Definitive Gold

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 even 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 five-disc set features tracks the Wailers recorded with producer Lee "Scratch" Perry between August 1970 and April 1971 at Randy's in Kingston, as well as self-productions, assorted dubs, and a couple of tracks produced by Bunny Lee during the same time frame, a period that many feel generated the most free-flowing creative material the Wailers and Marley ever recorded. ~ Steve Leggett