3.0 out of 5 stars
Good songs, sound quality lacking, July 22, 2010
This review is from: Anthology (Audio CD)
This budget-priced two disc Skatalites compilation consists mainly of tracks they recorded for producer Duke Reid's Treasure Isle label. During their brief two-year life span, they also recorded for Coxsone Dodd's Studio One label, plus a few tracks for Justin Yap's Top Deck, Top Hat, and Tuneico labels. Knowing a bit about the producers, labels and recording sessions helps when collecting Skatalites material.
While there are plenty of decent songs on here, including Studio One gems "Eastern Standard Time", "Occupation", and "Silver Dollar", the sound quality on this disc is mediocre, even though the cover says it was digitally remastered. I'm not just talking about the low-fi sound that all '60s Jamaican ska has--there are many other Skatalites discs that sound more lively than this one.
My recommendation: skip this compilation and see if you can track down the much better, but recently out-of-print
Phoenix City: History of the World's Greatest Ska compilation from Trojan records. Also a two-disc comp, it has 54 songs in total--19 more than this Anthology--and includes classics like "Guns of Navarrone", "James Bond", and "Man in the Street" while still covering most of the Anthology songs as well. And most importantly, the sound quality is so much better, as are the packaging and liner notes.
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