various artists - Duke Reid' Treasure Chest

I meant to post this last week, but the heat caused my brain to short circuit. Which is ironic, because some Duke Reid-produced rocksteady is pretty much the perfect antidote to a hot August night.

I've racked my brain for something interesting to write about this, but, like a lot of Heartbeat comps, I find this just washes over me.like a warm breeze. So I'll mostly let the music speak for itself. There are a bunch of bona-fide all-timers here; "The Tide Is High", "Lala Means I Love You", "Ranglin On Bond St.", and "My Best Girl". All in all, a hell of a good buy at $4.

Discogs

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Lee "Scratch" Perry - Chicken Scratch [Deluxe Edition]

'Twas a fun day at the ol' thrift store today. I came home with a Sergio Leone boxset, a copy of Abel Ferrera's "The Driller Killer", "The Queen Is Dead" and "Nigeria Afrobeat Special" and Grant Green's "Standards" and THIS slice of JA nostalgia. It's super early Lee Perry...the Upsetter, Pipecock Jackson, King Scratch, y'all. And I'm a fuggin' sucker for anything involving the Master of the Black Ark.

This here represents a sampling of singles released on C And N Records, Coxsone Records, Rolando & Powie, Mu-Zik City Records, Worldisc, and Supreme Records in the mid 60s. The credits list reads like a Hall of Fame of Jamaican music. Coxsone Dodd and Graeme Goodall engineered the tracks. The Soulettes and the Wailers provided backing harmonies. The likes of Jackie Mittoo, Roland Alphonso, Lloyd Knibbs, and Tommy McCook, whether under the Skatalites band name or ungrouped, make up portions of the backing band. The liner notes by David Katz are incredibly thorough; he literally wrote the book on Lee Perry, so it should be expected, but is still welcome.

This originally got released in 1989, collecting 12 cuts that'd never before appeared on CD. Twenty years later, Heartbeat reissued that compilation, adding seven tracks that'd previously only been available in their original 45 release. It's a dynamite collection, capturing Perry in his first years as an impresario, and the Skatalites as the top backing band on the island. It blows my mind that someone would donate this, but I was happy to plunk down my $2.99 for this one.

Discogs

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Big Youth - The Chanting Dread Inna Fine Style

What we have here is the CD reissue of an American collection from 1982 of Big Youth, toaster extraordinaire, and his A-sides issued on his Negusa Negast. As best as I can tell, it's the Soul Syndicate backing him on most of these cuts, with drop-ins from the likes of Augustus Pablo, Carlton Barrett, and Dougie Bryan. I don't know if you can call this a greatest hits, per se, but it's pretty hot. I love the original cover art from the 1982 Heartbeat release; why they redesigned it, and gave it that darker, 90s look, is beyond me.

This was one of those $3 Goodwill finds that I picked up at 50% off sticker after it'd sat on the shelves for several weeks. I love it when I come across these things; it's boggling to me that something like this could still be there, two months after going into the store. There aren't a lot of joys in this world right now, but turning up a cool record like this, long out of print, is one of the ones I have left.

Discogs

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Symarip - Skinhead Moonstomp

As novelty records go, this is a pretty good one. Definitely up there with the works of "Weird Al" Yankovic.

You take Prince Buster's touring band, add Alton Ellis's half-brother on vocals, market them to the skinhead youth who were buying up every JA import they could find, and you get Symarip, aka the Pyramids, aka the Bees, aka Seven Letters. You ask them to write topical songs about said skinhead youth, throw in a slightly-altered Lee Hazelwood classic, and somehow you end up with a classic one-off. Is this a purely British phenomena, the knock-off record? I see some parallels between this record and the "faux punk" records of Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoias or F.U.2. They're all proficient and memorable and existed (initally) to fill a void in the marketplace.

In retrospect, it's the Philligree production that really seals the deal for me. Graeme Goodall ran Doctor Bird, Sioux, and Pyramid Records, as well as helped found Island Records. Along with Phil Chen, Goodall gets a bass-heavy, skankable sound that just jumps out of the speakers. I listened to this all the time in 1995 & 1996. It was "the heavy, heavy monster sound", in the parlance of the time.

A double disc set, including the "Monkey Business" compilation, came out in the UK in 1988 and was the first CD release of either record. There's a really nice 2xCD Symarip discography that contains every cut they recorded during their initial tenure; you can probably cop one for less than $15.

Discogs

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