FRONT LINE: British reggae band Black Slate’s lead singer Gaven 'Magic Voice' Creary gets down with the crowd and has Lisa Maree Beach help out with the vocals.
Pictures by Rebecca Grunwell
ROOTS reggae with Pacific, international and old school flavours helped East Coast Vibes celebrate its fifth anniversary with a happy crowd of about 800 at the Soundshell outdoor theatre on Saturday.
One Point Five Men opened the show with homegrown sounds followed by multiple award winning Rob Ruha with his
soulful, East Coast reggae-beats. Up next were the witty but American gangsta-inflected East Coast Breevaz, and Chad Chambers.
With their mix of rock, funk, cool with a reggae overlays, LAB from Tauranga and Whakatane brought a different complexion to the line-up. With two Kora brothers in the band, LAB’s eclectic range of music spanned smooth, jazzy riffs driven by percussive bass. The band’s updated, upgraded, upbeat sounds from the 70s included vocoder, wah-wah and fuzz pedal effects and guitar hero theatrics.
Easy-listening reggae act Paua was followed by the much-anticipated British old-school reggae act Black Slate who had people dancing on the sun-bleached grass with simple, repetitive rhythms (“Get on your feet/ Don’t lose your beat/ Ba-ba-boom”) and simpler messages (“We want the right to vote if we want to”).
Old school reggae act, Big Mountain from San Diego, was another crowd-pleaser, particularly with the band’s rendition of one of the cheesiest pop songs known to man, Peter Frampton’s Baby I Love Your Way.
