'Virgin Front Line - Sounds Of Reality' is a 5 CD box set, released last week on August 11. As well as excellent roots gems from The Gladiators, The Mighty Diamonds and classics from toasting legends U Roy and Big Youth, there's a number of top notch dub selections too. Highlights include The Twinkle Brothers' liberation cry 'Free Africa', Culture's 'Can’t Study The Rastaman', Poet And The Roots' 'Dread Beat An' Blood', The Abyssinians' 'Hey You', Doctor Alimantado's incredible 'Slavery Let It Go' and Jah Lloyd And The Black Lion's 'Bone Dub'. One particularly killer track is Prince Fari's outstanding 12" mix of 'Throw Away Your Gun', which extends the song to a brilliant 8 minutes. A version of the track can also be found on his 1980 album 'Showcase in a Suitcase'.On 10th March 1978 Virgin Records launched a label that throughout the remainder of the decade would set the benchmark for Roots Reggae: Front Line. In the space of just under two years, some 46 albums and 26 singles saw issue on the iconic imprint, with its releases consistently of the highest calibre and rating among the very best music Jamaica had to offer. Front Line’s brief but glorious existence as the world’s greatest Roots Reggae label is celebrated with this deluxe box set, which across its 5 discs features many of Jamaica’s greatest talents, performing 92 of the most enduring Roots, Dub, Lovers Rock and DJ sounds of the seventies, with a third of the 31 tracks new to CD previously unissued. Also included in the package is a 52 page booklet, which opens with a typically captivating foreword from John Lydon, whose talent-scouting trip to Jamaica with Richard Branson early in 1978 was key to Virgin’s acquisition of some of the finest Reggae recordings of the era.
Peppered with fascinating imagery, including numerous previously unseen shots from the trip taken by world renowned photographer Dennis Morris, every key episode during Front Line’s brief yet glorious history is disclosed, courtesy of fascinating anecdotes from Don Letts, the label’s original manager, Jumbo Vanrenen, and its designer Brian Cooke, whose original drafts for the iconic imprint are revealed for the first time ever. As an added bonus, the set also contains four high quality reproductions of classic Front Line posters from the seventies, as well as a car sticker, based on the now impossibly rare Front Line Rockers badge from 1976. This, the most comprehensive collection of Front Line tracks ever to see issue, pays due homage to the legendary label and flawlessly illustrates just why it continues to be widely revered by Reggae fans around the world, more than 36 years after its launch.
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