Bob Marley : classic or dud?

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.