Various: Ska Train

This is one of those CDs you buy not for sitting down and listening to but to create or augment a mood — enjoying the kind of weather we've been having for the last fortnight, or ripping some songs to include on a playlist when you're entertaining friends at home.

I think this kind of compilation is on the way out, except perhaps as an impulse buy at a motorway service station. The weekend before last I experimented for the first time with using Last.fm and MP3Tunes to soundtrack our dinner party. It was a very lightweight set-up with my Asus Eee PC on the kitchen shelf playing through the line-in on the 25-year-old Sanyo radio-cassette machine we keep down there (basic functions, but great sound, and having line-in means you can play anything through it). I was most playing my personal tag radio (the artists I'd tagged as jazz, or Brazilian, or French), and switching to MP3Tunes if there was a request for something I knew I had in my collection. Then, when Sam asked for something more funky, I just started the Last.fm funky tag, and Robert was your mother's brother.

It's curious how this exclusively Jamaican music is sold with a cover referencing the white British experience of Jamaican music. What is it about that very specific historical period that appeals to us? The first stirrings of a mass youth style that embraced immigrant culture?

There are loads of enjoyable songs on here. But it's Shame and Scandal in the Family that always stands out. I love the lightness of touch that tells how "the girl is your sister but your mother don't know" while "your daddy ain't your daddy but your daddy don't know" with such good cheer. It makes shame and scandal sound very attractive.

Compilation-watchers, this one was licensed from Charly Licensing, just like last month's blues collection, but it was compiled by Carlton Home Entertainment Limited, who may have gone under, since their domain name www.carlton-ent.co.uk isn't functioning any more.

MusicBrainz entry for this album Rate Your Music entry for this album Listen to this album in full at Last.fm