While lacking the apocalyptic dread of the 1977 album, also called Police and Thieves, Murvin’s Muggers in the Street is an overlooked gem at a time when roots reggae was somewhat unfashionable in Jamaica following Bob Marley’s death and the popularity of dancehall.
On what was only Murvin’s third album in seven years he was backed by the Roots Radics Band and produced by Henry ‘Junjo’ Lawes, who was considered to be one of dancehall’s most successful producers.
But that doesn’t mean Murvin had radically changed his style in line with the day’s fad. Muggers in the Street is ostensibly a reggae album in the mould of the great 70s Jamaican workings, including Police and Thieves.
There is a link to that particular work in the title track which is little more than a reworking of ‘Police and Thieves’ the single. It’s not clear why Murvin redid this, there was nothing wrong with the original after all, and the lyrics on the original were far more potent. So, where we once had “Police and thieves in the streets (oh yeah)/ Fighting the nation with their guns and ammunition/ From genesis to revelation, yeah/ The next generation will be hear me”, we now have: “Muggers in the street/ Rob everybody that they meet/ In the street where the criminal acts/ They don’t care who they rob.”
The original is about the gang war and police brutality that was rampant in the streets of Kingston in the 70s; the remake appears to concerned only with the muggers as criminals, and not part of a rotten state that fed the criminality.
There’s no harm in it being included, in fact I would proffer that at least a couple of tracks on the second side could have been cut loose ahead of any others.
All of the wholesome meals are on the first half, and the standout is undoubtedly ‘Strikes and Demonstrations’, a cutting diatribe on the failed economic policy of the times: “Worldwide crisis is at large/ At home and abroad.” Murvin doesn’t necessarily support such actions, he just feels it’s a consequence of a world that doesn’t care anymore.
In 1984 Murvin fretted about his personal safety, imploring the working classes to ‘Stop the Crime’ and ‘Think Twice’ about their actions. Sensible advice, perhaps, but it’s doubtful if the poor would be moved by a record when the landlord is threatening eviction.
If it sounds like too much doom and gloom then there’s time for upbeat moments with ‘Jamaican Girls’ (“Jamaican girls are really nice/ Jamaican girls are sugar and spice”) and ‘Champagne and Wine’ (“I’ve got the money/you’ve got the time/C’mon let’s drink champagne and wine”) with the latter definitely signalling that the roots-heavy feel of a few years previous was now out the window, as the influence of Lawes began to show.
Murvin would continue recording until about 2007 (died 2013), but that period included only four studio albums. Of those, Apartheid, released two years after Muggers in the Street, shows a devotion to exposing injustice.
Muggers in the Street was recently given a vinyl reissue; it can only be hoped that Police and Thieves and Apartheid are given the same treatment soon.
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