WHAT'S (STILL) GOING ON, #3. Bob Marley, Live. "Get Up, Stand Up/ Stand Up For Your Rights/ Get Up, Stand Up/ Don't Give Up the Fight." I didn't make those lyrics title case all the way through on purpose but it felt right. Marley is so much more indignant and political than some of us remember, those of us who grew up with his easy-to-like greatest hits, Legend—well, I didn't exactly grow up with Legend. I guess I was there when it became something everybody had to play on repeat on their CD players all the time. The Onion had a fake story about it in '02... here, I'll copy and paste the fake lead: 'The American Council of College Administrators (ACCA) met Monday to discuss an emergency ban on the Bob Marley greatest-hits compilation Legend. "The situation grows more severe by the day," University of Michigan president Mary Sue Coleman told her fellow administrators. "At any given moment in Ann Arbor, it's impossible to walk down any street where there is undergraduate housing without hearing 'Get Up Stand Up' coming from five different porches."' Anyway, the music is so attractive it's easy to lose sight of the urgency of the message. Then when songs that weren't on Legend appear, such as "Burnin' and Lootin'"—well, Google those lyrics. Or "Them Belly Full." Those are not mellow jammin’. "Them Belly Full" isn't as explicit as Tupac forecasting actual poor-on-rich cannibalism at the end of To Pimp a Butterfly but it's close. Very close. Flip "Live" over, though, then, and maybe the tenderest song you can immediately think of, No Woman No Cry, is first up on Side B. On this album I hear the singer and his woman more specifically as a weary revolutionary couple, "in the government yard in Trenchtown," bound by some kind of sorrow that I should do the readings and understand better, clearly. #eattherich #thembellyfull #BobMarley #BobMarleylive #getupstandup #standupforyourrights #dontgiveupthefight #nowomannocry #trenchtownrock (at Noblesville, Indiana) https://www.instagram.com/p/CBmFnbBgcZj/?igshid=19wltf3gpn6ar
