Stunning late seventies reggae. maybe it's Blood and Fire's tasty design that makes the whole album feel like it was released for the first time yesterday, but I suspect it has more to do with the amazingly clean and timeless production. At any rate this song in particular brings me a feeling of great happiness and well-being.
Sublime lead and backing vocals with a bass line worthy of deep praise and adoration and lead guitar by the peerless Ernest Ranglin. A beautiful song.
20 May 04 ·pleasepleaseme: I don't own this record, but the album "Heart of the Congos" by the Congos from 1977 is a must have session! Some of the most uplifting Jamaican Soul. 13 Jan 05 ·mattypenny: SLightly OT - their Row, Fisherman, from the Heart of the Congos was really good for getting our nipper off to sleep. A combination of the high voices, bass sounds and reggae rhythms, I guess. Cracking song in any case 14 Jan 05 ·james: Am going to listen to Row, Fisherman Row - thanks for reminding me! must be something about falsetto reggae artists, our second boy was always mightily calmed by the Minstrel by Cornell Campbell - not really in the same league as the congos but check him out if you don't know him.
perfect hangover listening. just as the piercing headache eases off and the sadness and self-loathing set in, " I'm gonna leave out Babylon, gonna make the change"...
It seems unlikely to be able to pick one song from the threepenny opera that stands out above the rest since the thing in itself is so honed to perfection (and never moreso than in the very early recordings). But as a microcosm of the whole this track (track 8) encapsulates perfectly the balance between the borrowed idiom of the popular musical style and the squalor of the lyrics. there is a jaunty middle section in which Mac recalls how he would slip out of bed to let one of the whore Jenny's clients in, mix them a drink and treat them well. Then comes a duet and they sing together of how they long to return to that whorehouse and to those happy times. At the end the music lingers with added, disconnected percussive sounds, in which time the ambivilance and ironies all resonate, creating a moment of perfection for the work as a whole, where all meaning vanishes and mere rhythm persuades.
from Die Dreigroschenoper Berlin 1930 (Telefunken)
Rude in every way. Throbbing with self confidence, the gossamer soft voice of Leroy Sibbles builds with the music to a prolonged orgasm of strings [ORGASM: a collective term for stringed instruments when used in the Reggae style]. This is slow all night loving, crying out for a ten minute dub version to be looped ad infinitum, the which, alas, does not exist.
