Chris Thomas
Before I fell on the side of Oasis in the battle of Britpop, my final year of junior school (1993/94) was spent focused on music with its origin a lot further west than Manchester.
I joined the charts in swaying gently to the varying successes of Chaka Demus & Pliers, Bitty McClean et al, quickly realising that the obligatory smattering of such hits on the latest Now That’s What I Call Music… wasn’t going to be enough to satisfy my need for more Caribbean-tinged tunes. I wanted MORE.
Luckily, help was at hand in the form of the 100% Reggae compilations.
Happily I nodded knowingly away to hits like “Sweets For My Sweet” by CJ Lewis and “Sweat (A la la la la long)” by Inner Circle, remaining puzzled by my peers’ continual questioning of my non-stop consumption of these snazzily-covered cassettes and growing increasingly frustrated at my dad’s insistence that they didn’t provide a suitable soundtrack for our car journeys to Tesco, Truro or Tottenham.
In hindsight, the inclusion of Ace of Base and UB40 may’ve been generous, but the second and third parts did provide me with those first joyous occasions of eager anticipation ahead of their release; culminating in solo bus rides to Our Price or Sam Goody with pocket money in tow.
However, probably the biggest personal legacy of the 100% Reggae ‘franchise’ was the fact it introduced me to two of my favourite songs of all time.
So, whenever A Message To You Rudy (The Specials) or Silly Games (Janet Kay) come on the radio or my iPod, they always lead to a wry smile and a wistful jog down memory lane to the untouched, unaffected adolescence of my music-loving life.
And even if they led me to forever having Shine by Aswad as the first proper album I bought, I still forgive them.
