Believed to be the highest-charting song of the rock ‘n’ roll era about a sport other than surfing, according to chart historian Joel Whitburn, “Basketball Jones” climbed to No. 15 on the Billboard pop singles chart in 1973, its popularity enhanced by an ahead-of-its-time animated promotional video.

A spoof of “Love Jones,” a 1972 soul hit by a Chicago group of mostly high school students known as Brighter Side of Darkness, the Cheech & Chong parody was produced by basketball fan Lou Adler, who sits next to Jack Nicholson at Lakers games, and charted one rung higher than the song it mocked.

“It was just stupid enough,” says Marin, who played basketball at Mission Hills Alemany High but never made it onto the varsity. “Everybody kind of knew the song ‘Love Jones,’ and that was stupid. It was like a very hip stupidity because it was a takeoff on a funny, dimwit song, and that made it smart.”

Says Tommy Chong, the other half of a duo most famous for celebrating and lampooning the ’70s drug culture, “It was just a good song that hit at the right time. It had nothing to do with dope and everything to do with basketball, and especially the obsessions of the players. Tyrone Shoelaces was a good example: a guy who loved the game so much that he slept with his basketball.”  full article

Sit back, relax and inhale the vibe of “Oboe”

One of my first hangouts in Osaka when I lived there from 12/05 to 10/07, great Reggae, especially 70’s/early 80’s Roots focus. Osaka has some sweet Reggae spots.

With the crew of Xaymaca

Xaymaca website

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.

REST OF ALBUM ARTICLE

“Forever Loving Jah” video & others

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.”

REST OF THE ARTICLE