Bob Marley playing football backstage in 1979.
 

I love soccer. That’s all I ever watch. I’ll watch it all day if I can. But I’m too bloody old to play now.

—Lifelong soccer devotee, Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath.

 
I’m posting theses images today because I, and perhaps many of your reading this require a bit of a “mind cleanse” every now and then to blow all the bad shit out of your brain. And what better way to clear your mind of all the gloom and doom currently running amok in the global brain than to lose ourselves for a while looking at pictures of pretty people playing around with soccer balls. Ah, I feel better already.

There’s Robert Plant cavorting around in tiny sports briefs on a soccer field looking not-so-pleased that he was being photographed while doing so. There’s also a shirtless Roger Daltrey, a spandex-clad Rod Stewart, and a straight-up amazing shot of Bob Marley backstage at a show in San Diego in 1979 kicking a soccer ball around. Many other bands like Iron Maiden and Def Leppard actually actively played in amateur football leagues of their own during their time away from their headbanging duties, so I’ve included a few choice images of both bands suited up for gameplay as well.
 

Robert Plant.
 

Roger Daltrey.
 
More rockin’ footballers after the jump…

 
Since today is Bob Marley’s birthday—he would have been 72 years old—I thought I’d bring back “Captain Crazy.” As you might recall Captain Crazy, who’s a Bob Marley tour guide in the Nine Mile town of Jamaica, went kind of viral about 5 years ago because of his amazingly contagious laugh and giantic doobies.

The world needs a little more Captain Crazy right now. There’s too much hate going around nowadays. We all need to be more like Captain Crazy. If we’re ever gonna survive, like Seal said.

 
More after the jump…

‘The Two Faces of Patti Smith.’ photograph by Guillemette Barbet and art design by John Holmstrom.
 
Over the weekend I was yet again getting in some good quality time with my lovely copy of The Best of Punk Magazine and came across an amusing and highly entertaining interview by a musician and performer that undeniably embodies the word “hero” the multi-talented punk powerhouse Patti Smith.
 

 
In the interview that appeared in Punk (Volume One, Number Two from March of 1976) Smith agreed to talk to the magazine in the backroom of legendary Long Island club My Father’s Place where she sat on the grungy floor before her gig later that night. Of the many highlights and wide variety of topics covered in the lengthy chat include her love of comics, Bob Marley, her vivid dreams about Jimi Hendrix and her not-so-secret plan to hijack The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (who Smith very much admired) and turn it into “totally stoned TV every night.” If you are at all a fan of Patti Smith (who was 30 at the time of this interview), prepare yourself to adore her even more. Here’s Smith on her love of two things that go great together—comics (or “comix” as Punk likes to spell it) and rock and roll:

I was a painter. All I cared about was art school and painting. I used to be an artist before I became an artist. You know the French love comic strips. Comix are considered art. Comix are art. I mean the only two arts—comix and rock n’ roll are the highest art forms.

If that last passage got you daydreaming about what it would be like lounging around with Patti Smith in France in some cafe reading comic books and while listening to Alain Kan belting out David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” then get in line. As the interview progresses Smith talks a fair amount about Bob Marley while lamenting the current “grass shortage” in New York (never forget!) and her dream of opening a pot cafe that pretty much sounds like the best plan ever:

I’m gonna have a cafe when I grow up where it’s just gonna feature coffee and dope and mint tea and great music. What I’m gonna do is work to legalize marijuana and hashish. We’re gonna start a string of cafes where you smoke, drink coffee and listen to great music—like McDonald’s.

More Patti Smith, after the jump…

 
Once again, the Internet has anticipated what you absolutely gotta hear before you even knew that you had to hear it…. this time in the form of a supercut of all of the opening drum fills in Bob Marley’s entire career, arranged in chronological order. (One of the commenters says that the cuts aren’t chronological, whatevs.)

