By Mel Cooke, Freelance WriterWESTERN BUREAU:
THE NIGHT was cold and the gathering small, but there was warm laughter and good music at last Friday's Jamaica Association of Vintage Artistes and Affiliates (JAVAA) Jammin', Jamaican Vibes Restaurant, New Kingston, last Friday night.
Phillip Frazer, Angela Stewart and Ken Bob provided the song and Prince Edwards, leaning on a cane, the jokes, the audience playing their part with gusts of laughter and cheers that far outweighed their numbers.
Philip Frazer, his locks ending where the tops of his shoes began, combined showmanship, a good voice and general good cheer in opening the live performance segment of the evening. "Let it go. We no come fi talk," he said, starting the roots rock serving with I Will Never Let You Go. Stepping from the stage to get closer to the audience, Frazer dropped in You trying to conquer me on the same rhythm, to cheers.
Shining Star, also on a reggae rhythm, hit the spot, Frazer adding We Never Danced To A Love Song to good effect. There was a dramatisation, with Frazer and a lady sitting side by side in chairs, to cheers, as he sang come on baby, le's sit down-. On close to me they hugged and Frazer adjusted the song for the tropics with "reggae music is fine you see/I want to dance to a reggae song". And the two duly got up and did just that.
"This song was made popular by our brethren, Alton Ellis. "Cause Philip Frazer versatile, yu know. Sing everything," he said, doing I Just a Man.
DANCING PARTNER
He ended on a lover's rock note, again with the input of his dancing partner, who joined in as Frazer crooned "he don't love you/like I love you/if he did he would not/break your heart". She hugged him as he sang I will be there to take you home and the audience laughed.
Angela Stewart, who recently launched an album entitled Empress of Love, did not expect to perform that night, but was willing and able. "Maybe I don't get a man to dance like how Philip get a woman to dance. You know how you man stay," she said. She started with a song for the women, though, Mothers of Creation. "You know when you see somebody that you want? Is them you want," she said, doing Just One Look, for which a restart was required. Two couples danced to the uptempo song of instant love, before Stewart went slow for a dedication of If You're Not In Love By Monday to a favourite singer of hers, Boris Gardiner.
More was required of Angela Stewart when she closed and, in the absence of more recorded tracks, she did over Just One Look, saying "I slip up, so I am going to do it again". She did not slip the second time around.
Prince Edwards, in his calm, conversational style, was a riot. Leaning on a cane, he was whimsical of being assaulted recently, saying "de las' bredda kick me, him shoulda play pon Jamaica team. Las' kick him give me cross here," he said, indicating his upper body, "him woulda score 10 goal."
Marriage did not escape Prince Edwards' wit. "A bredda put a ad in the newspaper, 'wife needed'. About two week later him get about a thousan' letter. All of them say the same ting - 'you can have mine'."
Double meaning hit the spot, as a lady made an address about infighting to a group of woman, saying "ladies, I am sorry to say, as long as we have this split between us the men will be on top of us".
It was not all jokes from Prince Edwards, as he ended with a good rendition of Otis Redding's Dreams To Remember.
Ken Bob closed the show with a voice that went from falsetto in a cover of Smokey Robinson's Second That Emotion to cuts from his Reggae Rider album. On his closing song, Chapter a Day, Ken Bob noted that the guitar was played by JAVAA member Dwight Pinkney, returning to the stage to do Danger, the true story of an encounter with the police over a matter of some herb.
