Bob Marley and the Wailers
10/30/73 Changed to reflect proper date..ignore track dates setlist is correct

The Record Plant - Sausalito, CA
Source: Soundboard reel -> ??? -> CD
1.  Intro
2.  Rastaman Chant
3.  Bend Down Low
4.  Slave Driver
5.  You Can't Blame The Youth
6.  Stop That Train
7.  Burnin' & Lootin'
8.  Kinky Reggae
9.  Get Up Stand Up
10. Lively Up Yourself
11. Walk The Proud Land
12. Outtro

Total Time: 52 minutes

Peter Tosh (rhythm guitar/vocal)Earl 'Wire' Lindo (keyboards)Aston 'Family Man' Barrett (bass)Carlton Barrett (drums)




** Information **



In October 1973, Bob Marley and the Wailers embarked on the final dates of their debut American tour. The schedule included 17 shows as support to Sly & The Family Stone, the number one band in black American music. After only four dates, however, The Wailers were dumped from the tour. 

It seems the Wailers had been too good; support bands should not detract from the main attraction. They were now stranded in Las Vegas, their tour at a premature end. 

 There was, however, one more commitment to fulfill. The Wailers had accepted a last moment booking to play the Matrix, a club in San Francisco. A local radio station, the pioneering KSAN-FM, had been giving prime airtime to the band's recently released album, Catch A Fire. 

With a little help from their record company the group traveled north to play the two-night engagement. Although there had been modest advance publicity, both shows were sold out. Playing to such ecstatic audiences, the Wailers' collective spirit was rapidly restored after the debacle of the Sly Stone tour. 

Indeed, the club hastily arranged another two shows the following week. They were, again, the hot tickets in town and KSAN, which had championed the band for many months, came in with an offer to broadcast a live-in-the-studio show. 

The morning after their final night at the Matrix, The Wailers went across town to the Record Plant, a studio in Sausalito. Despite the lack of ambiance--it was a closed session and they played in front of only five or six people--the band delivered a magical set which vividly captured the moment when reggae was poised to enter the mainstream of popular music. 

The bulk of that session can be heard on Talkin' Blues, featuring seven songs from the KSAN broadcast, the only live recordings from that ground-breaking first American tour (which had earlier included an historic weekend engagement at Max's Kansas City in New York, opening for Bruce Springsteen.) 

The Wailers at this time featured Bob Marley together with Peter Tosh (rhythm guitar/vocal), Earl 'Wire' Lindo (keyboards), Aston 'Family Man' Barrett (bass), and his brother Carlton Barrett (drums). Founding member Bunny Livingston (later to change his name to Bunny Wailer) had toured with the band in England earlier that year but, disenchanted with life on the road, declined to work on the American dates. His place was taken by Joe Higgs who, a few years earlier, had taught The Wailers the techniques of harmony singing. 

Among the songs in the KSAN session were five-- Burnin & Lootin, Kinky Reggae, Get Up Stand Up, Slave Driver and Rastaman Chant -- from Catch A Fire and Burnin', the two Island albums the band released in 1973. The set also included Walk the Proud Land, originally recorded in the mid-Sixties (it was later to appear on Bunny Wailer's Sings the Wailers album) while Peter Tosh took the lead vocal on You Can't Blame the Youth, a song he subsequently released on his own Jamaican label, Intel-Diplo HIM. 

The performance had a majestic power and verve. The Wailers, of course, had been long in the forefront of Jamaican music, yet through this period of the early to mid-Seventies, the band's irrepressible dance rhythms, allied to strident political and social themes, found a resonance far beyond the confines of reggae.