I was living at my brother Tony's place in Blackburn South in 1977. My mum had gone back to the UK to live and Tony and his wife Carol let me live at their place. My brother had a great record player. A Marantz with these huge speakers. Really it made everything sound good. Late evenings we would have supper which was our custom and always included toast. Tony would toast two pieces of bread together to make his own thick sliced. With lots of butter. He would put a record on. More often than not something I didn''t really want to listen to. It didn't matter. It was cool hanging out.
One night my mate Chris Hunter came around with the Bob Marley Live! album and some funny smelling cigarettes. Everyone was bringing these cigarettes back from Bali and his girlfriend had done the same. Didn't taste them . The smell put me off. Chris asked to put the record on the Marantz. This was my introduction to Bob Marley. One good thing about music. When it hits you you feel no pain.
I had never heard anything like it. I was completely immersed in the sounds. They just jumped off the record. This record became my early evening Saturday night soundtrack. I would listen to it before I went to gigs. I quickly copied it onto cassette and we would pile into the Volkswagen Beetle and head into the city with Marley blasting out of the speakers. It would be playing as we returned home in the first light of morning. It was all we had until the punk albums starting turning up. The Clash. The Jam. But for a time Bob Marley and reggae was the sound of my 77.
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