While I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of conscious reggae album releases in 2012, even stunned by Midnite’s Children of Jah (an album I picked as the best of the year, I must say that it is Ziggy Marley’s Live in Concert that I was anticipating the most. I have been a fan of Ziggy’s ever since he jumped upon the international scene with Play The Game Right and Hey World in the mid-1980s. Of course redemption came early for Ziggy and his Melody Makers when 1987’s Conscious Party won over the radio-listening “tuff crowd” to become one of the year’s best albums, even capturing the reggae Grammy in Los Angeles. However, when Ziggy broke from the Melody Makers in 2000, something drastically changed and his music started to meander down a folksy road, picking up a little Ben Harper and Jack Johnson on the ride. That said, I hear from many fans whose opinions I respect on reggae, who tell me that my pallette is not refined enough to grasp what he is doing. Fair point. I apologize for being stuck on ‘Wise & Foolish’ while the rest of the world was discovering ‘Labour of Love.’
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LEGENDARY REGGAE 