At this point the rain was light but the wind was heavy, and I saw Liam Philpot of Jimmy Cliff’s band nearly run for cover as the giant dangly trusses of lights and cables above him wiggled violently in the wind. Whoever the DJ was, he had a smirky sense of humor, as he played “Riders on the Storm” throughout setup.

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Jimmy Cliff is to Jamaican music what James Brown was to R&B, if Brown had just worked a little harder. Cliff helped get ska off the ground, popularized reggae, even starred in the first reggae movie, The Harder They Come. Touring with Tim Armstrong and a tight band of mod-looking youngsters, Cliff seems set to inspire the world yet again. This interview by D.M. Collins.

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Somehow the Aggrolites are of that Warped world, and yet they have successfully fought its worst urges and drained all the suck out, leaving behind a “dirty reggae” sound that is highly pure, largely instrumental, organ-driven, and at times even beautiful. Listening to this album is like watching the female skinheads of This Is England walking down the street in their braces and boots.

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I pride myself on being able to capture the sound of music in words, but there really is no way to convey what came out of that man’s throat and into our hearts Friday night. The closest I can get is to say that he sounded effortless and full of love, like butter melting slowly over Mom’s pancakes. He sounded awake and alert, classy, not cluttered in Rastafarian claptrap but “transcendent” in as close to a literal meaning as an atheist like me can believe in.

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