Sometimes you can know a song for ages until something happens that ties it to a moment in your life, and, once that's happened, the tie can never be undone. So it is with the first track on this compilation, Train to Doomsville by Lee Perry & Dub Syndicate. I was on a train journey up the West Coast of America in May 2001 when my sister's third daughter was born. My thoughts were with them as the brief email news I'd had told me that the first few days of her life had not been easy — and that her name was Zara. Every time I thought of Zara, I heard in my head the bit in Train to Doomsville where Perry goes "Hello, Zara" and is answered by a young girl, "Hello, Lee Scratch Perry". The track was also the title music for Snub TV in the late '80s, but it's not that association that springs to mind when I hear it: instead it's the first days of little Zara (who has been in robust health ever since, I'm glad to say). This kind musical-memory-tie seems stronger when you're away from home and away from your music collection, so you can only play the song in your head, as it was in Germany that Yes's Madrigal got hitched to a particular moment.
I've never quite understood the Lee Perry/Adrian Sherwood partnership in the late '80s as it's hard to imagine anyone as strong-minded and idiosyncratic as Perry accommodating another producer's ideas. Obviously I need to check my premises: either I'm underestimating the flexibility of the individuals or I've misunderstood their relationship.
By comparison with last month's PIAB Volume 1, this one wasn't "almost a gift": instead of £1.49, it was £10. So not much to pay back, especially considering that it shares two tracks in common with Volume 1. And is pretty much more of the same, with just a hint of shift away from the critical, political application of sampling to a more deferential use.
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