Culture's Harder Than The Rest

Culture's Harder Than The Rest is as damn near a perfect reggae album as is possible, unless your the sort that would only get enjoyment out of a Bob Marley record. To take it out of the Reggae room, if Marley is the Beatles, an group like Culture would be something akin to The Byrds. I remember buying this album during the summer at a Tower Records in Stamford, Ct and tossing it into the car stereo for the ride home. I also remember that it remained inside that stereo for weeks, until school started up again.

Lots of reggae is heavily weighted in favor of rhythm - bass and percussion. Culture even the scales on Harder Than The Rest by adding a significant amount of melody to the mix producing a highly listenable, enjoyable and grooving set of music. In my book nothing, with the exception of Burning Spears' Marcus Garvey and the Jamaican version of Catch A Fire, beats this collection of roots reggae.Culture were three vocalists with Joseph Hill on lead and Kenneth Paley and Alber Walker bringing up the rear with harmony. Harder Than The Rest was recorded in 1978 in Kingston Jamacia at Treasure Isle Studios. The Revolutionaries, the legendary studio group, were employed to lay down the tracks. in case you need refreshing, The Revolutionaries are comprised of Robbie Shakespeare (Bass), Sly Dunbar (Drums), Willie Lindo, Bertram 'Ranchie' McLean (Guitars), Ansel Collins, Earl 'Wire' Lindo (Keyboards), Uziah 'Sticky' Thompson (Percussion), David Madden, Vin Gordon, Cedric 'Im' Brooks, and Felix Bennet (Horns). HTTR was engineered by Errol Brown and produced by Sonia Pottinger. Those names sound much cooler than any other set of musicians I have yet to come across. The album was released on Virgin's The Front Line label.

On a personal note Harder Than The Rest was the first reggae album I listened to where I was able to separate the fact that it was reggae and just focus on the music. It showed me that reggae could be just as good as any other type of music out there.


Without further ado some tracks.

Culture - Behold
Culture - Free Again