110. Two Sevens Clash

Culture: Two Sevens Clash (Joe Gibbs Record Globe, 1977);
composed by Albert Walker, Errol Thompson, Joseph Hill, Roy Dayes, and Vincent Gordon

One of my proudest possessions is a scratchy Jamaican 45 of “Beat Down Babylon,” by Junior Byles, that features the sound of a repeatedly cracking bullwhip with no apparent attempt made to sync it to the music – undoubtedly Lee Scratch Perry’s point: why should there be? Scratch’s colleague Joe Gibbs (also an occasional fill-in Wailer) intended a similarly aggressive aesthetic configuration in his production of this ultra-Roots vocal group’s debut, the title track of which details a long bus ride during which Joseph Hill espies a cottonwood tree destroyed by lightning (next to a police station, of course) and recalls a Marcus Garvey foretold cataclysm said to break over Babylon on 7/7/77. Supposedly, Kingston came to a near halt that day. “Wat a liiv an bambaie / When the two sevens clash,” or “How do we live by and by” when the world ends. “It dread” is the answer. Burning Spear had a similar vibe, but protean and primal as the truly great Winston Rodney sounded, he is almost Alan Lomax compared to the you-are-there gestalt here. It sounds like a crashing airplane’s black box recording, if the pilots just took their hands off the controls and sang Jah’s praises.

Note: Secular essays about individual songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day (or at least regularly) until Donald goes away.

109. The Red Telephone

Love: Forever Changes (Elektra, 1967);
composed by Arthur Lee

Hardly anyone bought this album in 1967, but it has never gone out of print and probably never will. Occasionally, I like to picture an alternate 1960s in which Arthur Lee and his cohort(s) had monster hits, which many of their songs sound like they had to have been. Until of course I once again listen closely and cannot help noticing that under all of Arthur’s (apparent) whimsy and (bodacious) (and jerry-rigged) tunecraft were beefs and paranoia aplenty (which ruled out doing any promotion, let alone touring outside of L.A.). And which makes it somewhat miraculous that three albums into what was already a doomed four-album contract, Elektra mysteriously shelled out for string arrangements to which Love responded with eleven perfect (and perfectly weird) songs that just samba right over your head - each one courting enlightenment while archly noting the blood coming out of their bathroom faucets. This tune ends (what was) side one, opening with a solemnly lyrical vision of nuclear devastation, followed by a playfully dilatory existential disquisition, and ending with a demand apparently copped from the Bonzo Dog Band, “We are all normal and we want our freedom.” But are we not vaporized? Maybe. So what?

Note: Secular essays about individual songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day (or at least regularly) until Donald goes away.