BOB MARLEY: UPRISING (1980)
1) Coming In From The Cold; 2)
Real Situation; 3) Bad Card; 4) We And Them; 5) Work; 6) Zion Train; 7)
Pimper's Paradise; 8) Could You Be Loved; 9) Forever Loving Jah; 10) Redemption
Song.
The last album released by Marley in his
lifetime is sometimes criticized for being way
too overtly Rastafarian and message-directed, and sometimes criticized for not
being too interesting from a musical standpoint, but my general impression is
that such criticisms should much more appropriately be reserved for Survival, whereas Uprising is actually a musical rebound — a brighter, more colorful
record that attempts to break out of the rigid reggae formula way more often
than you'd expect from somebody who was not only clearly past his absolute
peak, but also dying, as a matter of fact. The latter circumstance one should
keep in mind, I guess, when looking at the album cover and seeing Bob depicted
as a mythical awakening giant — an excusable bit of self-aggrandizing for a
cancer patient, who may already be more concerned about his image in the
afterlife rather than the here and now.
Anyway, Uprising
is surprisingly diverse and even «poppy» for Marley: there is no telling where
the Wailers would go had he been kept alive for another half a decade at least,
but Uprising shows that they could
have expanded into such areas as R&B (ʽWorkʼ), dance-pop (ʽCould You Be
Lovedʼ), and acoustic balladry (ʽRedemption Songʼ), without losing the «Marley
spirit» nor the «Wailers sound». ʽWorkʼ sews together reggae and a slow funk
groove, along with some ominous bluesy guitar playing and larger-than-life
vocal harmonies. ʽCould You Be Lovedʼ bops along as if it were a party-time
summer dance piece, pinned to a bassline that shakes its musical butt like an
oversexed young lady, and it is fun, not to mention a little baffling to be
hearing this and realizing it is, in fact, a piece by Bob Marley, and not by
Kool & The Gang.
Then there is ʽRedemption Songʼ, of course, widely
celebrated for its humble understatements and simple acoustic beauty — and,
cynical as it sounds, hugely aided by the fact of being the last song on
Marley's last album, thus forming a natural musical-lyrical testament for the
guy: "Emancipate yourself from mental slavery / None but ourselves can
free our minds". Musically, there's not much here, and lyrically, there's
not a lot of news, but you could say the same about Lennon's ʽImagineʼ, I guess
— some things are easy to criticize, but not easy to wipe out of the collective
conscience, and Bob's "won't you help to sing these songs of
freedom?" is one of those naïve, but persistent questions that will
probably dangle in the air till the end of time.
In between these formula-challengers we have
our usual reggae schtick, but with the balance smoothly corrected from
«messagism» to «catchism», so that a song like ʽComing In From The Coldʼ first
grips you with its repetitive, but funny chorus, and only later, if you want
to, you can begin pondering its predictably serious message. Equally catchy is
the chorus to ʽPimper's Paradiseʼ, a song made ever so moody with some clever
synthesizer textures in the background that it will take some time before you
begin wondering whether, this time, the message is not just a tad too conservative and moralistic for a
guy who wants us to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery (some might even
call the song «misogynistic» — of course, that would be pushing it too far, but
somehow, up until now Bob had had no incentive to rail against party-going
women).
There is no question of these songs being truly
on the level with Marley's best stuff, but sometimes, all you really need to
have to get by is «solidity», and this is as solid a swan song for Bob as, say,
something like In Through The Out Door
was for Led Zeppelin the previous year, or Who
Are You was for the Keith Moon-era Who the year before that: a bit tired,
lumpy, and grumpy, but still capable of looking out for new ideas and adapting
themselves to the rapidly changing world. Well worth a thumbs up, anyway.
Could you be Loved was a major hit in The Netherlands. It has an excellent riff, but I especially like the slightly weird chord sequence. Kool and the Gang never could dream of recording such an excellent song; no way any Dutch teen would confuse the two bands.
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