By Leighton Williams, Staff Reporter
Always the consummate performer, deejay Beenie Man entertained at 'Livity Splash' last Sunday. The event was held at the Downs Community Centre in St. Elizabeth. - Winston Sill/Freelance Photographer
ILLNESS COULD not deter Admiral Tibet from giving the small audience at 'Livity Splash' a good performance on Sunday night at the Downs Community Centre in St. Elizabeth.
Admiral Tibet's performance lasted for 20 minutes. However, during his set, he showed no signs of suffering from the flu, which he said was bothering him.
Dressed in full black, the singer opened his set with Times Are Serious, which yielded an instantaneous reaction as most of the patrons went wild. He closed his eyes and seemed to muster every bit of energy he could summon as he reeled off the popular tune. His easing into Terrorist and gave the audience something more to shout about as he crouched and pointed his hands to the crowd during his delivery.
He stopped briefly to complain about the effects from the flu and declared his love for the audience, which he said was the main reason he had decided to perform. After that pause, he launched into Don't Have To Be Rich and again the response was the same as to the previous ones. His rendition of Don't Try To Dis Me Girl earned him a second stint on-stage as the audience apparently had forgotten the singer's discomfort.
He obliged them and did Leave People Business Alone with equal intensity. Eventually he departed, much to the disappointment of the patrons who still wanted more.
However, Tibet was not the only good performer for the night.
Luciano turned in a performance that saw him moving from being sedate to energetic at intervals. The singer delivered a slew of hits in his 45 minutes on stage.
From his performance of Ulterior Motive, which was the second song in his set to We're All In This Together, the closing number, the singer was entertaining. He was calm with Sweep Over My Soul but when he touched Peter Tosh's Legalise It all hell broke loose.
The singer's opening lines of the song was enough to have the red, green and gold flags that were present in the venue waving. The flags waved and the flames from the lighters went up when he was given a thumb-sized 'spliff' by a man in the VIP section. As he delivered the lines in a sedate way, he lit the 'big head' spliff and from then on he transformed.
He flashed his shoulder length locks and invited his sons on stage to dance with him. One Away Ticket was enough to have the audience dancing as well. He returned to his sedate mode with It's Me Again Jah, which saw him and his progeny kneeling on the stage. He segued into Lord Give Me Strength before closing with We're All In This Thing Together.
Beenie Man was as usual the consummate entertainer. He jigged his pencil thin frame, deejayed snippets of past hits and did ska and folk tunes during his 45-minute performance. The deejay, who was doing his first local show in months, seemed not to mind the small crowd and invited Kitty Paw to help him. He also launched an attack against persons who engage in oral sex and concluded the theme of his performance with his current popular tune Red Red.
Anthony B and DYCR 'burnt enough fire' to compete with hell and the patrons loved every minute of it, especially Anthony B, whose scorching lyrics at the end of his performance were enough to earn him a second stint.
Richie Stevens did a short set while Queen Ifrica, Aaron Silk and Mikey General all bemoaned the violence taking place while delivering good sets. Queen Ifrica, in particular, took a few minutes in her set 'to bun out' all gunmen who she said were killing children and babies. Aaron Silk paid tribute to Garnett Silk, while Mikey General hit the right note with songs such as Unseen Blessings and Miss Taylor Boy.
Overall, the show was a good one, as the mixture of artistes and their solid performances complemented each other very well.
