MORE TRIBUTE

Okay... I sorta rushed my Gregory Isaacs tribute to the presses. When Sugar Minott left behind his earthly possessions, I took too long to respond. I spent more time researching and listening than actually typing. In the mean time some beautiful pages were written in the man's memory, so I decided that my two cents were worth just that; two cents. So I pushed delete. But with the Cool Ruler I relied on the what came quick off the top of my head and did my research after the fact.

Apparently what came off the top my head was wrong. Ernie B's didn't even have a CD copy of Extra Clasic. New or used. Although, they did have a few original copies in vinyl. Amazon listed a few copies of the Trojan CD edition for big bucks. Crazy. I wonder who holds the copyrights now? African Museum? Did Gregory Isaacs even own his African Museum record and publishing company by this point? Extra Classic is the Cool Ruler's best singles from 1975/76. This is way to important to be outta print. Hey suits are ya listening?

While I was loitering around Ernie B's online store, I came across this...



This seems to be a good thing that is catching on. VP Records in conjunction with their Greensleeves divsion gathers together four usually impossible to find records from a particular artist and then box sets 'em. This series of Reggae Legends releases is out to restore lost musical masterpieces from their collective catalogs. The trend so far is releases from the mid 80's to the mid 90's. That lost generation between the classic roots era and now. And at a nice price ta boot! I'll rave about the Cocoa Tea set at a later day. When I do, I will rave up the Shabba Ranks boxset from them as well.



I am not gonna lie to ya, Mr. Isaacs did his fair share of throw away tracks, but his uniquely languid approach could make light weight lyrics turn out heavy vibed. It was his gift.