Exodus has been flawlessly remastered from the original recordings and showcases what is probably the Wailers' tightest recorded performance. The initial notes of the album's opening track, "Natural Mystic," fade up from a deep silence, giving the listener the impression that the music generates from within a continuum of the past, present, and future. The first half of Exodus bears witness to Marley's shift in focus away from the mundane problems of Babylon existence and toward a greater understanding of vital universal truths. The second half features songs such as "Jamming" and "Waiting in Vain," which take a gently wistful look at the more interpersonal aspects of human relations. --Rebecca Levine

Album Description
Limited Edition Japanese pressing of this album comes housed in a miniature LP sleeve. Universal. 2006.

Album Details
Japanese Limited Edition Issue of the Album Classic in a Deluxe, Miniaturized LP Sleeve Replica of the Original Vinyl Album Artwork.

Opener "Natural Mystic" sets the tone: easy-flowing reggae sounds, with Bob's never-absent comments on the way things are, or should be. The album's title track is, at 7+ min, the "monster" track on the album, and one of Bob's best ever. The album also contains the well-known (and hits in the US) "Jamming", "Waiting in Vain", and "One Love".

One can argue that Marley was never as good in the studio as he was live (check out the live album "Babylon by Bus"), but as far as his studio output is concerned, it never got any better than this. Essential for any Marley fan.

Fun fact: Marley was always bigger in Europe than he was in the US. Of the original 10 tracks, 7 were issued as a single in the UK, a feat not repeated until Michael Jackson's "Thriller" album, just to give you a sense of "Exodus" impact in 1977.


Marley's Finest   April 21, 2005
 11 out of 13 found this review helpful

It is always interesting to follow Bob Marley's career from his early rude boy years, to the rock steady years, to the ska years, to reggae, to the roots, rock, reggae which this set shows itself. As so many other reviewers have said this has to be Bob Marley and the Wailers at their absolute tightest. Tight because of how tightly compacted and densely thick the drum lines are, delivered with startling accuracy. Tight because the guitars, and organs, and instruments have never sounded so heavy and so right before. Tight because there's no longer the dense weed smoke hanging in the air that clouded up some parts of Catch a Fire and earlier recordings. Instead now, now Marley is clear on, leaving no lyric to chance, and leaving no sound to the inspiration of the atmosphere: rather he's MAKING the atmosphere with his sound. Tight because his vocals have never been so right on before. If I had to stack all the records Bob and the Wailers (Peter Tosh and Bunny included) ever made, this would be the singular one I would choose. This is the best album Robert Nesta Marley, O.M. ever made, uniting world styles of music with the dreams of a little boy from St. Ann's Parish who on this record, has become a man of startling musical and lyrical power.

The album opens with Natural Mystic, a remake. Many times you will find that Bob remade some of the hits that he, Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh recorded back in their ska and rude boy years. This is one of them. Natural Mystic was recorded in a ska (a folkish jazzy sort of form of reggae) a few years earlier completely with trumpets, and orchestraic instruments. This time, Marley choose a more straight-forward and blunt delivery, his voice quiet, more mournful than it was in the ska version. While the trumpets are still here their last boastful as they were in the earlier version. Marley gives the song a hint of fatality that makes it quite profound.

So Much Things to Say follows next. This song was redone by his daughter-in-law, Grammy winning singer/songstress/philosopher Lauryn Hill some years later on her classic Unplugged 2.0 collection, and one can see why a songwriter of her caliber chose to do this as a remake. It has a classical no b.s. attitute towards the things people say. Marley acknowldeges that old axiom "Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me" is a complete lie. He says that words can hurt you, but only if you stop to listen. But if you know who you are, you know what you believe, and you know what you represent, it doesn't matter. This message is delivered over a rapturous accompaniment with joyful doo-wop style of vocals by the I-Threes

Guiltiness is next. He talks about hypocrites, liars, and backstabbers in this song, aknowledging that even they have a heart, but that that heart is filled with guiltiness. Unless they turn from their ways "Woe to the downpressers, for they shall eat the bread of sorry" he cries over a darker background than the earlier music.

Heathen is a sort of chanting kind of mantra against the Spiritual Enemy, as Marley and the I-Threes cry: Jah put dah heathen back deh, pon deh wall, or in American english: God, put the heathen back there against the wall, requesting that God help him fight the battle against the Heathen both spiritual, mental, and physical.

