Kosher Eucharist / יוקאריסט כשר

It snakes out of speakers hanging over beach towns and boardwalks from Asbury Park to Eilat. Its rhythms reverberate through ten thousand freshman residence halls. It inhabits the iPods of white American suburbanites and the tape decks of African freedom fighters. It’s served as the soundtrack to so many spliff-burning sessions over its 23 years that an entire generation can catch a contact merely from hearing the words “I wanna love you / and treat you right.”

And it’s a thoroughly mediocre album.

In case you haven’t left your house for the past couple of decades - and if so, let me take this opportunity to say that Catcher in the Rye was thoroughly overrated - I’m talking about Legend, the cash-in greatest hits collection that somehow became the only Bob Marley album, the slice of revolutionary Jamaican dread found squeezed between Eagles and Fleetwood Mac greatest hits albums on every CD rack in middle America, the pantheon of reggae anthems sharing iTunes space with Jack Johnson on the computers of every high school and college student in the Western hemisphere.

Bob Marley may be the most significant musician of the 20th century, at least in terms of global impact - say what you like about John and Paul, but nobody sharpens the knives of revolution to “Norwegian Wood,” and nobody has sex to “Yesterday” - but of all the musicians who could truly be described as border-shattering international phenomena, as modern-day prophets (no, Boney M doesn’t count), Marley is the only one not afforded the respect of being treated as an album artist.

Take the aforementioned Beatles. Most people will insist on the importance of owning Sgt. Pepper’s. People who know what they’re talking about will insist on the importance of owning the White Album. But no record store clerk will ever respond to being asked what Beatles album one should start out with by saying, “Dude, you fucking have to hear One.” Because greatest hits albums are not representative of an artist’s creative vision expressed to its fullest, they are representative of the public taste - a public taste which turned Celine Dion into a more globally recognized figure than Mother Teresa (who was mixed down to near-inaudibility on “We Are the World”). A public taste which subjected the entire world to six uninterrupted months of hearing about the virtue of Shakira’s pelvis.

Fuck the public taste.

Relegation to greatest hits status is especially cruel to Marley, who along with his fellow Wailers and Lee “Scratch” Perry was instrumental in transforming reggae into a genre which viewed the album as not merely a collection of songs, but as a cohesive artistic statement - the Wailers/Perry collaboration African Herbsman was an album in the way that Sgt. Pepper is an album and Meet the Beatles isn’t. And of course, no one song on Legend is a bad song, because Bob Marley is one of those few artists possessed of both enough talent and a sufficiently early death to have never written a truly bad song, but the tracklist hits a surprising number of Marley’s more mediocre moments, and the sum of those somewhat pallid parts is barely quantifiable. Unlike, say, Catch A Fire or Exodus, Legend gives you no sense of satisfaction or completion at the end - it is an unconsummated album, a playlist, a background track. And of course, playlists have their place just as compilation albums do (for the uninitiated), but the ganja-sticky crux of the issue here is that Legend isn’t even a compilation of Marley’s best songs. Every album from which the songs on Legend are culled has a song that is somehow better, a song more deserving of your aural love (with a couple of exceptions) - and I’ll prove it.

Song on Legend: Is This Love
Better Song on Original Album (Kaya): Sun Is Shining

Note: Sun Is Shining is one of my top five all-time Bob Marley songs.

Song on Legend: No Woman No Cry
Better Song on Original Album (Live!): Burnin’ and Lootin’

Note: This is actually the definitive version of “No Woman No Cry”, and features an absolutely tasty guitar solo from Al Anderson. Essentially, every track on Live! except for “Get Up, Stand Up” is the definitive version of the song - as such, “Burnin’ and Lootin’” isn’t better than “No Woman No Cry”, but it’s as good.

Song on Legend: Could You Be Loved
Better Song on Original Album (Uprising): Forever Loving Jah

Song on Legend: Three Little Birds
Better Song on Original Album (Exodus): The Heathen

Note: I find “Three Little Birds” inoffensive, if overplayed, but Mobius hates it more than he hates himself, his people and the state of Israel. In any case, “The Heathen,” with its sinuous guitar lines and ominous lyrics, is a far superior song.

Song on Legend: Buffalo Soldier
Better Song on Original Album (Confrontation): Trench Town

Note: Confrontation is a pretty lackluster album all around - something Marley can’t be blamed for, since he was dead when it was released - so “Trench Town” isn’t a huge improvement over Buffalo Solider, but at least the melody of the chorus wasn’t yanked from an old children’s show.

Song on Legend: Get Up, Stand Up
Better Song on Original Album (Burnin’): Rastaman Chant

Note: You can’t really touch the revolutionary fervor of Get Up, Stand Up, particularly Peter Tosh’s snarling verse about the futility of ism/schism games. But the Wailers demonstrated their more spiritual side with the closing track of the same album, “Rastaman Chant,” a Rastafarized version of a traditional American spiritual. The longing for Zion expressed in the “fly away home” section of the song rivals anything in the Tanakh.

Song on Legend: Stir It Up
Better Song on Original Album (Catch A Fire): Concrete Jungle

Note: “Concrete Jungle” also appears on my all-time top five Bob Marley songs list. The guitar solo, which climaxes in a lingering, note-perfect squeal of feedback, was the work of Stax/Muscle Shoals session guitarist Wayne Perkins, who happened to be in England during Catch A Fire’s overdubbing and, despite never having heard reggae before, laid down one of the best recorded guitar solos in reggae music.

Song on Legend: One Love/People Get Ready
Better Song on Original Album (Exodus): Natural Mystic

Song on Legend: I Shot the Sheriff
Better Song on Original Album (Burnin’): N/A
Note: I may personally like some songs on Burnin’ a bit more than “I Shot the Sheriff,” but as an anthem, “Sheriff” is essentially immune to criticism.

Song on Legend: Waiting in Vain
Better Song on Original Album (Exodus): N/A
Note: “Waiting in Vain” is the best call made by whoever compiled Legend. It’s a perfect song. It’s on my top five list, and I can find no fault with it.

Song on Legend: Redemption Song
Better Song on Original Album (Uprising): Zion Train

Note: “Redemption Song” is part of that unfortunate collection of easy-to-learn, “deep” songs that have been ruined for all time by That Fucking Guy at the Party With the Fucking Acoustic Guitar. You’ll be passing around a blunt, shooting the shit, having a good time, and suddenly your ears are assaulted by the screech of a white kid whose parents made $200K a year launching into a spirited “Old piiiirates, yes they rob I…”. It’s not even a bad song. I just can’t listen to it anymore.

Song on Legend: Satisfy My Soul
Better Song on Original Album (Kaya): Running Away

Song on Legend: Exodus
Better Song on Original Album (Exodus): Turn Your Lights Down Low

Note: What’s the deal with “Exodus”? It’s one of Marley’s most anthemic and widely-recognized songs, and also one of his most mundane and repetitive.

Song on Legend: Jamming
Better Song on Original Album (Exodus): N/A
Note: Are there better Bob Marley songs? Yes. Does everyone - ev-er-y-one - love “Jamming” anyway? Yes they do.

I rest my case.

And with my case rested, I institute a new rule: if Legend is the only Bob Marley album you own, and the only reggae album you own, you cannot call yourself a fan of either Marley or reggae. All owning Legend qualifies you as, given its ubiquity, is a member of the human race. Diversify!