Max Romeo & The Upsetters: War Ina Babylon 1976 (Limited Edition 2004)

 

Max Romeo (born Maxwell Livingston Smith; 22 November 1944) is a Jamaican reggae and roots

reggae recording musician who has achieved chart success in his home country and in the United Kingdom. He had several hits with the vocal group the Emotions. His song "Wet Dream" (1968) included overtly sexual lyrics and launched a new style of reggae.
                    

The singer who put the rude in rude boy, Max Romeo was responsible for launching an entirely new

sub-genre of reggae, whose overtly suggestive lyrics caused an outcry but took a massive hold of the music scene regardless. Yet innuendo was the least of the singer's stylings, previous to the release of his infamous "Wet Dream," Romeo had garnered a string of sweet hits with the vocal trio the Emotions. And once the nocturnal naughtiness faded, the singer established himself as one of the most important figures in the roots scene.
                        

Romeo was born Max Smith on November 22, 1947, in St D'Acre, St. Ann, Jamaica. His prospects initially seemed dim; at 14 he left home and found a menial job cleaning out irrigation ditches on a

sugar plantation. And there he might have stayed, if he hadn't won a local talent contest. With all the wide-eyed optimism of youth, the 18-year-old now made his way to Kingston, determined to become a star. Once in the capital, he hooked up with two other hopefuls, Kenneth Knight and Lloyd Shakespeare, and the Emotions were born. Their 1966 debut, "(Buy You) A Rainbow," produced by Ken Lack, was an immediate hit and over the next two years, the trio amassed an impressive list of successful singles.
                       

In 1970, Romeo returned to Jamaica setting up Romax, an unsuccessful record label and sound system,

and released in 1971 his second album, Let the Power Fall. It included a number of politically charged songs, most advocating the democratic socialist People's National Party (PNP), which chose his song "Let the Power Fall" as their theme song for the 1972 Jamaican general election.[7] After this, Romeo worked with producer Lee "Scratch" Perry on the album Revelation Time (1975), which featured the classic song "Three Blind Mice", an adaptation of the nursery rhyme with lyrics about a police raid on a party.
                     

n 1976, Romeo released War Ina Babylon, an album perceived as his best work. The politically and

religiously themed album included the popular single "Chase the Devil", which would become one of his most known songs. Shortly after this, the pair fell out, leaving Romeo to self-produce his follow-up album, Reconstruction, which, however, could not match the success of its predecessors when it was released in 1977.
                             

Like the epochal Police & Thieves by Junior Murvin, which also originated at Lee "Scratch" Perry's Black Ark Studio and thus shares with this album Perry's trademark dark, swampy ambience, War ina

Babylon is something of a mountain on the reggae landscape. But what makes it so remarkable is not just the consistently high quality of the music -- indeed, by 1976 one had come to expect nothing but the finest and heaviest grooves from Perry and his studio band, the Upsetters -- rather, it's the fact that Max Romeo had proved to be such a convincing singer of cultural (or "conscious") reggae after several years of raking it in as a purveyor of the most abject slackness.
                     

(His "Wet Dream" had been a huge hit in England several years earlier, and had been followed by such

other delicacies as "Wine Her Goosie" and "Pussy Watch Man.") But there's no denying the authority of his admonishing voice here, and the title track (which describes the violent mood during Jamaica's 1972 general election) has remained a standard for decades. Other highlights include "One Step Forward" and "Smile Out a Style." Essential to any reggae collection.
               

Max Romeo & The Upsetters – War Ina Babylon
Label: Island Records – B0002397-02, Hip-O Select – B0002397-02
Format: CD, Album, Limited Edition, Numbered, Reissue, Remastered 2004
Country: US
Released: 1976
Genre: Reggae
Style: Dub, Roots Reggae

TRACKS

                          

01. One Step Forward   5:11
Written-By – Lee Perry
02. Uptown Babies Don't Cry    5:00
03. I Chase The Devil   3:26
Written-By – Lee Perry
04. War In A Babylon   4:51
Written-By – Lee Perry
05. Norman   4:49
Written-By – Lee Perry
06. Stealing In The Name Of Jah    3:06
07. Tan And See   4:34
Written-By – Lee Perry
08. Smokey Room   3:04
Written-By – Lee Perry
09. Smile Out Of Style   3:33
Written-By – Lee Perry

BONUS TRACKS
           
10. Revelation Dub    4:59
11. Norman (Discomix)   8:37
Featuring – Jah Lloyd
12. One Step Forward (Single Version)    3:35
13. One Step Dub    3:13
14. War In A Babylon (Single Version)    4:50

NOTES

Vocals [Female Harmony] – Cynthia Schloss, Marcia Griffiths
Vocals [Male Harmony] – Barry Llewellyn, Earl Morgan

MP3 @ 320 Size: 147 MB
Flac  Size: 374 MB