Even in death, Bob Marley remains the biggest draw in reggae music. Or so these two soundtrack albums make it seem. The first, taken from a film of the 1981 Reggae Sunsplash Festival in Montego Bay, Jamaica, carries the subtitle A Tribute to Bob Marley; the second, from a dramatic feature, relies on Marley and the Wailers for most of its music. But Bob Marley's name, if a potent draw, also provides a standard against which these albums must inevitably be judged. Neither is particularly successful in living up to that standard.

Reggae Sunsplash '81 is the more blatantly commercial of the two. Functioning for the most part as a live greatest-hits collection, it offers tastes of some of the biggest names in reggae: Black Uhuru, Gregory Isaacs, the Mighty Diamonds, Dennis Brown, Rita Marley, Third World and Steel Pulse. Unfortunately, few of these stars are playing anywhere near their best. Isaacs and Brown, seemingly hampered by ineffectual rhythm sections, give perfunctory performances. The Mighty Diamonds' harmonies are riddled with sour notes, Third World is unable to get a groove going in either a reggae or a reggae-funk style, and Rita Marley obstructs an otherwise solid performance by the I-Threes with needless cheerleading.

The album is not a total washout. Black Uhuru's two cuts outweigh the whole of their own live album, Tear It Up, and the Melody Makers, a sort of reggae version of the young Jackson Five, turn in a delightful "Sugar Pie." But given such questionable features as an emcee who treats the affair as Woodstock in dreadlocks and the fact that Steel Pulse, the only Elektra act on hand, occupies one entire side of the set, you're left with precious few diamonds in the rough.

The performances on Countryman are consistently good; it's the material that tends to be spotty. Eight of the album's twenty-two selections are by Marley (one features Bunny Wailer singing lead), and while only "Natural Mystic" can be said to be great, all are quite excellent. More significant, each seems to have been chosen to suit the film, not to increase the soundtrack's sales.

Ironically, it's that same thematic devotion that ultimately undoes the album. Through the first three sides, the focus is on music, and the results are frequently impressive. Among the treasures are "Bam Bam," a dub-tinged gem from a wonderfully modernized Toots and the Maytals; the deliciously cooled-out "Ramble," by trombonist Rico; and "Mosman Skank," a spookily updated version of Aswad's "Dub Fire." But side four is surrendered to Wally Badarou, whose original music for the film is largely electronic babble posing as atmosphere. Not only does that drag the side down, it detracts from the power of the music that preceded it. Maybe slipping in a few extraneous hits wouldn't have been such a bad idea after all. (RS 380)

J.D. CONSIDINE