Alphabet Soup Week 31: Artists Filed Under P

Where has all the reggae been in this series? And where does a Prince newbie start with his catalog?? (tell me please!)

When I started the Alphabet Soup series I was sure that reggae would feature quite heavily. I've been somewhat surprised how little has actually appeared, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense. When I first really started getting into reggae I was probably 13 years old, a time when vinyl and cassette were king, and my choice of medium reflected that. While I started expanding my musical palette in my mid-teens, my relationship with reggae was fairly monogamous for the better part of half a decade.

My local purveyor of all things cutting edge reggae, particularly dancehall, was Dub City which operated two locations in Bermuda, Dub City Variety, which was more of a neighborhood general store, and Dub City International Records who were a specialty record shop. Not only were they a one stop shop for all the popular 45s and 12" records, they also compiled the most amazing mixtapes on a weekly basis as well as providing cassette copies of the latest "sessions" or sound clashes taking place in Bermuda, Jamaica, London, or New York. They would later form their own record label to release reggae by local artists.

By the time I began to accumulate CDs in the early 90s my musical tastes had significantly shifted. While I did still have a penchant for reggae, I was moving more into the alternative and college rock realms while still enjoying the new wave and goth of the 80s and beginning to lean into new-for-me genres like jazz, blues, and "world" music. The reggae that made its way into my CD collection included some of the classics and my personal favorites, artists like Bob Marley, Black Uhuru, Steel Pulse, UB40, and Peter Tosh who kicks off this week's playlist. When it came to dancehall, what little I ended up owning on CD came primarily in the form of compilations.

Given that the musical universe for Alphabet Soup is limited to albums that I physically owned on CD, it starts to make sense that reggae isn't represented as widely as I'd initially expected.

Another not insignificant factor for the dearth of reggae in the series is the sequencing of each week's playlist. That's an important element to me; I don't simply throw a bunch of tracks together and hope it works. My process involves going through all the songs in my now-digitized library (having the list of songs in a spreadsheet really helps) and selecting a batch of songs that I love or that have some meaning or memory attached to them. That usually provides anywhere from 15 to 30 songs that I'll then end up narrowing down to the ten that make the final cut. The cutdown process tends to be where the reggae tracks fall out; quite often they just don't fit in with the rest of the playlist stylistically, emotionally, or thematically.

In any event this series isn't meant to be the be all and end all of music that's important to me - it's just a snapshot taken on any given day from a vast universe of tracks. But there is a reggae song this week and it kicks off the playlist! With that, let's jump into week 31!!

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ALPHABET SOUP WEEK 31: Artists Filed Under P

This week’s selections:

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ARTIST: Peter Tosh

TRACK: “Johnny B. Goode” from Mama Africa (1983)

As I presume many fans did, I came to the music of the late great Peter Tosh through his work with Bob Marley and the Wailers. Along with Bunny Livingston (aka Bunny Wailer), Tosh formed The Wailing Wailers in 1964 with the band finding early success in the form of the ska hit Simmer Down. In 1967, after the departure of their lead and backup singers, Bob Marley joined the band, which was renamed to The Wailers. After releasing six albums between 1965 and 1973 both Tosh and Livingston left the band.

Tosh would go on to release seven solo albums before his tragic and untimely death in a home invasion in 1987. This fantastic cover version of Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode is drawn from Tosh's sixth album, 1983's Mama Africa. Tosh's rendition peaked at number 84 in the US on the  Billboard 100 and at number 48 on the UK Singles Chart.

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ARTIST: The Police

TRACK: “Invisible Sun” from Greatest Hits (1992)

I've previously mentioned my early love of The Police - they were my first favorite band - and through the 70s and 80s I owned all of their albums either on vinyl or cassette. Their fourth studio album, 1981's Ghost In The Machine, is an excellent album, perhaps my favorite of theirs. While it might've been an obvious choice to follow Peter Tosh with a more reggae-adjacent track like Spirits In The Material World or One World, I've gone with my favorite from the album, Invisible Sun, the lead single in the UK where it peaked at number 2. Surprisingly, the single was never released the US where Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic was instead selected as the lead single.

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ARTIST: The Pretenders

TRACK: “I'll Stand By You” from Last of the Independents (1994)

I won't pretend to have been a big fan of The Pretenders. Sure, I knew and liked the more popular songs in their catalog, but I never owned any of their albums. That is, until Last of the Independents was released in 1994. I've spoken before of what a foundational year 1994 was for me; it was the year I got clean and sober and it was also the year I began getting back into music after a few years of being caught up in the madness of my addictions.

The lyrics to the lead single I'll Stand By You really resonated with me. This was at a point in my life where I was deeply ashamed of some of my behavior during the prior nine months since my last relapse. I was also filled with self-loathing, incapable of understanding and managing my emotions, and desperately seeking a romantic relationship in which I could feel loved and supported. So when Hynde sings "When the night falls on you / You don't know what to do / Nothing you confess / Could make me love you less" it was everything I needed to hear, a salve for a lost and tortured soul.

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As you make your way through this week’s playlist, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do any of these tracks really stand out for you? What do you like? What don’t you like?

Please click the button below to leave a comment.

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ARTIST: Paolo Nutini

TRACK: “New Shoes” from These Streets (2007)

My God, I couldn't believe the voice I was hearing when young Paolo Nutini released his debut album in 2007. Some of the early tracks I heard had me thinking this was a 60-year old undiscovered Black blues singer whose career had been resuscitated as we'd see a few years later with Charles Bradley. Imagine my surprise when I found out I was listening to an 18-year old from the central Lowlands of Scotland!!