The album's title track comes in next. It's called Exodus. It's suprisingly long. In the Wailers (Bob, Peter, and Neville "Bunny") ska years they usually wrote songs that were about 2 minutes long, so it's a big jump to see him writing a 7-plus minute track. This is a very politically minded song, and it's not entirely catchy except for it's chorus Exodus movement of Jah people, which itself is not that catchy. It's more a political dictation that you really have to listen to. It fit well in the 70's, but now, it's more something you'll want to listen, and because of how heavy he made the beat and instruments it's more something you march to than dance to.

Next has got to be one of Marley's tightest dance tracks, Jammin. The beat says it all. This is Carlton Barret at his best, proving himself one of the most exceptional drummers in the known world with tight dense delivery and transcendent ability in regards to reggae. The way he switches rhythms in the middle of the drum line without ever disrupting the flow, constantly back and forth to some three to five different rhythms is absolutely amazing. Marley delivers lyrics about dancing in the name of the Lord, a righteous party here.

Waiting in Vain is a sweet love song over a sweeter accompaniment. Here the Wailers, usually hard up on rhythm and power, deliver a sweet as honey background to Marley's declaration that he will knock on her door for as long as she wants, and he'll wait for her love for as long as she says, but he just wants to know that he isn't waiting in vain. He'll wait forever, but he needs a promise that one days he'll get some reciprocity. It's a beautiful sentiment, and Bob as usual delivers it with shocking honesty and sentiment.

Next is one of Bob's, or maybe it IS Bob's best love song. For me it's his best, and what he brings to it is emotional. It has the feeling of new love, young love, passionate, full of light and emotion. His daughter-in-law, Grammy winning singer Lauryn Hill did a duet of this song with his voice, using computer technolongy. The duet made Natalie Cole and Nat King Cole's technology-aided duet seem tame, and makes you believe that if she had married his son while he was still alive, they might have actually done this duet together. They have the same views, and their voices so well together, his Marley's rough, and Hill's so smooth that it works. Check Chant Down Babylon, an album made by Marley's son Stephen, for this duet. But the original version is by far the best. The accompaniment is trance like and Marley's vocals are admirable. Here that feeing of smoke hanging in the air returns, but this time it's a more organic, natural vibe, and sensual sort of trance-like rapture, that transcends time and space, titanic yet captured at the same time. It's a great love song.

Three Little Birds is nice feel good song, and it works well. Enjoyable.

The monster hit One Love is next. This song has been played so much that it's self explanatory.

The two bonus tracks are great. The long version of Jammin lets Carlton Barrett give a transcendental execution of drumplay. If you don't marvel at how Barrett handles those drums, and how ridiculously wonderful that bass line is, then hand over your heart and your musical taste, because you have no need for them in regards to modern music. The next track Punky Reggae Party is insatiable and irrepressable. I dare you not to start jumping around your bedroom or living room as if you're in a Jamaican basement party. If your feet are not at least tapping uncontrollably, then again, hand over your heart and musical taste.

This is Bob at his ABSOLUTE FINEST. THe ska years saw Bob discovering his style. The ska years have their own feeling and are just as enjoyable as the reggae years, this is back when folk and jazz music from New Orleans pervaded Jamaica, and the Wailers (who were then Bob Marley, Peter McIntosh (Peter Tosh) and Neville "Bunny Wailer" Livingston) were ample exponents of that style, brilliantly delivering it. The rude boy years saw a young teenage Bob ascending from the ghetto's of Trenchtown with a fierce attitude, a courageous heart, and a raw talent as he was discovering his voice. The early Island recordings saw Bob consumating it. But it is Exodus that pushes Bob into a realm of superstardom so spectacular that Time was forced to declare this the album of the Century. That decision has got to be unanimous.

-Terrence Craft


Iconic! Simply unmissable!   June 7, 2007
 10 out of 12 found this review helpful

I watched a TV documentary the other night about the making of this album and it was a spellbinding hour and a half. Apparently, Bob had to flee Jamaica for the UK after an assassination attempt and ended up living in London for a year. It was during this year that this phenomenal album was recorded. I've owned it for over 20 years now - first on cassette, then on vinyl and finally on CD - and I had no clue that this was so.

The album was released in 1977. It was the year of the Queen's Silver Jubilee but Britain was in a very bad place, the seeds of Thatcherism and the heartless 80s had already been sown and Punk ruled the airwaves. I lived a very sheltered life as a teenager and so it wasn't until 1979 when I went away to boarding school, that I finally get to hear the album in its entirety. It was a true revelation. I heard it on (what was then) a new invention my peers and I called a "hi-fi system" owned by an older student and I remember hearing the percussion on "Jamming" and being transfixed. No exaggeration; I was literally hypnotised.

The album is faultless with pristine production by Bob and The Wailers. From the minute the first strains of "Natural Mystic" fade in, through the accusatory "Guiltiness", on to the revolutionary title track, the slow jams "Waiting In Vain" & "Turn Your Lights Down Low", on to the optimitic "Three Little Birds" and right to the end of "One Love/People Get Ready", there is not a single note out of place. Each song, a potential hit single, (7 of the 10 songs on the original album were actually hits here in the UK) has a vibrant, totally relevant message - especially for a black teenager living in 70s UK, and Bob's primary ethos of peace & love have stayed with me ever since. That being said, this is the album that began to open my young eyes to the oppression and injustice that already surrounded me. The idea that music wasn't simply for entertainment or escapism but could inspire thought, behaviour and attitude change as well as activism, was new and very appealing.

And this was also the album that turned Bob from an international reggae star into a global prophet. Setting everything about Rastafarianism (respectfully) to one side, Bob the man and the music he made, the message he spread, have always educated and enthralled me in equal measure and always will. When I think about what are for me, consummately iconic, influential and superb recordings and I think about such albums as Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, John Coltane's A Love Supreme, Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life, Michael Jackson's Off the Wall, Pink Floyd's The Wall (Deluxe Packaging Digitally Remastered) and Radiohead's OK Computer, I also, immediately, think of Bob Marley's "Exodus". My life was definitely not the same after listening to it and now that I fully understand the story behind it, I hold the album in even higher esteem.

Whether this is Marley's best piece of work or not is, I guess, a matter of personal opinion and will always be open to debate. What is beyond doubt, is that it is my favourite Bob Marley album and I am proud and honoured to make this my 200th review on amazon.com. I'm a bit of a purist so I prefer the version I have which does not have the two extra tracks (though I have both on 12" single) but they are definitely worth having. As such, this is the version to get. There'll no doubt be a '30th anniversary edition' knocking around before too long as well.



A man for all eternity   June 5, 2002
 5 out of 7 found this review helpful

This magnum opus of reggae albums is of such stature most of all because of the resonance, rather than the ever-evident catchiness, of its songs. Reggae music's compactness and choppiness combined with its rich texture and seemingly instrinsic depth turned out to be a most suitable avenue for Bob Marley's social, political, and spiritual commentary, and his talent in the genre and earnest, forceful singing blended admirably. Song titles and lyrics in Exodus demonstrate Bob's focus on Biblical metaphors as a means to galvanize people for action and self-examination, but he also sings about ordinary experiences in life and love. Most of the songs are instantly recognizable classics, especially the title cut, "Jamming," and "One Love." Bob's wringing declaration "Let's get together and feel alright" seems to be a musical parallel to the final line of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, with a universal aura, like something you heard in a previous life. But you didn't, nor was this the case with any of the other songs, which are the unique genius of Bob Marley.


so much things to say right now...   February 21, 2005
 5 out of 5 found this review helpful

Exodus (the movement of JAH People) was time magazine's album of the century, that should say enough right there. But if you are not convinced buy it and you will be for sure. This album was released in 1977, and was recorded in London England. Bob Marley and members of the band survived an attempted assination in December of 1976, and went into self imposed exile in London. Here the creativity of the band is quite good, and many of the Songs that you know by Bob Marley and the Wailers appear on this disc. Jamming, Exodus, One Love, Three Little Birds, and Waiting In Vain. All the tracks are great on this disc and you can hear for the first time in all of the Wailers recordings that the quality of the recording equipment here is much better. The dummer's (Carlton Barrett) high hat never came through so clear. This album marks the intro of Junior Marvin (lead guitar)to the band. The band was about to gain superstar status and this album marks the beginning. If you crave more Jamming, check out the Exodus Deluxe Edition, it offers a second disc with part of a concert from the Rainbow Theater, and some rare Lee Perry tracks that will surely move you. This album is the album of the cetury, and you should own it for yourself, reguardless of you liking reggae or not.