Bosstones Throwdown and Long Live Desmond Dekker!

The Mighty Mighy Bosstones kicked off their 10th "Hometown Throwdown" last night at the Middle East and it was an exciting, sweaty affair filled with familiar hits and a few new tunes including the jubilant "Don't Worry Desmond Dekker."

Jonathan Perry checks in with his review tomorrow and our piece on the band's return is here.

Our friend and colleague David Beard, editor of Boston.com, was cheered by the arrival of the new Bosstones song "Don't Worry" and its celebration of the reggae pioneer. Here are his thoughts on the resurgence of love for Dekker.

Sarah Rodman

Long Live Desmond Dekker!

A not-so-subtle subtheme of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones's reunion in their hometown this week is the veneration of a ska, rocksteady, and reggae trailblazer for Bob Marley.

The Bosstones's latest radio cut, "Don't Worry Desmond Dekker,"' references the onetime welder who sang the classic "Israelites" and was named in Paul McCartney's ska-flavored "Ob-La-Di."

Between the Beatles and the Bosstones, others have paid respect to Dekker, who died last year at age 64 after a late-career renaissance with punk-ska Stiff Records and The Specials, The Rumour, and Robert Palmer. Rancid's "Roots Radicals" mentions a Dekker song on the radio as the 43 bus climbs a hill. Toots & the Maytals, which once backed an early Dekker recording, wrote the song "Desmond Dekker Did It First." Frank Black includes a reference to him in "Parry the Wind High Low,"' and the group Reel Big Fish last year dedicated their live album and DVD to Dekker's memory.

Cinematic audiophiles also pay him tribute. Wes Anderson had character Margot Tenenbaum ("The Royal Tenenbaums") briefly married to Dekker when she was 19. Gus Van Zant used "Israelites" and its essential contrast, an upbeat melody with Dekker's mournful voice and desperate lyrics, to underscore the daily struggle at the heart of his 1989 breakout film "Drugstore Cowboy.''

But why Dekker, and why now? To Kevin O'Brien Chang, co-author of "Reggae Routes: The Story of Jamaican Music,'' Dekker carried the hopes of all Jamaica on his shoulders from "Israelites'' very first words:

"Get up in the morning/Slaving for breads sir/So that every mouth can be fed/Poor me, Israelite.''

It was a primal -- and timeless -- reference to the suffering of the ancient Israelites. In 1969, the song became Jamaica's first homegrown worldwide smash, forging a road for Marley and others to follow.

Chang's favorite Dekker song, though, came three years earlier, with "007 (Shanty Town),'' about student demonstrators challenging authorities who wanted to bulldoze a ramshackle West Kingston area. The song refused to put down the young toughs, known as rude boys, and dealt directly with a rising culture of violence. Its lyrics also alluded to the action movies of the time that inspired the rude boys, such as the James Bond films and the Rat Pack's "Ocean's Eleven.''

"Whatever you hear on the record, that is what was going down,'' Chang quoted Dekker as telling him. "Man take a stone and throw it through the window, lick after somebody.'' Dekker's lyrics: "Them a loot, them a shoot, them a wail.''

But why Dekker? Why now? From this corner, a few possible answers:

He broke through, but others refined his sound. He took risks, but others had greater success. And to some musicians, fearful of toiling at the edge of anonymity, quality still rules, and it should be rewarded, even when the creator of that sound is silenced.

So when the Bosstones talk of long-ago laughter and the joy of old records, it is appropriate to cap the feeling with the line: "And don't worry, Desmond Dekker's doin' fine.''