#267: Peter Tosh - Legalize It (1976)

Emily: In my last semester of college, I took a politics in film class with my roommate. It met once a week, and half the time we just watched movies in class. So of course, it was awesome. One of the films we watched was The Harder They Come, the first major film to come out of Jamaica. It's a pretty good movie, but it has an even more awesome reggae soundtrack. The soundtrack is even credited with introducing reggae to American audiences a few years before Bob Marley. For the final project in this class, we had to do a creative project incorporating themes we had covered throughout the semester. I worked with my roommate, and we didn't really want to do much with the project (being in the last weeks of our last semester and all) so we decided to pick up on The Harder They Come and did a presentation about political themes in reggae music. It took about an hour to finish, the last slide had a picture of our rabbit with a Microsoft-Paint-drawn rasta hat, and we still managed to get an A. Again, an awesome class. Perhaps, though, if we had put more effort into our research we would have come across Peter Tosh. Legalize It would have been an interesting song to discuss the political implications of the marijuana trade in post-colonial Jamaica. Early reggae frequently seems to have underlying political themes, so it's a worthwhile exercise to explore with artists like Tosh, who used to play with Bob Marley. On a pure musical front, I didn't think this album was much different than the style of Marley and his peers. I tend to prefer the more upbeat and ska-twinged (but still political) reggae of the early '70s, like Jimmy Cliff (seriously, check out the The Harder They Come soundtrack). Even so, you don't get to apply your liberal arts education every day (well, I don't), so a reggae album lets me do that without even having to make a PowerPoint.
Favorite Tracks: Legalize It; Till Your Well Runs Dry; Burial

Zack: It occurred to us that we haven’t done a reggae album since Gerald Ford was in office, so here we are. The first place I ever heard of Peter Tosh was a VH1 documentary about drug culture that played Legalize It in the background for a scene that (if my memory is correct) was about the illegal importation of marijuana by plane from South America. That song was pretty much made for use in documentaries about drugs. The song should just be called Royalty Checks. With that song in mind, I wasn’t particularly surprised to see the cover art. And I certainly wasn’t surprised to hear the music, which sounded exactly like everyone expects a reggae album to sound like. I wouldn’t be surprised if every song on this album had, at one point or another, been attributed to Bob Marley by some white person who wanted to seem hip. Overall, Legalize It (the album) is a good reggae album worth checking out if that’s what you’re into. If you’re not a real reggae fan but just want to put on something relaxing for an hour, you’d be better off going with the real Bob Marley.

Favorite Tracks: Legalize It; Till Your Well Runs Dry; No Sympathy