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Uptown Top Ranking - Joe Gibbs Reggae productions 1970-78 Various Artists, Trojan Records
Shelfmark: 63.2

No Bones For The Dogs - Joe Gibbs and The Professionals, Pressure Sounds
Shelfmark: 63.2 GIB

My wife tells me a story of when she worked in a big HMV store in the 1980s: her and her friend Steve would hide all the Jamaican dub reggae 12" singles until sale time and then reprice them at 50p and buy them. "We weren't as bad as the guys in the stockroom," she says by way of some sort of illogical defence. "They used to tape them to their chests underneath their clothes using parcel tape and just walk out past the security guards."

Many of these stolen records would be the distinctive 12" cardboard sleeves of Joe Gibbs Music. Sadly the Joe Gibbs' seem to have been lost in the Whiston Road fire back in the 'eighties - all I could find is a Clint Eastwood/Leroy Smart LP
with an HMV sale sticker to share with you. I digress - so back to the story.

Our two featured CDs borrowed from Hackney Library between them cover a wide range of Gibbs' earlier output and date back to the seventies that some might regard as being the classic Gibbs' time.

No Bones For The Dogs was released in 2002 and it brings together 7" 45s from 1974 and 1979 and focuses on the dub output of producer Joe Gibbs and engineer Errol Thompson, the self-styled Mighty Two with the in-house backing band the Professionals. This is an infectious selection of pulsing heavy beats that drive the rhythms along, as well illustrated by the opener No Bones For The Dogs, an instrumental version of Alton Ellis' Why Birds Follow Spring, and I Am Not Ashamed Version taken from the Culture track with the added layers of sound, most notably car horns and wailing children. Elsewhere, we find heavy and, at times, almost menacingly dark basslines aligned with delicate melodies, and the ghostly echoes of half-remembered tunes which is so much a part of the dub experience.

Uptown Top Ranking is a more pop-orientated selection of singles including hits like Althea and Donna's Uptown Top Ranking, Money In My Pocket (Dennis Brown) and Nicky Thomas' Love Of The Common People. Even here it's not as straightforward or obvious as it could be -- the Nicky Thomas track is the Jamaican release without the orchestral overdubs added in London by Trojan records for the UK market and Trinity's Three Piece Suit that utilises the same backing track as the Althea and Donna hit features by way of interesting comparison -- and this is an equally excellent compilation albeit showing a different side of Gibbs as a producer. The Heptones (I've Got A Feeling), Delroy Wilson (Pretty Girl), the Mighty Diamonds Ghetto Living and Prince Far I's Heavy Manners give you an idea of the quality of tracks on this slice of reggae history.

You'll wonder how you lived without it.