Roots Archives Forum

Amazon.co.uk offers the abovementioned title.
http://tinyurl.com/pj8nuf8

It's on the Jamaican Recordings label. Did anyone hear it? So it is another bogus release? Is it any good?

Rather likely bogus. They've released a lot of fake dub albums (most often with productions from Bunny Lee) and I highly doubt they managed to source all of these songs in dub plate mixes.

It's a shame because Jamaican Recordings is a label that seems to be in each and every record store. They could do a lot of positive work for reggae if they only changed their approach.

sonic wrote:Amazon.co.uk offers the abovementioned title.
http://tinyurl.com/pj8nuf8

It's on the Jamaican Recordings label. Did anyone hear it? So it is another bogus release? Is it any good?

If you know that Tubby's sound stopped playing in late '75 after it was shot up in Morant Bay, the CD title itself holds a clue to the validity of it's contents.

i myself have been tempted to buy it just to have..... aside from the rather misleading title with the earlier Hometown Hi-Fi name covering a period of time covered when the system had long since been put out of action by the police (allegedly Trinity Gardner was the cop who did it). King Tubby's Hi-Fi didn't make a peep ever again after late Oct. '75 or so.

you would hope that there would be stuff sourced right from a 2 track tape used for the master.... who knows, maybe all that stuff was recorded over, or maybe there still are tapes hiding somewhere for dubplate gems like "Spangler's Clap", etc.

but with all the fuckery that abounds with Jamaican Recordings, i would have deep doubts about its provenance. if you like how it sounds i'd say buy it and enjoy, but don't fool yourself into thinking that it's King Tubby mixes from that era, or that even one of those mixes ever played at a Tubby's Hi-Fi session.

Most of the track titles are identical to those on Blood & Fire's Dub Gone Crazy and Dub Gone 2 Crazy. My suspicion is that these are not dub plates. This is just a dub album likely using the same source material as the B&F albums, but represented with misleading and hyped marketing, which is JA recordings trademark.
I suspect they haven't been remixed though. Usually the remixed ones have a logo on the back that states "unreleased versions straight from the master tapes". This one just says 70's dub or something. Of course, this is taking them at their word, which isn't wise!

Anyway, if it is a hybrid of the two B&F Dub Gone Crazy albums, it's going to be an excellent set of Tubby/Lee dubs, and if you don't have them already it might be worth getting.
The danger is buying something you actually already have, due to the misrepresentation by the label.

Jamaican Recordings also released King Jammy: Dub Kings, which is also mostly a hybrid of various B&F albums

wonder if its gonna end up as "essential pick" on the website linking us to potato chips and Beatles music

It is

It's very strange. The vocal stuff they release on their Kingston Sounds sublabel is mostly excellent, from what I've heard of it. They can do things well when they want to...

a few genuine Tubby's Hi-Fi dubplates have been released, but not promoted as such.

Linval Thompson 'acquired' some of Tubby's personal tapes and released a couple 7"s -

johnny clarke - can't stop me now
jacob miller - false rasta

both on the "ain't no sunshine" rhythm and both killer.

also the Auralux label compilation "whip them king tubby's" (also released via Linval) has more of these Tubby's Hi-Fi tunes, though i think that compilation is mostly new dry mixes (or even straight unmixed bounces) from the multi-track tapes, not true Tubby's personal mixes, but at least they were tunes that were made exclusively for Tubby's sound.