There are countless Bob Marley collections out there, and more each year, most of them made up of Marley & the Wailers' pre-Island Records recordings done initially for the Jamaican market, and many of these are rather random, thrown-together affairs, possibly legally dubious, reshuffling the same tracks in various configurations, often without liner notes or much annotation. The recordings are generally rougher, grittier, and less sound-expansive than Marley's more polished (and tightly copyright controlled) Island releases, and they're definitely more Jamaican in feel. This rather random set features tracks the Wailers recorded with producer Lee "Scratch" Perry (as well as some Wailers self-productions) between August 1970 and April 1971 at Randy's in Kingston, a period that many feel generated the most free-flowing creative material the Wailers and Marley ever recorded. ~ Steve Leggett

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