Twist & Shout and 97.3 KBCO Presents
Jimmy Cliff
- Day: Tue, Jun 19, 2012
- Showtime: 8:00 PM
- Doors open: 7:00 PM
- Ages: 16 & Over
- Advanced Ticket Prices*: $34.95
- Day of Show*: $40.00
They say the world is spinning around
I say the world is upside down
With
a legacy stretching back nearly 50 years, the Honorable Jimmy Cliff is
still standing as one of the prime movers and continuing shapers of
modern music. With a catalog that ranks among the most influential in
global culture, Cliff remains a forceful voice of power and conscience,
creating new music as vital and vibrant as ever. Teamed with producer
Tim Armstrong, the Rancid front man who has cited Cliff as his most
admired artist, Cliff is working on his first new album in seven years, a
set which builds on his unparalleled history and points to a wide-open
future.
The power and promise of the
pairing jumps out from a five-song EP previewing the album. Together
they bring fire to both compelling Cliff originals and a couple of
pointedly chosen covers. The above-quoted World is Spinning and the
steely One More show an artist as engaged with and troubled by the
state of the world as much as he was when he made such landmark songs as
You Can Get It If You Really Want and the title song of the movie The
Harder They Come, both game-changers that will mark their 40th
anniversary in 2012. A version of the Clash's The Guns of Brixton taps
into the popular uprisings for freedom in the Middle East, not to
mention the recent London riots, which took place as sessions for the
album were underway. Rancid's affectionate portrait Ruby Soho brings the
generations together, a full-circle journey of icon and acolytes. The
two also teamed on a forceful interpretation of Bob Dylan's
generation-defining and generation-crossing A Hard Rains Gonna Fall, a
featured track on the upcoming all-star Dylan tribute album benefiting
Amnesty International.
It comes at a time in
which Cliff's legend has only grown, reaching new ears from many tastes
and walks of life, with much more to come as the milestone anniversary
for The Harder They Come is celebrated. Additionally, Paul Simon
featured Cliff's 1970 song Vietnam in his electrifying 2011 concerts.
Simon introduced the song which Dylan had called the greatest protest
song ever written as having inspired him to head to Jamaica and record
Mother and Child Reunion with Cliffs band. Cliff himself has in recent
years revived and revised the song to address the current wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq, bridging his past and present.
"I
have great respect for what we did [in the past] and what other people
have done," says Cliff, the only living musician honored with Jamaica's
Order of Merit and a 2010 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee. "At the
same time, I am always looking for the new."
In
fact, Armstrong's great love for and knowledge of Cliff's past music
offered fresh insights for the artist. Armstrong recruited his studio
band, The Engine Room, to play on the sessions featuring J Bonner (bass
and percussion), Scott Abels (drums and percussion), Dan Boer (organ
and percussion), Kevin Bivona (piano and lead guitar), with Armstrong
producing and playing rhythm guitar.
"For
someone like Tim having a great foothold on the traditions, it woke me
up to some things that had been done," Cliff says. "The drummer played
some patterns I forgot we had done! Its a reawakening to those things,
knowing they are not lost, preserved by younger folk, passing them on."
The
two had never met before this project began, and Cliff was not really
familiar with Armstrong's music. But he had heard the younger musicians
name, with a premium recommendation. The Clash's co-founder Joe Strummer
talked up Armstrong while he and Cliff were recording Over the Border, a
song from Cliffs 2004 album, Black Magic a session that sadly was to
be Strummer's last before he passed away. Strummer, another top Armstrong
hero, released his last three albums on the latter's independent Hellcat
Records label.
"I was talking with Joe, talking
about music and people, and Tim's name came up," Cliff says. "I had never
had the opportunity to hear his music, but it was a great thing how we
hit it off in the studio."
The first song they
did together Ruby Soho, gave the two a chance to see how they worked
together and offered Armstrong a chance to have an idol sing one of his
songs.
"I knew the song but never got deep into
it," Cliff says of the ska-tinged tune. "I didn't know it was one of Tim's
songs, but I liked it and could identify with the sentiments. A musician
has to go on tour, do his thing, miss his woman. I know the life, yeah."
Even
more relevant to current events is World Upside Down, though that songs
roots reach back even further than the Clash song, to the 70's period
right after The Harder They Come.
"I wrote the
lyrics, but it was a song originally written by [late reggae great] Joe
Higgs," Cliff says. "Joe and I were very close. People knew the role he
played with Bob Marley & the Wailers. He for me was one of the
unsung heroes of Jamaican music. This was a song I always felt I would
do. I recorded the song in 2009 in Jamaica, played the tapes for Tim and
he pulled it out as one he wanted us to do. The song was originally
called World Turned Upside Down, but I re-wrote the lyrics and made it
for the world today. Joe's was not as broad a subject."
With
Our Ship Is Sailing, Cliff seeks to inspire and embrace positive
movement. "Its one of the newer songs that I wrote this year," he says.
"It's about part of the sacred fire that's inside of me, expressing that
the ship had been land bound, in dry dock, not moving. Now the tide is
in and the ship is moving. Sacred fire is about myself as an artist and
my aspirations the goals I've set."
The song, and
all the music here, has both the global sweep and the personal focus,
just as it is at once timeless and of the moment.
"People
might say, Jimmy Cliff, you've done a lot, achieved a lot. What more can
you want? That's what I want. I keep things to myself, but things are
opening again and the ship is sailing."
Fittingly,
then, the EP-closing One More serves as a personal statement of purpose
and a promise to both himself and the world that he has much left to
do.
One More kind of speaks to that, he says.
One more shot at the prize. One more shot at the goal. Straight from the
soul and in control.
Cliff has
hardly been idle in the seven years since his last album, constantly
touring, he says. Meanwhile he was just waiting for the right time, the
right opportunity and the right collaborators before making a new album.
With The Harder They Come marking its milestone, its a full-circle coup
for the now-elder statesman of reggae. When the film and album came out
first in Jamaica in 1972 as an instant national sensation, great
acclaim in Europe and the U.S. followed, exposing reggae music to
listeners outside its homeland.
At that time,
Cliff was already a huge star in Jamaica. Coming from the small town of
St. James, Jamaica, he headed to Kingston while still a boy and quickly
convinced record store proprietor Leslie Kong to produce him. His first
hit, Hurricane Hattie, was released when he was just 14. After
representing Jamaica at the 1964 New York World's Fair, he signed with
Island Records and moved to London, making such hits as Waterfall and
Wonderful World, Beautiful People, which won him international success
and acclaim.
The Harder They Come brought him
unprecedented renown at home and global stardom. The title track, You
Can Get It If You Really Want, Many Rivers to Cross and other songs
quickly became mainstays of FM radio, opening a whole new world of music
and, arguably, opening the door for reggae's journey to being a
universal sound, embraced and adapted in cultures throughout Europe,
Africa, Asia and the Americas.
With that to his
name, Cliff was sought out as a collaborator by artists ranging from
the Rolling Stones and Elvis Costello to Annie Lennox, while Willie
Nelson, Cher, New Order, Jerry Garcia and Fiona Apple are among the many
who have performed and recorded his material. His song Trapped reached a
vast new audience in the 1980's when Bruce Springsteen performed it
regularly and contributed his version to the 1985 mega-hit charity album
We Are the World. In 1993, Cliff returned to the mainstream pop charts
in he U.S. with his version of Johnny Nash's I Can See Clearly Now.
The
music was fresh and this introduced it to the world, he says. A few
countries had been hearing it, but this is where it all came from.
The key?
It captured a moment in time, but had lasting quality.
With his new music, Jimmy Cliff has done exactly that again.
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