Dub Me (Blood & Fire, 1997 [orig. released 1975])

Dub, when done correctly, can be expansive, visionary, mind-bending, and mesmerizing.   At its worst, it can be drab, repetitive, and downright sleep-inducing.  As much as I wanted to like Dub Me, I can't help but lump it with the latter.   Morwell Unlimited, or The Morwells, were a singing group made up of Maurice Wellington, a pre-Roots Radics Bingy Bunny, and Louis Davis who made music together between 1973 and 1980.  Dub Me features dubs of some of the group's vocal tracks, mixed by King Tubby (The original release of the album included only the first 10 cuts.), and although the personnel -- including music played by Flabba Holt, Chinna Smith, Tony Chin, and Ansell Collins -- is beyond reproach, there is no magic here.  This album is boring, boring, boring.  Everything has the same lethargic tempo with none of the ingenuity or bells and whistles that make great dub so fresh.  None of the songs are bad -- the best being "Morpheus Special," "John Bull," "Lightning & Thunder," and their version of The Melodians' "Swing & Dine," titled "Swing & Dub" -- but they're just there, doing little for the listener.