Before he was gunned down during a home aggression in 1987, Peter Tosh was one of reggae's a lot of active performers – a civilian rights advocate who co-wrote "Get Up, Stand Up" as a affiliate of the Wailers. That rep has accustomed his music a harsher casting than it deserves; Tosh could be aloof as able-bodied as hot-tempered, as on the adept "I Am That I Am": "I'm not in this apple to reside up to your expectations/Neither are you actuality to reside up to mine." The song is a highlight of Tosh's best album, 1977's Equal Rights. Tosh is affluence fiery: Over deliciously absorptive roots grooves, he states his backroom both claimed ("Stepping Razor," a abrupt quasi-answer to Randy Newman's "Short People") and political (the unblinking appellation cut and "Apartheid"); the benefit actual includes appropriately bitter rejects like "Babylon Queendom." (The added anew choice Tosh LP, 1976's Legalize It, has an even added apt benefit track: a PSA for a weed-legalization organization.) Tosh was never as alarming as he was on Equal Rights – or as absolutely approachable.
Listen to "Get Up Stand Up":
Related: Photos: Bob Marley and Beyond: Reggae in the Seventies and Early Eighties
From The Archives Issue 1134: July 7, 2011
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