Africa Stand Alone | ||||
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Studio album (bootleg)by Culture | ||||
Released | 1978 | |||
Recorded | Harry J's, Kingston, 1978 | |||
Genre | Reggae | |||
Label | April Records | |||
Producer | Jamie Hatcher Seymour Cummings | |||
Culture chronology | ||||
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Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music | [1] |
Africa Stand Alone is a 1978 album by Jamaican roots reggae band Culture. It was recorded with engineer Sylvan Morris at Harry J's Studios, Kingston, in the interim between the band's sessions with producers Joe Gibbs and Sonia Pottinger, and produced by Jamie Hatcher and Seymour Cummings.
The album was never fully completed, and the extant version was released without the band's permission or involvement by U.S. label April Records in 1978, making it effectively a bootleg. [2] As such, most of its tracks were re-recorded with Sonia Pottinger for release on the Harder Than the Rest album shortly afterwards. It remains the only Culture release to feature the track "Dog Ago Nyam Dog" in its original form, though a dub version appeared as "Dog Eat Dub" on the Culture in Dub album later the same year.
Neither the backing group (christened the Sons of Jah by Culture's lead singer Joseph Hill [3] ) nor the producers of Africa Stand Alone had appeared on record before. Perhaps for this reason, the versions here of the tracks that also appear on Harder Than the Rest are renowned for being rawer and less disciplined. [4] The musical backing tracks are also known for being more minimal, thus allowing the vocals to take a more central rôle. [5] The import of copies of Africa Stand Alone from the U.S. at roughly the same time as Harder Than the Rest was released had the ultimate effect of stimulating interest in the latter, and for a while each record boosted the other's sales. [6]
Africa Stand Alone was voted the 5th best album of 1978 in NME's annual Top 50 albums poll. [7]
Winston Rodney OD, better known by the stage name Burning Spear, is a Jamaican roots reggae singer-songwriter, vocalist, and musician. Burning Spear is a Rastafarian and one of the most influential and long-standing roots artists to emerge from the 1970s.
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Hair of the Dog is the sixth studio album by the Scottish hard rock band Nazareth, released on 3 April 1975. The album was recorded at Escape Studios, Kent, with additional recording and mixing at AIR Studios, London, and is the group's best known and highest selling release, with over two million copies sold worldwide.
Sonia Eloise Pottinger OD was a Jamaican reggae record producer. An icon in the music business, Sonia Pottinger was the first female Jamaican record producer and produced artists from the mid-1960s until the mid-1980s.
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Pack Up the Plantation: Live! is the first official live album by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, released in November 1985 by MCA Records. It was released as a double LP and, in slightly truncated form, a single cassette or compact disc. A concert film of the same name was released on home video in 1986. Stevie Nicks sings on two songs, including the US single "Needles and Pins", which reached No. 37 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Culture Club Collect – 12″ Mixes Plus is a compilation album by British band Culture Club, first released in 1991 by Virgin for the VIP Series. The album includes remixes and extended versions of Culture Club songs that were recorded for their first four albums (1982–1986) plus a couple of their stand-out tracks, some B-sides as well as the P. W. Botha 12″ Remix of lead singer Boy George's solo British and European Number One single "Everything I Own".
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