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Guinness B's Explosion - Good performances but many snags

The first of the events hosted by First Klass Entertainment in partnership with Guinness, Guinness 'B's Explosion', which promised to be an explosive night of live performances by Brick and Lace, Bunny Wailer, Buju Banton, Bounty Killer, Bling Dawg, Baby Cham and Beenie Man, held last Saturday night, nearly imploded. In fact, while there were select and undeniably good performances, the event bordered on anti-climatic, due mostly to production flaws.

Show time, advertised as a prompt 8:00 pm, was a misnomer as there was only the effervescent and appreciated juggling of disc jock duo, Razz and Biggy, when the Observer arrived, continuing until 9:30 pm.

Despite the late start, the event did not jump into full gear at this time. Instead, there was a barrage of seven unadvertised and supposedly upcoming artistes who took the stage, performing on tracks. While there was no booing or anything else untoward, it was obvious that those who were present were a little less than pleased but did give forwards to at least three of the artistes - namely singers Blufox and Bascom X and Capital D, a Puerto Rican DJ. This was followed by a lukewarm effort by sister singing trio, Brick and Lace, who also performed on tracks.

The venue, which filled out by 11:00 pm, became a dancing and waving show ground thereafter. The stage became imbued with musical messages of social and political commentary, badmanism, religious inclination and anti-homosexual doctrines as well as a showcase for cultivated and inventive lyricism, in true testament to the current culture of dancehall.

These came in the form of high energy sets delivered by Bling Dawg, Baby Cham and Bounty Killer, which received much crowd support made more noticeable when Vybz Kartel made a cameo appearance during Bounty Killer's set.

An obvious plague of the night was that there were band changes for each of the six advertised artistes. This was somewhat rectified as the presence of Jazzy T of Renaissance Disco, DJ Inferno and Coppershot Disco did much to assuage what would have been a hanging crowd.

However, while many were dancing along, the four sets by Jazzy T and Coppershot showed some indifference by the disc jocks as they were replete with already played songs. Only DJ Inferno offered any originality as he delved into our musical history and dug up danceable gems ranging from Bob Marley and Dennis Brown to Half Pint and Super Cat.

A real damper fell on the night at 3:00 am, when only halfway through his performance, Buju received word from backstage that his set had to be cut short due to the presence of police officers who were there to enforce the 2:00 am cut-off time. Still left to grace the stage then, were the doctor Beenie Man, Bunny Wailer and Beres Hammond, whom MC Richie B had earlier promised would be present.

Buju's last two songs were rushed, but received much support as patrons waved lighters and sang along word for word. "The Doctor's" set was a disappointingly short - 25 minutes, but it only lasted this long because of his impassioned pleas to the officers for more time. Despite its length, it was arguably the most well-received performance and even featured a "dancing war" between Beenie and John Hype, of which there were no victors.

By far the most harrowing mistake was the scheduling of veteran musician Bunny Wailer, who performed after Beenie Man.

The crowd of thousands by then had depleted to a bare two or three hundred, due mainly to the fact that Beenie had already performed and there was another 15-minute band change, this time not accompanied or mollified by the music of a disc jock. This only led to Bunny Wailer's discouraging verbal attack on the audience who had already left and spotlighted his fervent tout, "come mek mi show yuh how fi ram dance hall" as inane and paradoxical.

Other drawbacks of the event were the distant, inadequate and seemingly unsecured parking, a sometimes failing sound quality and an inadequate number of porta-loos in the general admission area, though all the ones provided throughout the venue were indeed well-manned and sufficiently clean, as promised by the promoters.