Roots Reggae label ‘Virgin Front Line’ set for special boxset release
On 10 March 1978, Virgin Records launched a label that would later set the benchmark for Roots Reggae: Front Line.
In just under two years, some 46 albums and 26 singles saw issue on the ‘iconic’ imprint, high calibre recordings and those rating among the very best music Jamaica had to offer.
Now the Roots Reggae label is celebrated with a deluxe box set, which across its 5 discs features many of Jamaica’s greatest talents, performing 92 of the most enduring Roots, Dub, Lovers Rock and DJ sounds of the seventies, with over 31 tracks new to CD, of which a third are previously unissued.
Also included in the package is a 52 page booklet, which opens with a foreword from John Lydon, whose talent scouting trip to Jamaica with Richard Branson early in 1978 was key to Virgin’s acquisition of some of the recordings.
Photos from the trip taken by photographer Dennis Morris, show Front Line’s brief history.
As an added bonus, the set also contains four high quality reproductions of classic posters from the seventies, as well as a car sticker, based on the now impossibly rare Front Line Rockers badge from 1976.
RobMoro 
On 10 March 1978, Virgin Records launched a label that would later set the benchmark for Roots Reggae: Front Line.
In just under two years, some 46 albums and 26 singles saw issue on the ‘iconic’ imprint, high calibre recordings and those rating among the very best music Jamaica had to offer.
Now the Roots Reggae label is celebrated with a deluxe box set, which across its 5 discs features many of Jamaica’s greatest talents, performing 92 of the most enduring Roots, Dub, Lovers Rock and DJ sounds of the seventies, with over 31 tracks new to CD, of which a third are previously unissued.
Also included in the package is a 52 page booklet, which opens with a foreword from John Lydon, whose talent scouting trip to Jamaica with Richard Branson early in 1978 was key to Virgin’s acquisition of some of the recordings.
Photos from the trip taken by photographer Dennis Morris, show Front Line’s brief history.
As an added bonus, the set also contains four high quality reproductions of classic posters from the seventies, as well as a car sticker, based on the now impossibly rare Front Line Rockers badge from 1976.
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