Marley a Cool Breeze on a Summer Night

The air was instantly thick with ganja smoke by the opening notes of Ziggy Marley’s July 23 OC Fair performance at the Pacific Amphitheatre, so maybe it was some small contact high that made the whole thing somehow more satisfying an evening than it should have been.

Marley, the famous scion of musical legend and international icon Bob Marley, set his show to a slow groove in the first verse of the opener “This Train” that carried through the first third of his 90-minute, 18-song set. Even for reggae that was probably too slow a start, but it didn’t seem to matter.

Marley’s second song, “Melancholy Mood” was the most appropriate choice for the show, though it’s arguable that what Marley was really aiming for – considering he barely spoke between songs and the solid eight-member backing band barely stopped – was a near continuous groove that slowly picked up tempo as it went on.  

But it was Marley’s heavy reliance on his ever-weakening solo work from 2003’s Dragonfly through 2006’s Love is My Religion and 2009’s Family Time that seemed the biggest buzzkill. The absence of the Melody Makers (brother, Stephen, and sisters, Cedelia and Sharon) was too often felt.

Minus the sharp vocal arrangements and more polished songwriting of his MM work, there were simply too many droning, overly simplistic moments. And that’s despite several of his father’s songs thrown in.

After all this time, if there's any musician on the planet who has a right to use Bob Marley songs unabashedly as a staple of his live shows, it’s the eldest son of Bob and Rita. When Damien Marley and Julian Marley do it, it seems like they’re only cashing in on their father’s legacy. With Ziggy’s recording history now stretching out longer than his late father’s and several great albums and hits of his own, he can balance the use of  “War,” “Lively Up Yourself” and “Jamming” – all in his July 23 set – with all the legitimacy of a son bestowed, even burdened, to carry on the mantle of his father’s work.

With the strength of his band and Marley’s remarkably similar voice, he continued to pull off his father’s songs with aplomb.

But burying a wealth of strong MM material only undercuts his legacy. The exceptions, “Tomorrow People” and the closing “Look Who’s Dancing,” were notable high points in the show.

Nevertheless, the strength of Marley’s live performance was able to pump life into even the weaker songs to create a satisfying and undeniable good vibe that kept the near-capacity audience swaying like sea grass, or maybe more fields of ganja.