Track Listing

1. Natural Mystic
2. So Much Things To Say
3. Guiltiness
4. Heathen
5. Exodus
6. Jammin'
7. Waiting In Vain
8. Turn Your Lights Down Low
9. Three Little Birds
10. One Love/People Get Ready
11. Jammin' (2)
12. Punky Reggae Party

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1767 in Music
• Released on: 2001-11-16
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Extra tracks, Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .23 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
In 1999 Exodus was rightfully voted by Time Magazine the most important album of the 20th century. This is the visionary Bob Marley's masterpiece, a concept album that distils the myriad experiences of both our daily lives and collective unconsciousness into 46 minutes of aural perfection. Exodus has been flawlessly remastered from the original recordings and showcases what is probably the Wailers' tightest recorded performance. The initial notes of the album's opening track, "Natural Mystic", fade up from a deep silence, giving the listener the impression that the music generates from within a continuum of the past, present, and future. The first half of Exodus bears witness to Marley's shift in focus away from the mundane problems of Babylon existence and toward a greater understanding of vital universal truths. The second half features songs like "Jamming" and "Waiting in Vain", which take a gently wistful look at the more interpersonal aspects of human relations. --Rebecca Levine

CD Description
Marley's consistent (certainly by reggae standards) album career has proffered many great songbooks, of which EXODUS isjust one good example. The singles "One Love" and "Jamming"will be familiar to anyone with even a passing acquaintancewith Jamaican music, but just as vital are the touchingly vulnerable love song "Waiting In Vain", the title track, and the splendid "Guiltiness". This was the first album to feature Junior Murvin on guitar, while the expressive use of horns adds new texture to the established quality of the Wailers' backing. Like most of his work, vital for a comprehensive collection.

Customer Reviews

Exodus - A classic and a must buy
Brilliant. Absolute genious. I would say it is a masterpiece in every sense of the word. Every song is fresh and a pleasure to listen to, the political and releigious undertones and lyrics of the songs are heartwarming and pridefilling, and the sheer geneous of the instrumental playing and the structure of the songs is top class. In comparisson to other of BM and the W's albums, this IS the BEST.

Genious
Without doubt, one of the most important albums of the 20th century - forget Nevermind, OK Computer, Appetite for Destruction or Revolver, Exodus is the ultimate audio experience from the greatest and most prolific songwriter of the last fifty years. This album is packed with the sweetest melodies you are ever likely to hear, thought provoking lyrics, and masterful guitar playing. Undoubtedly my favourite album of all time - I implore you to open your mind to the sheer wonder of Bob Marley and the Wailers.

Debatable whether this is the classic most say it is
This album was divisive at the time it was released, and remains so to this day (although opinions have shifted a lot in the intervening three decades).

FOR its "classic status" :-

1. It was almost certainly the first reggae LP where the musicians were both freed from the draconian Jamaican studio system (where copyright rested in the OWNER of the recording - in 99% of cases the "producer"), and were making all tracks in the knowledge that it would be one LP. That in itself was fairly unusual in the 1970s reggae scene.
2. There are a few very memorable melodies, without the "rebel" status of the LP being diluted.
3. History has been kind to the record. "The Heathen" rhythm has entered the reggae mainstream via Morgan Heritage's "Watch the Heathen", while Cocoa Tea and Cutty Ranks' "Waiting in Vain" in the late 1990s was cut over the original backing track.

AGAINST its clasic status :-

1. At the time it was released, it was as far away from mainstream Jamaican reggae as Max Bygraves was from Led Zeppelin. It had none of the sonic experimentalism that was then commonplace in JA studios and sounded tame compared to the sounds of Channel One, Errol T and King Tubbys. It was not influential at the time of its release.
2. It represented a conscious attempt to turn a legitimate indigenous musical form into acceptable "mainstream pop" music - a process that inevitably devalues the original form
3. Of the hundreds of thousands who bought it, the number that moved on to buy records by Junior Byles, Burning Spear, Big Youth, Augustus Pablo et al could be numbered in the low thousands - therefore, in no way did it represent a "breakthrough" for reggae.

All in all, as a result, three stars