Once upon a time, I very nearly bought a Bob Marley best-of - it was £9 but had three whole cds of Bob's songs. After a shift in my part-time, teenage job in Sainsburys' I was strongly contemplating buying the copy they had there. There was a party at a friend's house that evening (as there often was, back in the day) and I thought that turning up with three cds of Bob Marley's greatest hits would be pretty cool. I then considered my bank balance and the lack of enjoyment I'd get from those cds at any point in the future and decided to buy a bunch of beers instead (guaranteeing that money wouldn't go towards anything with future enjoyment - it is funny to think back to when a hangover didn't knock out the next few days, creating future pain instead).
I've since spent a week in the Caribbean and heard altogether far too much Bob Marley. The worst thing about that sentence is that it's not even entirely true - I've been to the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, which definitely isn't the Caribbean, but still heard too much Bob Marley. Everywhere we passed, sat, ate or drink was playing Bob Marley. No matter how much you like him, that's going to get on your nerves.
Sometime between those two events, this record entered my collection. The worst part of that sentence is that this is the first time I've even bothered to play it. There are very, very few records or cds in my collection I've not played - colour-variants of albums and a small pile of sampler cds that I really do plan to listen to one day, but know they're very unlikely to change my life (queue future posts about bands I had songs by on neglected samplers that I'd wished I'd got into earlier).
There are a few reasons why I've never played this album:
- I got it for free, in a hold-all of records a guy I used to work with found in his attic (a bag that also contained Springsteen's Born to Run, Marvin Gaye's Anthology and an Elvis Costello's compilation, all records that have been played a lot). I can't imagine any other circumstances whereby this record would have found itself wedged between Mariachi El Bronx and The Mars Volta in my record collection.
- I never found myself in a situation where I though "I really fancy listening to Bob Marley". I was 22 when I got this album and my friends were all on the other side of their "weed phase". It just never seemed like a good time. I think I took it from that bag of records thinking there might one day be a reason to play it, but that hasn't happened in the last decade. Who knows what the future holds though.
- Finally, there's basically no need to ever play this album - everybody everywhere knows these songs better than they realise, having heard them at various points throughout their lives. I suspect that three-cd best-of I nearly bought had some rarities and oddities on it, but Legend is the core Marley tracks squeezed onto two sides of vinyl.
On one hand, there are some really good songs here - No Woman No Cry, Get Up Stand Up, and Exodus. There are also some songs I really hate, like Could You Be Loved and Buffalo Soldier - songs that I heard on the radio all the time growing up and came to associate with being really bored on a Sunday afternoon knowing school was the next day (there are a whole bunch of songs where that is my main association - I don't know what radio station my parents played on a Sunday afternoon, but it really did a number on me). I also have a very vivid memory of hearing I Shot the Sherif on the radio whilst studying a Lego catalogue (which was the bulk of my childhood, to be fair) - I was looking the red Lego Technic supercar from the late-80's trying to understand the construction whilst also wondering what the song was about (we don't have sherifs or deputies) - it's deeply imprinted on my mind; it's funny the inconsequential events that stay with you.
Anyway, the most interesting thing about this particular record is that deep inside the sleeve was a roached packet of Rizlas, as you can see in the first picture below. I can't think of a single more appropriate thing to fall out of a Bob Marley record sleeve than such an iconic symbol of drug use. I love that whoever owned it before it ended up in my hands was doing the exact same thing that so, so many other people have done whilst listening to Bob Marley.
Format: 12", gatefold
Tracks: 14
Cost: free second hand
Bought: Gunnar's attic
When: 25/03/09
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no
