Certain Songs

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

Album: African Herbsman.

Year: 1971.

It’s the manifesto, and one of the greatest thesis statements any musician has ever put out there:

One good thing about music: when it hits, you feel no pain.
One good thing about music: when it hits, you feel no pain.

And then, for the rest of the 2:58 of “Trench Town Rock”, Bob Marley & The Wailers demonstrate exactly what they’re singing about, joyously trading off vocals. Bob is so totally painless, he’s practically scatting while Peter and Bunny chant “grooving grooving grooving grooving!”

But of course, it’s deeper than that: music is physical, and by pleading and begging to be hit with music (at one point, Bob even asks to be “brutalized,”) he’s basically saying that he prefers the violence of being hit by music than the violence being hit by anything else. 

Music is a drug. Music is a defense. Music is life.

Fan made video for “Trenchtown Rock”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Album: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8.

Year: 2004.

On Time Out of Mind, “Cold Irons Bound” didn’t so much play out as it slowly unfurled. Buried in the swampy Lanoispherics of the rest of the record, it was as if someone decided to stick a Tom Waits tune (it kinda reminds me of Waits’ amazing interpretation of the “Dwarves Marching Song (Heigh Ho)” from Stay Awake) in the middle of a Bob Dylan album. No one would ever mistake it for a lively dance song.

However, live, “Cold Irons Bound,” as represented by this performance recorded at the Bonnaroo Festival in 2004 (and stuck onto the super-expensive 3rd disc of The Bootleg Series Vol. 8), it takes on a whole new life. 

With drummer George Receli playing an inverted Bo Diddely beat, and the guitars crashing in as if they’re trying knock that beat to kingdom come, the whole thing sounds like Louis Jordan filtered through the early Who.

And when Bob Dylan slurs out the chorus

I’m 20 miles out of town in collllllld irons bound
20 miles out of town
in 
collllllllllllld 
ironnns
bounnnnnnnnnd

while the drums steadily build out of that beat only to get slammed back into it by the guitars, and all of the guitars start battling with each other, it’s utterly thrilling. Simultaneously light as a feather and heavy as a freight train, this version of “Cold Irons Bound” inspires me to dance around in my living room, which is something I’ve never really said about any other Dylan song since … well,  ever.

Naturally, I couldn’t find that specific performance on Spotify or YouTube, but this video, from the highly underrated Masked and Anonymous, will do. It isn’t quite as great as the version as I’m describing, but it’s 95% of the way there, which damn straight is good enough, and a fucking awesome way to end all of the Dylan posts.

Video of “Cold Irons Bound” from Masked and Anonymous

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Album: “Love And Theft”

Year: 2001.

Bob Dylan was so certain that he had a winner with “Mississippi” that he recorded three separate versions for Time Out Of Mind: an all-acoustic version, a draggy rock version, and a slow blues. None of them fit the album, so it was shelved and resurrected for the utterly amazing “Love and Theft." 

Recast musically as a slowly-building near-anthem, "Mississippi” gave up its beautiful chorus over and over again:

Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

The chorus is the first thing you notice, of course, But as the song rolls on, you hear more and more from the obviously unreliable narrator, and you get the impression that perhaps it wasn’t the staying in Mississippi that was the problem, but coming there in the first place. Or anywhere, really.

Everybody movin’ if they ain’t already there
Everybody got to move somewhere
Stick with me baby, stick with me anyhow
Things should start to get interestin’ right about now

Feels like an understatement. Clearly things have always been interesting. But “Mississippi” – sandwiched as it was between two tough rockers – was also a signal that “Love and Theft” was going to be an even better album than its predecessor.

Official video for “Mississippi”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever