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Jo-Ann Greene
The Trojan Beatles Tribute Box Set
Trojan (TJETD 220) (Three CDs)
In the late 1990s, the Trojan label began steadily shifting archival material out of the vaults and into the record shops, a stream of releases that turned into a deluge upon the label's purchase by Sanctuary in the last few years. Clever repackaging remains the order of the day, with the ongoing series of budget three-CD box sets particularly inspired; so it was merely a matter of time before some creative compiler hit upon the concept of an entire box dedicated to Beatles covers.
The sequencing of The Trajan Beatles Tribute Box Set (Trojan TJETD 220) is too clever by half, as the Brits would say, running chronologically not by the Trojan release dates, but by The Beatles' own, with songs composed by John Lennon and Paul McCartney for other artists appended onto disc two and disc three dedicated exclusively to British reggae artists and Jamaican expatriates.
The bulk of the tracks date from the reggae age (1968-75), and, not surprisingly, only two tracks predate this era, while a handful are drawn from later years, one as recently as 1995.
The reggae age is often given short shrift by today's fans, who blindly perceive the music as brimming with...