So it's a nice sunny day and I headed into town to pick up a couple of bits that I needed, pretty trivial stuff but as ever I end up in record shops (how this happens is a mystery to me)
Sunny weather usually means a reggae / dub purchase is likely. That obviously happened
So there's this story that John Lydon signed to Virgin because he really appreciated the way they treated their reggae artists (not like shit which a lot of other majors did), so Virgin had been releasing reggae for a while by 1978 and decided to set up a dedicated reggae subsidiary - Front Line. After the Pistols split and before PIL (early 78), Lydon ends up on holiday in Jamaica with Don Letts and others. The rumour is that Lydon was effectively acting as an A&R Man for Front Line, if he was, he certainly was very productive, Front Line realeased a silly amount of albums and singles between 78 and 79. Virgin then inexplicably disbanded the label in 79. This was the Roots / Rockers / Dub era and Jamaican reggae was probably at the absolute peak of it's powers. Anyway this double album compilation cherry picks some great artists on Front Line from that very narrow period and ticked an awful lot of boxes for me, reggae / dub, single label compilation and it has On-U connections too (Prince Far-I on first glance). This has U-Roy (another vague ON-U connection iirc), Culture, Twinkle Brothers, The Gladiators, Gregory Issacs and ....
Reggae compilations can very often be a bit hit and miss but not this one, this really is a superb compilation. I'd thoroughly recommend it for those with an interest in Jamaican music.