Recently I visited a favorite dingy subterranean record store and asked the assistant behind the counter whether they had one particular record in stock. While they didn't have that recording, they did have one of the same group's earlier records which turned out to be one a friend had recommended. The assistant pulled it out from the wall of paper behind him and handed it to me.
In my hands I held a dark green velvet sleeve with the band's name embossed in gold upon the cover, the limited edition piece was numbered with an imprinted black stamp on the rear. Opening the sleeve I found, beneath the hand-printed liner insert and rice-paper tissuing a nested gatefold format which opened out to reveal two slabs of black vinyl both of which had cuts across their circumference so when abutted they resembled (with their white labels) a figure of eight. As I was I remarking aloud that, as they stood, these records would be impossible to play, that the needle would fly off their edge, the assistant produced two smaller yellow sections of vinyl which (nearly but not quite) fitted into the holes of the larger records.
The assistant then took one smaller yellow and one larger black section placed them together in a clear shallow plastic tray the size of a twelve inch record (this plastic dish in some ways resembled the lids which cap cream pots in super-markets). Handing the assemblage to me I was distressed to find the vinyl crumbling into jigsaw-shaped pieces between my fingers.
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SOUL JAZZ have hunted me down nearly a year and a half year after Paul* laid in to me when he'd assumed that because I didn't like the 100% Dynamite series this meant I was both a snob and a racist. I didn't like 100% Dynamite because I thought they lacked proper liner-notes and I thought that Blood & Fire and Pressure Sounds made a better job of making stuff available to the public, managing to be at once both populist and yet still succeding in offering solid information up to collector geeks. I went on, in subsequent weeks to say how much I liked their Studio One series (then just picking up steam) and later on praised their shop to the skies.
The bloke who is sending me rude emails telling me I'm a racist declaring that I ought to get out more often hasn't even bothered to check out the links to the entries I sent him which would effectively clear my name, he just goes on heaping me with insults. Actually I've decided I don't care, and that it goes with the territory when you hold strong opinions. I put a few moments more thought into it this afternoon. The Tighten Up Trojan releases never used to have liner notes and neither do the current crop of VP and Greensleeves comps. The crucial difference here, I've decided, is that they didn't/don't need them; that contemporarily repackaged material doesn't demand it. On the other hand if you're digging up old Jamaican tracks, and you're serious about making Reggae available to the 'General Public', then you ought to provide liner notes. They needn't be dull, they can be a crap newsprint insert but you need 'em.
*For the record the Meme-ster wrote a sterling rant to them in my defense. Big up.
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