BOOKLET

 

here is the NFO file from Indietorrents

01 Come On Home

02 Got To Make A Way

03 Wake Up And Live

04 Life Of Contradiction

05 Who Brought Down The Curtains

06 There’s A Reward

07 Hard Times Don’t Bother Me

08 My Baby Still Loves Me

09 She Was The One

10 Song My Enemy Sings

11 Let Us Do Something

12 Freedom Journey (feat. Karl Masters)

cd rip @ V0 VBR

Album info

A mere footnote in mainstream musical history, Joe Higgs’ name is inextricably linked to that of Bob Marley. It was Higgs who taught the teenaged Wailers to sing and harmonise at his Trench Town home and was the first in a series of surrogate father figures who helped create and refine the Bob we know today.

But Joe was also a respected singer and composer in his own right. He’d been present at key moments in the development of ska (as part of the duo Higgs and Wilson), rocksteady (with Lyn Tait) and reggae (touring and recording with Jimmy Cliff) before releasing Life Of Contradiction in 1975.

Recorded three years earlier but held back due to the all-too-familiar rights issues, Contradiction saw him teamed with the formidable and versatile Now Generation band. The result was a highly conceptual, deeply personal record by one of reggae’s true masters that deserves to cross over into popular music’s wider canon.

Of the three Wailers, Higgs’ deep, rich voice sounds closest to that of Peter Tosh, but is a more mournful, weary instrument, the sound of one who has suffered great hardships with a shrug and a smile. From the battle-worn but hopeful Come On Home, to the poignant There’s A Reward, through to the clattering hand-drums and sad solo trombone of bonus instru-dub Freedom Journey, each song draws on universal themes of love, redemption and pain, while each note played by the band shadows Joe’s every ambiguous mood.

The level of songwriting and the breadth of influences on display will impress the casual or non- reggae fan. Glimpses of Dylan and the Band, Simon and Garfunkel, Cat Stevens and Otis Redding bubble to the surface in this melting pot of jazz, country, roots, rock and soul.

Unjustly ignored on first release, Life Of Contradiction is a work of astonishing depths and bruised, aching humanity. Give this album some time and you’ll get your just reward.