barrington levy, len hammond: cubby bear: chicago, il 12/7/02
            i arrived at the cubby bear around 11:30 on this cold wintry chicago night. it was nice and warm inside though, and dub dis was playing to a laid back crowd.   their set was long and action packed featuring two lead singers and including cameo apperances from devon brown and special guest direct from jamaica, the dj called turtle man.         
             the crowd was about half capacity, and pretty quiet, but the energy on stage was high.   matrix sound played a very nice set full of vibes with mostly foundation tunes, in the spirit of the evening while the band change took place.
     barrington levy gave us excellent renditions of all of his big hits like: 'too experienced', 'work', 'murderer', 'prison oval rock',  'here i come', his solo version of the duet w/bounty killer in 1996 'living dangerously' as well as his solo version of he and shyne's 'bad boyz'. he also had a special segment where he sang about nelson mandela being free and the ubiquitous audience competition (you know the man is big when he can get a whole audience trying to sing his tounge twisting trademark 'skiddily widdley woddely widdley..wooooooaaahooah').
             barrington left the stage after around a half hour set and slacky j came onstage and told the audience that barrington wasn't going to come back out unless they requested him loudly enough.  from the laid back audience's reaction, i didn't think the man would come back out, but luckily he did. i was expecting maybe one or two songs, but barrington gave us a full set to rival the first half of his show!  barrington is a seasoned veteran of the business, performing for over a quarter of a century, yet when he's onstage, he has such energy and he seems genuinely happy to be there and very happy to be performing.   his band, who i was told is from LA and who travels with him, also seems very experienced and from what i could tell, they played flawlessly and confidently throughout the entire set.
    opening for barrington was beres' hammond's  nephew len hammond.   in the business for over 10 years and winning 'Male Vocalist Of The Year 1998' at the Canadian Reggae Music Awards, len is no stranger to the reggae world.  his sweet singing, lovers rock style blended perfectly with the vibes of the night.

thanks to everyone who made this review possible including barrington levy, len hammond, dub dis, matrix and shockwave sound, slacky j, afrikano and the mo money family.

pics and review © 2002 courtesy of montana for chicagoreggae.com