Sly & Robbie - Taxi Fare (Heartbeat - 1987)

Reggae is probably one of the music the most cherished by die-hard fans. It's even the music that has the most fetichists in Western world, the kind of guys that spend monthes and massive amount of money to track down rare 7". Posting about reggae can consequently be a double edge sword: it's curiously the posts that have the most success and drag trafic on this blog but it's pretty hard to find something really interesting and rare that has not been posted elsewhere on hundreds of musical blogs like this one. You'll probably find posts about Taxi Fare at other places but this record is so good it would be a crime to omit it. Jamaican music most famous rythms duo, Sly Dunbar and Robbie Skakespear probably hold the bass and the drums on the best reggae releases of the last 40 years. They released Taxi Fare under their own name with the help of the Channel One All Stars (Bongo Herman, Carlton "Santa" Davis, Eric Lamont, Errol "Flabba" Holt, Gladstone Anderson, Noel "Scully" Simms, Sky Juice, Winston Wright) and Jamaican best vocalists of the time. It's not a proper album but more a compilation of their best production works of the previous years for their own Taxi Records label. It all starts out with the instrumental track Triplet and its slowed down and dubbed out interpolation of Don't Go by Yazoo. Sugar Minott then holds the vocals on Devil Pickney, Struggle on Rock Music, Jimmy Riley on Pure & True, Junior Delgado on Fort Augustus, Dennis Brown on Sitting & Watching, The Tamlins on Baltimore, my favorite track of the record, Jimmy Riley again on Bang Bang and Carlton Livingston on Those Tricks. The bass and the electronic drum are mixed above the vocals and the other instruments and the result just kick you in the chest. In a time when digitalized reggae was starting to dominate Jamaica, Taxi Fare succeeds to be a roots release with a modernized flavor. A must.

























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