Thinking about the world in terms of epochs and social groups, contrasting what a similarly aged group of folks in JA accomplished to twenty somethings in the States during the ‘60s is pretty interesting.

If your parents are of that vintage – born during the latter part of the forties or early fifties – whatever they’re up to now doesn’t really have anything to do with the rebellious nature of the time they grew up in. The States, for just about a decade, was engulfed in various waves of protest ranging from equal rights to problematic war posturings. JA was endeavoring to enter a period of freedom and self reliance. Of course problems arose.

Bob Marley was born in ’45 and Max Romeo (aka Maxwell Livingston Smith) was born in ’47. I’m gonna go ahead and guess that anyone reading this with parents roughly that age doesn’t think that their mother and father have accomplished similar goals as the two aforementioned singers. And in fact, being totally ignorant of either performer probably isn’t out of the question.

All involved can agree that the ‘60s were all engulfed by attempts to change the status quo and resulted, to a certain extent, in a liberalizing of the broader culture. Whether or not the ‘revolt’ was successful is up for debate, but the music that came out of that time is inarguably some of the strongest work in recorded music’s one hundred year history.

Romeo isn’t the best known figure out of the era – even as he worked with a nascent Hippy Boys ensemble that would soon become the Upsetters – but some of his recordings changed JA music. His first successful single after parting ways with the Emotions, a vocal trio he was a part of, was “Wet Dream.” It’s not difficult to guess what the topics those lyrics dealt with.

After the song was banned in England by the BBC, Romeo attained a higher profile than one would have imagined. And partially as a result of that, he was able to begin issuing long players. His first attempted to capitalize on the success of “Wet Dream.” And while it would be a few recordings on before Romeo attained a political enlightening, his second disc, Let the Power Fall, began the shift.

In the title track, listeners can obviously hear the difference between “Wet Dream” and what was being served up. But Romeo still mined the depths of relationships for a great deal of the album – “Puppet on a String” being a decent example. Beyond that, though, the singer went so far as to version a Wailers track from a few years back in the form of “Chatter Box.” And while everyone’s gonna figure the Marley version as the better of the two, Romeo’s voice seems full formed by this point.

Nothing over the course of Let the Power Fall came close to attaining the transcendence imbued in War Ina Babylon, but that’s what formative albums are for. So cop it well if you want a bit of perspective on one of JA’s most important vocalists.