Editorial Reviews

Britain's Trojan Records licensed Jamaican records for distribution during the 1970s and 1980s, and the massive vault of Trojan titles has been released and recombined in endless ways ever since, including a series of small box sets, three discs to a box, that center on one style or theme. There is really no theme to the Trojan 35th Anniversary set, however, and it would seem that it really functions as a place to put the odd songs that didn't fit easily into the other themed collections. Not that this compilation suffers for it, since there are titles here that are relatively rare, and serious collectors of Jamaican records are going to love it. Highlights range from the beautiful and sublime (Slim Smith's "No Honey, No Money," "War Boats" by the Sensations, "Pride and Passion" by the Pioneers) to the utterly bizarre (Gladstone Anderson's "Swanee River," the Crystalites' "Blacula" dub), and all points in between (Roland Alphonso's "Saucy Horn"). You wouldn't want to start your reggae collection with this box, but if you have several titles already, it might nicely fill in some of the gaps. Steve Leggett, All Music Guide

Customer Reviews

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