Bob Marley And The Wailers Rastaman Vibration on 180g LP

In correlation with Bob Marley’s 70th birthday year-long celebration (2015) and the release of the expansive Complete Island Recordings vinyl box, the 11 LP’s from the set will also be broken out and released individually on 180-gram vinyl beginning in September 2015. Apart from the actual disc labels which will feature more recently reissued artwork, the LP’s will faithfully replicate the original album pressings.

The individual issues encompass all nine Bob Marley & The Wailers studio albums recorded for Island Records including some of their most celebrated releases like 1972 label debut Catch A Fire, 1976 US breakthrough Rastaman Vibration and the two live albums Live! (1975) and Babylon By Bus (1978). Also available: Burnin’ (1973), Natty Dread (1974), Exodus (1977), Kaya (1978), Survival (1979), Uprising (1980) and Confrontation (1983).

Rastaman Vibration proved to be Marley’s American and commercial breakthrough, climbing to #8 on the Billboard 200. The album paired hard-hitting tracks such as “War” (essentially a musical recitation of a speech by Haile Selassie, the Ethiopian emperor considered a prophet of Rastafarianism) with lighter fare such as “Positive Vibration.” Bob Marley & The Wailers were declared Rolling Stone’s Band of the Year for 1976. “Marley, like Dylan, has transcended genre,” wrote the magazine. “You only have to see him on stage, a dancing dervish, dreadlocks wind-milling, to realize that here is a rock & roll star.”