Word: marley
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...back-pocket onomatopoeia for the distinctive sound of the beat-means no harm, carries no heavy freight, sets out to make you happy and keep you dancing. Ska is the no-account stepfather of reggae, the blues-inflected Jamaican soul popularized Stateside by Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley and seen to splendid advantage in The Harder They Come, one of the best and most popular cult films of the '70s. Reggae shouldered a lot of political burden and social outrage, sometimes sounded almost introverted in its island concerns and religious visions. By contrast, ska is flat-out party music...
...effect of all this is much less that of a musical masquerade than of a soulful affiliation of outsiders who share a taste for a strong dance beat and a sense of fun as strong as all that ganja Bob Marley goes on about. Besides roots, both Madness and Specials hold similar suspicions about mainstream rock. "Me Mum had a lot of Beatles records," admits Madness Organ Player Mike Barson. "I reckon they're pretty good, but a bit wimpy." Observes the Specials' Panter: "I think the Rolling Stones have been playing Honky Tonk Women for the past...
Just in time for the holidays, Broadway has a festive new ornament, an all-black musical version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Scrooge is a Harlem slumlord with a goatee and an Afro, Marley's ghost marches through eternity in sneakers, and the three Christmas ghosts are high-stepping disco dancers. Even Dickens' capacious imagination could probably not have envisioned such sequins and flash. Taken on its own good-natured terms, however, Comin' Uptown is a high-gloss package that should bright en everybody's holiday...
Survivors--the title cut--is the last song on the album. Marley calls his black brethren the survivors of centuries of hard living, urging them to continue the struggle; to continue to survive "in this age of scientific atrocity and atomic misphilosophy...
...MARLEY continues to record albums like Survivors, he'll survive quite nicely, and with him, the Rastafarian ideology that gives him his direction. His popularity in places as diverse as Africa and North America proves he has struck a common chord that cuts across class and culture. It's impossible to know whether Marley's popularity in the United States is fed by appreciation or curiosity. The music, fortunately, can be enjoyed on either level...