All My Records: Bob Marley and the Wailers “Live!”

I’m going to go ahead and get the fact that I’m not a big Bob Marley fan out of the way. Sorry, not sorry.

I like reggae. I like it a lot, but, as with most forms of music, I’m really picky about what I like within any given genre/subgenre. In reggae’s case, I find myself suspect of anything coming from Jamaica after about 1972 or so. Early ska and rocksteady like Derrick Morgan, Desmond Dekker, Prince Buster, and Symarip (technically an English band, but made up of Jamaican immigrants) I absolutely love. Even Bob’s early material with The Wailers is totally on point.

My appreciation for these early reggae artists is due to my involvement with Skinhead, which might not make sense to some, but I assure you, Skinheads and reggae go together like booze and fighting. Their histories are intertwined, as explained by Don Letts in his documentary The Story of Skinhead. People have a hard time coming to terms with this for some reason. Again, sorry, not sorry.

I’ve always found Bob Marley’s music to be bland, and his fans to be, for the most part, shitty people. For some reason, they seem to think that he’s the only reggae artist that has ever existed, which is extremely annoying to someone who enjoys his large collection of reggae records on a regular basis.

A few years ago, I was working as a dishwasher in a local restaurant. The clientele (and most of the staff) consisted of dreadlocked white people with trust funds who drove expensive looking cars. They played Bob Marley all day and night. I heard “No Woman, No Cry” at least ten times every shift. On my first night closing, they asked me if I’d like to put some music on. I chose the Ramones. That lasted all of two songs before they switched it back to Bob Marley. I quit.

An artist’s fan base probably shouldn’t be a basis for not liking someone’s music, but I’ve never had a problem with going down that road. It’s easy for shitty people to completely ruin anything they touch. Bob Marley fans are generally really white, secretly afraid of people of color (even though you claim to “not see race”), would rip off their friends in a heartbeat, say things like “brah,” and are looking for “chill vibes,” or “dank nugs,” or some such other bullshit. They also generally dance really fucking stupid and don’t have the first clue who Haile Selassie is (google it).

In short, they suck.

Oh yeah, the record. It was recorded live in London in 1975. The first song, “Trenchtown Rock,” is all right. The rest of it is just the same old soundtrack to the lives of white people in search of kind bud, or whatever.