More Island Records

• These vintage British pressings boast solid Hot Stamper grades or BETTER on all FOUR sides – fairly quiet vinyl too
• As you can imagine, any Reggae Island UK import is very hard to come by – not to mention expensive – with audiophile playing surfaces, but here’s a very good one
• It’s richer, fuller and with more presence than the average copy, and that’s especially true for whatever godawful Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently being foisted on an unsuspecting record buying public
• 5 stars: “Arguably the most influential live reggae album ever, Babylon by Bus captures Bob Marley and the Wailers during the European leg of their Kaya tour in the spring of 1978. The success of this set was not entirely unexpected, however. If the universal and widespread acclaim of Live! – their first concert recording – was an indicator, all involved knew that a Bob Marley & the Wailers performance contained unique energies and a vibe all of its own … an integral component of any popular music collection.”

These vintage UK Island pressings have the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, these are the records for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What The Best Sides Of Babylon By Bus Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1978
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing these records are the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find pressings that sound as good as these two do.

Standard Operating Procedures

What are the criteria by which a record like this should be judged? Pretty much the ones we discuss in most of our Hot Stamper listings: energy, vocal presence, frequency extension (on both ends), transparency, harmonic textures (freedom from smear is key), rhythmic drive, tonal correctness, fullness, richness, and so on down through the list.

When we can get all, or most all, of the qualities above to come together on any given side we provisionally award it a grade of “contender.” Once we’ve been through all our copies on one side we then play the best of the best against each other and arrive at a winner for that side. Repeat the process for the other side and the shootout is officially over. All that’s left is to see how the sides matched up.

Record shootouts may not be rocket science, but they’re a science of a kind, one with strict protocols developed over the course of many years to ensure that the sonic grades we assign to our Hot Stampers are as accurate as we can make them.

The result of all our work speaks for itself, on this very record in fact. We guarantee you have never heard this music sound better than it does on our Hot Stamper pressing — or your money back.

What We’re Listening For On Babylon By Bus

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
• The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Side One

Positive Vibration
Punky Reggae Party
Exodus

Side Two

Stir It Up
Rat Race
Concrete Jungle
Kinky Reggae

Side Three

Lively Up Yourself
Rebel Music (3 O’Clock Road Block)
War
No More Trouble

Side Four

Is This Love
Heathen
Jamming

AMG 5 Star Rave Review

Arguably the most influential live reggae album ever, Babylon by Bus captures Bob Marley and the Wailers during the European leg of their Kaya tour in the spring of 1978. The success of this set was not entirely unexpected, however. If the universal and widespread acclaim of Live! — their first concert recording — was an indicator, all involved knew that a Bob Marley & the Wailers performance contained unique energies and a vibe all of its own.

Sharply contrasting the somewhat pastoral grooves of the Kaya album, Babylon by Bus possesses a more aggressive sound — which was a trademark of this particular band. Tyrone Downie’s progressive rock keyboard flavors on “Exodus,” as well his judiciously located percussive clavinet accentuations during “Punky Reggae Party,” lock in with Aston “Familyman” Barrett’s viscous basslines to create something akin to psychedelic reggae or even along the lines of Parliament/Funkadelic. Likewise, “Heathen” highlights Anderson’s explosive guitar leads, which are distinctly reminiscent of Eddie Hazel from his early days with Funkadelic.

The lead guitar solos on “Rebel Music (3 O’ Clock Roadblock)” and “Is This Love” also define Al Anderson’s innovative and decidedly Western guitar style, as it is seamlessly and thoroughly integrated with Marley and the Wailers. As with their first concert album, Babylon by Bus highlights material from the band’s history up to that point. “No More Trouble” is placed in an entirely new context when linked with “War,” which features lyrics taken from a United Nations speech given by Haille Selassie I, the Ethiopian emperor considered the father of modern Rastafarianism. Other early tracks, such as “Kinky Reggae” and “Stir It Up,” prove to be not the only favorites of concert attendees. More recent offerings of “Is This Love,” “Jammin’,” and “Exodus” actually garner the most audible support.

Without question, Babylon by Bus is an integral component of any popular music collection.