Easy Star All-Stars: Thrillah (Easy Star)

 |   |  <1 min read

Easy Star All-Stars: Thriller (ft Mikey General and Spragga Benz)
Easy Star All-Stars: Thrillah (Easy Star)

And of all the tributes to Michael Jackson, this might be the most expected.

Easy Star All-Stars make a habit of taking classic rock and giving it the reggae/dub treatment (Beatles, Radiohead, two stabs at Dark Side of the Moon, see here for the second) but here they kick in with a very interesting African jive version of Wanna Be Starting Somethin' which aims towards Afrobeat in its closing overs.

Elsewhere things are more familiar although guests include Steel Pulse, Michael Rose (Black Uhuru), Luciano and others who have been fellow travellers for a while.

Like those orchestral albums of classic rock songs or a dog that can walk on its hind legs you always applaud the effort but do always wonder, "Why?"

Another diversion from the Easy Stars and while we acknowledge the long tradition of reggae artists co-opting material for their own ends this just sounds . . . tame and calculated?

Still like the idea of this? Then check out this.

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Reggae at Elsewhere articles index

THE DREAM GOES ON: Bob Marley's enduring influence, in jazz and elsewhere

THE DREAM GOES ON: Bob Marley's enduring influence, in jazz and elsewhere

Twenty years after the death of its high priest, reggae still informed the vocabulary of music. Reggae had so thoroughly infiltrated pop, rock, hip hop and electronica, we hardly noticed it any... > Read more

Mixed Culture: Movement in Roots/Moving in Dub (Jah Youth)

Mixed Culture: Movement in Roots/Moving in Dub (Jah Youth)

No sentient being could doubt the global reach of reggae which we have essayed previously . . . but it is rarely better evidenced than the existence of this double CD: one disc of the rootsy... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

EPs by Yasmin Brown

EPs by Yasmin Brown

With so many CDs commanding and demanding attention Elsewhere will run this occasional column by the informed and opinionated Yasmin Brown. She will scoop up some of those many EP releases, in... > Read more

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . DARONDO: The soul man who went AWOL

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . DARONDO: The soul man who went AWOL

To hear William Daron Pullman tell how he got his non-de-disque at the dawn of the Seventies gives an insight into both his smarts, and how he could just as equally be seduced by the money-image... > Read more