Burnin'

by

The Wailers

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Don't get me wrong, I love Bob Marley. But outside of Jamaica, it seems like all anyone knows of reggae is Bob Marley. With "Burnin'" we get The Wailers, with Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer comprising the band. I always prefer bands to solo acts, and though Bob kept the Wailers name alive after he split with Tosh and Bunny, it was really just Bob and a backing group. With the Wailers, you get different voices (literally and figuratively) and different perspectives. And I always preferred male backing vocals for reggae (as opposed to Bob's later use of female vocals).

But as for the album -- the songs are great. "Put It On," "Small Axe," "Duppy Conqueror" and "Rastaman Chant" are all favorites of mine, and for those who like the bigger hits, you'll find "I Shot the Sheriff" and "Get Up Stand Up" on there as well. The album is simply a classic, and anyone who claims to like reggae needs this CD in their collection (and should probably branch out from the Marley tree and check out other reggae acts like Jimmy Cliff, Toots and the Maytals, Desmond Dekker, et al.). If you don't have this one, buy it!

They say 2nd albums usually fall short, and Burnin' is no exception to that. Yes, it has merit, songs like Get Up-Stand Up, I Shot the Sheriff, and Burnin' and Lootin' definitely stand out as Wailer classics and the album sure has that warm original Wailer's sound (good mastering), but besides these songs the rest of the repertory is so so. At the end, the album as a whole did not surpass their debut album Catch A Fire nor did it surpass many of Bob's records after it.

The forte of the first album was the variety of emotional melodies and its accentuated instrumentality (as far as root-reggae for 1973). In this one, the recurrence to rhythmic formulas starts to become present, the sound was more simplistic. In reality, Bob Marley and the Wailers never again did an album with such caliber as Catch A Fire. But for me successive albums like Exodus, Kaya, and surely Babylon By Bus are definitely before this one.