Article Library

Spring has arrived blooming with major shows as Ziggy Marley, The Kinks, Michelle Shocked, Melissa Etheridge and Pearl Bailey will visit the region’s theaters for concerts.

The parade of shows begins Friday night in Waterville with Marley’s concert with the Melody Makers. The show, at the Wadsworth Gymnasium at Colby College, starts at 8.

Tickets are $13 and are available at Ticketron locations, the Record Exchange in Portland and at student activities’ offices at Bates College, Bowdoin College, Colby College, and the University of Southern Maine.

Ziggy, son of the late Bob Marley, has shouldered a musical tradition his father established a generation ago.

The elder Marley’s musical talent and political passions helped transform reggae from a little-known form of Jamaican street music into a globally popular and important art.

Although Ziggy is talented, critics have noted he has yet to dress his tunes in the passionate trappings that his father used. Even so, his concert in Portland last year was fun and energetic.

For more information, call the Colby student activities office at 872-3000.

Fans of new acoustic music may wish to stay in Portland and take in a music revue headlined by singer Michelle Shocked.

The show, Friday at the Portland City Hall Auditorium, begins at 8 p.m. Appearing with Shocked is songwriter John Wesley Harding and the Hawaiian-based band Poi Dog Pondering.

Shocked’s recent success has been—excuse the pun—a little shocking.

Only three years ago, Shocked was singing her funny, yet often melancholy folk music on street corners and at small folk concerts. Her first commercial success came after an entrepreneur used a pocket cassette deck to record Shocked singing next to a campfire at a Texas folk festival.

That recording became a fast-selling album in England.

Since then, Shocked has made two studio-produced albums which critics have praised for their sensitive tongue-in-cheek lyrics and their simple style.

Shocked, it seems, can’t help poking fun. Her most recent single, “[On] the Greener Side,” was made into a video full of pictures of flexing, barely dressed male body builders.

With “[On] The Greener Side” video, Shocked parodies videos made by male singers that generally are full of writhing, half-naked women.

Tickets for the Shocked show are $18.50 and $16.50 and are available at Ticketron locations, Strawberries Records and Tapes locations, at the Record Exchange in Portland and by calling Teletron at 1-800-382-8080.