420 Day 2023: Peter Tosh’ ‘Live And Dangerous’ Album To Be Released On Vinyl For The First Time

Peter Tosh’s 1976 album Live and Dangerous will be released on vinyl for the first time, and will be available only at select indie retailers this Saturday, April 22, which is being observed as Record Store Day, in what has been described as “highly limited quantities.”

The sale also coincides with the celebration of Peter Tosh Day, which will be celebrated tomorrow, April 20, an occasion which is observed internationally as the day for the celebration and appreciation of ganja.

“Never-released Peter Tosh on vinyl is available this Saturday for Record Store Day. PETER TOSH, LIVE & DANGEROUS BOSTON 1976 will be available only at select indie retailers on April 22nd in highly limited quantities.  This classic live recording from 1976 was the last show of Peter’s first solo U.S. tour, supporting the LEGALIZE IT album released four months earlier,” a post on the late Reggae Legend’s Instagram page notes.

The page also quoted from a Boston Herald preview of Record Store Day which noted that “the 1976 concert from Boston”, is a testament to the might and malleability of the Westmorelite’s backing band Word, Sound and Power, which included the legendary Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare and guitarist Al Anderson.

The album has a total of 11 tracks, some lasting as much as nine minutes.  They are Let Jah Be Praised, 400 years, No Sympathy, Burial, Mark of the Beast, Babylon Queendom, Why Must I Cry, Watcha Gonna Do, Stepping Razor and Ketchy Shubby, in addition to the instrumental intro.

Peter Tosh was born Winston Hubert McIntosh in 1944 in Belmont, Westmoreland, approximately 25 miles from Orange Hill, an area regarded as the home of the world’s best ganja.

As for Peter Tosh Day, it was named in his honour for what is described as his relentless fight for the decriminalization of ganja, his imperious efforts towards the global promotion of reggae music, and his quest for equal rights and justice.

Tosh’s boldness was exemplified in 1978 when he, according to the New York Times in a 1987 article, “took it upon himself at a Kingston stadium concert” to reprimand the then Prime Minister Michael Manley, and then Opposition Leader Edward Seaga, “both of whom were in the front row -about the evils of politics, the destitution of the poor and the hypocrisy of outlawing ganja.”.

In a review of the album when it was released by Sony Music on CD in 2001, independent international magazine of cultural criticism and analysis, Pop Matters, described it as an “Amazing concert” and a seminal performance by a seminal performer and artiste.

Pop Matters noted that Tosh’s “live concerts show him at both his best and his most comfortable”, and that as an artiste he straddled the line between indie and pop, and was accepted in both worlds and respected for his artistry, and as a true dissident.

Pop Matters described Peter Tosh as the consummate Wailer, and “the only one who fully realized that he could use reggae’s inherent pop sensibility and turn it into an anthem for the struggling and oppressed”.

“Bunny Wailer and Bob Marley both missed their opportunity as artists to meld politics and music as fully as Tosh; Bunny was muttering in the dark and Marley was so fully commercialized that it was hard for him to address the scope of political issues that Peter Tosh could…,” the review noted.

In October last year, MSNBC’s Ari Melber had described Peter Tosh’s 1976 classic Legalize It, as “one of the most iconic statements about pot prohibition policies of all time.”

Legalize It was released by Tosh in 1976, from the album of the same name.  He had penned the song as a response to his ongoing victimisation by the Jamaica Constabulary Force, and also as a political statement calling for the legalisation of ganja.  The song had instantly become a classic ganja anthem in what was the plant’s most difficult era.