SONIC REDUCER / CARL HANNI

Vivian Weathers' Bad Weather

By Carl Hanni

Here's a question for academics and true-blood music lovers alike: how important  is biography and contextulization to fully appreciate an artist's work? Or can the work simply do all the speaking for itself?

Consider Vivian Weathers. His recorded output appears to be limited to a single solo album, Bad Weather, a couple of singles, a track on a dub compilation and playing bass and some guitar on dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson's epochal first three records. This little burst of activity all took place between 1978 and 1980; he seems to have evaporated since then. Biographical information? I heard he was a school-mate of LKJ; other than that, good luck.

But Weathers' one album is so solid and in the pocket that that's all he needs to have left a foot print on lover's-rock reggae. Released on Virgin's Front Line imprint in 1978, Bad Weather proffers a British Jamaican take on roots reggae steeped in American soul and blues. It takes about 20 seconds into the first track, "Going To The Blues," to realize that here is, quite literally, a unique voice. Against a slippery groove Weather's sweet falsetto slides in like a whisper in the ear. Weathers can express pleasure and pain simultaneously; his voice mirrors two sides of the human equation, sweet and sultry while also melancholy and blue. This duality plays itself out over all ten tracks of Bad Weather. "Hip Hug" is as as sexy a slow jam anything cut in a British or Jamaican studio, but again with the push and pull; Weathers sounds both ecstatic and tortured. Same with the sizzling, slow burning "The Way You Walk;" you almost fear for Weathers, he seems so vulnerable and wrapped up in a tenuous lovers embrace. He broadens the palate to include social (in)justice on and racial identity on  "Street Talk" and "Star of Sufferation" with no loss of intensity.

Weathers band, including several of LKJ's key players, lays down a tight, smoking groove. Guitarist John Varnom is the ringer, and his slinky, almost verbal leads wrap each song in an outrageously sexy soul-blues embrace. Vivian Weathers struck gold in 1978, and anyone lucky enough to locate a copy of Bad Weather can share the wealth.

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Carl Hanni is a music writer, music publicist, disc jockey and vinyl archivist living in Tucson, AZ. He  hosts the vinyl-only Scratchy Record Show every Tuesday night at the Red Room in downtown Tucson, and spins records wherever and whenever he can. He believes that in a better (all analog) world all records would be released on vinyl, but takes good music from wherever he finds it--even on CD. His feature piece on legendary bass player/record producer Harvey Brooks was recently published in Goldmine.