Jamaican Ska Records Are Going to Drive Me Crazy

No, seriously.  A very…let’s say “detail-oriented”…personality such as my own cannot handle trying to research Jamaican records.  I am working on a little Skatalites project right now, which I will premier a few months from now, depending on where my research takes me and whether I retain my sanity.  I was sorting out the tracks that appear on the old Studio 1 Best of the Ska-talites album, starting with the track “Air Raid Shelter.”  My LP is in fairly rough shape, so in digitizing it, I ended up with really crackly recordings.  I happen to have the 7″ of that song, so I figured I would just record the 7″ and be done with it.  Simple, right?  Negative, Ghost Rider.  The song on the 7″ didn’t match the one on the album.  I checked over on Discogs, which told me that the tracks on the record were all out of order.  Crap.  That album was my only source for about 8 of the tracks on there.  After researching the matrix codes on the 7″, I determined that it was mislabeled, and was actually “Addis Ababa.”  Cool.  Let’s double check that with the version of that one that I have on the Foundation Ska CD – that ought to be accurate, right?  D’oh…that’s an entirely different song, and was actually “Fidel Castro.”  Cross-referencing with YouTube, I sorted it all out, and “Air Raid Shelter” was actually labeled correctly on the LP.  So let’s recap…the Best of the Ska-Talites LP track listing on the sleeve does not match the one on the labels, neither of which match the actual track listing.  However, the tracks on my copy are not out of order in the same way that is documented on Discogs.  The “Air Raid Shelter” 7″ is actually “Addis Ababa,” and “Addis Ababa” on the Foundation Ska CD is actually “Fidel Castro.”  Got it.