The perpetrators here are Goodhertz, Inc.. Bloodclot!
 

 
via Das Kraftfuttermischwerk

Bob Marley in the studio during the sessions for Johnny Nash’s I Can See Clearly Now
 
No, it’s not a musical—praise Jah—but a curiosity in Bob Marley’s catalog: 1972’s “Reggae on Broadway” was Marley’s first and only single on CBS, recorded and released before Chris Blackwell signed the Wailers to Island. Intended to break Marley as a solo artist in the UK, the single “sank like a stone,” according to biographer Timothy White. But imagine how Marley’s career might have been different if this fairly conventional rock/soul tune, adorned with screaming fuzz guitar and horns, had been a hit. “I’m in the mood / to give you some food.”
 

Bob Marley and Johnny Nash in the studio
 
Marley worked with Johnny Nash in Sweden and England during the early 70s, and he participated in the sessions for Nash’s I Can See Clearly Now, which included three of his songs and a fourth co-written with Nash. “Reggae on Broadway” was cut with one of Nash’s backing bands, Sons of the Jungle (a/k/a Rabbit and the Jungles), whose leader, keyboardist John “Rabbit” Bundrick, says the single dates from the English sessions for I Can See Clearly Now. In John Masouri’s Wailing Blues, the Wailers’ legendary bassist, Aston “Family Man” Barrett, says the song was also in the Wailers’ repertoire at the time:

Every day we have to take about three trains to go to this place called Kingston-upon-Thames and then we’d be there in this small little room, whilst Johnny Nash was in a big room rehearsing with his band Sons of the Jungle across the hall. We never play with Johnny Nash directly, but we did a nice little section of our own and Bob, Bunny, and Peter, they were singing some songs, man. We used to do this song ‘Reggae On Broadway’ that went, ‘Hey, hey mama, hey. Get down on the floor.’ It was like a crossover t’ing and then we used to do songs like ‘Oh Lord, I’ve Got To Get There’ and ‘Concrete Jungle’ also.

More after the jump…

Myles Kingston Sadler AKA Lil’ Bob Marley via Instagram
 
I can’t find too much information on two-year-old rad rasta Myles Kingston Sadler, but what I could find is that he lives in Atlanta and really, really loves himself some Bob Marley. In fact, Myles does a pretty mean impersonation of his spliff smokin’ idol. There’re over 20 videos on Myles’ YouTube page of this top-ranking tot performing Bob Marley songs. They’re damned adorable.

Myles may not be old enough to sport his own natty dreads yet, but give him some time. This kid is going places. 

Myles performing “Get Up, Stand Up”
 

Myles performing “Kinky Reggae”
 

Myles performing “Crazy Baldhead”
 
via Arbroath

 
Although for some, Legend, the best-selling anthology of Bob Marley’s music originally released in 1984, is their gateway drug into the world of reggae music, most hardcore reggae fans would have no use for the album at all. Frankly I’m one of them. Legend, to me, is (with the exception of a few tracks) the blandest of the bland, on par with Phil Collins or Billy Joel. But there is a reason for that… a pretty interesting reason that I’ll get to in a minute.

I think the matter has long been settled, though, on Legend‘s status as an all-time classic album—it’s sold well over 27 million copies worldwide and continues to sell another 250,000 copies annually in the United States alone—and the occasion for this post isn’t to bestow (inflict?) my opinion of it upon you or anything. That reason would be UMe’s new 30th anniversary edition of Legend which came out yesterday, as remastered in stereo and 5.1 surround by producer Bob Clearmountain, one of the best in the business.

I may have just stated that I’m rather lukewarm about Legend, but holy shit does this sound amazing (Thankfully UMe issued the anthology on a Blu-ray disc (along with a CD) and not just a regular DVD). If you are already fan of the collection, I’d have to say that this rates a “must buy.” Hearing Marley’s music—even the inoffensive selection on Legend—opened up into the wide sonic vistas that the multi-channel format allows for, Clearmountain’s surround sound revisioning of these songs is quite remarkable. If you already own Legend on vinyl or CD (or both) you won’t feel like a chump at all for buying it again. Like I say, it’s pretty impressive on the audiophile level, almost like hearing these songs for the very first time.

