POP MUSIC REVIEWS : Rose, Reid Take Different Paths to Roots

Two former lead singers of the Jamaican reggae group Black Uhuru were the focus of the sold-out second day of the 14th annual Bob Marley Day Festival at the Long Beach Arena on Sunday. While Michael Rose pleased the crowd with a set heavy on the Uhuru favorites, Junior Reid’s area debut offered a more challenging, if flawed, performance.

Visa restrictions prevented Reid from performing in the United States for eight years. That’s unfortunate, because his recordings are arguably the most creative synthesis of modern electronic reggae sound and roots reggae songwriting.

But Reid, backed by a five-piece band, kept the music in a straight roots vein during his 75-minute set. The layered keyboard textures that play a prominent role in his recorded sound were conspicuously absent.

Reid wants to fill Marley’s Rasta-spokesman-for-the-sufferers role, but the wordiness of his songs often worked against him Sunday. The audience was surprisingly receptive to the unfamiliar material until kinks in the arrangements and pacing problems arose--like ending the set with a ballad and holding his 1990 club hit “One Blood” for an encore that almost didn’t come. But those problems can be ironed out--Sunday’s set confirmed Reid’s potential as a major artist.

Rose sounded good and performed well, but why was his hourlong set still loaded with Black Uhuru staples a decade after he left the group? “Too Short Temper” was a strong new song, and he did unveil a new tonsorial touch, wrapping his hair around his head like a dreadlocks pillbox hat.

With a nonstop presentation that kept a throbbing bass in the audience’s face, the first 30 minutes of Leroy Sibbles & the Heptones’ set was a textbook on how legendary veterans can connect with a festival audience. The backing Skool band merits a mention for superbly delivering both the Heptones’ ‘60s-era sound and Rose’s rockin’, dub-laced late-’70s style.