In April of 1973 The Wailers headed back into the recording studio to pump out another outstanding roots, reggae album. The band was comprised of lead man and shaman Bob Marley followed closely behind by his musical cronies Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston. Ranked number 313 on Rolling Stone Magazine’s 500 greatest albums of all-time it should come as no surprise that many of the songs from this record still stand-up today as politically and socially important songs of revolution and change.

In 2004 the good folks over at BMG Music Company put together a deluxe edition of this timeless album, it’s this CD that I’ll be covering within this article. The first disc showcases the entire original album as well as a bunch of unreleased tracks that had been left off the 1973 LP. The second disc has a never before released full concert from 1973 in which the Wailers performed at Leeds in the UK and blew the damn doors off the building.

Disc 1 starts off with the timeless call to action song Get up Stand Up, the words and mindset of this track should be self explanatory in that it calls for not just Africans and African-Americans to stand up for change but all people who feel that the social injustices of the world have for too long gone unresolved and unaddressed. The next song most of us will recognize is the classic I Shot the Sheriff, covered and turned into a national pop success by Eric Clapton, it’s the Wailers version for me that truly stands the test of time. Unlike the other Wailer albums Burnin’ hits you with a much more progressive and militant ideology, not to say that the other albums don’t have political messages, but not quite as on the nose.

Track number four Burnin’ and Lootin’ is one of my personal favorites of all-time. The lyrics really stick out to me and are in my opinion just as good as any ever written by Bob Dylan or Neil Young. Marley has a wonderful ability to wrap up complex and mindful concepts into easy to digest and universally understandable songs and lyrics. I think we have to acknowledge Bob Marley as one of the great-underrepresented songwriters of the past 50 years, and with the success and total appeal of his catalog of work I defy anyone to challenge this assumption.

The great thing about the Wailers is that it’s not just Marley who helms the songwriting and musical development. Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston also pin several terrific songs on Burnin’. Track seven Pass It On is sang by Livingston and has a sweet and tender harmony to it that shows the slightly softer and more peaceful side of the group. Song number eight Duppy Conqueror is another funky and amazing call to arms for the oppressed peoples of Jamaica and everywhere else where blacks are thought of as second-class citizens. The next track is a Tosh written song entitled One Foundation and is a really great number. It has a universal message of unity and peace, which is nice sense Tosh tends to be a bit of a angrier person, or at least that’s my opinion. His solo albums tend to be more aggressive and frustrated about the problems that never seem to end. Track ten Rasta Man Chant is the last song from the original 1973 LP and is a great closer for that album because it’s really a sing-a-long type jam that forces you to chant along with the Wailers as the number plays, but it’s not the last song on the deluxe edition. Tracks 11-15 are all unreleased and demo versions of songs not issued in 1973. My personal favorites are No Sympathy written and sang by Peter Tosh and The Oppressed Song written and sang by Bunny Livingston. Both songs are so amazing I can’t believe they were left off the original. Maybe the record company wanted to push Marley as the bands leader and front man so the left them off, but what terrific songs, and you have to get the deluxe edition to hear them.

Disc 2 is the Concert from Leeds in 1973. The fact this concert had never been released is one of those sad and crazy misses of music history. There are many great concerts that have never made it to the light of day, so we should all rejoice that this one did. The modest 12-track show is one of the best sounding and best recorded in recent years. Most of us who love Bob Marley and collect his albums have heard the famous Live at the Roxy album or the 1977 Live at the Rainbow concert from the Exodus tour, but the Wailers and the era before Tosh and Livingston left to pursue their solo careers had never gotten a proper live album released. The concerts songs are made up of both Wailer albums released in 1973 Catch a Fire and Burnin’. I would say that there are many more songs from Fire then Burnin’ so I wont go into tons of detail about every song, but I will say that if you love reggae and Bob Marley then you must hear this album.

The power and energy of the band is intoxicating and if you can imagine what it must have been like for all those prudish and snotty English hipsters to be kicked in the nuts by these crazy Rastafarians, you can hardly catch your breath. I wish that in 1973 America had been as welcoming to the Wailers because we may have been able to claim a concert from that era as well, but of course it was the UK that first embraced them as not only ligament artists but as quite possibly one of the best bands in the world, as claimed by the shows announcer at the beginning of the CD.

I know I tend to say this a lot, but if you don’t at least have the original album from 1973 or the deluxe edition then you can’t really claim to know about reggae or the history of Bob Marley or the Wailers. I hate to sound like a snob but I have to tell it like it is. This is very important stuff and if you want to claim to be into music then you must learn how to cover all your bases, and Burnin’ is the first base of many to come. Might I suggest that you head over to Itunes or Amazon.com and pick up this album, I promise you won’t regret it. In fact you may just thank me. See Ya next time.

All images copyrighted by The Wailers / Bob Marley courtesy of Wikipedia and Yahoo.com

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