Rock

The Fourth of July weekend is here--the deal is about to go down, and the engines of the Bicentennial industries
By Joseph Dalton

Thirteen years ago, four young boys from Liverpool disembarked from a BOAC jet in New York. Their hair was long and unkempt; they took the Ed Sullivan Show by storm, and all America soon fell prey to Beatlemania. Well, the boys have grown old now, and an anxious continent waits for their return. Well, I got news. They aren't ever coming back. But guess who's coming on Sunday? No! you say. It can't be true! But it is! Bob Marley and the Wailers are coming to The Music Hall on Sunday at 4 and 8 pm, and every one of you who screamed your head off when Ed Sullivan introduced you to those precocious Liverpudlians back in '63 had better be there if you know what's good for you. Bob Marley is just the same as Paul McCartney, only he's from Funky Kingston, which is just South of Liverpool, and he's been high all of his life, on ganja, that is, which is this substance which people from South of Liverpool worship by smoking it a lot. Reggae, which is the stuff BobMarley and his Wailers play, is the same as what the Beatles played, only a lot better, and the words, whatever words you can hear, actually mean something, something more than I wantoholdyourhand. Oh, and by the way, the stress is on the first, and not some other beat. So you can't get up and dance to the music without crippling yourself, as opposed to at a Beach Boys contest where you can get up and dance your blond little tushy off.

Since the Beatles aren't coming back ever again, other people are coming to Boston along with Bob Marley and the Wailers this weekend to take your mind off the final passing of the sixties, which happened sometime last week in Hollywood. David Bromberg will sing songs of the post-folksong era at the Berklee Performance Center at 7:30 and 10:30 pm on Saturday. The Tubes, who are like a recrudescence of all that is and ever was bad with the entire world, especially that of rock, will torture you and your mother if you bring your mother to rock concerts which is real dumb and so is all this, along with some bogus group called Be-Bob Deluxe at the Orpheum on Friday at 7 p.m. Sleaze city, kitty. Finally, you've got the J. Geils Band, who also rot, like everything else about the seventies, in a benefit for Summerthing, on Wednesday, April 28 at 8 pm, at the Music Hall. And I won't even mention America at the Boston Garden at 8 pm on Sunday. It's too painful. Don't go. If you can't see Bob Marley on Sunday, just listen to Beatles records, or study for an hourly or burn your draft card or your roommate or something.

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