Open The Iron Gate 1973 - 77

Early singles like “Wet Dream,” "Mini-Skirt Vision," and “Wine Her Goosie” positioned the St. Ann-born Max Romeo as the most laddish of Jamaican singers. But in the early ‘70s, he put away Playboy and checked out Marcus Garvey and Karl Marx instead. Blood & Fire captures that revolutionary shift with Open The Iron Gate 1973-1977, coupling his 1975 album Revelation Time with other relevant singles like “Valley of Jehosaphat" and “Melt Away.” Romeo has harsh words for the police and their cruelty, but even harsher ones for bourgeois society, with visions of heads rolling down from hillside homes. The set proves that Romeo’s iconic Scratch-produced follow-up, War ina Babylon, was no one-off.