SCRATCHY 45's FROM JAMAICA - Vol I - Tape - 2007

   When it comes to reggae and ska, I know next to nothing about the genre and I'm not going to pretend that I'm any sort of expert. Like any other white kid who grew up in a small town that is 1253 miles from Jamaica, my first exposure to reggae was BOB MARLEY when I was 10 or 11 years old. I acted like I was into it for a while, but really, he never clicked with me. He still doesn't and I partially blame that on an early and very extreme hatred of hippies (I completely understand that MARLEY actually didn't have much to do with white hippies, but they just ruined it for me.) Later on, I got into THE SPECIALS and they introduced me to the world of ska, which was more to my liking. This led to total life-changers (like the ska-punk of OP IVY) and dubious purchases (like LESS THAN JAKE and MIGHTY MIGHTY BOSSTONES). After a mid-90's revival of the worst ska I've ever heard in my life, I never wanted to hear any of that shit ever again.
   I've always been drawn to people who know more about music than I do (an easy task) and when I found myself living in New Orleans in the early 00's, I would routinely hear names thrown around like the MAYTALS, PRINCE BUSTER and THE PARAGONS. I didn't know what any of these artists sounded like, but I knew that the way some people talked about them, I needed to hear them. Sometimes, I would go to the record store and pick out dusty, interesting-looking 45's. I never lucked out. They were always kinda shitty newer reggae and dancehall. I just wished someone would've made me a tape of a bunch of good stuff that I needed to hear.
  Once, on a visit back to New Orleans, I stopped by Domino Sound (without a doubt, my favorite record store in the entire US) and ended up spending over a hundred bucks on a stack of vinyl. When Matt, the owner, was ringing me up, he threw in a couple of tapes on top of the stack and assured me that they weren't just some throwaways. One of them was a ROARING LION collection and the other was this tape of scratchy, and I mean scratchy, 45's from Jamaica. I listened to the latter while driving down some sweltering back roads alone through the panhandle of Florida and that's when this kind of music really clicked with me. This is the tape that I wish someone would have made me years earlier, but I was still happy to get it when I did. As always, thanks to Domino Sound and whoever put this great tape together.

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This file is pretty big (203 mb) and only two tracks. Each side sounds like it was put together by someone with good DJ experience so each song just flows into the next and I decided to not try and break up the flow of the tape. Side A is 45's from the 60's and Side B is 45's from the 70's. Each track is about 45 minutes.