Frederick “Toots” Hibbert, singer, songwriter, December 8, 1942–September 11, 2020
The Maytals (later Toots and the Maytals), “Pressure Drop” (F. Hibbert), 1970 (original recording)
It’s a song about revenge, but in the form of karma: If you do bad things to innocent people, then bad things will happen to you. The title was a phrase I used to say. If someone done me wrong, rather than fight them like a warrior, I’d say: “The pressure’s going to drop on you.”
Bob Marley and the Wailers, live (“Catch A Fire,” “Trenchtown Rock,” “Concrete Jungle,” “Midnight Ravers,” “Talkin´ Blues,” “Rebel Music,” “I Shot the Sheriff,” “Natty Dread”), Chicago (Quiet Knight), 6/10/75
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Happy—70th!—Birthday to my brother Don, with whom I’ve heard more music, in and around Chicago, than I could ever possibly recall. Most recently there was Ry Cooder at Thalia Hall; but before that—way before that—there was, let’s see, Bob Marley and the Wailers at the Quiet Knight (today’s clip), and the MC5 in Lincoln Park (during the infamous 1968 Democratic Convention), and the Velvet Underground at the Kinetic Playground (after which, on our way back to the car, we were stopped by Chicago police, in an unmarked car, who took us back to the station—curfew bust), and the Beatles at Comiskey Park, and Peter, Paul, and Mary, the Kingston Trio, the Smothers Brothers, and the Beach Boys at Arie Crown Theater (with Dad), and Johnny Tillotson, Gene Pitney, and Bobby Rydell on the basement jukebox, and . . . the list goes on, and on, and on.
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lagniappe
reading table
Reflecting over seventy years,
I am tired of judging right from wrong.
Faint traces of a path trodden in deep night snow.
A stick of incense under the rickety window.
—Ryokan (1758-1831), translated from Japanese by Kazuaki Tanahashi
