, thanks to Brian Marks
Easy Star All-Stars are a New York reggae band who specialise in covers of famous rock albums. So far, they’ve released “Dub Side of the Moon”, a reggae version of Pink Floyd’s epic Dark Side of the Moon, still widely acknowledged as one of their best. Their version of Money has bubbling and coughing instead of money clinking in a cash draw, and the entire record has a chilled out, upbeat feel to it that the original does not. Their next record was “Radiodread”, a collection of their favourite Radiohead songs. This album was what really pushed them into the spotlight, especially the track “Karma Police”, which is, in my opinion, even better than the original (and the original was pretty good). Their most recent release was “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band”, and if you can’t work out what that is, then, well, frankly, we don’t want you as a reader.
Their performance in Sheffield was, in short, excellent, so when I saw them billed on the World Music/Reggae stage at Sziget, they went straight on to my “must-see” list. As I wandered up to the stage, the smell of marijuana suddenly struck me. At the Sheffield gig, the band had of course been indoors, but the nature of the festival allowed their fans to smoke openly. In some ways, I think this improved the atmosphere — there were a lot more people chilling out at the back of the crowd, and there were a lot of people sitting down. On the other hand, it meant there were fewer people up at the front dancing. Easy Star All-Stars were, as I expected, fantastic. The easy, relaxed reggae versions of songs everybody knows won the crowd over very quickly. For a man who must be getting into his fifties now, Ras I Ray, the front man is one hell of a mover as well — I think three quarters of the girls in the audience (and a quarter of the guys as well!) were transfixed by his dancing. My opinion of the band has not changed in the slightest, and a few of their songs are on my Spotify Off-Line playlist — and I never skip them.
