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Rating: Great |
For Bob Marley, 1975 was a triumphant year. The singer's Natty Dread album contained one of his strongest originals (the first compiled after the departure of Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer) and spawned the Top 40 hit "No Woman No Cry." The subsequent Live set, a document of Marley's performance at London's Lyceum, also saw the singer conquer England. After the tour, Marley and his band returned to Jamaica, where they recorded the tracks for Rastaman Vibration (1976) in the legendary studios of Harry Johnson and Joe Gibbs.
Sylvan Morris and Errol Thompson, Jamaican engineers of the highest caliber, were at the mixing desk for the sessions. While none of these tracks would appear on Legend, Marley's massively popular posthumous best-of, some of the best reality tracks would surface on the more militant equivalent of the compilation, the 1986 Rebel Music set.
"War," for example, remains one of the most stunning statements of the singer's career. Although essentially a direct recitation of one of Haile Selassie's speeches, Marley beautifully frames the lyrics in a musical setting, with a quiet intensity that lies just beneath the surface. Equally strong are the songs "Rat Race," "Crazy Baldhead," and "Want More." These songs are tempered by upbeat, lighthearted material like "Cry to Me," "Night Shift," and "Positive Vibration." Not as strong as some of the love songs that would become hits for Marley on later albums, "Cry to Me" still seems an obvious choice for a single and remains underrated.
While record buyers may not have found any song as strong as “No Woman No Cry,” Rastaman Vibration still reached the Top Ten in the United States.
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