I've still got Bob Marley songs going round in my head, and here's three and a half hours of Scratch and his friends. All of it more or less blissful. You could put this on at the start of the work day and, by the time you'd got to the end, it would be lunchtime, and then you could start again at the beginning.
I remember being slightly miffed when this came out as it was only a year or two since I'd shelled out a fair few bob for Open the Gate. But I waited a few years and the price dropped — in Fopp, as usual, as far as I remember.
I think this is the better, if less eccentric, of the two collections. It seems to be all the best tracks from the Black Ark between 1975 and 1979. Again the original songs are followed dub versions, which adds to the stoner sense of time stretching out to swallow you.
Favourites? I'm sure they'd be different each time, but I really enjoyed Congoman and either — I can't remember now — Vampire or Sufferer's Time.
In 2003 Lee Perry curated the Meltdown festival. I went along for one night and it was, ahem, a bit of a curate's egg. The Bees, who opened, were probably the best bit of it. I think Tortoise were the nominal headliners, but they were incredibly dry. Perry himself did one or two slots accompanied by the Mad Professor. As you might imagine, "coherent" was not the word.
 MusicBrainz entry for disc 1disc 2 disc 3 |
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