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The Grass Roots were, without a doubt, one of the great singles bands of the 60s and early 70s. So, why hasn t a collection of their complete, original Dunhill/ABC hit singles ever been released? Well, there s the little matter of the original mono master tapes. There are various stories about what happened, including one with Dunhill head Jay Lasker pitching all the label s multi-track recordings and mono masters after having deemed them obsolete. And so the classic hit singles by the Grass Roots have for the most part only surfaced in their stereo album versions on the various anthologies of the band. But when the going gets tough for a reissue label, Real Gone Music gets going. After a worldwide search for the best sources available, we are thrilled to announce that we have rounded up all two dozen Dunhill/ABC hit singles (including the censored and uncensored versions of Let s Live for Today and their biggest smash, Midnight Confessions ) and put them together into one AMAZING-sounding package! Indeed, this collection offers the truest essence of the band those hook-filled singles in that glorious, original mono sound mixed and mastered to punch through 60s and 70s AM radio. And, by covering the years 1965 to 1973, The Grass Roots: The Complete Original Dunhill/ABC Hit Singles also provides a fantastic overview of the group s tangled history and many line-ups all meticulously explained by Ed Osborne s liner notes with late lead singer Rob Grill the closest to a career-long member (their first two singles featured Bill Fulton on vocals). It s the Grass Roots collection that we ve ALL been waiting for, yours from Real Gone!

This set, with its powerful melodies, brilliant playing (note the superb horns) and all round attitude, is a sparkling reminder of how reggae sounded when it first influenced the world music scene in the Seventies. But it afso bears testimony to the sophisticated consciousness, wisdom and Afrocentric worldview that were the trademarks of the Rasta rebel soul at that time. This music had weight. That 'Roots' and 'Culture' became pilloried cliches at the beginning of the 80s says something about the rot that had set in at the heart of reggae - and just as much about, how times had changed. The idea of Roots - kind of personified by Alex Haley's mid-Seventies book and TV series of the same period - typified the search for an African identity, after centuries of physical and then economic slavery, amongst Jamaican youth.

"It was fifteen years ago today…. I wrote a book about a bunch of bands who couldn't play. Subtitled, `A Pre-Punk History for a Post-Punk World', From The Velvets to the Voidoids is now back in print both sides of the pond, and methinks deserving of a companion CD (or two), a noise-some soundtrack from the subterranean silos of Sire'n'such….." - Clinton Heylin, author of From The Velvets to the Voidoids (Penguin, 1993) and Babylon's Burning: From Punk to Grunge (Penguin, 2007).