Jimmy Cliff - Hits the Bristol harbour Festival

*****

A Wonderful Reggae Night

Jimmy Cliff ***** The Bristol Harbour festival continued their tradition of a paid for concert the night before the main events starts, this year it was a double bill of one of the original superstar DJ's, Grandmaster Flash taking centre stage. Treating us to the story of how he was one the pioneers of Hip Hop and scratching records developed with the bloc parties in New York. Well received but quite how he didn’t play ‘White Lines’ is still a mystery, because this is his biggest hits.

The word legend is banded around a lot in music but very few people actually deserve the title, perhaps one or two in each genre. I think one of those that certainly deserve that accolade from the Reggae scene, in fact from any scene is Jimmy Cliff.  Now having reach the grand age of 70 but showing no signs of slowing down as soon as he comes out he commands a presence on the stage.

Now I can’t criticise such a man, but he perhaps needs to have a word with his wardrobe department as all his backing bad were in matching bright red t shirts which sort of gave them an air of being in a CBBC quiz show or similar. But why worry about that when there is classic song after classic song emanating from the stage, it’s easy to forget the great tunes Jimmy Cliff is responsible for.

We had versions of ‘Rivers of Babylon’ and his own ‘Wonderful World, Beautiful People’ which would have practically been worth the entrance fee alone. But when added to ‘Vietnam’ and a rousing version of ‘Hakuna Matata’ you know you are in for a good night of singing and dancing. Some songs are showstoppers and I think ‘Many rivers to Cross’ would be one of those, his vocals are so strong if anything age has made it more impressive.

He wasn’t done there either ‘I can see clearly Now’ evoked those memories of watching 'Cool Runnings' about twenty years ago and is probably the way most people actually are familiar with him. ‘You can get it if you really Want’ was yet another moment where you could stop and appreciate just what a privilege it was to see him perform. We see some wonderful people doing these reviews, but this can’t really be a review in the traditional sense as who am I to pass judgement on such a (and I use the word one more time) legend.

Review by Jon Cooper and Photo's by Steve Owen

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