The Rolling Stones - Black And Blue.
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If this wasn’t already one of THE greatest debuts ever, the addition of NINE brilliant bonus cuts makes this required listening.
From the excellent The Rock Box 1973–79 7-CD/1 DVD box set of earlier this year. Absolutely brilliant!
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Hi @TheKevster
Of course I’m familiar with Laurel Aitken but that comp is new to me and looks pretty good, I looke it up and see its from Cherry Red who are usually pretty reliable, whats the SQ like.
Laurel Aitken doesnt really get the recognition due that many of his musical peers do in my view. He came to Jamaica from Cuba with his family and his brother Bobby Aitken became a respected session guitarist. Laurel started out singing Mento songs and then cut some early pre Ska Jamaican R&B right at the start of the JA recording industry, Boogie In My Bones was reportedly the first record produced by Chris Blackwell before he launched Island records, he really was there at the foundation.
But his relocation to the UK during a time when JA music was evolving and going through many innovations arguably meant his name didnt really get associated with that so his early achievements and contribution to the history of the music gets overlooked I believe.
He linked up with Melodic and then Blue Beat here in the UK but then for better or worse depending on your view he hitched his wagon to the Skinhead Scene recording a prolific number of singles on the Nu Beat label (I have some originals), he became known as the Woppi King after one of those hits.
A little sadly in my view, perhaps largely due to his being away from JA during a large part of the sixties musical devolopment that he became kind of typecast as an icon of Skinhead Reggae and its this period that the comp appears to focus on, great stuff but he really was much more than that and what interests me most about this comp is his production work with early UK Reggae bands and singers like The Cimarons and Winston Groovy which hasn’t to my knowledge been particularly well covered before.
So thanks for the heads up Kev.
Also, if your interested I can highly recommend checking out the Doctor Bird catalogue of re issues/compilations of glorious music from all corners of JA music, excellent value for money too, I post some of their stuff here from time to time. Their distributed by Cherry Red, you can view the Doctor Bird catalogue on their website and I find many titles available to stream on Qobuz.
Hope this helps
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I expected nothing less 
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Burning Spear - Marcus Garvey/Garvey’s Ghost, listening to the dub versions.
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@TheKevster
That Laurel Aitken comp is on Qobuz so will be dipping into that, I see the same label (Pressure Drop) also has a 17 Volume series of singles!
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Cheers Dread, will check out the Doctor Bird stuff.
SQ on the Laurel box is fine. A lot of it was pretty lo-fi in the first place and the music is great (which is what counts).
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Some of the original Nu Beat singles I have sound pretty good
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Pleasant chilled afternoon listening.
Which reminds me of their covers album with one of the best covers of 5 years.
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On Vinyl:
Tracey Thorn - Record
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Paul McCartney - All The Best, playing this to hear the stand alone singles, spinning the US Capitol choice of tracks.
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I listened to it this morning and suspect it will be a serious contender for the end of year ‘Best Album’ lists. Absolutely brilliant
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