Review: Toots and the Maytals, Newcastle O2 Academy

May 30 2009 by Matt McKenzie, The Journal

HOW edifying. I last saw this bunch of bona fide founding fathers of reggae five years ago, when they delivered one of the finest gigs I’ve witnessed in the North East.

Great concerts often become distorted in the imagination, becoming greater still. But their return, on Thursday, was satisfying and triumphant proof that first time round wasn’t a musical mirage of my mind.

My, they were good. Bouncing on stage in white suit and diamond-studded headband, Toots Hibbert is, as my friend said, a proper tiny legend. I may feel too old for gigs to start at 9.50pm, but Toots seemingly doesn’t, at a sprightly and muscular 63.

They started with the song that christened the genre, Do The Reggay.

Acoustic yet immediately hitting a groove both insatiable and inexorable, he rushed into the mighty Pressure Drop, then Pomp and Pride. “Today’s a happy day”, said Toots. I couldn’t disagree.

And so they continued, trotting out a greatest hits set: Louie Louie (featuring the first of a few call and response endings); Bam Bam; Reggae got Soul, which took me not to the cliched Jamaican beach, but to a gospel hall, in rapture.

Funky Kingston had a lightness of touch that’s disguised on the recording, while Take Me Home, Country Roads (“Almost heaven, West Jamaica”) unleased unbridled joy. And if the biggest fault I can pick is that the magnificent Sweet and Dandy was a tad too fast and that his vocal should have been a touch higher in the mix then that’s an indication of how good this was. Any road, his voice gets bigger the longer the note emerges.

The mighty Monkey Man was a shriek of adrenalin – just weeks after the Specials reprised their version at the same venue – and 54-46 (That’s My Number) an irrepressible cry of defiance from behind bars, as strident now as it was in 1969.

This was a euphoric night. He’s a charming pugilist, a gospel magician and a privilege to watch.