Classic Albums:
Bob Marley – Catch A Fire
(Eagle remaster)
Picture:
C+ Sound: B- Extras: C- Documentary: B
As a big
fan of The Harder They Come, a film
that gets better with age, is a classic and deserves a major restoration, it is
also a film that made Reggae explode worldwide.
However, it was did not stand alone in this as at the same time, Bob
Marley released his studio album Catch A
Fire in 1973 and it became an even more largely recognized breaker of the
genre in the long-term, whether that was true or not. It is no surprise it became one of the
initial episodes of the great Classic
Albums series. Now, Eagle Vision has
reissued the installment on DVD.
An album
that still constantly sells today, Stir
It Up and Stop That Train are the
kinds of songs you may have heard but did not know their names. We see how the great Chris Blackwell made the
album happen by handling, engineering, mixing and producing to perfection the
final product. We see Marley & Peter
Tosh innovating and the rise of the musical voice of the third world in
profound terms that no one then could have imagined would go as far as it has
today. For any serious music fan, this
is a must-see.
The 1.33
X 1 image is a bit soft, but that is inherent to this early installment in the
series. It was originated in the analog
PAL format as looks as good as the previous Image DVD, while despite the label
stating Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo for the sound, this has the same PCM 2.0
16bit/48kHz Stereo as that disc, so performance is the same. A brief text piece is the only extra. Any serious fan of this album or Reggae has
to see this show, or they just don’t care as much as they think.
- Nicholas Sheffo
