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Rating: Unfortunately, there are still people in the world who think reggae means (only) having dreadlocks and smoking joints. And, even worse, there are those who think reggae begins and ends with Bob Marley. Fortunately, there are also people who don’t think like that; otherwise, at this moment Toots would be working as a gas station attendant in Kingston, fueling occasional broken-down Fords, instead of playing - for example - at the Apollo club in Barcelona, making us happy and sending us home with a spring in our step and a vacant smile plastered on our faces.
By 9:00 PM, we are already in a nice queue in front of the tacky Art Nouveau style entrance: people from all over the world, vacationers, workers, tourists, and residents, all united to receive the body of music in a mystical reggae liturgy. I arrive early, with my trusty Mexican Enrique and Onno, the shady Dutchman with whom I share the dump… er… apartment two blocks away.
The concert is scheduled for 9:00 PM, but it’s immediately clear that it will take a while for everyone to get in. Meanwhile, the omnipresent Pakistanis are busy hawking cans of Estrella Damm beer to the thirsty crowd, including Onno who downs three in a few minutes, with the sound of a flush.
We finally make our entrance into the place, the most unlikely you could imagine for a reggae concert: horribly decorated like a third-rate 1920s brothel, the kind of place where you can easily imagine fifty-year-old prostitutes prowling around with bellies squeezed by lace and lipstick slathered on like plaster. The smoky, dark stage seems better suited to hosting a suburban Tom Waits than a sixty-something Jamaican firebrand with half-inch braids, and, above all, everything in Apollo seems designed specifically to jeopardize the audience’s safety. Sinister-looking and very non-compliant electrical cables pop out everywhere, you’d expect to see them coming out of the beer tap, and monstrous things like 400-watt speaker stacks and two-ton chandeliers hang from the ceiling, apparently secured by invisible nylon strings. It takes at least half an hour (and some psychoactive support) to drive away the image of yourself reduced to a tortilla from a worried mind.
Pushing through the truly impressive crowd, I make my way to the front of the stage, leaving Onno and Enrique inevitably behind, who, as expected, are already inflated like turkeys.
And finally, he arrives.
He's dressed like Brian Johnson!!!!
Seriously! Maybe a bit worse: denim vest with patchwork patches on the shoulders, tight black tank top, big gold chain, loose fitting jeans like a used car salesman, and hideous shiny black loafers. All enclosing the shining physique of a sixty-something who truly looks like a sixty-something. How can you not love him? Even the rest of the band has a look characterized by informality: the guitarist is in a tracksuit, the backup singers are cute but not too much, light years away from the typical concert floozies of the last Guns era, and dressed as if going grocery shopping; the keyboardists surely don’t spend their evenings at home dressed much worse than this. And that's the beauty of it. Because everyone is simple, informal, and playing with a smile all the way through the concert. They are having fun first and foremost, and they convey this positivity to the audience. To hell with all the "divos" like Liam Gallagher, who perform with a face that seems to say "dear amorphous pieces of crap who have spent a ton of money to hear me sing, take this handful of crappy songs, because you won't even notice that it's all a rip-off, and then get lost, because later I'm going to screw like a warthog in your faces, losers!".
The music, from the first notes, begins to make the heads of the varied Apollo audience sway, from fifteen-year-old skinheads in boots and suspenders to rude boys with checkered shirts and floppy hats, up to the most represented species nowadays, the pseudo-rastafarian-post-grunge-anti-globals who, united and allied in the fight against globalization, are now more globalized than Monsanto. Come to think of it, it was difficult to see looking around a single person dressed in the same way they probably go out the rest of the week… oh well!
Anyway, the music stays, and the classic "Pomp And Pride", "Pressure Drop" and "Bim Today (Bam Tomorrow)" (totally unrecognizable in its bizarre "ambient" arrangement) are the launchpad for the peak of the evening, that "Funky Kingston" which, when finally announced by its three persistent chords, sends shivers of emotion under Fred Perry polos, checkered shirts, Trojan t-shirts, and torn tank tops, indiscriminately, and everyone begins to elbow like never before, in a jungle of boots, dreadlocks, belts and big shirts. Toots sweats and squirms, a hundred times more vital than at least 50% of today’s singers and musicians with 40 years less on their shoulders, and eventually lets go of the vest (couldn’t he think of it sooner?) showing off his silhouette like a Barolo barrel: unforgettable!
Towards the end come the inevitable "Monkey Man" and "54-46 (Was my number)", the latter performed in a somewhat disconcerting manner, as Toots nearly forgets to sing it, letting the music play for a good eight minutes and occasionally remembering to "I say yeah!...That’s what I say!", tying it, towards the end, to "Struggle".
But, aside from this little mishap, the emotions soar high throughout the concert, up to the final bows when the band returns to the stage holding hands and bowing to the applause, like one had witnessed a performance of "Il Campiello" instead of a Toots concert. Beautiful, beautiful! I’m truly convinced that if there were more people like this in the world, everyone would live much happier lives.
The lights come on, the crowd streams out, armed with a spoon I rescue Enrique and Onno, who look blissful and call me "mama": what did they do to these two when they were little? Then we also head out, and like shadows, we blend into the Barcelona night… Goodnight everyone!
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