Skip to main content

Album of the Day: Max Romeo & The Upsetter's War Ina Babylon

War Ina Babylon (1976) - Max Romeo & The Upsetters

I'm pretty sure what I'm about to describe is something most people have at least tried. I hope so. If not, I'll sound like a lunatic.

Have you ever gotten in your car on a blistering hot day and driven around with the windows up and possibly even the heat on until you either couldn't stand it anymore or reached the highway and quickly rolled the windows down and punched the max AC?

The aural equivalent experience is listening to Max Romeo's debut 1969 album A Dream then immediately playing 1976's Lee "Scratch" Perry-produced War Ina Babylon. If you've never heard War Ina Babylon--and especially if you have heard it--you really should listen to the truly stupid A Dream first. Invest the 30 minutes. War Ina Babylon will blow your doors off without this challenge, but listening to it after A Dream will burn your fucking house down.

We'll get to War Ina Babylon, but we really need to discuss Romeo's debut. Romeo didn't want to record it. He wrote its single ("Wet Dream") but then tried to skirt recording it until Bunny Lee threatened to shitcan him if he didn't. Romeo did, and the song climbed the UK charts, granting him notoriety and popularity while banning him from dance floors and BBC radio. Romeo and Eddy Grant (of "Electric Avenue" fame) concocted a denial to the song's sexual overtones, claiming the song was about a leaky roof and a nagging girlfriend. No one believed this, especially considering the nature of the rest of the album which consisted of either sappy love songs or more dreck. "Wet Dream" unleashed a wave of rude reggae songs, but Romeo would zag with his next two albums, Let the Power Fall (1971) and Revelation Time (1975).

Let the Power Fall managed a Neil Diamond cover song ("Cracklin' Rosie") and the brilliant, socially conscious "Maccabee Version" that mocks the King James Bible to the tune of "Good King Wenceslas." Revelation Time contains straight up Rastafarian and socialist anthems. That album's Perry-produced "Three Blind Mice" is a preview of the glory to come.

Both albums are well worth your time, but I won't blame you for jumping to the main course: War Ina Babylon. The album's sole fault is having its whole overshadowed by the single. Every song on this album is fucking perfect. It's not one of the greatest reggae records ever produced; it's one of the greatest records ever produced. And it's lightning in a bottle. Perry, not the easiest dude to work work, fell out with Romeo after this record and they never worked together again.

The social consciousness on display is the essence and the best of roots reggae. The lyrics are a sword cut so sharp they almost overshadow Perry's dub production. Strip away the lyrics and you've got some odd versions here, but throw the lyrics back into the mix and you can almost lose the distinction of Perry's sound. Every word is urgent. Every song is important. And keep in mind that Kingston was literally burning in political turmoil as Romeo sang "War Ina Babylon." You can't separate the climate from the lyrics. They're so specific to the time and location, yet they're universal. (See the opening track "One Step Forward.")

I know I just detailed more about Romeo's other works than War Ina Babylon, but this masterwork speaks for itself and it demands you learn more about Romeo's back catalog to understand how truly revolutionary this album was and is. Listen to Romeo then and now. At 79, he's still recording.

Label: Island Records

Track for monthly playlist: "Chase the Devil"

Listen/Purchase: https://music.apple.com/us/album/war-ina-babylon-expanded-edition/1469584606
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

State of the Blog (Part 1?)

No posts since October 2024 and then four since August 24? One of these posts is a random playlist and another is review of a Conan the Barbarian eBook? What’s going on around here? What’s the point of this blog? Practice is the point. I love writing, and I never write. I love creation, and I never create. So this is an exercise in commitment. Not that I have commitment issues. Rather, what I regularly commit to rarely fulfills me. I commit to my job, but if I didn’t have to work it, I wouldn’t work it. Two hours a day on the commute circuit? Two hours a day of poisoning the atmosphere and wearing down my body? No thank you. I commit to cleaning the house. To building habits and routines. To feeling productive. But that’s all a racket. True commitment is creating. It’s loving. So here I am, in a hotel room outside of Princeton, New Jersey typing these words and learning more about myself than I knew five minutes ago. I need to commit less often to the arbitrary. I need to commit less ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Conan: Black Starlight (Book Review)

Conan: Black Starlight (2023) - John C. Hocking Before diving into this series of e-books, which promises to capture the spirit of the original Conan tales, I'd read very little Robert E. Howard. I've since started reading the complete Conan stories, and I've found that this one really did nail it. Firstly, props to Hocking for crafting Black Starlight to be entirely accessible to any reader despite being a direct sequel to his own Conan and the Emerald Lotus . He doesn't include an exposition dump, yet he is able to clue the reader in just enough to keep them from getting lost. What you have is an extremely accessible sword-and-sorcery tale that is riveting from start to finish. In an effort to cross the River Styx undetected, Conan and friends end up in what seems to be a ghost town, but they are soon set upon by zombies and richly described demons that attempt to kill the travelers and steal the sorceress Zelandra's supply of E...
Post a Comment
Read more

Album of the Day: Danger - Mallwalker

Danger (2023) - Mallwalker This one's been in my Bandcamp collection for a while, and despite listening a few times and digging it, I didn't realize it's a memorial to Mallwalker's late singer Sarah Danger. I jammed to it a few times and wanted more, which led me to Kerry Cardoza's moving obituary of the young punk. Mallwalker was loud, snotty, quick, and juvenile: everything right with DIY punk through the ages. Here you'll find the deadly serious "Hunt You Down" that speaks to eradicating sex pests from the scene. You'll hear gleeful nihilism with a cover of semi-obscure punk of yesteryear: Flux of Pink Indians' "Tube Disaster" (complete a with snarling faux-British accent). You'll hear the delightfully stupid "Parent Trap" ("Don't kiss your honey when your nose is runny!/You might think it's funny but it's snot !"), which would be unbearable in any other talent's hands. This is not the case ...
Post a Comment
Read more