In many respects, the song selection of Legend provides the listener with a misleading notion of what Bob Marley was all about. Where were all the songs about hunger, survival and ghetto uprising? Aside from “Get Up Stand Up,” where’s the militant Marley represented?

It turns out that the militant side of Bob Marley is how Island Records owner Chris Blackwell originally wanted to memorialize his friend, but the man he handed the job of making Legend happen to—Island’s UK manager Dave Robinson (co-founder of the Stiff Records label)—had a different vision: Robinson wanted to sell Bob Marley albums—boatloads of ‘em—to white people.

Of course Bob Marley was a worldwide superstar during his lifetime, but he wasn’t a platinum-selling artist (Exodus sold about 650,000 copies in America, 200,000 in Britain). The track selection on Legend was made very carefully and justified by focus groups along the way to appeal to just about everyone and offend no one.

In “The Whitewashing of Bob Marley,” the fascinating cover story of this week’s LA WEEKLY, writer Chris Kornelis describes how Marley’s music came to be sold to the suburbs:

It’s not that Bob Marley didn’t have white fans when he was alive. Caucasian college students in the United States - particularly those around Midwestern schools, including the University of Michigan, Prevost says - constituted a large percentage of his fan base. But for the compilation to meet Robinson’s lofty sales goals, those students’ parents had to buy the album, too.

Robinson had a hunch that suburban record buyers were uneasy with Marley’s image - that of a perpetually stoned, politically driven iconoclast associated with violence. So he commissioned London-based researcher Gary Trueman to conduct focus groups with white suburban record buyers in England. Trueman also met with traditional Marley fans to ensure that the label didn’t package the album in a way that would offend his core audience.

Less than a decade before violence and drugs became a selling point for gangsta rap, the suburban groups told Trueman precisely what Robinson suspected: They were put off by the way Marley was portrayed. They weren’t keen on the dope, the religion, the violent undertones or even reggae as a genre. But they loved Marley’s music.

“There was almost this sense of guilt that they hadn’t got a Bob Marley album,” Trueman says. “They couldn’t really understand why they hadn’t bought one.”

Legend may be a “tame” “lite FM” version of Bob Marley, but nearly 30 million albums later, who can quibble with any of it? And trust me, the new 5.1 surround mix of the album will blow your doors off and make you want more… The more militant stuff, but I’m sure that’s to come.

Below, Bob Marley accepts the UN Peace Medal at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, June 15, 1978.  You will probably want to turn on the subtitles.

 
And yea, Bob said unto the unbelievers, “Herb is the healing of the nation,” and it is “cool.” For those that smoke the herb shall bring their heads together to think one way. And Bob decreed that the herb was like a man drinking water, and though it be illegal, recall that the man who made the law was a baby once. For when you smoke the herb it reveals unto you yourself. Here endeth the lesson from the book of Bob.

Vintage interview with Mr. Bob Marley, in which he discussed his thoughts on Rastafari, the use of the “herb” and why alcohol is far more dangerous drug than marijuana. The video quality is slightly trippy, but there is much here to relish.

Check here for Bob’s interview with High Times from 1976.
 

 
The good in life is this gentleman’s distinctive laugh and a big spliff.

He’s known as “Captain Crazy” and apparently gives delightful tours of various Bob Marley-related locations around Nine Mile in Jamaica.

 
h/t reddit

 
This “Bob Marley” belt buckle reminds me a lot of a previously featured “Bob Marley” item, the hilarious t-shirt by African Apparel which you can view, below.

Unlike the shirt, I’m not sure if this belt buckle is ironic or just… Made in China?
 

 
With thanks to Skye Nicolas!

 
Happy birthday Bob. We miss you.

