Roots roots
Michael Crowley | Albany, CA USA | 12/03/2004
(5 out of 5 stars)
"If you have any fondness for roots reggae you have to have this CD. It's great stuff.
I was amazed to discover what a pioneer Spear was. The earliest of the songs here, Door Peeper (and maybe all of them--unusually for a Heartbeat release, the chronology is a little unclear) was recorded in 1969. That's just a year after the term reggae (or "reggay, as on Toots and the Maytals "Do the Reggay") was becoming popularized, and already Spear was laying down tracks that sounded less like pop music and more like Rastafarian grounation chants with a little guitar and keyboard sweetening. I'm sure that's exactly what some of these songs are.
Also, it's interesting to hear how early in his career Spear had his basic sound worked out. These are his first recordings, and already he's at least 80% there. Some of these songs appeared on later Spear albums in pretty much the same form they appear here. There are some slight pop touches to some of the songs (which I think is a good thing) but basically this sounds pretty much like the upfull and righteous Burning Spear we all know and love, albeit with cruder sound (although Heartbeat has done their usual amazing job cleaning these recordings up-they sound great considering they're 35 years old and were recorded in essentially a Third World country).
Of course, these songs may have been chosen specifically because they do sound so much like Spear's later stuff. I have some old Spear on vinyl, so I happen to know that at least one really pop --for Spear--song, Girls Like You, was left off this collection, which bummed me out a little, man-how often do you get to hear Burning Spear sing about girls? They did include one love song here, Down By the River.
But that's unimportant. This is a fantastic collection of reggae so rootsy you can't listen to it with your shoes on. Oh, and as a little bonus you get to hear the actual voice of Coxsone Dodd on the last track!"
Track Listings (22) - Disc #1