These Streets peaked at number 3 on the UK Albums Chart and would go on to be certified five times platinum in the UK.

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ARTIST: Peter Bjorn and John

TRACK: “Young Folks” from Writer's Block (2006)

Peter Bjorn and John, an indie pop band who formed in Sweden in 1999, had already released two albums by the time they came to my attention in 2006 with their third album Writer’s Block. By all accounts the band had seen little commercial success before this release which was anchored by the lead single Young Folks featuring vocals by Victoria Bergsman from the fellow Swedish indie pop band The Concretes. The track would make it into the top 40 in eight European countries and featured in several of the US alternative charts.

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ARTIST: Phish

TRACK: “Bouncing Around The Room” from Lawn Boy (1990)

Over the course of building my CD collection, I managed to acquire a handful of CDs from the Grateful Dead, most of which came into my life in the early 90s as I deepened my experimentation with LSD and other psychedelics. But it wasn't until the mid-90s that I started to become aware of modern day jam bands like Widespread Panic and Phish.

It was Sample In A Jar from 1994's HOIST that first brought Phish to my attention and while I liked but didn't love the album, it did lead to me purchasing their previous album, 1990's Lawn Boy. If anything, I appreciated that album even less than HOIST, but Bouncing Round The Room, the absolute gem that closes the album was a slice of audio perfection for my musical tastes. I spent many summer afternoons in the mid-90s bouncing around the figurative room to this song and I’d forgotten just how much I loved it until I began compiling this week's playlist.

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ARTIST: Peter Gabriel

TRACK: “Mercy Street” from So (1986)

My knowledge of Peter Gabriel's vast musical catalog (six albums with Genesis and ten solo studio albums) is admittedly sparse. In fact, I only ever owned one album, his fifth solo album, 1986's So, which was his most commercially successful album. The album produced five singles, four of which made the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, with two making the top ten (the monster hit Sledgehammer, which peaked at number one and Big Time, which topped out at number eight).

I've gone with the deeper cut Mercy Street, which was inspired by the works of American poet Anne Sexton. To me it's the most beautiful track on the entire album, a mournful and haunting reflection on Sexton's poem 45 Mercy Street as well as perhaps a nod to her The Awful Rowing Toward God which was published posthumously after her death by suicide in 1974.

The Financial Times published a mini-biography of the song in their Life of a Song series, which includes audio samples of numerous cover versions. It's a quick but informative and engaging read.

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ARTIST: Prince & The Revolution

TRACK: “The Beautiful Ones” from Purple Rain (1984)

Prince is an artist that I've spent way too little time with. In fact, I only ever owned two of his albums, Purple Rain, which I owned first on cassette and later on CD, and Around the World in a Day, which I owned on vinyl. For this week's playlist I've gone with The Beautiful Ones as I have such a vivid memory of being absolutely mesmerized by the scene in the film where the Kid (Prince's character) sings the song to Appalonia as she's sitting in the audience with his rival Morris Day. It's perhaps a lesser known track, but one I've always appreciated.

Prince is near the top of the list of artists that I've always said "I'll get to one day" and it's long been on my to do list to start exploring his catalog. Once my full retirement begins to unfurl after my current travels which will take me into early 2025, I'm planning to explore his catalog. But where do you even start with an artist who's released forty studio albums? Presumably, at the beginning? I'd welcome any suggestions on a targeted list of the best albums to start with.

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ARTIST: PJ Harvey

TRACK: “Down By The Water” from To Bring You My Love (1995)

Down By The Water, my introduction to PJ Harvey, came not through her 1995 album on which the track appears (To Bring You My Love) but from the soundtrack from the 1995 film Basketball Diaries. With my curiosity piqued by the song, I immediately went out and found the aforementioned album. While I enjoyed it, it ended up being the only album of hers I ever physically owned. I've found Harvey's work to be a little hit and miss over the years, but I thoroughly enjoyed 2016's The Hope Six Demolition Project, which made my AOTY list that year.

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ARTIST: Pearl Jam

TRACK: “Jeremy” from Ten (1991)

A few weeks ago when I was extolling the virtues of 1994 as a great year for music, I received a lot of feedback about other great music years and 1991 got a lot of love. In August of that year, Pearl Jam released their stunning debut album Ten which, while not initially commercially successful, went on to peak at number two on the Billboard 200 more than a year after its release. Jeremy, which is probably one of the band's best known songs, was the third single released from the album. It became the most successful single from the album on the US rock charts, peaking at number five on both the Billboard Album Rock and Modern Rock Tracks charts. The track also made the top 40 in Canada, the UK, Germany and Ireland.

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Week 4 on the South West Coast Path

My journey on the UK’s South West Coast Path continues. My wife and I are now 30 hiking days and almost 300 miles into the trip, which is a little tiring but continues to provide amazing scenery every day. Here are a selection of photos since last week’s post, one from each of the last eight days.

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Here’s the link to the running playlist which is updated on a weekly basis as each new installment is published:

ALPHABET SOUP RUNNING PLAYLIST

Tracks missing from the Spotify playlist:

• Allegory by Murray Attaway (Week 02)

• Face Me and Smile by The Lover Speaks (Week 12)

• From Your Mouth by God Lives Underwater (Week 13)

• This Can’t Go On! by The Lover Speaks (Week 23)

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Thank you for reading Joy in the Journey, I appreciate you being here! If there’s someone in your life you think may enjoy this post, feel free to share it.