The Opinionated Diner

I'm a sucker for a good compilation album....buying stuff I own over and over again sometimes if its in an ace new package or given a new reason to exist on a piece of vinyl with other tracks...I mean do I really need Buffalo Girls again, umm no, but I do need Don Letts' Dread Meets the B-Boys Downtown, a tribute from the old Roxy DJ to the NY underground of the early eighties, all that noisy Smurfy electro and attitude and the bonus of an unreleased Clash track (even if it is just an average re-take of Radio Clash, but I love it when Joe's voice kicks in half way through). Wonderous stuff, and made for the car Norman Jay (bless him)'s second comp of tracks from Philadephia International's seventies archive is as impeccable as the first. I own every track on Norman Jay Present's Philadelphia, some six or seven times (actually "Love is the Message" probably many more) but they all still sound so bloody wonderful and Norman puts it together so well. The greatest record label ever bar none.......and when Leon Huff's electric piano kicks in on LITM......... Jeff Mill's Azuli collection Choice seems to have revived what was becoming a slightly dull series (the Louie Vega one was simply boring, and predictable and the Derrick Carter one was just bad) and is a far more ecclectic and interesting, and I've always been a sucker for Chaz Jankel's "Ai No Corrida", Blake Baxter's "Sexuality" and DJ Q's "We Are One". The next one, from Xpress 2, is just as good