Thursday, February 20
What am I listening to? Reggae and dub. I've been digging through my back catalogue of Jamaican music for the past week, trying to figure out what is still fresh and what is stale. The fresh stuff includes just about everything by Lee Perry (no big surprise there), a lot of Augustus Pablo's music (especially the wonderful East of the River Nile and Augustus Pablo Meets the Rockers Uptown), some Bob Marley music (the original, Jamaican version of Catch a Fire that was released in a deluxe edition package last year is fantastic; by comparison, the originally released version is stale, filled with all the cliches of early 70s overproduced rock), and just about everything by King Tubby. Some of the stale music includes some albums I used to love, like Culture's Two Sevens Clash, Black Uhuru's Brutal and Brutal Dub, and some of the more modern dub artists like Dub Syndicate and Bill Laswell (well, some of his stuff is good).
What makes the good stuff good and the bad stuff bad? Well, to start, the bad stuff isn't really "bad" in the same way schlock music like the Dixie Chicks or even Eek-a-Mouse is bad. It's bad in the sense that it is dated, that it represents a musical time period that no longer seems that relevant. In many ways, the music itself--the songs--are still interesting, but the sound is dated. Since we listen to the SOUND of music, not the idea of songs, it's hard to really be excited about music you don't want to listen to. Culture's album is a good example of this. Compare Two Sevens Clash with Lee Perry's Divine Madness...Definitely. Culture's album is vastly more intricate and intelligent than the happy songs collected on Perry's work. But Culture's music sounds 25 years old (which it is). The rhythm is sparse and uninteresting, the bass is tinny, and the vocals, while decent, are not really decently mixed into the rest of the track. It's dull. By contrast, the music on Perry's album, produced around the same time, is vibrantly alive. The rhythms and melodies just float along. Even though the tracks could do with serious remastering (they sound, at times, like blues records from the 40s), the music itself is so powerful and joyous that it overcomes the poor quality of the masters. It's just that good.
It is for this reason that I tend to ignore arguments that say that lyrics are the most important part of music, or that lyrics are underrated in pop music. That's silly. Lyrics are only as good as the music they are set to. The best lyrics in rock are not Dylan's but James Brown's or John Lee Hooker's, where lyrics, simple as they might be, are every bit as intelligent and as moving and as deep as the so-called "poetry" of other, more celebrated lyricists--because those lyrics fit the songs, because those lyrics are subtle enough not to overwhelm the beat or the melody. If your lyrics don't fit the song, then it's poetry.
Bob Marley is an interesting example of a great lyricist. His lyrics are simple, and that's why they are great. Pop music doesn't get any better than when he sings, "No chains around my feet, but I'm not free" (on "Concrete Jungle"). That's just brilliant, and it's brilliant because it's such a simple statement--the kind of statement anyone could come up with. The problem with some of Marley's (and The Wailers') music is the forced inclusion of "rock sounds" onto this very raw, beautiful Jamaican sound. As I said, the Deluxe Edition of Catch a Fire is great because it offers up both records, the Jamaican version and the "official" version. The differences are subtle, but those subtle differences make a huge difference to my ears. The Jamaican version sounds like it was made yesterday. It's raw, yes, but that rawness is the mark of a band that had worked together for ten years, knew each other inside and out, and were polished and professional enough to know that less is always better than more and overdoing a song is to kill it. That's obviously not what Chris Blackwell thought when he decided to overdub tons of organ, guitar, and other sounds on top of the original masters, in order to "tame" the sound and make it palatable for a rock audience. In other words, Blackwell wanted to turn timeless music into commercial music, and he did a good job. The problem is, in making the music relevant to the early 1970s, he effectively dated the music. It's basically the same thing that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas did to their "classic" movies when they edited out guns or added CGI characters. Redoing something to appeal to an audience is not only dishonest but an artistically bankrupt move.
If you're interested in any of this music (including Culture and Black Uhuru, but not including Catch a Fire), then you should check out Emusic. For either $10 or $15 a month, you can download as many albums as you want. Of course, the service doesn't have any new stuff, but it does have a lot--A LOT--of great reggae and dub from the 1960s and 70s, including tons of Pablo, Tubby, Perry, and others (not to mention most of the Force Inc. back catalogue).
What makes the good stuff good and the bad stuff bad? Well, to start, the bad stuff isn't really "bad" in the same way schlock music like the Dixie Chicks or even Eek-a-Mouse is bad. It's bad in the sense that it is dated, that it represents a musical time period that no longer seems that relevant. In many ways, the music itself--the songs--are still interesting, but the sound is dated. Since we listen to the SOUND of music, not the idea of songs, it's hard to really be excited about music you don't want to listen to. Culture's album is a good example of this. Compare Two Sevens Clash with Lee Perry's Divine Madness...Definitely. Culture's album is vastly more intricate and intelligent than the happy songs collected on Perry's work. But Culture's music sounds 25 years old (which it is). The rhythm is sparse and uninteresting, the bass is tinny, and the vocals, while decent, are not really decently mixed into the rest of the track. It's dull. By contrast, the music on Perry's album, produced around the same time, is vibrantly alive. The rhythms and melodies just float along. Even though the tracks could do with serious remastering (they sound, at times, like blues records from the 40s), the music itself is so powerful and joyous that it overcomes the poor quality of the masters. It's just that good.
It is for this reason that I tend to ignore arguments that say that lyrics are the most important part of music, or that lyrics are underrated in pop music. That's silly. Lyrics are only as good as the music they are set to. The best lyrics in rock are not Dylan's but James Brown's or John Lee Hooker's, where lyrics, simple as they might be, are every bit as intelligent and as moving and as deep as the so-called "poetry" of other, more celebrated lyricists--because those lyrics fit the songs, because those lyrics are subtle enough not to overwhelm the beat or the melody. If your lyrics don't fit the song, then it's poetry.
Bob Marley is an interesting example of a great lyricist. His lyrics are simple, and that's why they are great. Pop music doesn't get any better than when he sings, "No chains around my feet, but I'm not free" (on "Concrete Jungle"). That's just brilliant, and it's brilliant because it's such a simple statement--the kind of statement anyone could come up with. The problem with some of Marley's (and The Wailers') music is the forced inclusion of "rock sounds" onto this very raw, beautiful Jamaican sound. As I said, the Deluxe Edition of Catch a Fire is great because it offers up both records, the Jamaican version and the "official" version. The differences are subtle, but those subtle differences make a huge difference to my ears. The Jamaican version sounds like it was made yesterday. It's raw, yes, but that rawness is the mark of a band that had worked together for ten years, knew each other inside and out, and were polished and professional enough to know that less is always better than more and overdoing a song is to kill it. That's obviously not what Chris Blackwell thought when he decided to overdub tons of organ, guitar, and other sounds on top of the original masters, in order to "tame" the sound and make it palatable for a rock audience. In other words, Blackwell wanted to turn timeless music into commercial music, and he did a good job. The problem is, in making the music relevant to the early 1970s, he effectively dated the music. It's basically the same thing that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas did to their "classic" movies when they edited out guns or added CGI characters. Redoing something to appeal to an audience is not only dishonest but an artistically bankrupt move.
If you're interested in any of this music (including Culture and Black Uhuru, but not including Catch a Fire), then you should check out Emusic. For either $10 or $15 a month, you can download as many albums as you want. Of course, the service doesn't have any new stuff, but it does have a lot--A LOT--of great reggae and dub from the 1960s and 70s, including tons of Pablo, Tubby, Perry, and others (not to mention most of the Force Inc. back catalogue).
