For the past five years, L.A.’s Tomorrows Bad Seeds have been honing their hard rocking version of Reggae, Metal, Punk and Hip Hop to increasingly loyal and exponentially larger audiences at home and around the country. Spicing Rock with island rhythms is certainly no new development. The Police, The Clash, The English Beat, Shaggy, Sublime, 311 and dozens of others have iced their individual styles with varying amounts of Ska and Reggae, so Tomorrows Bad Seeds is the latest in a long line of Rock bands with an affinity for Jamaica’s second favorite export (and working knowledge of the export in the No. 1 slot as well).
TBS has expanded its fan base with a number of opening gigs in front of genre traditionalists like The Wailers and Steel Pulse and fellow hybridizers like Slightly Stoopid, Pepper, UB40, Fishbone, Hed(pe) and Pennywise, among many others. And while a lot of TBS’s lyrical content leans toward the obvious (the ganja life in “Bad Seed,” cheating with your girlfriend’s sister in “Downlow,” bad breakups in “Heartless,” alpha male chest thumping in “Warrior Poet,” Reggae Against the Machineisms in “Vices”), the quintet more than delivers on the musical end of the spectrum, weaving plenty of Reggae’s diversity and nuance into their big Rock presentation.
TBS’s debut album, 2007’s Early Prayers, made a big splash on iTunes Reggae chart and the band‘s impending album, Sacred For Sale, is likely to follow suit in a big way. So lock up your women and hide your stash (and not in the teakwood box with the mandala on top; everybody knows what’s in there) — Tomorrows Bad Seeds are coming to plant some Rasta Rock in your head garden.
(Buy tickets, check out performance times and get venue details here.)
