Jimmy Murders The Classics

[Jimmy Dread]

Greetings.

I'm bored of being bloody positive about everything all the time and now I'm comfortably in middle-age I think it's high time I started getting a grump on. So this musical diary will be dedicated to my ongoing mission to shit all over albums you and everyone else loves just to provoke derision and create an argument. Especially with canon-loving Swedes who steal other people's reviews and pass them off as his own.

If you want an album you love torn to shreds leave a recommendation here. I make no apology for anything I say, unless it's not funny. And who knows - i may discover a record I've previously dismissed that I ultimately love. Chances of that are remote of course, but if you want to be BEAutiful here's your opportunity.

Peace, love and shit

JD (and coke)
_________________
'Reggae' & t'ing
Folk 'n Stuff
SHAMELESS RECORD DEALER PLUG

[Repo]

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Legend by Bob Marley And The Wailers

this should be fun. I promise to put my Depends on before reading. Also give some tea recommendations! I'm off coffee and can't stand Lipton. lol.

Peace, brother. Psyched to see what you do with this.

[joyofdivision]

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions by Miles Davis

I'd love to hear an alternative viewpoint on these legendary and groundbreaking sessions. As long as you don't send me a cowpat in the post for making you sit through 3 hours of jazz fusion

[Jimmy Dread]

Tilly, you're on (and try Earl Grey):

1. Two Fingers Up At The Leg-End

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Legend by Bob Marley And The Wailers

I remember it well. 1996. University. A small-town indie kid decamps to Canterbury, famed for its cathedral, the playwright who was supposedly Shakespeare but in actual fact wasn't and the old fella who sings "I'm Henry VIII I Am" near the County Hotel. As an 'indie kid' I read the NME and rarely ventured outside my comfort zone musically, mainly due to the fact that you had to actually buy an album to listen to it (remember we didn't have Spotty Fry in those days) or else clog up the listening post in Our Price. Woe betide you if you exceeded the 'no more than four discs at a time' limit.

As with so many things in life (staying up late, one night stands, different flavours of Homepride cook-in sauce) university gives you plenty of opportunities to experiment. In my halls of residence I used to live 3 doors down from the son of a Swiss diplomat called Tim. Tim was pretty well-educated, spoke about 5 languages and - according to him at least - had immunity from arrest thanks to his father. This meant that he confidently smuggled weed into the country by hiding it inside the lids of his can of Lynx Africa or whatever deodorant was de rigueur back in them days. Naturally this also meant he was the 'go-to' man for a bit of 'da 'erb', as well as the host of many an after-hours get-together in the box room he called home for 3 university terms. Being a neighbour curiosity eventually got the better of me and I joined in the pow-wow, kouchie being passed 'pon da left-hand side. But it wasn't the sensation or the endless packets of Golden Wonder than linger in the memory. It was Tim's CD collection. A collection that consisted of 3 CDs. I mused upon why only 3 - maybe he'd left the rest back home in Geneva. But no. These were all he'd ever had. They were

Jagged Little Pill - Alanis Morissette
Travelling Without Moving - Jamiroquai
and (obviously for the purposes of this post) Legend

It turned out that each of these CDs were only put on when the mood was right. Alanis for the late-teen angst, the anger he had when he had run out of change to work the university washing machine which from memory used to bubble over if left unattended and was often screwed for weeks on end so you had to wash your pants in the bath. Jamiroquai for 'getting ready for a night on the town' and dancing in front of the mirror to (and obviously because he'd never heard Songs In The Key Of Life). And Legend. For getting caned to.

And as a self-confessed fan of Jamaican music in all its many wonderful forms, I hate the fact that most people's introduction to 'reggae' (a horrid umbrella term for all Jamaican music, but used here for ease of reference) is Legend. It is perhaps the most unrepresentative of all reggae albums. It's also the easiest to get your hands on, just as easy as a poster of Marley with a spliff hanging out his gob or a cannabis leaf indiscretely added to the top corner for 'authenticity' whilst middle-class stoners mong out on their bean bag with a bag of Doritos by their side. In fact in a genre that is usually typified by uprising of the impoverished and rejection of Babylon it is the most commercially savvy packaging of a collection of music ever devised. It's rebel music for people who shop in Marks & Spencers. It's a pair of Crocs when you should go barefoot. And musically it's also as soft as shit, for reasons I'll get into.

The fact that Legend has continued to maintain some sort of shaman-esque mystique has quite frankly little to do with the music within. Gone were the Studio One days where The Wailing Wailers (as they were then known - notice the lack of Marley pushed into the limelight) wrote amazing ska tracks such as the glorious "Simmer Down" (in fact I'd wholeheartedly recommend listening to this if you're not familiar with the Wailers' early output). Island Records' head Chris Blackwell saw his opportunity to capitalise on the success of Desmond Dekker and Dave & Ansell Collins (Trojan artists that both had UK no.1 singles in 1969-70) - he was after a marketable star. Authentic ghetto suffering coupled with good looks and an edge. It could have been Jimmy Cliff, but Island tried too early in 1967 when Hard Road To Travel bombed. It could - and should - have been Toots and The Maytals, especially when you factor in Mod anthems like Pressure Drop and Monkey Man and the fact that they were still Jamaica's biggest homegrown draw in the late 60s-early 70s. But no. Blackwell had a masterplan of spin and white-washing which worked a treat and duped an audience to believe that the slick-packaged Wailers were the real deal, at least from Catch A Fire onwards.

