Archives for February 2015

Album: Night Moves.

Year: 1976.

Because Punk Rock came along and rendered his roots-rock almost instantly critically obsolete almost the second he starting lobbing hit singles into the Top 40, and because his licensing of “Like a Rock” to Chevy for a hundred million truck commercials felt like “selling out” in the worst way, guys like me have tended to underrate Bob Seger over the years.

I’m guessing that’s not the case now, though, given that all of those concerns are pretty much moot here in the 21st century, and Bob Seger doesn’t seem all that different from contemporaries like Bruce Springsteen or Tom Petty to the younger folk who even bother with 70s rock at all.

And then again, there’s “Night Moves,” easily his crowning achievement, which somehow made me nostalgic at 14 for things I hadn’t yet (but desperately wanted) to experience. That’s no mean feat, and while I wasn’t sure what I was responding to, there was something in the sadness of “Night Moves” that made it feel different from everything else on the radio, where it’s continually lived for nearly 40 years.

Like “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” “Night Moves” was one of those songs that had both a single version and an album version, but whereas the extra bit in “Reaper” was just a temporary (albeit kickass) guitar break, the long version of “Night Moves” was something else entirely. 

About 3 minutes into a groovy folk-rock song with a killer bassline, perfectly placed piano and background chick vocalists chiming in on the chorus, Seger ground the song to a dead stop, and suddenly it turned from a reminiscence about fumbling teenage sex to a meditation on mortality: 

I awoke last night to the sound of thunder
How far off I sat and wondered
Started humming a song from 1962
Ain’t it funny how the night moves
When you just don’t seem to have as much to lose
Strange how the night moves
With autumn closing in

So, just like that, as the song restarts and the back-up chicks chant the title hook over and over again, there’s isn’t anymore mention of teenage sex, but rather the adult regret of not realizing just how temporary those youthful pleasures really are.

Of course, as a teenager, I just thought of this as “that boring part,” but now, these decades later, remembering how this song was pretty much everywhere in 1977, I totally get it. Fucking Seger, man.

:: bursts into tears ::

A weird 1994 Official Video for “Night Moves” with famous people in it

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Album: Burnin’.

Year: 1973.

The last album that Bob Marley & The Wailers released before Bunny & Peter split for solo careers was as good as anything in their catalog, and serves as capstone to their remarkable early 1970s run. 

I rate Burnin’ as slightly less amazing than Catch a Fire mostly because I heard Catch a Fire first and maybe because some of the songs aren’t as special as they were remakes of earlier songs – which, of course, I heard later as I dug into Marley’s pre-Island recordings.

Like “Put it On,” which my iTunes informs me I have five different versions of, ranging from a ska-like version recorded in the late 1960s to an live in-studio version recorded at Capitol Records. Every version is gorgeous: with the possible exception of “Stir it Up,” I think that “Put it On” might just be Bob Marley’s best melody.

While a lot of the songs on Burnin’ were political and militant, “Put it On” was a song about the ability of music to point your soul towards the divine. Of course, since he doesn’t specifically reference music, I guess it could be about ganja, too.  Either way, with Bunny & Peter with Bob every step of the journey, the Barrett brothers providing a steady rock solid bottom and a couple of lovely keyboard solos by Earl Lindo, this version wins out.

Fan-made video for “Put it On”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Album: Catch A Fire

Year: 1973.

It is my firm belief that no human beings – not McCartney, Lennon & Harrson, not the Wilsons & their cousins, not even Supremes or Temptations – have ever sung together as beautifully as Bob Marley, Peter Tosh & Bunny Livingstone.  Exhibit A: the group harmonies of “Slave Driver,” which come together so perfectly you almost don’t even realize how political it is.

Also, “Slave Driver” – at least on the U.S. version of Catch a Fire – is one of the few songs to invoke The Handclap Rule (“Handclaps make a good song great and a great song immortal) totally in context of the lyrics. When Marley sings:

Ev’rytime I hear the crack of a whip, 

[CLAP CLAP] 

My blood runs cold. 

