Roots Archives Forum

a 1980 release, i just got it cheap..4 quid..in a 2nd hand shop. Great cd it is too, with ace songs such as guess whos coming to dinner and abortion on it. We never find this great disc in major retail outlets, why's that?

If I remember rightly it was released around the time that Black Uhuru signed for Island records and Sinsemila came out.

The Black Uhuru album was released by virgin and was a complilation of their 12" and 7" singles and b-sides/versions that came out on the D-Roy and Taxi lables. At the time Black Uhuru we're being touted as the next big thing. I suspect Virgin bought the rights in order jump on the bandwagon. Since then they've never re-ssued. I'm not 100% sure if the material has appeared somewhere else. The version/mix of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was different from the D-Roy 12"

Great album anyway , it was the very first full reggae lp i heard back in 1981

Great album, "Nuff Said"

I always thought these tracks were the same ones as on both Showcase and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Are they different mixes than on those two LPs?

The Guess Who's Coming to Dinner disc used to always be fairly easy to find. I have it on both vinyl and CD because there are quite a few copies floating around.

i dont know Jason, since i never did see the 2 discs you mention there.Only one place i ever saw plastic smile, thats on Black uhuru.

The D-Roy LP is a proper Showcase (ie 3 tracks on each side) but the later CD release had 7 tracks.

Plastic Smile is the last track on the LP and is cut short. But it can be found in its full version on the accompanying D-Roy 12". I've never bought the CD so I don't know whether everything else is the same on both versions.

There are at least four different releases.

[cover=2416,2783]
This one has the 'original' 12" mixes that appeared on the D Roy label through 1978/1979.

[cover=6316,2783]
The mix on this is different (original Taxi ?, don't know) and has 'Shine Eye Girl' on it. Plus full-length mixes on all tracks.

[cover=259,285]
This is the most popular release on the Virgin label. The mix is different again to both already mentioned. The sounds are edited for general release like all that stuff coming from Island/Virgin/Greensleeves. When Richard Branson lost interest in reggae he also lost the rights to this album which since the early 1980s has only been available in another form like this [cover=21,19].
And again, there was a mastering here and an editing there...

All you have is one great collection of songs (this never has been a classic 'album' in the first way, like all of Black Uhuru's later efforts) which is sounding strangely different depending from which source you have learnt them

[cover=6316,2783]

To add to the confusion, there are differences between the various issues of this album. The mixes in the extended segments, the segues and (possibly, I can't completely verify this) the track order differ depending on the label.

thanks, the lp i heard in 1981 had the colourful flag on it, as does the cd i got for 4 quid recently. its exactly the same cuts too. hey, i never saw any of the above releases anywhere in the shops and i want to know why.can anyone shed any light upon this matter for me today??