Back in my youth, like any red eyed American white kid who discovered a taste for the devil's lettuce, I heard Bob Marley's Legend. Soon enough I had my own copy, and decided to dig deeper into Marley's music. I went to local Record Exchange (remember record stores?) and purchased the four CD Songs of Freedom boxed set, all chronologically sequenced and nicely bound together in an attractive package.
It's a fair bet that I used the cover to roll out a spliff like the one Bob Marley is holding between his fingers in the cover photo prior to first listen, preparing to take the reggae sacrament. I heard the first track, "Judge Not" from 1961, and was not feeling it. Went on through the disc, but it wasn't the same, clean sounding recordings that I'd heard on Legend. Same with most of the second disc. I didn't hate it, but I definitely didn't love it. Discs 3 and 4 were a bit more in line with the Bob Marley sound I was expecting, and 1 and 2 sat for years in the now ragged package, played maybe twice each.
Fast forward to January 21, 2017 - I got called up on stage at the inaugural Roanoke Women's March, to play some percussion with one of my band mates and a female singer he gigs with locally. I grabbed a tambourine and some shakers and pretended to be a percussionist. We played Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come", another tune I can't recall, then one called "Small Axe", which I thought I might have heard before, but wasn't sure. When I got home I did a little research and discovered that it's a tune the Wailers wrote with Lee "Scratch" Perry, and it is on Disc 1 of Songs of Freedom. So I dug out the old box set and for maybe the third time ever, put in the first disc, skipped to track 22 and pressed play.
My forty-something self was a lot more open to the more primitive vibe of this track, and the others on the the first two discs of the set. And, since I didn't handle them much in my youth, they still play perfectly. Here is a story about the tune's origin as a diss track.
Oh, and the Jimi-Bob tattoo is on the leg of a buddy of mine from Roanoke, who is now out in LA working as DJ Petey Clicks. He came up with the idea, and his tattoo guy thought enough of the joke to adorn Peter's leg with it for free.
Petey Clicks sounds like the nickname Klam wished he had.
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32 comments:
Mets w a tough loss last night.
They are just so bad.
bad meaning bad not bad meaning good
There it is.
When I was in high school I bought a Bob Marley cassette from HMV Records in London. Much to my initial dismay, it had none of the Rootsy-mentioned Legend hits. I ended up listening to it a few times, though, and then a few times more. It became one of those tapes I wore out. I still really dig those tunes alongside the later great stuff.
Among them:
- Do It Twice
- Baby We Got a Date
- Slave Driver
- Back Out
- Soul Shakedown Party
But my favorite was Stop the Train, the Peter Tosh sung tune that had me toe-tapping in the Tube. There have been a handful of versions of it and another song called Stop That Train, but this one was a reggae classic.
So...Urban Meyer isn’t a good guy? Hmmph.
“Smith has never been convicted of domestic violence, though he was arrested in 2009 for aggravated battery on a pregnant victim following a fight with Courtney.“
Um, how are those different things?
Meyer should resign. Baylor will hire him in a heartbeat.
hell, Notre Dame will fire Kelly in a heartbeat to hire him
Peter Tosh is great. My adopted hippie uncle gave me a cd of a 1972 Wailers live show from San Fran with many of the tunes on Whit's London tape. It is fire.
Too bad you didn't say that when we were driving by Peter Tosh's house and grave! You and Schpfeck and Slick Fiddy wouldn't stop despite my lamentations. I guess you were in a hurry to get to YS Falls.
oh, snap
Dang, sorry Z. We really screwed that one up. YS falls were cool though.
They were. I think our failure to stop dropped us down a notch in Robbie's eyes.
Hello Gheorghies.
Fuck Urban Meyer.
Z, would it be unfair for me to be pissed that you didn't make us stop?
Senior year spring break I made our 12 dudes deep rolling sausage fest detour to check out the Allman Brother museum at The Big House in Macon, Georgia after getting the invite while chowing down on Mama Louise's soul food at the the fabled H & H Restaurant.
I was only able to overcome the stiff resistance by pointing out that we would be crossing into a different time zone, so we had an extra hour to make the reservations at our shitty motel.
that was an awesome detour and I had no complaints
I don't recall any complaints after the detour, but many objections prior to it.
I do remember teej not being too fond of the imaginary joints I was passing around on the long ride home.
Sonny Gray is becoming this generation’s Ed Whitson. He is toast in NY.
those imaginary joints were the worst
i played "redemption song" with my friend's kid at an open mic a few weeks ago. he played percussion and sang, and i played guitar.
It would be unfair, although to be fair you were a pledge at the time and had little to no influence on whether we would stop for Tosh. I lay the bulk of the blame on the other guys. Which is convenient, given that they don't comment here.
I thought of making that exact point to defend myself. Thanks for helping me take the high road!
The invisible high road
Apple did it today, cracking the $1 T value. Some smart guy hinted at this recently...
http://gheorghe77.blogspot.com/2017/11/one-trillion-dollars.html?m=1
just got off a flight home from minneapolis. sat next to a kid who’d been camping for a week in the northern part of the state with a group of scouts. poor young man smelled like he didn’t bathe or use deodorant the entire trip. that was a pleasant 2 hours.
nice going TR. you are wicked smaaht.
was talking about this yesterday w/coworker here, and how apple every so often rents out 100% of the Inn at Spanish Bay (Pebble Beach) and plays no golf, but are required to pay for golf for the right to rent out the entire hotel...and then we were doing the math on this, adding in the avg hotel night, x 3 nights x the people + food minimum + green fees x X x the number of days +++++ and then divided that by 1 trillion and figured it was really not only not a big deal but fuck why wouldn't you do that every GD month?!!!!!
The house that Yauch built: http://oscilloscope.redbullmusicacademy.com/panorama/main_01
Cool interactive walk through MCA's studio.
you people need to start figuring out what makes a post as opposed to a comment
"you people"?!
Rob just called you all deplorables
Why can’t we just call it “palm hearts?” It’s not like folks say “I’ll have an omelet with whites of eggs.”
eye of newt and toe of frog
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