Yeah, it's a compilation - so shoot me - but that's the point. This selection is all about singles - some of the best pop music ever recorded that has been excluded from this debate because it didn't appear on long players, or not on consistently good long players. This isn't about Desmond Dekker as such; this choice could have easily been any Trojan compilation, Motown Gold, Utter Madness, Out on the Floor, Phillybusters, Singles 45's and Under, any Spector compilation etc etc.
But this is great. Early ska stuff in the shape of Get Up Edina, but mostly rocksteady / skinhead reggae from the late 60s. Great pop harmonies on the likes of Pretty Africa and Sabotage; a more soulful vocal on Warlock. 007 (Shanty Town) still sounds really fresh today. Unlike later Trojan output, this is Jamaican music, not made with western ears in mind - It Mek sounds odd now; it must have sounded like it came from another planet in 1969.
19 tracks, and only 3 of them longer than 3 minutes - that's what we're talking about.
This album was another Glossop library loan back in 1985 - 20p for a week and taped thank you very much. It satisfied a curiosity driven by a revisiting of the 2-tone stuff at the time, and opened up a new avenue in music for me. Soon I was ordering bootleg tapes from stores off Carnaby Street, reading articles on Treasure Isle records in skinhead fanzines and going to gigs by the likes of The Deltones and The Potato 5 & Laurel Aitken. I can still see the look of alarm on the faces of the Red Wedge types as a load of skinheads piled into an anti-racism benefit at Manchester Apollo to see the latter.
Soon after I was off to Poly - met a lad and swapped him a skinhead reggae compilation tape for a tape of northern soul of his, and another musical avenue opened up...
This is a cracking bit of footage (bagsy the one in the red check skirt):