That there's hardly anything to Jamming is somehow central to its appeal. The song's insistent hook ensured that it was the first Bob Marley record to cross into the clubs and his first Top 10 single. No less ground-breaking was its B-side. Painstakingly assembled by Lee "Scratch" Perry in Miami, Britain and Jamaica, Punky Reggae Party saw Marley and Perry giving punk the thumbs up. The song has dated better than Perry's claim that he wrote it to heal the (ultimately fatal) toe injury that Marley had just sustained playing football.
Availability: Exodus Island CD
53. THEM: Baby Please Don't Go/ Gloria(1964)
Dozens of singers, from John Lee Hooker to Big Bill Broonzy, had already tackled Baby Please Don't Go by 1964. But it's the treatment meted to it by Them that most people remember-- an amphetamine punk riot, ignited by Van Morrison's libidinous harmonica solo. Morrison wrote the equally fab B-side himself-- Gloria's cathartic one word chorus somehow seems mainlined from the very core of human longing. Simultaneously grubby and transcendent-- just like the thing it describes-- the song's primal power has since been harnessed by artists as disparate as Jim Morrison and Patti Smith.
Availability: The Story Of Them Deram CD
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