Bob Marley and The Wailers at The Sundown Theater in Edmonton, England. May, 1973

“Slave Driver”
“Stop That Train”
“Get Up, Stand Up”

According to reports at the time, most of the audience at this Wailers gig didn’t “get” the group. Marley was still somewhat of an enigma and the Wailers were sonically much more adventurous than some of the other acts on the bill that day. In his book Wailing Blues: The Story of Bob Marley‘s Wailers, author John Masouri experienced something extraordinary:

Marley is a vibrant, charismatic figure with his wild hair and tight trousers.  He’s full of smiles as he strikes rock poses, playing around with the phrasing of certain songs and joining Tosh on a highly charged, semi-acapella version of “Get Up Stand Up”.  Livingston is again hunched over his congas, and Lindo’s playing is more free form than Bundrick’s studio embellishments.  It’s a joy to see him dancing behind his twin keyboards as the Barrett’s anchor proceedings with transcendent drum and bass. The sound quality is good too which must have made a welcome change.“

To me, this is Marley at his nitty grittiest and I love it.
 

 
There should be some type of law that forces us all to store our cables this way.

Via Boing Boing

 
A totally ridiculous (but boy does it work with the video!) metal version of Bob Marley’s “Is This Love” by Andy Rehfeldt.  You can almost believe this is real.
 

 
Via KMFW

 
Made with the blessings and full cooperation of Bob Marley’s family, Kevin Macdonald’s sprawling, two and a half hour documentary Marley is an emotionally engaging and beautifully filmed tribute to one of the great spiritual forces in music history. A revealing and well-rounded testament, Marley digs deep into the psychological and sociological forces that drove Bob Marley to create great art and eventually become an international symbol of inspiration to people everywhere. From Zimbabwe and Jamaica to the suburbs of privilege in America. Marley’s message of peace, love and human rights cut through all stratas of society and was Universal in its power and authenticity.

Marley walked it like he talked it and Macdonald’s film makes it absolutely clear that Marley was willing to put his life on the line for his beliefs…literally. His efforts to serve as peacemaker between warring political factions in Jamaica had earned him countless enemies and on December 3, 1976 he was wounded in an assassination attempt. The persuasive sting of a bullet didn’t for a moment stop Marley from his mission to unify his homeland.

Marley the movie is not blind to the contradictions and complexities in Marley the man. He was a “half-caste” who struggled with racial identity and was bullied relentlessly as a child for being neither white or black. In learning to balance the yin/yang of this racial polarity, Marley became an embodiment of the ‘“One Love” he preached of so passionately.

The film touches on Marley’s legendary womanizing. In interviews with his wife Rita and several ex-girlfriends, there is a bittersweet acceptance of some of the sexism in the patriarchal Rastafari culture. But if you look closer, you will see that Marley’s life was shaped by strong women and his attempts to control them was akin to a boat attempting to control a typhoon.

Marley is composed of some terrific restored concert footage and a wealth of anecdotes from friends and fellow musicians. A highlight is Bunny Wailer’s humorous account of how The Wailers overcame stage fright by rehearsing in a cemetery at night. Perhaps this was the seed that led to the song “Duppy Conqueror.” [Duppy being Jamaican patois for ghost.]

Is Marley the last word on Bob Marley? In addressing that question at the film’s SXSW premiere, director Macdonald commented on the distinction between an authoritative and definitive film on Marley’s life. “About 30 minutes,” he said. We’ll have to wait until that 30 minutes pops up as an extra on the DVD box set.

During a Q&A at SXSW, Ziggy Marley was asked to summarize his father’s legacy. He replied with one word: “love.”

 
One of the highlights (so far) of the 2012 SXSW Film Festival was Sunday’s screening of Kevin Macdonald’s two and a half hour documentary on Bob Marley, Marley. Watching the film is a powerful experience and I plan to review it in full in the next few days. In the meantime, I want to share this interview with Marley conducted by Gil Noble for his New York-based show Like It Is from 1980, portions of which are featured in Macdonald’s documentary. It captures his bullshit-free forthrightness, his grace and passion. It was one of Marley’s last interviews before he was decimated by cancer.