The ire crowd at Humboldt County’s 1988 Reggae on the River festival cheered when a member of Inner Circle introduced a song.

“This is going to be the theme song for a new TV show,” he said, and the crowd roared louder.

“It’s called ‘Cops.’ ”

The crowd went silent.

Bass player Ian Lewis laughed when he was reminded of the occurrence.

“The irony about that whole thing is we didn’t do it for (the television program),” he said. “The song was about a kid who was out of control. The essence is what life gonna do when it come for you? Doin’ all this killing; you’re gonna have to pay for it one day. It might not be on earth, but when you get into the spiritual sphere, you’re gonna have to do some paying. That’s what the song was about. Bad guys don’t go to heaven. It’s not about no police show.”

Ian and his guitarist brother Roger Lewis started their band before they were teenagers in 1968, when a new generation of Jamaicans were creating the rock steady beat. The music evolved into reggae, led by Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer and Toots Hibbert. Inner Circle was not far behind.

Keyboardist Bernard “Touter” Harvey, who made many recordings with Bob Marley and the Wailers, has been with Inner Circle since the early 1970s. Jacob Miller joined the band as lead singer around 1975. Today’s lineup includes 25-year band member Lancelot Hall on drums and Jr. Jazz, the lead singer since 2007.

Inner Circle, which started recording in 1974, released its 25th album, “State of Da World” Aug. 29, coinciding with 30-year anniversary of the passing of lead singer Jacob Miller, who died at the age of 27 in a 1980 auto accident just a few blocks from Marley’s home.

Inner Circle continues to play tribute to Miller by performing some of his songs at each concert.

“That was a hard one,” Ian Lewis said. “If you are 50 or 60 or 70, you can accept it. But when you are in your 20s, it’s hard because you are not even thinking about death. The combination (with Bob Marley’s death a few months later), that really took us back.”

Bob Marley and the Wailers and Inner Circle had been scheduled to tour the United States together.

“We had to chill out about four or five years,” Lewis said. “You can’t rush into things after that because it was too hard.”

Carlton Coffie emerged as the new lead singer in 1986. Inner Circle went on to release two of its most successful mainstream singles, “Bad Boys” and “Sweat (A La La La La Long).”

Coffie left due to illness in 1995, replaced by Kris Bentley until Jr. Jazz was added.
“State Of Da World” is Inner Circle’s first album with Jr. Jazz as lead singer. The theme is contemporary society, love, nonviolence and homage to ganja — the sacrament to rastamen, who, if devout, lead a disciplined lifestyle which avoids alcohol, meat, most seafoods, white-flour breads and sugar-based beverages and salt.

Lewis wants the new album to bring people back to the mind-set that created reggae.

“From ’60s to early ’90s was a conscious era,” he said. “Rastafari and the earth movement and the people vibe, I think that’s what captured the world. That vibe from Jamaica via Sunsplash and all those other festivals. It was love, ire, feeling that true feeling, and it took a little change after that. I don’t profess violence against nobody. I don’t like that edge. I don’t think it’s necessary.”

He laments how the Internet and technology has changed society.

“The influences that the kids get into, they get into it so fast,” he said “There is too little time to connect. But you travel all over the world and you realize one thing. It’s a state of mind. That’s why we came up with the idea, “State of Da World.’ ... This life is not the same anymore. Nobody trusts anybody. In times of war all we have to sing is a love song. If we don’t love, we can’t go on. That’s the essence of the world right now.”