Which of course they weren't, at least not to the trained eye. What they were though was a distilled attempt to market reggae to the masses. Take out the Jamaican studio musicians, strip away the soul of the Scratch Perry produced work, overdub some Muscle Shoals session man's guitar licks in place of the originals to clean up the sound, stick it in a record sleeve that looks like a Zippo lighter (and then one with Bob smoking a spliff) and market a singles-based genre to an album-orientated rock audience. Clever.

Marley's fame and subsequent role in Jamaican politics could never have happened before Island and Chris Blackwell got hold of him. His currency rose and rose to such an extent that Bunny Wailer and Tosh got pissed off with 'selling out' and Marley's ease with playing venues that went against their faith as Rastafari that they ditched the band and went solo. Internationally he was - and still is - the face of reggae and Jamaica, although Usain Bolt isn't far off the latter these days. And there's stoners holding him up to be some sort of totem, the public face of ghetto suffering. Well he was doing just fine, fathering umpteen kids with different women whilst his wife Rita provided backing vocals (in fact, if there is any positivity out of this diatribe, it's that the I Three were perhaps the finest backup singers Jah could bless any band with).

Jamaican music has never been an album-focused genre. LPs weren't conceptually viable, and more often than not were a collection of tracks intended to collect singles for the Jamaican diaspora in the UK (note that even some of Studio One's early LPs on Coxsone started out as UK releases - Alton Ellis' Sings Rock And Soul and The Gaylads' Soul Beat being two prime examples). Ska and rocksteady was about the single, focused on the dance, and as such didn't embrace the album format, at least not before Catch A Fire came along. It's intriguing, then, that Legend ping-pongs around all over the place in an attempt to present a coherent flow instead of presenting the tracks in chronological order. And as such it's an unholy mess, missing key tracks all over the shop.

So what's the problem with "No Woman No Cry", "Stir It Up" and the like? Well, not much really. I don't and never have disliked the tracks themselves, although there's a stack of songs that would to me have made better selection choices. But the likes of "War", "Johnny Was", "Small Axe" and "Them Belly Full" are far too political to make the cut on what Legend ostensibly boils down to: a soft rock record consisting mostly of love songs designed for smoking weed or getting laid to. True, you've got "Redemption Song" - perhaps aside from "War" Bob's most political and spiritual statement. But take the lyrics away and it's nothing but an acoustic ballad which could have just as easily be a Dylan number. Then there's "I Shot The Sheriff", which was musically such a pale imitation of reggae despite the subject matter that Clapton decided to nick it, and comes complete with faux ghetto organ that tries to rip off Jackie Mittoo and ends up sounding like something you'd hear at the end of Clacton Pier (although I have to confess I actually don't mind it - Tosh and Bunny's harmonies are ace). "Waiting In Vain" and "Is This Love" are just plain old sentimental slush designed to suck a soft rock/pop audience in. Listen to the version of "One Love" on the link above, compare and contrast. The whole record - and the vast majority of Marley's Island output - is watered-down mush. And true, Bob gave a voice to the voiceless in Kingston before his untimely passing, but musically Blackwell created an international rock star who just happened to have dreads (a little like Gwen Stefani). My point here - Marley may have been a hero to many in Jamaica, but at the expense of Jamaican music as a whole. I would guess a large number of people who've heard Legend will never buy, let alone listen to another reggae album. And why? Because Legend doesn't present reggae as a bona-fide genre, but rather as a soft-rock off-shoot with the odd bit of politicised sentiment. It's this, coupled with the fact that by proxy all us reggae fans are consequently labelled as caneheads (I haven't touched it for 15+ years and love JA music more so than ever) that irks me the most. People more often than not start their journey here, get mashed, lose the will to investigate further and stop.

Ironically the Canterbury High Street branch of McDonalds where my university housemate worked used to have an employee called Legend. I think him humming "Uptown Top Ranking" out of tune whilst cleaning of tables probably represents a better introduction to Jamaican music than this pile of toss.
_________________
'Reggae' & t'ing
Folk 'n Stuff
SHAMELESS RECORD DEALER PLUG

[SuedeSwede]

Nothing makes my day more than Jim ranting about Bob Marley
_________________

[Graeme2]

Nice read. Legend is a perfectly good, great even, compilation of adult rock. In a reggae style. The production has always felt a bit too much for a me but the plan they had for Marley obviously worked and the production sure must have been a big help in that regards. Guitars where you don't need them and bass thats not loud enough and loads of top end. Just a great pop rock singles collection. He possibly opened lots of peoples eyes to reggae as a whole who may not have been bothered otherwise. Maybe.

[Repo]

lol. Awesome write-up, Jimmy! I had a very similar college experience. Except absolutely EVERYONE owend a copy of Legend to get high too. My college was literally about 90% prep scholl kids and they must hand out Legend and Neil Young's Decade as graduation gifts. They all owned about five albums and they were all the same...

1. The Allman Bothers - Eat a Peach
2. U2 - Achtung Baby (or the The Joshua Tree)
3. Neil Young - Decade
4. Bob Marley - Legend
5. Pink Floyd - The Wall

I actually really like The Wall before I went to college. lol.

Anyways, as I said before, Legend was soo overplayed - prep school kids smoke A LOT of weed lol - that it turned me off of reggae for DECADES. Luckily, I'm in the BEA recovery program and things are looking bright. lol

Much love, Jimmy! Peace!

[alelsupreme]

jim this is so good i've gotta see more
_________________

Romanelli wrote:

We're all fucked, lads.

[Luigii]

Oh my god this is so beautiful.Please talk shit to some of my all time favorite albums out there.
Sweet Trip-Velocity:Design:Comfort
Boards Of Canada-Geogaddi
Tim Hecker-Harmony in Ultraviolet
Bjork-Medulla
Jamiroquai-Emergency on Planet Earth
This will be a fun read to talk down to music.