Bob Marley : classic or dud?

Kaya was the first Marley in our house, thanks to my sister. it still seems to suffer from its reputation as ‘this is were he fell of/forgot to be a rebel’ or something, but side 2 is a gem, a mood onto itself, one of my favourite things he did, intimate and at times chilling. “Misty Morning”, “Crisis” and “Running Away”, damn.

― Long Tall Arsetee & the Shaker Intros (breastcrawl)

Similar experience. I had a good relationship with an ex that lived in barcelona, long story short: we traded apartments and roomates and I lived for six months in there with no bluetooth speakers and just an old cd stereo with a limited collection. The album we played the most before going out drinking was Kaya. Had no previous interest or knowledge about Marley and I ended up loving it by association. Still the album from him I rate the best if only by nostalgia.

"Sun Is Shining" rules.

It's easy to take Marley for granted, especially if you get deep into reggae and he was the entry point. But he's really amazing and it's all good. The Lee Perry stuff is my favorite, the big box of all the Perry/Marley sessions is terrific.

Took me a while to appreciate him despite having people shouting his name at me regularly. I think I do still appreciate a lot of other reggae a lot more than him. Prolonged exposure to his music when I first moved to Ireland did leave me thinking he had more soul or whatever, passion, commitment than the pop reggae I had previously thought of him as. I do enjoy that set Trenchtown Rock which had been released by the Sanctuary incarnation of Trojan covering his material with Lee Perry producing.
Think I grew dreads looking for a way to grow long hair and discovering the Bad Brains in the mid 80s after looking for a way to make my curly hair spiky or find a way of emulating Nick Cave's back combed verticality.

I still don't listen to him much. Probably listen to Burning Spear much more and have a load of Lee Perry stuff and things.

Oddly enough Marley was not the reggae entry point amongst my schoolmates. It was Alpha Blondy. I have no effing idea why. Iirc a student that came from guadalajara was a massive fan and she was the one that tuned us into him.

I was aware Bob Marley’s Legend was one of the cliché records everyone in highschool bought but I was always wary of buying into hyped albums in my generation, I grew up on a generation that bought the shit out of nu metal and happy punk.

heard “no woman no cry” and “redemption song” first and found them very boring and lacking in idk groove (I still do tbh). Years later I heard “jamming” and “could this be love” and that was way more my thing. So decided to finally give Legend chance and liked it a lot but not enough to keep digging. It wasn’t until that summer hearing Kaya frequently that I stopped underrating him.

to be fair, the re-recorded (iirc) versions on Legend are mostly terrible

Are they really re-recorded?

sorry, remixes

The "remixes" on this record by Eric Thorngren are quite terrible. For instance, No Woman No Cry is ruined with 80s synths. Don't buy this pressing.

Am I the only person that likes the studio take of "No Woman..." more than the live version?

def not

Isn’t the legend version of no woman no cry exactly the same as on the live album? I never noticed a difference

Pressings from 1986 on used the international version of the release until 2002, when a two-disc deluxe version released by Universal replaced all tracks with their respective album versions (except for "No Woman, No Cry," which is the full length version from the "Live!" album) and included the two extra tracks from the cassette release as bonus tracks. That version was released individually as part of "The Definitive Remasters" series.

If there is one artist who can be universally hailed as a classic . . .

...it's Bernard Sumner.

LOL

Well played, sir.

Having been moderately engaged by Legend for years, taking the time to get into early Marley/Wailers last year was fun and enlightening.

I'm here to chime in: “Misty Morning" and “Crisis” are amazing songs.

Confrontation is all time.

If there is one artist who can be universally hailed as a classic . . .

Not according to Marcello Carlin, a terrible man for sure.

Exodus is a masterpiece

Marcello did offer a mea culpa of sorts.

Oh, that guy! I wouldn't have put the two together.

I honestly couldn't get through Catch a Fire. I've been meaning to give it another go for decades.

x-post

"of sorts" is covering a lot of bases there.

Yes, doesn’t own the toxic attitude as his own, just a historical error made by others as contrast to his own apparently nuanced take.

MC has a curious literary style - mixing a tone of certitude and authority with some way out WTF-ery:

Charles Shaar Murray was in attendance, to review the show for the NME, and despite the somewhat regrettable wording of his piece, did manage to give his readers a good idea of how significant and guard-changing an occasion this was; the aroma of ganja was inescapable, you didn’t trespass on the known territory of others, you had to keep a keen eye on your handbags or wallets. Overall the air was of a revivalist gospel meeting, as is evident throughout “No Woman, No Cry” in particular – or perhaps Sankey’s Sacred Songs And Solos, published one hundred and two years earlier, was still remembered – although by all accounts the intensity and atmosphere were more redolent of a Grounation ceremony.

Skanktankerous

how great is “who da cap fit”?

Love "Corner Stone", especially given its backstory

On top of everything, he's a great singer. Sounds at times like Otis Redding.

TIL Rita Marley wrote "Johnny Was". Realized about a month ago listening to Hanx! that i still LOVE SLF's version of that

Gotta be honest … I like the uk version of catch a fire w the muscle shoals guitars and such, idk

― xheugy eddy (D-40), Friday, August 18, 2023 9:33 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

i like both versions, but those session guns played their asses off. i do think tosh's two songs are much better without the overdubs tho.

never realized there were two versions! I do have two LPs worth of the Perry stuff (Rasta Revolution and African Herbsman) and yeah they are great

there was just one version, which was the one w/ overdubs from american roots/rock musicians bc island was trying to position marley as a reggae artist for a rock audience...to me its aged better than ie aerosmith on a run dmc album

i've never done a truly deep dive on Bob but in all honesty everything i've ever heard from him is borderline best-case scenario for the type of music that finds its way into absolute unquestioned mass acceptance, in terms of the sentiments of the songs and the quality of the work across the board.

the deluxe edition of catch a fire (from 2001) included the "unreleased original jamaican versions," alongside the album that was actually released

Feel like there are multiple Bob Marleys in play and the real Bob Marley and the Wailers as well as the original Wailers were actually pretty good and not just some kind of all-purpose filler of various niches.

yea I think the argument for the overdubs would be that reggae itself was still being defined as a genre and that part of what reggae *is* is the influence of rock and funk music...some of the overdubs were also stuff like the clavinet stevie wonder was using at the time/was big in funk music, the idea behind reggae was that it was in part a global genre which was in dialogue w what was happening creatively in america & that this was bob's vision as much as it was chris blackwell's

Gotta be honest … I like the uk version of catch a fire w the muscle shoals guitars and such, idk

― xheugy eddy (D-40), Friday, August 18, 2023 9:33 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

i like both versions, but those session guns played their asses off. i do think tosh's two songs are much better without the overdubs tho.

The material on that Trenchtown rock set which I think is largely the early prefame band recorded in JA though possibly augmented by local musicians is pretty great. Has some later material recorded late 70s with Perry on the second disc.great set as were most of the Sanctuary Trojan 2cds I've come across so far.