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Taken from Scottish Socialist Voice (June 22, 2003)
Power to the peaceful
Michael Franti and Spearhead, King Tut's, Sunday June 22. Everyone Deserves Music, out now
by Jo Harvie
 Maybe I keep going on about them a wee bit, put people need to know - Spearhead are the best live band in the world.
Michael Franti is the six foot six songwriter, singer and salsa dancing frontman, and Spearhead are the group of musicians who record and tour with him.
The San Francisco collective do hip hop like it should be - a big soup of styles from all over the world with an anti-oppression, pro-peace message holding it all together.
Sunday's brilliantly sweaty, three hour set started with some reggaed up versions of older material that had everyone dancing straight away.
They covered The Guns of Brixton. It was breathtaking.
From then on we got a world tour of sounds, from salsa and samba to some John Lennon-esque new songs.
A wee acoustic break gave the band a rest, and Franti sang lip-tremblingly beautiful versions of What's Going On and Concrete Jungle.
It was Stay Human and Sometimes from the last album that had the King Tut's floor really bouncing, but the stuff from the new album, Everyone Deserves Music, promises even more funkiness.
My highlight was the calypso crazy Taxi Radio, which made me dance like an idiot and smile so much my face hurt.
The new album is also Franti at his angriest. There's been no anti-war speech more succinct than Bomb the World - "You can bomb the world to pieces/but you can't bomb it into peace".
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