The handclaps are doing double duty as both a lyrical and rhythmic punctuation. Of course, as always, it’s the rhythmic punctuation where they work the best, as they are being repeated throughout the song, as are those wonderful harmonies.

"Slave Driver” performed live in 1973

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Album: Catch a Fire.

Year: 1973.

I’m probably remembering this wrong, but I think we were just out of high school in 1980 when Tim first got that cassette of Catch a Fire. Hell, maybe it was a tape of a cassette, who even remembers. All I know is that suddenly, this record felt like the greatest thing in the universe.

Of course, I’d heard reggae before, I thought. I mean, in 1980, The Clash were my favorite band in the universe, and they’d been tossing reggae at me for a couple of years, as – of course – had The Police. And, of course, there were those half-remembered singles from the early 70s like Desmond Dekker’s “The Isrealites” and Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now,” but a whole album of the stuff seemed daunting, to say the least.

Which is where “Concrete Jungle” comes in. With the slowly building intro, call-and-response vocals and that long, spooky guitar solo, “Concrete Jungle” kicked a door open in my head. Not to mention that the words described a world that was even more alien than the New York or London depicted in my beloved punk rock.

No sun will shine in my day today (no sun will shine)
The high yellow moon won’t come out to play (that high yellow moon won’t come out to play)
I said (darkness) darkness (has come and covered my light) has covered my light,
(And has changed)
And has changed (my day into night) my day into night, yeah.
Where is the love to be found? (ooh-ooh-ooh)
Won’t someone tell me ‘cause
Life (sweet life) must be (got to be) somewhere to be found (out there somewhere out there for me)
Instead of concrete jungle (Jungle, jungle, jungle!),

The intricacy of the vocals and the music continually weaving in and out of each other was nothing like I’d never heard before. Everywhere I turned with this music, there was something new to discover. Yes, reggae felt alien and druggy and apocalyptic, but that was exactly why it was so appealing! 

Not to mention that, in retrospect, if you check out the video below (or any of the live recordings from around that period), it was clear that for a hot moment in 1973, The Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band in The World wasn’t The Who or The Rolling Stones or P-Funk, it was Bob Marley & The Wailers.

“Catch A Fire” performed live in 1973

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Album: African Herbsman.

Year: 1971.

What even is this song? That was my thought when I first heard it in the early 80s. After being blown away by both Catch a Fire and Burnin’, I went both forwards and backwards with Bob Marley and the Wailers, but landed hardest on African Herbsman, which is basically a compilation of songs they recorded with the legendary Lee “Scratch” Perry. 

Despite – or maybe because of – the much poorer sonic quality as compared to Catch a Fire & Burnin’, I was nearly as enthralled by these records as I was those impeccably produced records. And “Brain Washing” accounted for much of the enthrallment.

Seriously: the bubbling, infinitely circular bass line that Family Man Barrett uses to drive this song has no ken in modern music. With an organ chirping like a robin in the background and somebody’s – let’s say Marley’s – guitar coming in at the end to square the bass circle, “Brain Washing” is so hypnotic musically I never even knew what was about until I read the lyrics to write this post.

For years, I would only catch snatches of what Marley was singing, which was snatches of nursery rhymes and fairy tails:

Cinderella and her long lost fellow
In the midnight hour, she lost her silver slipper
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
While Jack and Jill had themselves a fall

But the chorus, which I never caught, makes it so much deeper:

It’s just the poor’s brain washing
And I don’t need it no longer, I don’t want it no longer

In other words: instead of just singing snatches of fairy tales, Marley is basically saying “stop believing in fairy tales, they ain’t going to come true!” And suddenly a song that I’d ever believed was musically deep becomes lyrically deep as well.

And once again, with that bassline, it doesn’t even matter.

Fan-made video for “Brain Washing”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever