Jimmy Cliff: Special

Jimmy Cliff: Special

1982

Columbia Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Special  2. Love Is All  3. Peace Officer  4. Treat The Youths Right  5. Keep On Dancing  6. Rub-A-Dub Partner  7. Roots Radical  8. Love Heights  9. Originator  10. Rock Children  11. Where There Is Love


Keep in mind, there's a bit of a gap in my Jimmy Cliff collection...There were two(?) albums in-between "Give Thankx" and "Special" that I haven't heard, so I don't know exactly what happened in the gap..."Give Thankx" found Jimmy jettisoning the paranoia and bitterness, replacing it with a cool, spiritual calm and eclecticism on such a scale that there still isn't really a genre that "Give Thankx" clearly belongs to... 

"Special" finds Jimmy sounding like he's in positive mental health again, and while there's nothing here that has that spark of genius that his more unexpected, esoteric albums had (minus maybe "Originator" which would have worked brilliantly on "Give Thankx"), it's all very solid, light, Jamaican pop. Super professional, springy reggae instrumentation with Jimmy's always incredible vocals. I think it needs to be reiterated that every single Jimmy Cliff album has top-notch vocals. To this day, I've never heard the guy deliver anything close to a lackluster or phoned-in vocal performance...

And it's nice to hear sweet, lovey stuff like "Love Is All" and "Where There Is Love"...He still manages to work in a bit of righteous fire but this time it's not personal recrimination aimed at a specific individual that ripped him off...Now he's going for the more general social justice thang...Targeting the folks who have ripped everybody off...The plus here is that he comes across as not petty or bitter, but noble...This edge manages to put "Peace Officer" over the top, making an already hooky groove into something really special and memorable...And "Roots Radicals" is just flat-ass awesome...When Jimmy belts out, "I'm a true born Jamaican!" at full-force it really hits you where you feel it...It also provides a brief glimpse at how well synth can work on a reggae album...Fat, dirty and farty rather than fake and dinky....

And this is the last stop for a long while if you want some straight-up Jimmy Cliff reggae music...He would switch to 80's synth-pop after this record before falling into the abyss of re-recordings, duets and general blandness...He wouldn't fully recover until his recent team-ups with Tim Armstrong, so I recommend you take this one in and appreciate it for awhile...It's maybe not as immediately striking as some of the other material that preceded it, due to the relative sameness of the album, but it really is a rock-solid example of Jimmy Cliff at his Jimmy Cliff-iest...Just having fun, singing infectious anthems of universal love...If "Rub A Dub Partner" is a little too feathery, who cares? It's kind of a relief after some of the more psychologically harrowing Cliff albums I've been put through this past week...

To be honest, the first listen of this album was a bit underwhelming due to its lightness, but don't let that fool you...I suspect the public at large would probably really dig this album if they knew of its existence...This screams "summer reggae" like little else I've heard and is probably one of his most consistent albums...(P.S. don't let the "1982" on the cover scare you...This is far removed from "Cliffhanger"/Latoya Jackson/Robin Williams soundtrack stuff, again this a' reggae music)...

Here's "Roots Radical" by Jimmy Cliff...Enjoy...