Dimery skips over Marley’s follow-up studio album to Catch A Fire, appropriately named Burnin’, that features Get Up Stand Up and I Shot The Sheriff, and jumps straight to Marley’s seventh studio album.
It’s a much more varied album in terms of the music. Although the reggae skank is there behind all the tracks, they borrow more from blues and jazz for the soloing components. The tracks are generally longer as well, allowing the musicians to get into a groove and play around with it. This is especially true of Rebel Music, where Al Anderson gets a bit of a slow and funky guitar jam.
The tracks are more politically charged than before, with Rebel Music about police harassment, while Them Belly Full (But We Hungry) speaks for itself and Revolution talks of
“Never make a politician, grant you a favour
They will always want to control you forever”
They will always want to control you forever”
There’s more Rastafarianism in evidence as well, with So Jah Seh espousing the fundamental faith of Rastafarianism, as well as the character Natty Dread as an everyman Rastafarian. The most well-known track on the album, I would say, is No Woman No Cry, but the single version that gets all the radio play is a slower live variant; the one here is a paced a bit more perkily and initially seems a little perfunctory. I rather like this version though, I’ve always felt that the live version dragged a little.
If you wanted to introduce somebody to Marley, this one seems like a good place to start; it covers a lot of his themes, but the music is just that little bit more crisply produced, while remaining relaxed and powerful at the same time.
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