Reggae’s Heavyweights Don’t Go Light on Lyrics

Two of Jamaica’s most acclaimed musical exports, Burning Spear and Pato Banton, will headline this year’s Bob Marley Birthday Celebration. The ninth annual tribute to the late, great reggae pioneer will be held Saturday night at the California Theatre in downtown San Diego.

Burning Spear, whose real name is Winston Rodney, is the heir apparent to Marley as the social conscience of reggae music. Unlike most contemporary reggae artists, who prefer to sing about love, sex and ganja (marijuana), the 41-year-old Rodney concerns himself primarily with weightier topics.

In most of his songs, he either rails against the evils of oppression--black Jamaica’s history of slavery--or hails the virtues of achieving mystical transcendence through the Rastafarian religion. Rodney will appear with the nine-piece Burning Band from St. Anne’s Bay, Jamaica.

Pato Banton is no lightweight, either. Although the Birmingham, England, native first found success on the British charts a few years ago with such infectious dance tunes as “Allo Tosh” and “Mash Up the Telly,” his music has since become increasingly topical.

On “Never Give In,” his 1988 U. S. debut, Banton sings about everything from apartheid in South Africa (“Sometimes I cry for my people in South Africa/Brutalized and persecuted by apartheid law/Living under the rule of a mass murderer/Who goes by the name of Mr. Botha”) to poverty in Jamaica (“Because of the government joke system/A lot of families find it hard to make a livin’/To be young and unemployed is an everyday thin’/That’s why so many youths gone ragamuffin’. “)

Also on the bill is Don Carlos, a founding member of Black Uhuru. Since going solo a few years ago, Carlos has released nearly a dozen albums in Jamaica, Africa and Europe.

The Bob Marley Birthday Celebration will also feature an exhibition of Jamaican handicrafts and jewelry and a slide show chronicling Marley’s career.

The biggest dance craze of the 1960s began in the eighth month of that decade. In August, 1960, a young black man from Philadelphia named Ernest Evans--who a year before had quit his job as a chicken plucker in a local poultry shop, rechristened himself Chubby Checker (in emulation of the similarly built Fats Domino), and signed with Philly’s Cameo-Parkway Records, under whose label he topped the charts with his version of “The Twist.”

The song was written, and originally recorded as a B side, by rhythm and blues singer Hank Ballard in 1958. But it was Checker’s interpretation that became a hit--one that soon had teen-agers all over the world dancing to “The Twist” and countless other rock acts jumping on the bandwagon with their own variations of the tune.

There was Danny and the Juniors’ “Twistin’ U. S. A.,” Jimmy Soul’s “Twistin’ Matilda,” the Marvelettes’ “Twistin’ Postman” and Sam Cooke’s “Twistin’ the Night Away.” There was the Beatles’ “Twist and Shout” and Gary U. S. Bonds’ “Twist, Twist Senora.” There were even three follow-ups by Checker himself: “Let’s Twist Again” in 1961, “Slow Twistin’ ” a year later and 1963’s “Twist It Up.”

Checker, who will appear Thursday night at the Bacchanal nightclub in Kearny Mesa, subsequently promoted several other, less successful dance crazes in songs like “The Hucklebuck” (which went to No. 14 in October, 1960), “Pony Time” (No. 3, January, 1961), “Limbo Rock” (No. 2, September, 1962) and “Let’s Do the Freddie” (No. 40, May, 1965).

But, by the late 1960s, the hits had stopped coming, the toes had stopped tapping and Checker found himself relegated to has-been status. For the next two decades, he was a mainstay on the oldies circuit, regularly touring the country with rock revival shows.

Last year, however, Checker’s remake of “The Twist,” with rap group the Fat Boys, put him back on the charts for the first time in more than 20 years. Ever since, he’s once again been a top concert draw, this time attracting a whole new generation of fans.

LINER NOTES: Veteran singing duo the Righteous Brothers, whose mid-1960s hits include “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ ” and “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration,” have picked San Diego as the site for their second retro-rock diner. Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield have yet to settle on a name, but they’ve already settled on a location: next to the abandoned Loma Theater on Rosecrans Street in Point Loma. The combination restaurant-nightclub, modeled after the one the pair built a few years back in Orange County, is scheduled to open in November. There will be live music five nights a week, including regular performances by the Righteous Brothers and other oldies acts.

The Pandoras will appear Saturday night at the Spirit nightclub in Bay Park. The all-girl rock group’s new album, “Rock Hard,” was produced by San Diego guitarist Stevie Salas, who spent much of last year on the road with Rod Stewart. . . . Local roots-rockers the Beat Farmers have finished recording their fourth album, “Poor and Famous,” up at Indigo Ranch studios in Malibu and are back in town for a brief respite before they head out on tour in late March. The LP is due out around the same time on the MCA/Curb Records label.