OBAMA WINS NOMINATION!!!
June 4, 2008
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Before a crowd of cheering thousands, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois laid claim to the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday night, taking a historic step toward his once-improbable goal of becoming the nation’s first black president. Hillary Rodham Clinton maneuvered for the vice presidential spot on his fall ticket without conceding her own defeat.
“America, this is our moment,” the 46-year-old senator and one-time community organizer said in his first appearance as the Democratic nominee-in-waiting. “This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past.”
Rest of Article – The Huffington Post
25 years of ‘Confrontation’
June 4, 2008
Posthumous epic marks silver anniversary
By Ben Apatoff / BobMarley.com
When a great artist dies, it’s common for the deceased’s unreleased music to be compiled in a posthumous album. Usually such releases are hodgepodges of outtakes and unfinished tracks that are not up to par with the artist’s best material, but Bob Marley’s 1983 release Confrontation is a rare exception. Produced by Rita Marley and featuring some of Bob’s best-known songs, Confrontation is a complete, thoughtfully put-together album that adds to the greatest legacy in reggae history.
Shortly before his death, Bob Marley had finished the first two albums of a planned trilogy that recounted the Third World’s struggles against its oppressors in “Babylon.” After releasing Survival in 1979 and Uprising in 1980, Marley’s illness prevented him from completing the last installment in the series. When he died in Miami on May 11, 1981, he left behind several unreleased songs that would serve as the basis of his final album. The result, which reflected Marley’s physical and inner struggles at the time of it’s recording, is the appropriately titled Confrontation.
Mr. Marley
Bob Marley was a hero figure, in the classic mythological sense. His departure from this planet came at a point when his vision of One World, One Love — inspired by his belief in Rastafari — was beginning to be heard and felt. The last Bob Marley and the Wailers tour in 1980 attracted the largest audiences at that time for any musical act in Europe.
Bob’s story is that of an archetype, which is why it continues to have such a powerful and ever-growing resonance: it embodies political repression, metaphysical and artistic insights, gangland warfare and various periods of mystical wilderness. And his audience continues to widen: to westerners Bob’s apocalyptic truths prove inspirational and life-changing; in the Third World his impact goes much further. Not just among Jamaicans, but also the Hopi Indians of New Mexico and the Maoris of New Zealand, in Indonesia and India, and especially in those parts of West Africa from wihch slaves were plucked and taken to the New World, Bob is seen as a redeemer figure returning to lead this.
In the clear Jamaican sunlight you can pick out the component parts of which the myth of Bob Marley is comprised: the sadness, the love, the understanding, the Godgiven talent. Those are facts. And although it is sometimes said that there are no facts in Jamaica, there is one more thing of which we can be certain: Bob Marley never wrote a bad song. He left behind the most remarkable body of recorded work. “The reservoir of music he has left behind is like an encyclopedia,” says Judy Mowatt of the I-Threes. “When you need to refer to a certain situation or crisis, there will always be a Bob Marley song that will relate to it. Bob was a musical prophet.”
