Catch A Fire
The Wailers

Think back to 1973. (No, better not. Many of you were not even born, and Butler --- well, Butler was already moving on from jeans to chinos.) The great rock revolution of the ‘60s was over. Music had become what it is now: a business. A depressing time for Butler, who kept looking for flowers sprouting through the concrete and, month after month, came up with only weeds for his troubles.

And then, at Max's Kansas City, Butler found what he had been seeking. Some friends of friends were playing; an unknown group called The Wailers was on the bill. These young Jamaicans came out, freaky as Sly Stone, clearly tranced-out behind some serious ganja, and began to play amazingly complicated music that had Butler twisting in one direction while the beat had him going in another.

Excited and limp, Butler went backstage (back then, back there, no big deal). Met the Wailers (Bob Marley was not then The Star). And, the next day, bought “Catch A Fire,” their American debut.

There are two versions of the album cover. One is a rendition of a Zippo lighter (it opens --- and, very quickly, breaks). The other features Marley smoking a huge spliff. That one came later. Butler got the original.

And was it ever original. There were sweet seduction songs. There were songs that evoked Jamaica 's colonial past. Angry political songs: “ No chains around my feet/But I'm not free/I know I am bound here in captivity…” And the spooky Rasta dreamscape, “Midnight Ravers,” with its devastating opening condemnation (“You can't tell the women from the men/ 'cause they're dressed in the same pollution”) and its Book of Revelations vision: “I see ten thousand chariots/And they coming without horses/The riders --- they cover their face/So you couldn't make them out in smoky place.”

Rarely has music been better matched to lyrics. “ Midnight Ravers” is the best example. A repeated corskscrew organ riff. Guitars that sting, then soar. And a bass guitar/drum pattern that paints a musical picture of camel-like horses riding, riding, riding, in the dead of night.

Butler followed The Wailers around that season. He had dinner with them in their dressing room in a Philadelphia club and watched them smoke so much ganja they should have passed out. Instead, they went on stage and --- like angels, or aliens, or just humans blessed with telepathy --- played a note-perfect set that converted everyone in the room to blithering fandom.

The sanctification of Bob Marley began the following year. There was only one more true Wailers album (“Burnin'”) before the band changed. And then came all the songs you know --- great songs, but great in isolation, like great singles. “Catch A Fire,” on the other hand, is a great album: there's a logic to the flow of the songs, a satisfaction that's bigger than the sum of the individual tunes.

Yeah, you've got the greatest hits. But do you have the greatest album? Not until you have this.

--- by Jesse Kornbluth, for HeadButler.com

To buy "Catch A Fire" from Amazon.com, click here.

Copyright 2004 by Head Butler Inc.