by TRACY MOORE

HEAVYWEIGHTS LIKE EDWIN YEARWOOD, Alison Hinds, and Khiomal were noticeably missing from the debut of Celebration Time tent on Friday night at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre. But the tent was still able to show off some weight, "riding" high with crowd-pleasers Li'l Rick and Kimberley Inniss.

Inniss' Wings To Fly was impressive on a lovely melody and a well-produced soca-dance hybrid arrangement, while Keann's Show Dem Who Is Boss, an ode to strong women, and coined the Ladies' Anthem, was balanced by the cool groovy melody.

Donella provided one of the memorable performances of the night with Show Me Your Colours. Her strong vocals did not get lost in Wacky Wayne's colourful burst of chaos that accompanied the performance.

Babydoll, though pregnant, moved around the stage effectively to project vocally her two strong social commentaries. Her first, Glimpse Into The Future, questioned the future, and her second, I Pray For You, spoke strongly about people living with HIV/AIDs and other ailments.

Coco/Rico, using Coco for commentary singing I Ain't Got No Luck, and Rico for party song Who Mad, had a nice arrangement and strong lyrical performance for the commentary.

MC Mac Fingall brought two humorous pieces to the stage, entitled Bizzy You Safe and Google. Both were delivered in the uptempo style that has become his forte and, despite his unconvincing argument that his songs have no "underlying" meaning, it was his free-styling to Google that proved his argument wrong.

The song Bizzy, although a straightforward response to Bizzy Williams' openness about his interracial marriage, still had a tailor-made Mac mischief stamp to it.

Ishaka McNeil was in fine form with Not Calling No Names. The song was strong on lyrics and melody, while Cyclone was solid with his songs The Bajan Way and David Thompson.

His strong suit was witty lyrics, balanced melody and a great hook with David Thompson, but his Bajan Way was somewhat short of a strong hook-line.

On the party front were Rameses with Coming Home. He can take a 120-beats per minute song and make it more hype.

Unda Dawg's Morning Stamina is following successfully in the footprints of his father Hypa Dawg's Ride It, and Versiwild's two ragga soca offerings Hype Style Wining and Juck Up All Dat which left some of the audience speechless.

De Coopa may not be the best on vocal delivery, but he had appeal with his comedic groovy medium tempo in Sweetest Girl and Don't Copy.

Chow Mein was the definite crowd-pleaser and his number The Chinese Connection had the audience in stitches.

Salt was infectious with his See Me And Don't See Me but it was newcomer Thicky Sweets whose uptempo tongue-in-cheek Keep Yuh Guyanese Wine, a response to the Guyanese song, was the showstopper.

The lyrics were biting and matched her dance moves that illustrated how a Bajan woman could keep her man.

Some advice to the GT song included "a sling shot wine that would blow 'his' mind, to the hot wuk that would make 'him' come back all the time".

These pieces of information had Fingall speechless and the crowd calling for more.